Alligator

Sophia. (My brother's photograph.)

I’m sitting at yet another McDonald’s, this one at the edge of the Minnesota prairie. I’ve just spent another fantastic weekend with my family, this time with my brother and sister, her husband and children, and her brother- and sister-in-law. It is cool how there is this real way that we’ve all become family to each other. My sister’s husband is really my brother, as is his brother. We’ve created a new family for ourselves, or the family is evolving and changing, and if we want to maintain these relationships, we have to accept that. And relish it.

We spent the weekend at an incredible Wisconsin lake cabin, and I spent two hours both days rowing my sister and her daughter across the lake. We chased box turtles, spied sandhill cranes, and watched a family of Canada geese, the chicks fluffy and gray, disappear up from the water. This weekend was billed as my brother’s bachelor party. It’s the first long weekend the three of us have spent together in a very long time. Both my sister and I are standing up for my brother at his wedding, so, as groomsmen, we had to show him a good time.

Not that we did anything particularly spectacular. But two days of laying in the sun, good conversation, and marine exploration make for a perfect weekend. Not to mention my sister’s near-perfect menu, with an all-day marinade of skirt steak in garlic and cilantro, grilled and sliced for carne asada tacos topping the list. My nieces are perfect, as usual. Sophia had about three children chasing her around the beach, trying to get her attention. She attracts a fan following anywhere she goes.

Now we head west. Westward ho. The goal today is to get to Boulder, where we meet up with friends of Peter’s. It’s going to be an epic, seventeen-hour day of driving, which freaked me out enough that I couldn't sleep last night and woke up at two in the morning and did some yoga outside on the deck. Seventeen hours in a car does not make my lower back happy.

In other news, the Pacific Crest Trail hike looks like a more distant possibility. I’m getting consistent feedback that section is still impassable from snow. Another, more low-elevation hike, is a possibility, especially later in the season. I’m disappointed, but I also want to be realistic. Then again, one can always start a southbound thru-hike of the PCT on July 1… Why are these ideas always so tempting to me? And so tough to follow through on?

The grass was made for the cows

Bridge over the New River Gorge in West Virginia

Yesterday I spent a day with my grandmother and grandfather in Grand Rapids. They're family legends--up until last August, my grandmother, at 86, was preparing meals at which four of the five dishes came from her own garden. This year she's much changed. Yesterday, I made a rhubarb pie for her, at her request, with rhubarb from my aunt's backyard.

I never thought I'd have her blessing bestowed on me like that. She's never been good at letting go in the kitchen, and she always seemed to believe that culinary skill was bestowed from above after a wedding, and only then. A month from now, I will be her lone unmarried grandchild, and the main thing she wanted for all of us was a family. But she trusts me to make pie crust, and that's a gift I never thought I'd get. I never made a rhubarb pie before, either. My crust, with her supervision, was more flaky and delicate than I ever thought I'd be able to make it, and I took extensive notes. So maybe that can be my inheritance.

It's hard to talk about the future, though. One of the main reasons I wanted to drive across the country with my brother was because I knew we'd be stopping here. I don't know how many visits we have left. Up until last fall, all four of my grandparents were still alive, still married to their original spouses. I had four full grandparents, a complete set. Now they’re dwindling, and it’s hard to feel that I’m gradually moving into the position of the second generation, rather than the third. The reality of it doesn't make it any easier to think about.

I don’t know why. All four lived amazing and full lives. I doubt they would say there was anything they wished for that they didn't accomplish. My grandparents are surrounded by love and I imagine that they are satisfied. Age is still hard, though. Aging is hard. The passage of time is hard, death especially hard. No matter who we are, at the end of our lives, we grab and hold on to every last minute.

Across the sea

Iris, niece

My dinner the evening of Friday, when I was supposed to post, was McDonald’s, because they have wifi. Theoretically. The network didn’t show up, so my grand plans to post were shot. I should have posted when I had internet access in the morning, at the hotel, but everything seemed too stressful. Instead, I’m tried to find internet access in the mountains of West Virginia, where my family and I spent the week at a cabin on a camping trip. These are the advantages of these trips with the family—some stress, but lots of fun. Maybe I’m one of the few people in the world that still has a blast hanging out with my immediate family.

The disadvantage to these grand trips are the spending of money. I think about that more and more as I progress west across the nation. I am spending money now. I am choosing to spend money right now, because I’m doing something that I believe in. Spending time with my family is important, as is giving myself the gift of a mini-adventure this summer. But it’s still difficult.

My brother and I had this conversation about how money only gives me freedom if I’m willing to spend it. He’s right, too, as hard as it is for me to admit. If I let it sit in my bank account and don’t do anything, then it’s not giving me freedom at all. Knowing it’s there doesn’t allow me to do anything I want with it. Like buying a plane ticket for Argentina.

The real reason I don’t like spending money is because I like having it, because it makes me feel safe, because no matter what happens I have something to fall back on. Or maybe because of the starving babies in Africa.

I hate talking about the starving African babies, because it feels like such a cliche, just a guilt trip that we lay on each other. But they’re real, and the only way Americans know how to deal with them is by ignoring their existence. I’ve talked before about how I try to handle global inequity in my own conscience, but there are only two real ways:
1. Go feed them.
2. Give money to feed them.

My third way, which feels like a massive cop-out, is to minimize my participation in an unjust system, and to raise others’ consciousness by making art. I have to believe that art has a place in the universe, despite the reality of suffering. I make art in the face of suffering. But when I buy an Extra Value Meal for $5, rather than spending that $5 to save another human being’s life, I begin to have a hard time.

How can I deal with that in my own conscience? It’s so hard to understand. How can I spend money on anything when I know that $5 can save someone’s life?

Friends argue that it’s not enough to simply choose poverty as a life choice. Maybe they’re right. I just don’t know what my other choice is, if I want to follow the vocation I believe God has chosen for me. Maybe by feeding the babies at the same time that I follow my vocation? Maybe I should buy that ticket for Algeria instead.

During the year I spent dying

Really?

Every time I spend time with my family, I realize that I love my nieces more than life itself. I believe that they are literally enchanting. They enchant me, like fairy princesses waving magic wands at my face and sending me into a utopian state. They could change me into a frog and I wouldn’t even notice.

That being said, I must acknowledge that going to family weddings is an ordeal, primarily because it reminds me of the fact of children’s existence and, thus, my lack of them. Since I am an unmarried woman (everyone go read this Maureen Dowd article right now, which makes me so angry I could spit), I get to share a room with my widowed grandmother. She’s my date. I accompany her around, with her hand on my arm. Which is fine--I love her, and I’m happy to help. It just affects my perception of myself. It doesn’t matter what adventures I have partaken in, or how much I’ve published, or if I’ve won the effin’ Nobel Peace Prize. (Heck, it certainly didn’t help Obama.) In the context of my Republican family members, for whom marriage and children are almost all-important, I’m merely a spinster, no more nor less, a person sans companion or the patter of little feet in my future.

This fact used to make me so angry I could cry and scream and cry and do all of that at the same time. Now, when it doesn’t make me cry and scream, it makes me laugh. How ridiculous is it that nothing matters except children? What about my own life? Don’t all of my cousins want exactly the same things for their children that I want for myself? To wit: I am following my dreams. They want their children to follow their dreams. But what about their own dreams?

My real source of terror is that I’ll wake up on my 35th birthday and say: d’oh. I’ll realize that all of my ova have rotted on the shelf, and then realize that true happiness in life comes from progeny and progeny alone, and I blew it and now it’s too late. That’s what I’m afraid of. Or I’m afraid of ending up with a life partner who wakes up and says that same thing, minus the end bit, replacing it with: now I’ll go find a 21-year-old with ova raring to go.

So every day I progress farther into my thirties (or every day I think of it) I ask myself this question: do I want children? Do I? Do I? The answer: yes. I do. The biological imperative is too strong not to fight. Of course I do. Of course. Millions of years of DNA are screaming at me, louder and louder every passing day.

Then I ask myself the more important question, which is: do I want to raise children? And the answer to that one? Um, not so much.

Oh, they tell me of a home

Inchworm

I bought a new pair of shoes, Vasque Mindbenders, trail running shoes. Vasque evidently sponsors a 100-mile ultra-marathoner, so if they’re good enough for her, they’re good enough for me. Joke nalang--I don’t really buy things based on who sponsors them, but it does give me confidence. The real reason was that they were on sale at the outfitter in my size, and my AT hiking companion wore Vasque Velocities for 1000 miles. So I know they’ll stand up for the duration. It’s the first new pair of hiking shoes I’ve bought in six years. I even wore my second-half AT pair of New Balances for my full 900 miles of the PCT in 2005.

That’s exactly why I want to do a solo hike this year. I feel like I’m waking up all those old joints, all those old feelings of anxiety, adrenaline, excitement. I love hiking, and I also hate it. I went and reread my trail journals from June of 2005, and remembered how much of hiking is sheer pain. That’s okay, right? Maybe not at the time I’m hiking.

Anyway. I’m trying not to make my expectations too high. I know it’s a high-snow year in the Sierra, and I know (from a friend) that there’s still snow at 7000 feet. Evidently Donner Pass, where I begin, had a freak snowstorm last week that dropped twelve inches. And it’s been in the twenties at night all week. Yikes.

I’m also trying to remind myself that I’m fairly comfortable in the snow, that I have the equipment I need, that I’ve done this before, and I’m much more experienced with snowshoes and crampons than I was five years ago. And I’m trying to remember that I can always cry uncle. Maybe the best thing for me would be to get a quarter-mile down the trail, realize I can’t hack it, pitch my one-person tent, and hang out for three weeks. By myself. In the woods. How cool does that sound? It blows my mind that I’ve even given myself permission to do that sort of thing.

Maybe I’ll bring a copy of Dharma Bums, just to give myself an air of authenticity.

Back to my new Vasques. I half-thought about dropping a line to Vasque and asking if they wanted to sponsor me, but this little tiny hike isn’t nearly epic enough. Corporate sponsors are fascinating to me. They remind me of the medieval Medicis, that corrupt Italian family that kept artists as pets. And in the best possible way, although that sounds awful. I love the idea of medieval patronage, especially because it reminds me that artists (and adventurers, in this case, although I know I’m stretching the metaphor) have always needed patrons. They’ve always been forced to participate in the marketplace, and a lot of times the way they’ve had to do that is by finding people who believe in what they do and accepting their financial support.

So, does anyone want to be my patron? I think I’ve asked this before. But now I’m being specific: Prana (tank tops that lasted 3000+ miles), Vasque, Salomon (best AT shoes), New Balance (second best), Duofold (tee-shirt that lasted 3000+miles), Smartwool, REI (tent and hiking shorts), EMS (best long underwear), North Face (fantastic fifteen-degree sleeping bag), etc...

Is that in bad taste? I don’t know. If I had the funding, I’d jet off to South America in a heartbeat. I’d wander around Mongolia and write about it. Maybe I’d spend six months a year here on my five acres, but I’d go as far as I needed to go. Maybe what I’m saying is that I’m not as distrustful as the corporate impulse as most hippies are. I believe in old-fashioned capitalism: good people selling a good product that they believe in and that does a good job, what it says it does. What I don’t belive in are government-sponsored Medici/Walmart-style monopolies. I do realize that artists and adventurers have to find ways to sell their work, their stories. That’s the work they do. Maybe, some day, my art will fund my new shoe purchases.

I just need twenty dollars.

Sky above Trenton

I have been wanting to do an environmental post for a while, but I don't think I have enough energy tonight. I'm sure there's a great pun in there about energy efficiency or something, but I can't make the effort to find it, either. Tonight is the fourth night in a row I've broken the one o'clock barrier, and I still feel like I'm not getting half of the things done that I need to. I have to be completely ready for California and the next month of my life, including a death-defying snow hike, in four days. Four friggin' days. I don't know how I'm going to do it.

But I'm posting! Maybe this goal is important only to me. I don't know. I can't figure that out. I still get this weirdness around blogs, that it just doesn't seem very important, even though I know that when I do it consistently, I stay happier. Isn't that perverse? Does that just show what a creature of the electronic age I am? Or what an egoist I am?

I'm going to try to stay on a consistent posting schedule as I travel west, mainly for myself, but it should lend itself to some interesting photographs and some interesting posts. I'm looking forward to seeing friends and family, and just being on the road again. I'm never happier than when I'm moving. Moving and writing. Moving and writing and doing yoga. That's the hard part. Maybe I will achieve true enlightenment when I can whip out my mat at a rest area and do yoga in the rain. That would probably make anyone achieve true enlightenment.

In the meantime, I'm just wicked stressed out. I'm going to bed at 1:30, but unable to sleep until well past two, because I keep waking up and making to-do lists. I have about eight to-do lists now, and I spend most of my time reorganizing them. When in doubt, restructure.

Cymbals crashed

New leaf in Georgia

I'm trying to plan my trip to California, and it's not going so well. So far my plan is to spend about three weeks doing about 250 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, which is not all that ambitious, considering the scope of some of my previous adventures. But I'm trying to hike north of Yosemite National Park, in early June, which means that my problems with snow will probably be significant. If you've read any of my other journals, you know that I don't always do that well with snow.

I'm hoping that I've made progress since then, that I've become a better snow-walker. I did do a fair amount of snowshoeing in Maine, and also tried a lot of walking on icy snow in crampons. If you recall those journals, though, I also did a fair amount of wallowing. Wallowing is never good for one's psyche. Or one's daily mileage. I can't decide if my plan is ambitious in a good way, or ambitious in a dangerous, I'm-going-to-die way. Which is always the fatal flaw with any of my plans.

If you recall, this was my major dilemma with the boat, too. It's at this point that I always say: screw it. If I die, I die. A lot less amusing when I'm standing at the edge of a field of snow at 9000 feet by myself with only a pair of running shorts, a backpack, and an ice axe.

Bravery is an interesting virtue. We revere it, or at least I do, and I have a tremendous amount of healthy respect for it. And some scorn. What's brave for one person is folly for another. But what's wrong with folly? Only death. That's what's wrong with folly. And pain. Pain is always a significant companion in any hiking adventure, something else that I always forget until about the second mile.

When will she see that to gain is only to lose?

Walnut Street Bridge

One thing about living in the South is the wound of slavery forever on the landscape. It's so hard to talk about. It's almost impossible to have an honest discussion about race in this country, which makes our problem with it even greater. Nationally, we're always ready to condemn other nations for their failings, but not ourselves. It's that famous verse writ large: "Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?"

Of course, all other nations are the same. When I lived in France, they were forever having conferences about "the American race problem," or "racisme Americaine," as they called it. All the while they were kicking Arabs out of their bars and restaurants, completely legally and without recourse. The French were unable to acknowledge that they had a race problem themselves, just because happened to have not kept slaves. At least not on their own soil.

Our race problem, admittedly, is deeper and darker and longer and bloodier. I just learned from the Chattanooga paper that two black men were lynched from the Walnut Street Bridge. During the twentieth century. The bridge is now a pedestrian footbridge, the heart of Chattanooga's scenic downtown. I'll never be able to look at it the same way. I knew these things happened, but it's another thing to know they happened here, on this dirt.

I keep thinking about the Billie Holiday song "Strange Fruit." It blows my mind that an African-American woman, a mythic and powerful singer, was able to create art out of such horror. As it was happening. Especially when we can barely breath a word about it now. We're so afraid of telling the truth--about both our own past and our own present.

Here's the truth: racism is alive and well in Chattanooga. Maybe that's not a newsflash, but after years in the north, it shocked me. I work in a service industry, and the blatant disregard my bosses have for racial equality disgusts me. We hold to the letter of the law when it comes to African-American teenagers, and give rich white men enough wiggle room to do anything they want. I try to enforce our policies equitably, but I feel myself accepting and participating in that discrimination, as much as I try to fight it.

Here's another truth that makes me squirm: almost all of the problems I've had at work have been with those same black teenage boys. What does that mean? Can my statement even be trusted? Isn't my anecdotal evidence corrupted by the cultural lens through which I see the world, the racism I've been taught since I was a baby? Maybe those tendencies are rooted so subconsciously that they can't be changed.

But that's crap. I believe in change. I adore Tupac's song "Changes," too--an interesting counterpoint to Billie Holiday's song. Here's his line: "although it seems heaven sent, we ain't ready to see a black president..." It isn't true anymore. We have a black president, and that song is only twelve years old.

I'm not sure it helps the African-American kids that come to my desk, though. They're swimming against a strong tide. I just hope they keep swimming, and I hope the tide is changing. I'm going to swim and join them.

In land news, I found a beautiful five-acre piece on Monday, emailed the realtor immediately, visited the property yesterday, and was on my way to make an offer when she called back. It had sold. The contract was on her desk. So another one bites the dust. In blog news, I continue to be unhappy with my redesign. So more changes may be coming. I believe in change, after all.

La prophete

Hand-drawn map of crossing from Bimini to Nassau

So I redesigned the blog today. Does it look awful? I kind of think it looks awful. But that's mainly because I have an aggressive love-hate relationship with change.

Hmm. If you have any thoughts, or colors you'd prefer, or, heck, if you happen to be a web designer with some time on your hands, please let me know. I'm happy to be finally giving credit to all the blogs I read, and also letting all of you know what I do with my time that I'm supposed to be spending writing. Maybe eventually I'll add all of the fancy elements that all of my favorite blogs have.

Maybe I spent all of this time doing this because I found out yesterday that one of the pieces of land I was prepared to make an offer on has already sold. Merde. It's making me more sad than I thought it would. I always knew that this would happen, that as soon as I decided on a piece it would be gone, but still. It's one thing to believe it will happen, it's another to actually have it happen.

Now it's back to the drawing board. At least I can draw beautiful diagrams, as indicated above. I can also make cheesy sunset blog headers.

Before I reached the bottom

Bob Dylan's song "All Along the Watchtower" is his best short story. I won't argue that it's his best poem, or best song, but as a straight-up short-short, it succeeds completely.

“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth”

“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke
“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late”

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl

There's so much story there. I can't begin to explain it. My goal as a writer, for the rest of my life, will be to come close to something that reaches that level of complexity and beauty. One of Keats central concepts of literature was negative capability, and a fiction writer struggles with that idea as Dylan does here. I always imagine negative capability like one of those metal pin art things, where you press your face into it and it leaves an impression. I want each story to be something where each individual can find their own face in it.

But the symbolism and mystery and myth in stories can't ever be generic, because it's in the specific that we find the universal. We know all sorts of things about the characters in this story. We know their professions. We know that they are in a watchtower--not just a tower, but a watchtower. We know that something changes profoundly for them at the end of the story. We also know a lot about their character, based on the conversation they have. Those specific references lead us to specific images--the one that always occurs to me are the thief on the cross next to Christ. Who's to say the other fellow wasn't a joker? And the riders at the end. The whole story rests on those riders at the end. They're so specific--I can see them, against the horizon, at the end--but they could be anyone.

The most famous short-short of all, of course, is by Ernest Hemingway. He invented the genre, some claim. His is also the shortest successful story, in my opinion. Six words. Here it is:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Allegedly, he called it his best work. But he was wrong about a lot of things.


Here's a more modern one, by Dave Eggers. With tongue suitably in cheek.

"The Battle Between The Giant Squid And The Bears Of Yosemite"

It was a great battle. You probably heard about it already, so why go on about it here?

Dylan uses all of 130 words, which is practically novelesque by comparison. I find myself thinking a lot about Dylan lately. As usual, I suppose. He gave an amazing interview about "Christmas in the Heart" on his web site. He's a true believer, and he never let anyone else tell him to play by their rules. He never even let anyone else choose the game for him. I want to be like him, but it's hard to be that strong. I feel like he must have a keg tapped straight into the Muse.

Roses

Leaf on a log

I read this quote about romance novels the other day, on one of the blogs I wander around every so often: "It’s a 50-plus-year-old industry comprised mostly of women writers operating their own businesses and producing a genre about women’s self-actualization, pursuit of autonomy, and acquisition of sexual agency for an audience made mostly of women, who buy over $1.4 billion dollars worth of books a year."

Even though I'm not a huge fan, it's an interesting take on that world. It's a good example of how something that is looked down upon, derided, can take on another appearance when looked at from another angle.

I have been trying to look at my life from different angles. It’s so easy to get caught up in the slow, steady pace of one day into the next, one month to the next, one season to the next. And the next thing you know, you’re fifty. Or eighty. Or 110.

When I tell the story of my life, I tell it in these huge sweeping plotlines, with arcs and major decisions, inciting incidents. But I almost never knew what the turning points were when I made them. Strike that: I never knew what the turning points were when I made them. Could I be on the cusp of one right now? I have no earthly idea.

I used to think that any single day of any single person’s life could be used as the plot of a major Dostoevsky-type epic novel. You know, Bloomsday. The whole Joyce thing. What if that’s not true either? What if a lot days are just filled with boring television-show watching, procrastination, staving off time’s arrow and the slow process of decay for another 24 hours? Does each day really have enough heroic moments to form an epic plotline?

I’m less sure of that now. Maybe there really are singular days that are ends of eras. Fin. Curtain. How do we know when those days are when we’re living them? We absolutely don't.

Sailing past Bimini Island, I knew that the year before Hemingway’s bar, The Compleat Angler, had burned to the ground with all of its memorabilia. I couldn’t help but think of it as the end of the era. I was on the cusp of a new one. Everything was new: entering that blue water, crossing the Gulf Stream, embarking on a new and perilous adventure. But each change in angles, each end, though a beginning, also meant a terrifying break with the past. I’m scared to break with the past. Not so scared, perhaps, that I end up cradling my aging body in front of the television for the next twenty years. But sometimes I do that for days on end, afraid to push myself out of my current snake skin, into one that’s fresh, new, raw, painful, terrifying.

This is where I'm staying

The Anchor Song

Stone on the water

If you recall from last year, we had a big problem with squirrels in our garden. This year we decided to solve that problem.

Full copies of recipe available

The following images may be disturbing to some of you who don't eat meat. Or maybe to some of you that do. Which is one of those things I don't quite understand. Isn't it better to realize that meat doesn't come from styrofoam packages at Wal-mart, but that the animals I eat are living and breathing creatures? Wouldn't I rather eat animals that have had happy lives, collecting nuts and stealing tomatoes?

I don't have a problem with vegetarians. I ate vegetarian for a significant length of time, and I have frequently used vegan fasts as a way to reorient my relationship with food, especially the highly processed factory food force-fed us by our culture. But that's exactly why I believe my dinner this evening should be celebrated. I must admit, I'm extremely proud of myself. Not just for obeying the Bible's injunction (The slothful man roasts not that which he took in hunting: but the substance of a diligent man is precious. --Proverbs 12:27), but for saying grace over my meal, for thanking my dinner for her life.

I have a good friend who was forbidden from raising chickens in her community by her herbivore neighbors. It's one thing to eat animals, but evidently it's a big problem to eat animals that you know. If I choose to eat animals, then I'm going to make my best attempt to be as intimately involved with every step of their lives as possible. If nothing else, today's experiment makes me fairly confident I won't die of starvation in Alabama.

Squirrel stock

Firschamakearoux

Squirrel gravy

Dinner

Not hungry anymore

I was grateful for the nourishment. That sounds cavalier, but it's true. I certainly thought about my dinner a lot more than I thought about my spaghetti for dinner last night, or my chicken for dinner the night before. Not to mention that it was delicious.

What we have here is a failure to communicate

So what do I want to write about? Failure. I'm not even sure what movie that quote is from, but I love it. Aren't all failures failures to communicate?

Maybe. At least mine are. What do I have to say about failure? I need to know if I should be hard-nosed, hold myself to an impossibly high standard. The activist vegans may be right about everything, about the need for universal impossible standards.

It's the question of whether I want to hold myself and other people, the universe, God even, to the standard of perfection or whether I want to forgive. It's the question of grace versus the law all over again. If I believe in the law, I refuse to forgive myself or other people. If I believe in grace, then what?

Then I have a hard time. I've always prided myself on not being one of those loosey-goosey hippies who say I'm okay, you're okay, everything's okay, but what if actually everything is okay? What if all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well? What if there isn't a problem?

The hard part, as with every relationship and every piece of art, is that same one: trust. I have to trust my life partner, as difficult as it is and as as often as I've had that trust fail. If I don't, the moment I don't, is when any marriage, friendship, relationship begins falling apart. I know that. Trust in God is that much harder, and trust in myself harder still, especially when I've betrayed that trust in myself countless times.

Countless times. My trust in God always pans out eventually, but my trust in myself does not.

I spent Thursday through Saturday backpacking at Savage Gulf with a college friend, and yesterday at the track, dodging tornadoes. I'm back now.

The greater the subtletly, the greater the sacrifice

This week I spent camping at a friend's house, who happens to live atop Lookout Mountain. It's amazing to me how even though I am basically homeless, I always end up living like a millionaire. Or at least someone with million-dollar views. I've been trusting a lot to synchronicity lately. An auction is coming up in Dade County, Georgia, and I've been assiduously researching property so I can make an informed decision, an informed bid. Maybe I'll actually end up with something.

It's one of those moments where I have to have faith. "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed," Jesus says, "you can ask this mountain to uproot itself and throw itself into the sea, and it will be done." Do I believe that? Do you?

Maybe I can have enough faith to simply believe that God will guide me to the right piece of property.

This week I was reminded of one of my favorite literary legends. I don't even want to Wiki it, for fear it will turn out to be a lie. The myth is that Robert Lowell, he of "Skunk Hour," showed up at William Faulkner's door, unheralded and unannounced. Faulkner I imagine as wavering, perpetually half-drunk in the doorway with a bourbon on the rocks, and said, "Well, I guess you can camp in the back yard..." And of course Lowell ended up staying for months, much to the dismay of Faulkner's wife.

I feel like Lowell, at least this week. I've also been loitering in the backyard of a writer friend, but maybe that's just what artists need to do sometimes. Find people to apprentice to, even if it can make one feel awkward and annoying.

C minor

Dogwood leaves close-up

I’m having a hard time posting after Lent. On the one hand, I want to keep the habit. On the other, all of you probably need a break. So. I’m being quiet and lazy.

I went to the Four Bridges Art Festival yesterday, a major arts festival in the southeast (I guess, although I don’t remember ever hearing about it before). It reminded me that a whole other artists' world exists. Getting into a prestigious festival must feel the same way for a visual artist that getting into a good writing conference would feel for me. It’s always strange for me to have the doors open on a whole new realm of competition, to realize how it must feel to be a painter or photographer struggling for legitimacy, the same way I struggle, but in a different medium.

Visual art is not my forte, although more and more I give myself permission to take photographs. It’s one of the things I’ve been allowing myself to do without asking that I be perfect, and it’s amazing how much of a difference that makes.

I’ve learned so much by just trying to mimic the photographs of photographers I admire. Like a writer learning by writing the exact same sentences of her favorite writer. (I’ve tried that, too.) My method lately has been to search for a new idea for a picture, and then just to search for ways to take that picture, with my crappy little point-and-shoot. I change the background on my computer every month to a new National Geographic shot, just as inspiration. This month is this green castor bean leaf interior.



It inspired me to take the picture at the top, looking up through the leaves. And this one, of ivy.

I love ivy, and I love the dust of pollen gathered on its top in this picture. I wish I could have captured it better.

Part of my fear of being a photographer is not having a good enough camera. I realize what I could do with a better lens. Then I realize what a cop-out that is. Because anyone can use that excuse. My goal has to be simple: to take the best pictures possible with the camera I have.

The hard part of taking photographs isn’t equipment--it’s courage. Photography is a much more public art than literature. I was at an art festival yesterday, but everyone was afraid to be seen making art. I thought more people would be taking pictures. The only people unafraid were the children, making chalk art on the pavement.

So the hard part is having the balls necessary to break out the camera, no matter how dumb and beat-up and podunk my camera is. The hard part is being brave enough to say: I’m not afraid of looking like a tourist. I’m not afraid of imprisoning the souls of strangers. I’m not afraid of looking a fool.

Walking here from the parking lot, I saw an amazing broken-down building, shattered glass, barbed wire, no-entry signs, grafitti—a hundred fantastic pictures. But how do I give myself permission to take them? With everyone watching? Some of whom have more photographic talent than I do in their left little fingers?

Because no matter how good the photographers at the festival were (and they were amazing—check this guy out, who had a beautiful picture in the same vein
), none of them were taking pictures of that broken-down building, at least not at that moment in time, in that particular light. The key, as always, is doing the work. If I don’t take the pictures, I can’t learn. If I don’t take the pictures, they don’t exist. They will never exist. No one in the universe can take the exact picture I can take at this exact moment.

Writing, journaling, recording my thoughts either here or by myself is the same. If I don’t put them down, I lose this moment. I know I need to keep writing, too. I can’t commit to every day anymore, though.

I can’t sustain my own or anyone else’s interest at that pace. I’m thinking about a thrice-weekly posting schedule. How does that sound? If I say it out loud, maybe I’ll do it.

Will I? I don’t know. Okay. I’m going to do it. I will post, from now on, on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday. Until otherwise stated. Will someone comment and yell at me if I don’t? If not, it’s your own fault if I slack off. Or maybe you're ready for me to shut up. Who knows?

The way I see it

Today I was back at work, the whole adventure of a week away, living in the van at $3 primitive campsites in the middle of national forests, dissipating like a dream. It always happens like that, but it’s usually a little less sudden. This afternoon I was immediately immersed in the pedantic life that disappears completely from my imagination when I leave it. I keep asking myself whether I even want to get a job once I make the transition south. Do I need a paycheck, or can I make it as a freelance writer/tutor/farmer/yoga instructor/homeless person?

One of the things I did while gone was make an extensive pro-con list for both pieces of land at the top of the list. One is far away, farther from my friends and family, but also farther from development, current and future. It’s also a better deal, if I want to be farther away. But on the con list is: “potentially feel more alien?”

That’s a big question. I have learned, again and again and again, that I don’t belong anywhere. I try to belong, I pull out my chameleon colors and attempt to blend, but eventually the effort becomes to great and I run away to another place I don’t quite belong. Part of me enjoys not belonging. It’s also miserable. I remember crying, driving away from my church in Oak Park, slamming my hand on the steering wheel, saying: “I just want to belong!”

Don’t I?

I continue to have the same problem, especially with churches. I blew off church again this morning, because I can’t convince myself to even make the attempt, especially when I might be leaving again, and soon. And because it’s really hard work.

The more rural an area, the harder work it is. It’s why I felt the most belonging in Chicago, where I could be as anonymous as I pleased. I am consciously choosing the country for the next step of my adventure, but I know how much I hate for everyone else to know my business. I think I’m going in with my eyes wide open, but am I? It’s impossible to say.

When I called the Marion County commissioner to ask about a land survey, she made fun of me. “You’re not gonna find that here, hon,” were her exact words. Lovely. Or the, “You don’t sound like you’re from around here, dear,” I’ve received from landowners I’ve called. Or, “I knew y’all folks ain’t from around here.” Can I let that not bother me? Does it matter that I belong nowhere equally: not Maine, not Massachusetts, not Chattanooga, not Bangkok, not Chicago? It can’t matter much to the people who have known each other since grade school in any provincial town.

Around a campfire, a potential future neighbor told me, with a hug: “Well, you belong now.” Can I believe him? Maybe if I can decide I belong somewhere, everyone else will believe me, too. Maybe the hard part is convincing myself.

Pull out my pistol

Bradford pear blossoms

My lack of health insurance come to haunt me, in a very practical way. I’ve come down with a bout of bad illness, making me feel awful, and also making me thank God for the invention of antibiotics. And Tylenol. What did people do before antibiotics? Die of blood-poisoning, I imagine.

Our health is rather a fragile thing. Maybe I haven’t been realizing how much good yoga has done me, and taking a week off from it (well, not entirely, but close) was enough to throw my entire immune system out of whack. I wouldn’t doubt it. In any case, I am lucky to have family in the health professions, or at least family that hoard ten-year-old expired prescriptions of antibiotics, so I am dosing myself and hoping for the best. Like any good Thai girl would do. In Thailand, you don’t go to the doctor for your drugs--you go to the pharmacist. We travel often enough that there’s a good little stash of southeast Asian “prescriptions” hanging around. Which is great for things like my brother’s asthma, or my dad’s antacid, etc.

So maybe I don’t need health insurance after all, if I can wiggle my way around it. The problem is how people with just a little less sense than I have kill themselves. Or maybe with just as much sense as I have. The jury’s still out.

It’s one of the perils of living the life I want to live, though. My parents seem blind-sided by my desire to live an extraordinary life, but I’m just following their example. We were struck by our fair share of medical calamities as I grew up: encephalitis, dengue fever, malaria, amoeba, meningitis, motorcycle accidents, ringworm that tried to consume the flesh of my sister’s leg alive and that my parents treated with dry ice from the neighboring Pizza Hut... The list goes on.

These are things that happen. People get sick. Even young people who are loved very much. And it stinks. But what do you do about it? Live in fear? No. You live. And try to keep a stash of good vitamins.

I also managed to step on a piece of rusted barbed wire on my way to dig a hole this last week. I’m crossing my fingers than my 2001 tetanus shot is still good. They last ten years, right? Life on the edge is exciting. And dangerous, medically and otherwise. Am I scaring all of you? Probably. Blame it on my wooziness from painkillers and herbal tea.

I had to run like a fugitive

On one of the two pieces of land I’ve narrowed it down to, I felt a cool breeze wing by today, beneath the oaks and the pines. Ray Jardine, patron saint of ultralight hikers, always talks about the microclimate that exists under trees. I swear, in the woods, it feels ten degrees cooler. Even with the 99-degree temperatures that parts of Alabama experienced this week. Parts of Alabama where I was camping.

It’s a lot cooler up in the highlands, under the trees, than down in the valley. Many degrees cooler. It’s weird to be thinking about how to keep cool rather than how to keep warm--too long in Maine, I suppose. But the primary climate challenge in the south is cooling rather than heating.

Maybe that’s why I’m beginning to tip, ever so slightly, in favor of the ridgetop land. I’ve pretty much narrowed my choice down, and the two fall on either side of the highland/bottomland conundrum. Do I want to risk bad soil? Or do I want to risk flooding? Do I want to be far away from all neighbors? Or do I want good water on my land?

I do like privacy a lot. Maybe it’s because I was just at the high land today that I’m leaning towards it. It’s both farther from the neighbors and closer to civilization--to places where I can shop and find a job and meet people. I do have to start thinking about how I’m going to make a living out here in the middle of nowhere, at least until I get my hot sauce company off the ground. Or write a guidebook. Or a best-selling novel.

But here’s what I’ve been thinking about for housing.

Earth ships are the greenest building method I’ve discovered yet.

You know what they say about being nice to the right people

Cairns in Bucks Pocket State Park

It’s interesting sometimes to think about the rest of my life. The rest of my life. It’s not that long. I am 32 years old this year, and every year, as another sun creeps around, I realized I’m not as young as I used to be. The end of life seems closer, more finite. Which is fine. The old adage about youth being wasted on the young is almost 100 percent true, and I’m sure those with decades more experience than I have would claim that my youth, my third decade, is being wasted on me, too. Just as I believe those with a decade less are wasting their twenties.

But: the rest of my life. It’s a hard thing to make promises for. Maybe because I’m not married. It blows my mind how married people make these promises, till death do them part. It’s so common! Almost 98 percent of people, or something, get married. How can all of them be that brave?

I have a hard time making promises, and buying a piece of land is, in a lot of ways, a promise. A promise to myself, more than anyone. A promise that I can stay put. Can I stay put? I doubt it.

I’m trying not to make it feel like it is a decision that has an eternity’s weight behind it. I don’t know if I can stay here for fifty more years. But ten? Maybe. Five? Can I allow myself to make that big of a promise to myself? I don’t know.