Box of Tales

The Unpredictable Nature of Finding Photo Opportunities

2026-07-31T17:08:44.821-07:00

I knew I would find photo opportunities on my recent trip to Thailand, Vietnam, and Seoul. There would be typical tourist locations and family pictures, but beyond that I was hoping for scenes with a little more intrigue or beauty. I took my macro lenses, but these Asian countries were dense with bigger stories, viewpoints, and colors.

Please, take your time examining the photos that follow. Whether snapped from seven floors up (the cafe, the gas station, the building corrugated in blues and greens) or poolside (the clouds, the sunrise, and the photo above), notice if you find yourself transported from your armchair.

Cafe from seven stories up. Vietnam

Gas station. Vietnam

Homage to Lennon at Old Town Coffee Shop. A village. Thailand

Motorcycles. Vietnam

Evening clouds. Island in Thailand

Sunrise over the Gulf of Thailand

Building. Vietnam

Wall art. Bangkok, Thailand

Market fruit. Thailand

An ant of a banana flower. Thailand (Macro)

One of many cats in the flower market area. Bangkok, Thailand

The tourist necessity. Thailand

Dog in prayerful mode. Thailand

An elevator selfie! Happy tourist! Seoul, Korea

A Tourist's Observations from Thailand

2026-07-29T20:25:08.516-07:00

The word tourist originally meant travel-writer, with tour derived from the Latin word torpare (to turn on a lathe) or, in a later French update, to make a circuit, a rounding with the intention of returning to where one started. In the late 18th century, being a tourist was an occupation. On my recent trip to Asia, I toggled between being a 21st-century tourist on holiday, hoping to write something relevant, and being a mom again to the Thai Muslim high school exchange student, nicknamed First, who became part of my family some twenty years ago.

The United States State Department sponsored First under the Youth Exchange and Study (YES) program. The program, initiated after 9/11, aimed to bring carefully selected Muslim students from around the world to experience American democracy and life, then return to their home countries and tout our worthy qualities. First was a joy to everyone in our household and was loved beyond measure. I had long intended to meet her family, but when her father died the previous year, I didn’t want to miss meeting her mom. My daughter Molly, her partner Rocky, and our dear Thai kid mapped out an itinerary, keeping some details secret to surprise me.

Before First picked us up from a boutique hotel, Rocky, Molly, and I walked to a bank to withdraw cash. Thailand intentionally promotes a cash-based economy to spare small businesses the fees associated with credit and debit cards. While I waited outside the bank, I took a photo of a charming billboard featuring a businessman with a silly-looking chick—not something I might see in America. Thai humor was already asserting itself.

First escorted us through the day, starting with a wander through the canal-side Pak Khlong Talat wholesale flower market. Approaching a canal, I saw a line of guys, one or two with fishing poles, others holding baskets, and a few just watching. As we passed, laughter broke out when one of them lost his fish. The sense of camaraderie was strong, but it occurred to me they were working, not fishing for fun; they were catching fish here in the middle of a city of five million people in need of food in any way it can be obtained.

Numerous well-tended cats and a rare dog or two were in evidence in the stalls lining the market's roads. Women making jasmine garlands, folding lotus buds, and stringing marigolds as offerings at Buddhist temples sat in the back of the deep stalls, chatting as they worked.

Men with a weariness about them pushed dollies overladen with baskets, cardboard, or other odd lots of stuff. In a city where the poverty rate hovers around an astonishing two percent, it seemed everyone had a job, however modest. Dodging motor scooters or small pickup trucks over-piled with crates, we wended our way to a corner cafe recommended by First.

We sat at tables outside on the walkway while two women cooked over fires on this humid, hot day, preparing our meal from fresh ingredients. Thailand is known for its hospitality and food. First lent me a battery-operated fan to keep cool while we waited for a delicious meal. Her small gesture of packing an extra fan for me exemplified her culture’s thoughtfulness.

Upon returning to the little parking lot where we had left the car, we each paid a few baht to an elderly woman for access to a clean restroom with a single squat toilet, a spray hose, and no toilet paper—the first time I had encountered this. I came to appreciate the logic of not adding paper to what must be a massive sewer system. (However, over the course of the trip, I had a couple of hilarious episodes of dousing my clothes with one of the spray hoses. An inept tourist, I was.)

Switching things up, we drove to the elegant ICONSIAM mall, which is culturally associated with Thailand’s royal family. It didn’t resemble any mall I had visited before. I think of it more as performance art, with its curated views from curving balconies looking down into a courtyard below or the river beyond. Midway, we came across a humongous thirty-foot dachshund sculpture, gently breathing, wearing a warrior’s shield. (It startled me because of its resemblance to my mutt back home.) The dog was promoting a new line of perfume called Puppy, with advertising copy that was art itself.

The mall had its share of ultra-expensive shops, indicative of the wealth in Bangkok, but it also showed how Thailand has made it possible for succeeding generations to move out of subsistence livelihoods. First’s grandparents were rice farmers; her parents were a teacher and a police officer; and she works in administration at an international school. Although some of the products in the mall were well beyond First’s (and my) income level, there were still numerous affordable options for someone in a middle-income position.

While driving toward our night’s lodging into an older part of Bangkok, an accumulation of details—the foreign look of the apartment buildings along the canyon-like roadways, the noise, the signs in other languages, and the pick-up trucks with people riding in the back (illegal in the U.S.)—caused me to have two almost simultaneous reactions. The first was a flash of joy at being in this enormous city, which so obviously cultivated a culture of caring. Jobs like sweeping the sidewalks with simple handmade brooms seen everywhere or offering taxi service in your truck’s bed had a dignity to them. Seeing a family squeezed onto one motor scooter—a father, a child, and a mother—spoke to me of how humanity is the same the world over, everyone making do with what is available, hoping their children will enter a world of better possibilities. And then, uncalled for, came a thought of Pakistan. Of children injured. Of apartment buildings like those we were passing (except the ones in my mind’s eye were bomb-ravaged, tilted, with bed sheets hanging where walls had been). The joy I had been feeling seemed to draw itself up, slide sideways, and a sadness took a seat beside it. I said nothing. For a moment, I felt choked up; it was an odd feeling to have in the middle of that glorious day.

But the day was not over. First dropped us on a curb near our lodging. We slipped through a small parking lot that bordered a Buddhist temple, rounded older houses with cats and one old dog lounging about, and arrived at the doorstep of what had once been a small fish-oil factory partially built on pilings over the Chao Phraya River, a huge river known as “The River of Kings.” Entering a corridor lit by a dog with a lightbulb in his rear end (how could one not smile?), we slipped off our footwear in the foyer, imitating the thoughtful, culturally common gesture of the guests who had arrived before us.

Molly found this unique ten-room hotel, Loy La Long Hotel, knowing it would please me with its charming, historic atmosphere. While we waited for the front desk clerk to check our passports, we were served a chilled drink and then escorted to our small but beautifully appointed rooms. The earlier unsettling sadness was gone. Opening the windows to catch the river’s breeze, I settled in for a nap before venturing out on my own to walk the neighborhood as evening approached.

A few blocks from the hotel, I entered increasingly narrow streets; motorcycles, mostly ridden by men, arrived home to the greetings of neighbors already sitting outside the now-closed first-level shops. The welcoming smell of cooking wafted from the windows.

Again, the feeling of being deeply affected by this vast and diverse city and its lovely people returned to my heart. How could anyone visit such a city anywhere in the world and not fall in love with the people? How is it possible for any man or nation to be so cavalier as to presume that bombing or attacking fellow humans or their housing, water, food, or fuel facilities has any moral standing? Thailand is not under any immediate threat, but like Ukraine, Israel, Pakistan, and Iran, its people want the best for their families and want peace. Tourism has made our world smaller and more accessible. Might it not foster an aversion to war and a love for all our fellow passengers?

My Thai Family

Women Flagging the End of Wars

2026-05-26T21:11:18.827-07:00

The bluster of men at the beginning of wars is like a cocking of language—their words oiled and weaponized against their doubting selves, against their enemies, and against rhetoric advocating peaceful solutions. The ammunition is boxed and peddled with convincingly glorious slogans: “God is on our side,” or “Whatever may be our fate, the cause for which we fight is just and righteous and must prevail.” These exact quotes and similar sentiments were voiced by both Union and Confederate soldiers at the start of the American Civil War.

Ten of my ancestors fought in that war—five for the North and five for the South. I find it absurd to think that if any of those men had swapped their home regions some hundred years before the war, Northerners to the South or Southerners to the North, the side each man fought for would probably have shifted. Men convince men to fight. Peruse any military history, and the faces in command are men’s. Their prerogatives and responsibilities have led civilizations into and through countless wars across generations and around the world. Some wars were justified, and some were not. Women were a footnote, but this is changing.

In 1865, the Confederate Army’s white flag of surrender was a hastily found dishcloth purloined from a woman’s kitchen. It was a signal, as if a flagging of the beginning of women’s role in ending wars. After the Civil War, newly available educational opportunities elevated women into the public sphere. As predicted in the Bahá'í writings, they will use their influence to end wars:

“So it will come to pass that when women participate fully and equally in the affairs of the world, when they enter confidently and capably the great arena of law and politics, war will cease; for women will be the obstacle and hindrance to it.” — ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

The diversity and creativity we already see among women who have won the Nobel Peace Prize suggest an incredible tapestry of women-led approaches to dislodging war as a means of solving problems. Wangari Maathai, an African professor, founded the Green Belt Movement, in which women planted trees to prevent deforestation and economic instability. This effort helped make a democratic Kenyan government a reality. Leymah Gbowee developed methods to help traumatized child soldiers from the Liberian Civil War and brought Christian and Muslim women together to work for the end of that conflict. She befriended another woman, Kiki Katese, who founded Ingoma Nshya (New Drum), which brought together women from opposing sides of the Rwandan genocide to bond and rebuild their lives through drumming or by running ice cream shops! In America, Jane Addams was elected a delegate to the first Peace Convention at The Hague and, in the same year (1915), became the founder-president of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She encouraged President Wilson to advocate for establishing the League of Nations. The following description of her intellectual skills exemplifies one woman’s capacity, grounded in her education.

“In an era when the mental capability of women was still questioned, Addams’s breadth of knowledge on a variety of subjects was formidable. The journalist Ida Tarbell considered her “one of the best-read women that I have ever known.” But unlike most experts, Addams remained open minded to other viewpoints. “Her mind had more ‘floor space’ in it than any other I have known,” recalled the feminist author Charlotte Perkins Gilman. “She could set a subject down, unprejudiced, and walk all around it, allowing fairly for every one’s point of view.” — Neil Lanctor, Lit Hub, 11/1/2021

Women have the potential to make world peace a reality. Their innate reluctance to violence, abhorrence of sending their sons to battle, and “that they are more philanthropic and responsive toward the needy and suffering” (Bahá’í Writings) all bode well for their role in bringing about world peace. Maybe not in this century, but in one to come. Flag it as possible.

Trepidations and Strangers

2026-03-24T16:10:00.000-07:00

“Aren’t you afraid to travel alone?” This uneasy question brings to mind images of kidnapping and murder by strangers—whom I would, of course, have to somehow identify among the thousands of people I might encounter during my cross-country journey. When asked this common question, I usually fumble through a brief explanation involving statistical odds and spiritual practices, but it never feels sufficient. As I sat down to craft a more thoughtful response, I gained a deeper understanding of the question’s nuances and the importance of personal pursuits.

First off, the concern has some validity. I am a petite female, and I will be in unfamiliar places. If I face a threatening situation, I have no backup except my dog Chester. While he might be good in a crisis, he has been known to bark at an abandoned dishwasher, upturned buckets in places they did not appear the day before, and dog sculptures. In a novel, he would be pegged as an unreliable narrator, his intuition and perceptions a bit faulty. I might be left to rely on my own defensive skills.

Statistically, what are the chances that I will be harmed? In today’s age of easily accessible and sometimes artificially created news, our perception of how often violence occurs gets skewed. Vivid stories or images of crimes seem so real and immediate that we imagine that if it happened to them, it could happen to us. This kind of thinking ignores the vast size of our country and the fact that violent crimes are, in most places, rare. Aside from robberies, these crimes are usually committed by someone the victim knows. In fact, you might be safer traveling among strangers than staying at home.

The word “stranger” comes from the Latin word extraneus, meaning “foreign” or “not belonging to the family.” As a member of the Bahá’í Faith, I am encouraged to see all of humanity as my “family,” as souls of a single race. When I became a Bahá’i in my thirties, I started working to shed prejudices and misconceptions—those initial reactions based on race, clothing, poverty, or body language. It changed how I connect with people. Furthermore, the Faith asks me to show loving kindness to everyone who crosses my path. This “everyone” includes the strangers I will inevitably meet when I travel alone.

During this past trip, I realized there were several times when I might have mistakenly feared someone if I hadn't become a Bahá’í. I would have missed many engaging exchanges. Here is an example. I was camping in late October at a deserted Wyoming campground, situated between a railroad, a river, and a highway. I ate dinner at a picnic table under a canopy of gorgeous yellow cottonwood trees and then took Chester for a walk the length of the grounds. When I was nearly as far from my car as I could get, an older-model sedan pulled into the campground and strangely stopped right beside me. Again, there was no one else around. An older man, slightly stooped, got out, barely looked at me, moved to the back door of his car, opened it, and reached inside. This is where, earlier in my life, I might have hurried away, scared of this man. Instead, he straightened up and backed away as he pulled out a fishing pole, turned, and enthusiastically began telling me about his wonderful day of fishing and birding. After winding down our conversation, he circled the car before heading down the path to the river on the opposite side—his original destination. His passion for the area’s lakes and birding opportunities inspired me to consider returning someday. I felt fortunate to have met him and grateful for having learned to be open to his company.

Traveling can involve unsettling events. They're not threatening, but sad or unexpected. Being alone makes it harder to process their impact. In Thunder Bay, Canada, I had just parked in a hotel parking lot when, from the corner of my eye, I saw a youth knock hard into my side passenger mirror and fall away from my sight. I got out and checked to see if he was okay. The young man, who was obviously Native American, lay on the pavement shaking, eyes rolling back in his sockets, drugged. He didn’t respond to my touch or words. I went into the hotel and got someone from their security staff. She called 911. Later in the evening, on a walk to a park on the edge of Lake Superior, I passed other youth who also appeared to be on drugs. Having to leave the young man alone while I went to get help made me wish I had had a second person with me. It would also have been comforting to have someone with me to deal with the sorrow of seeing the tragedy of drug use fostered on the Native population.

Does anything scare me or give me trepidations about traveling alone? I had to think about this one. I usually sleep in my Prius, doors locked, but sometimes the windows are open and netted to keep out bugs. Usually, I stay at campgrounds with many other campers, but not always. However, the night I stayed at a city park campground for just ten bucks in Broken Arrow, Nebraska, reminded me of what I may fear the most. I slept restlessly that night, folding and unfolding in my sleeping bag around Chester, whose hot little dog body usually keeps me warm and makes me sleep well. But all night we were woken repeatedly by the rumble, clatter, and whistle of monstrously long coal trains passing along the edge of the park. A sleepless night and the potential for falling asleep on the road the next day; this is what I fear.

Me at Watkin's Glen—Photo Taken by a Lovely Japanese Family, "Strangers"

The Trip Stats—Chester’s and Mine

2026-03-05T17:54:00.000-08:00

I admire how numbers convey time and distance or embody an experience. On the fall trip across the continent and back in 2024, my dog, Chester, took over 1,000,000 steps. He counted none of them. I did. Not that I followed him with a clicker counter, but factoring in that he has four legs to my two, I doubled my 557,586 cellphone-recorded steps to arrive at his number. Although I sometimes walked without him, he made up for the step discrepancy since his stride is shorter. Our step counts converted to around 279 miles, but despite similar mileage, we experienced the trip very differently.

On September 13, 2025, I walked 13,999 steps. Chester walked an estimated 27,998. The date and step count converge at Acadia National Park and the tourist town of Bar Harbor, Maine. Behind the numbers are these memories: we hiked around Cadillac Mountain’s pinnacle, the easternmost point of sunrise in the United States.

We passed near one porcupine. I saw it. Chester didn’t. I took photos. Chester didn’t. Chester tabulated dog news on bushes or rocks. I didn’t. Bar Harbor meant shopping for me: a cap with a moose embroidered on it, a puzzle to do at home, and a maple-flavored milkshake for lunch. For Chester, it meant navigating a thicket of legs and being disappointed that so few of them belonged to dogs. He was frightened by a store’s black ramp and embarrassed to be carried over it twice while shopgirls laughed. For dinner, he ate the same dog food as the day before. Late that evening, we hiked toward a coastal trail in the park. Oncoming hikers kept encouraging us. “Not much farther to the water.” On his nimble little legs, Chester especially loved running on the return, bounding over rocks and tree roots, the trail becoming almost too dim to see in the dark. Me nervous. Him not.

Chester smelled his way across the land. I didn’t.

As we entered towns, I would slow down. Chester would press his nose against the window, his way of asking me to roll it down so he could identify the unique scents of wherever we were, sniffing for traces of dogs and figuring out whether he recognized the place. I fear he was often disappointed.

He is a dog who appreciates the comfort of the familiar. He was truly animated only when we visited places with old friends: Art or Adele, Tom, and their dog Opel.

At the end of the journey, as the car’s trip odometer rolled past 10,000 miles and we wound our way out of the Palouse hills into the Walla Walla valley on a road I rarely travel, he became so excited. By some inexplicable combination of smells, he recognized home.

I wish we could have a conversation about what was memorable for him on the trip. His full name is Chester Muggins, PhD. I am often asked what his degree is in. I answer, “Food science, of course.” All dogs major in food science. Maybe his recollections are the trip’s culinary highlights. This reminds me that years ago, when my husband and I thought about going out for pizza, we would laughingly suggest a particular restaurant that served smoked salmon, cream cheese, and dill-and-caper pizza. The only problem was that it was in Nelson, Canada, about a six-and-a-half-hour drive away. Chester and I had our favorite foods on this trip. Maybe if he could talk, this is what we would discuss. If we were to return for a second or third helping of something, these would be the stats:

Our favorite chips: Mileage from home:1,422 miles; Driving Time: 23 hours, 45 minutes

Ye Olde Chip truck in Kenora, Ontario, Canada. The menu offers four cup sizes: small, medium, large, and X-large. Malt vinegar is available on request. Cash only. Must stand in a long line.

Chester has sampled these French fries twice now, eating any that have fallen in his path and, once, a stolen chip from a cup I was holding. Such thievery is most unusual for him, but even he knows these chips are different from all other fries.

My favorite chocolate: Mileage from home: 2,327 miles; Driving Time: 37 hours; Walking Time: 36 days (this seems optimistic, but Google Maps is always accurate).

Large double chocolate flourless cookies from the Homestead Artisan Bakery and Cafe, Barrie, Ontario, Canada. I ate one and returned within minutes to buy another. The clerk chuckled at my return. The second cookie lasted three days. I regretted not buying a bag-full.

Chester’s favorite chocolate: Mileage from home: 2,614 miles; Driving Time: 39 hours, Tolls: $67.20; Trotting Time: 38 days

One-half of a milk-chocolate Hershey bar with almonds purchased at a food mart in Hershey, Pennsylvania. I confess that I bought this candy bar in remembrance of my father. It was his favorite kind of chocolate. I think he ate lots of them during WWII. I had hoped to visit the Hershey Museum and purchase a candy bar there, but I decided not to after realizing how difficult it was to reach its parking lot and that dogs weren’t allowed.

Chester never takes advantage of food left in the car. But something about that half of a Hershey candy bar he found in the carry bag on the passenger-side floorboards while I later that day walked the grounds of Fallingwater was irresistible. Maybe he was just trying to honor my dad. Half of the candy bar costs 91 cents. The emergency vet bill to pump his stomach was $125.00. He has very expensive tastes.

Very few dogs have eaten and smelled their way across 15 states in the United States and 7 provinces in Canada. As a final statistic, maybe Chester is a 1-percenter among dogs, a premier smeller of smells, a heroic walker, a milk-chocolate connoisseur, and a coveter of maple ice cream.

What Dwellings Linger

2026-02-09T20:23:00.000-08:00

Big Tancook Island, Nova Scotia, Canada

I arrived home from my fall, cross-continent trip with my mind delightfully out of balance. I’d wake in the morning to a rolling tide of visions. All day, I’d be rocked by their waves, as if I were still on a ferry bound for Tancook Island in the Atlantic Ocean. Over two and a half months, from late summer into fall of 2025, I traveled across the North American continent and back. I camped in my Prius with Chester, my dog, or stayed in various accommodations and with friends. While I wandered, I set myself the task of staying present and remembering what felt significant or pleasing.

Upon my return, the slosh subsided as I caught up on neglected fall chores and resumed my obligations. I woke less often, already smiling. Worried I would lose memories and insights, I gathered my trip calendars, traced my route on a paper map of the United States, and jotted notes in a small notebook. From these, I distilled four topics: Mover of Rocks, What Dwellings Linger, Trip Stats—Chester's and Mine, and Trepidations.

***

What Dwellings Linger

My Childhood Home

I grew up in a cement-block house in a nondescript middle-class neighborhood. The living room, dining room, and hallway were painted a dark brown or wallpapered with lattice-and-lily patterns. I loved those delicious chocolate walls and elegant lilies. As a child, I admired the slanting corner fireplace, the linen-drawer nook in the hallway, and the back half-bath’s flooring, where, from the toilet, one could entertain oneself by finding fantastical creatures in the linoleum’s tiny blotches. In the book Topophilia, Yi-Fu Tuan proposes that there is “an affective bond between people and places.” My childhood house was shorthand for my most intimate and favored topography. But my roving eye didn’t stop there. I examined my friends’ homes, some with similar construction and others more exclusive, brick-fronted, with their Tiki bars and pool tables in novel daylight basements. I walked to junior high through an Italian-American neighborhood of 1920s and ‘30s brick houses and on into a landscape of older wooden homes. I judged rooflines, facades, and paint choices (ick, to that odd shade of green on a house on Pine Street). Without a vocabulary, I noticed eyebrow dormers and Doric porch columns. I freelanced in architecture and minored in racial and cultural differences in housing stock. It never occurred to me that most children didn’t work in my fields of expertise, or, even now, that most adults don’t walk blocks with the singular intention of noticing houses.

I play a game like Clue, where players are given hints to figure out who committed the murder, where, and with what weapon. My version uses clues to guess what might have been altered in a house, what makes its design attractive, and how its interior is laid out. I spot when a Victorian has had its downstairs windows replaced with a single plate-glass window and now appears to be screaming beneath its eye-like second-story windows. I appreciate modern houses painted in dark gray, with a pop of orange on the front door for warmth, and I am often accurate about details: whether a home has a central hallway, where the bedrooms are located, and whether the kitchen sink has a view. Like the Google Maps little person you can place on any road to see a street view of the surrounding houses, I figuratively put myself into houses, into rooms. Years of reading architectural magazines and historical plan books inform my guesses and preferences. On the westward portion of this trip, I stopped at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater for a second time. It is my favorite house ever.

Fallingwater, Pennsylvania

But my affinity for a wide range of architectural details and my interest in how people live led me to find delight in far less extravagant structures, like this former live-above-the-store building in St. Paul, Minnesota, with its jutting window seat. What a lovely place to view the tree-lined neighborhood.

During my travels across the continent and back, some houses and neighborhoods pleased me—even as I passed them at sixty miles per hour. Others I looped back to examine more closely, and some I stopped to photograph. It is not a coincidence to me that the verb "to linger" could be replaced with "to dwell." I passed millions of houses. I struggled to pick the ones I wanted to remember most.

Stonington Cottage

Some houses, like the replica above of a stonemason's cottage in Stonington, Maine, or the Second Empire House at Schodack Landing in the Hudson Valley, and the tiny house on wheels in Montpelier, Vermont—all of which I stayed in—were enhanced by their hosts’ welcome. Each filled their spaces with their own beloved sense of topographic connections, sharing their love through their passion for detail and design.

"Keep Out"

On a dog walk with Chester in Moose Jaw, Canada, I spotted the first house whose style I truly loved. It was a long and low Arts and Crafts bungalow. Unfortunately, the home’s stone-pillared porch was marred by a “Keep Out” sign, giving the house a foreboding, almost paranoid feel. The sign's intent felt offensive, making me wonder whether a welcome sign might have been a better way to protect the home.

I crossed into the United States at Niagara Falls and followed the Erie Canal east through New York. As I moved eastward, the houses increasingly reflected the historical trends of earlier centuries. I especially liked the company-built houses, often constructed as multi-family dwellings. Their simple design, with porches and/or second-story balconies aligned along the block, was inviting. It was clear that many of the houses were home to new generations, and their occupants were more racially diverse than earlier residents.

In South Portland and Belfast, Maine, I walked with friends to farmers’ markets, beaches, and bakeries. Houses were set so close to the road that even children could effortlessly call out “Hello” as though we were not strangers. It would be easy to grow fond of these neighborhoods.

A Cape Cod

It wasn’t until Chester, a town on the Nova Scotian coast, that two houses held my wholehearted affection. The first was a dusky-blue Cape Cod built in the 1830s. The color seemed a blend of maritime blue and fog. In its narrow, cross-gabled entryway, high under the eaves, was a Gothic-inspired window. It evoked church architecture and lent the house a sacred grace, a small peak of delight. The enclosed entry foyer spoke of practicality in a land where winter lingers long and hard. The house edged the roadway, with its left side perched on a knoll, as if it had backed in, sidled sideways, and sat to rest. An enclosed undercarriage supported its other half. In this lower level, a slanting light caressed a worn wooden desktop. I moved a little closer. I am always wary of being confronted for my trespassing gaze, but would the occupants of this Cape Cod be satisfied with an explanation that I wished to enter their home and write at that desk? Would they invite me in and offer me a cup of tea and a pen? Just dreaming.

The Woodbox

The second house I loved was called “The Woodbox.” For years, I have tried to pick a name for my cabin. The earliest summer cabins in my community all had names like “Lucy Dell” and “Heap O’ Liven.” I liked the name “The Woodbox” and wryly wondered if I could borrow it. The house itself was lovely. Its stepped-back, stacked configuration, painted a light, airy gray, lifted its smallest room skyward, three stories up, offering a view of the sea and the town through its multi-paned windows. I could live by the sea in that little room, writing with my head in the clouds. Maybe I picked these two houses for their potential as workspaces.

There were other houses I hoped not to forget amid the slush of travel remembrances.

Paul Urann Home

On a busy two-lane highway in Maine, I doubled back and stopped at a Greek Revival house museum, The Paul Urann House, in the midst of an unfinished renovation. Approaching a carpenter working in the garage, I asked if I could wander inside. The home’s wide-cut floorboards, peeling glimpses of early wall coverings, and piles of donated furniture excited me, as did a tiny, bare room with one window on the upper floor. What had that little room been used for? Sewing? Birthing? Nursing? It felt like a room for a woman, a tiny sphere of contentment. I leaned briefly through the doorjamb, mindful not to overstay my self-guided tour. Linger a moment; remember this, I said to myself.

Back Doorknob of Robert Frost's Stone House

At Robert Frost’s Stone House in Vermont, I felt the poet’s presence in light-filled rooms with their plain New England-style furniture. The detail I obsessed over was the back porch’s Bakelite doorknob, a burnished butterscotch. I assumed Frost’s hand had touched this knob as he returned from a walk on the night he wrote the poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” The knob could have been a poem had Frost fashioned it. Surely, he loved its beauty. I took a quick photo (unfortunately slightly blurry) to ward off the risk of forgetting it.

Daniel Rose's Original Home

In Reading, Pennsylvania, a few blocks from where my fifth-great-grandfather, Daniel Rose (1749-1827), a clockmaker, musician, and state legislator, had his shop and home (now an oyster bar serving the best fish and chips), I came across rows of rowhouses. Here was a neighborhood where I felt comfortable. I liked the idea of having lots of neighbors, lots of eyes on the street to keep everyone safe. I was even more delighted to find one middle-of-the-block rowhouse with a gorgeous mural painted across its front and doorway. According to a sign, the building was occupied by the Puerto Rican Civic Society. There was something joyous about the name and the building’s facade. I later learned that the Society is a fascinating blend of a nightclub and a humanitarian organization. Puerto Rican immigrants have become a significant and growing part of Reading’s population. I think the neighborhood's Latin rhythm would be fun.

For want of a pail or two of paint, white clapboards across the Midwest in little towns here and there looked like markers of community disaster. I didn’t see any homeless people, but there were enough poorly kept houses that I'd guess everyone had a place to live. The towns were struggling.

My game entertains me, but it also makes me aware of the iniquities in our world. It makes me more empathetic toward others who live in substandard or poorly maintained homes. Not that a poor or small house will necessarily predict unhappy inhabitants, or a rich or large one either, but there must be some measure of contentment for the inhabitants when their housing includes elements that delight and comfort them.

Here is a house that illustrates this:

A Simple House in Peru, Indiana

It stood in town on a highway through Peru, Indiana. I later found several houses like this one in the area. A builder must have chosen this style as his forte. This one had dark-gray paint peeling from its brick walls. Someone had recently tried to paint it a pleasant cream but had gotten no further than a few swipes on the second story. Last year’s winterizing sheets of plastic hung rumpled against the panes. On one side, the original porch entry had been enclosed with a shed structure. The addition was not the most artfully done, but I am sure it made the house more functional. In the living room, there were two tall, very narrow front windows, each topped with curved headers and transoms. At the peak was another slim window. A child could have drawn the house; it was beautiful in its simplicity and proportions. Two more things made it endearing. Someone had pressed colorful, stained-glass-like paper in the transoms and hung a welcome sign on the door—so much more gracious than a "Keep Out" sign.

Although I didn’t highlight any new homes, when I stopped in Regina, Saskatchewan, for takeout at the Roots Kitchen and Bar in Harbour Landing Village, I found it surrounded by an entirely newly built neighborhood with a wide variety of housing options, all connected to parks and walkways. Above the restaurant was housing for seniors, and on the ground floor was a childcare center. Harbor Landing has 780 acres of a planned community. We need more housing, and this is a wonderful model. I could live anywhere here. Any abode. I could always paint mine chocolate-brown with lily-and-lattice wallpaper.

Thank you for lingering with me.

Mover of Rocks

2026-01-22T10:11:00.000-08:00

I move rocks. I read a short story once about a geologist who presents a paper to an assemblage of peers. He proposes a novel theory: the only reason humans are on earth is to move rocks. I could be Exhibit A.

By the time I returned home from my 2025 journey, there was a stack of rocks lodged between the cook box and the back passenger seat. Every coat—raincoat, featherdown, midweight, and lightweight—had a stone or more in each pocket. It was as if I had been selected as a cross-continent Uber driver, hired to be a transporter of pebbles and paperweights, each chosen to represent rock formations from across the continent. I can reason that if I transport rocks, I am human.

And as such, I am wont to be romantic, thoughtful, curious, and sometimes now, as I am older, pathetically forgetful. It is winter now, and I wear my heaviest coat. I’ll go to retrieve gloves, a doggy bag, a hat, or a cellphone, or nestle my hand in the warmth of the coat pocket. I’ll bump that night-black, Nova Scotian, sea-worn chunk of basalt. A rock in a pocket is a mnemonic device. For a moment, I am no longer wherever I am.

Instead, I will be squatting on a hard-scrabble beach with an incoming tide, pebbles swishing subtly on its leading edge. The smell of the ocean is fresh and pleasing. It is the evening of my seventy-sixth birthday. I am alone except for Chester, who eyes me as he gingerly wanders among the black stones, avoiding the water that confuses him and causes him anxiety. He is no water dog. I search for the rocks that moments before I set aside as mine. But I can’t find them among the many look-alikes. I begin again. Chester stops to smell a rock I pick up. Maybe it smells of a fish carcass or a Nova Scotia dog. He wanders off. I finally chose one small rock and a larger one. Calling Chester, I take a photo of us to commemorate the occasion. Leaving, we clamber back up the path to the road, where I then notice a “No Dogs on the Beach” sign. I smile; here I am at seventy-six, breaking the law again.

I move rocks for an odd lot of reasons. To push the hill away from my cabin’s wall. To make the yard’s wooden archway appear to have a more substantial footing. To remember my husband, Gary, by keeping a bowl of the million- and billion-year-old rocks he collected on a field trip shortly before he passed. To make a pleasing mantel display. To remind me to pray.

Honestly, I wasn’t thinking of moving rocks on the first day I left home. When I was waylaid at the news that Mila, a four-year-old, a child whom I had babysat when she was one, had just been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and was at a Spokane hospital, I missed my border crossing, stopping to see the family. Fortuitously, a hill near the roadside turnout where I then camped that first night yielded a jumble of pastel-colored rocks. I pocketed a mica-flecked, girly-pink granite specimen, a prayer stone fit for a child. Throughout the journey, it nudged me into remembering to say a Bahá'í healing prayer for Mila.

Genetically, maybe I am predisposed to move rocks. Afterall, my cousin Captain Cornelius Dunham hauled ballast hither and yon across the seas in his tall ships. In Maine, I visited his gravestone, a substantial boulder marked with a metal plaque stating “1748-1835 Capt. Cornelius Dunham who was Father of Isaac Dunham, The First Keeper of Pemaquid Light.” The stone was located in a small cemetery on a hill overlooking the ocean near that very lighthouse. A chance encounter with a neighbor led me to another grave nearby, that of a nameless shepherd. His mound was covered with a layer of smooth stones. No marker. The woman noted that someone had bothered to collect the rounded stones from the base of the cliff rather than using the rough rocks the shepherd had used for the foundation of his long-abandoned hut close by. Grief moves rocks.

Unless it can’t.

Last summer, I went looking for the grave of my Swedish-born great-grandfather, Charles Bord Peterson (1855-1883). According to the Find a Grave website, he appears to have no gravestone or burial site listed. I didn’t know if he might be buried in the oldest private cemetery in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, or in a pauper’s grave in the same city. Researching in an old, beautifully bound record book at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, I found his name in looping script, the first on a page recording plots purchased by an Andrew Johnson, whose name I recognized as my great-grandmother’s brother.

A groundskeeper took me to the burial location, where there was not one sunken and unmarked grave, but a heartbreaking stretch of many. My Swedish immigrant ancestors were mostly laborers (shovelers of dirt and rock), bricklayers, and miners, the cornerstone of a welcomed nineteenth-century workforce and rock-movers all. On their death, they were too poor to mark their passing in this new world. During this trip, I commissioned the moving and engraving of two stones—one for Charles and another for Andrew’s family, including his first wife, their infant son, a child, his second wife, a niece, and himself.

It is no accident that I ordered gravestones. I love a good cemetery, stone, and inscription. Rocks tolerate us chipping away to make our final mark. My favorite inscription was in Hope Cemetery in Barre, Vermont. The memorial was a large dog lying on a granite arch, inscribed: “My dog taught me a valuable lesson—shed a lot.” In some parts of the world, the only rocks around are memorial markers. In Roseville, Illinois, an old cemetery butted up against a row of grain silos. The silos appear to squeeze in close, dominating the scene and erasing the usual sense of the stones' glory. They seem to say, “Your greater mark was to farm this land. We stand to testify to this fact.”

Roseville, Illinois

The rocks I gathered and stashed behind my car seat came from Washington, Maine, Vermont, Nova Scotia, and, lastly, a heavy one from Wyoming. Like a logbook, their origins marked where I dallied and where I hurried; they explained why I crossed the Canadian prairies in a two-day rush and, on the return journey, my state-a-day passage through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and into Iowa. I loved those lands for their sun-clock vistas, the multitude of backroad travel options (chosen to ease Chester’s fear of eighteen-wheelers), and the charm of farmhouses set neighborly distances apart. What kept me moving was the dust plumes trailing behind the tractors—nothing to collect but vials of dirt.

At their cabin in Maine, Andi and Parke (long-ago founding parents of my childcare center in Walla Walla) and John (a Bozeman transplant to Vermont) were friends who became hauling advisors. My luck in having them as friends meant I hiked to extraordinarily lovely collection sites—Pigeon Hill (a striped wishing rock and a slice of mica), Winter Harbor (more wishing rocks), Putney Ridge and the Appalachian segment of the Vermont Long Trail (granite and marble), and John’s driveway (Vermont white granite).

Pidgeon Hill, Maine

John, in particular, understood my task. I don’t know what to call someone who piles rocks on side tables, on the floor where they take off their shoes, or on their deck. The two of us are a small contingent of collectors, distinct from those who acquire a pet rock or a single painted rock. We are lovers of a bounty of rocks for their beauty, their touch, and their capacity to hold thoughts or memories.

John's Collection from Kansas, Montana, and Tanzania

***

Traveling is an adventure dense with potential. Moving rocks and then reflecting on why I do it is only one aspect that gave this journey depth. A trip can be more than a shorthand list of places one has visited.

Now, I ask you, “What rock might you move next?” You are human, after all, yes?

Affected by Ice

2026-01-08T20:56:00.000-08:00

This is my first selfie for the year of 2026. I think it indicates that this will either be The Year of the Brain Freeze or The Year of the Mouth! I am hoping for the latter. 

The past few months I have not been writing on the blog, silenced by the task of mulling over my fall’s continent-wide travels. I am often asked if I worry about traveling and camping alone. In the coming weeks, I am hoping to post a more thoughtful answer than the one I often give to that question. I also want to describe how wandering the world with an open heart and wide intentions lifts mere sightseeing to another dimension.

In the meantime—within a hundred yards of my doorstep, I am grateful to find the natural world carrying on with its diverse cycles of water-nourishing missions. One waterfall and one stream’s work. Enjoy!

"We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life moulds the environment and is itself also deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions."

—Written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, To an individual (Bahá'í) believer, 17 February 1933

Finding the Snag that Will Capture a Viewer's Eye

2025-11-06T09:27:00.000-08:00

Font names—cloister black, baby italic, and undertaker—names found on an old printer’s cabinet in the Deer Isle-Stonington Museum on Deer Isle, Maine, had indicated to the typesetters how a particular kind of story or advertisement could be set with a font to create the right atmosphere. (“Undertaker.” A font stalking a grim finality.) By the time the typesetters laid rows of words with inky hands, the story had been gathered and written; the ad worded and illustrated. Their job was a simple one, almost like the placing of a period at the end of a sentence. And yet, it was the snag that could catch a reader’s eyes.

When I take photos, I work the opposite way. I look for the snag in images, the detail/s that will make a viewer think they might know the storyline, even when there is no one in the image. I look for what is incongruit, silly, evocative of a feeling, a character, a story.

Dock End, Stonington, Maine

Did you imagine yourself gripping those ladder ends and with a mite of trepidation while descending unsteadily to a boat bobbing far below or did you find yourself waiting, thinking someone or something was going to throw a leg over the last rung and come toward you? Were you confused a moment by the water being the sky? I took the photograph of this dock and bay a dozen different ways, but the main snag ended out being the viewpoint, the intimacy of being at arm’s length to the ladder. The wooden beam across the edge of the dock is just visible, a tripping hazard. The ladder handles are gray cold metal, unpleasant to the touch. The water seemingly sky-wide boundless, could swallow you. All snags.

Here is another photo. End time at the dog park? Dog gone. Leash remains. Last supper, bowls empty. The high view of this scenario from the Grand Bridge in St. Paul, Minnesota, places the viewer at an omnipresent vantage point. The snag is the lofty viewpoint.

I loved that someone had a great sense of humor, putting a “Pull first with Dry Hands” sign on a paper towel dispenser. But this is serious. In order to dry your hands with one of those paper towels, you HAVE TO DRY YOUR HANDS or the paper tears as you try to pull it out. So, sheepishly you dry your hands as told—on your pants, on your shirt, on your jacket—before pulling with dry hands. The snag in this photo for you, the viewer, is that you don’t see anyone, so you go through your reactions to the sign alone like in a typical gas station bathroom. The clerk who wrote the sign isn’t there, you don’t see me. You get to experience this thought process all on your own. The mirror adds to the image with its no-no signs; in this restroom you are expected to follow the rules. I could have taken a photo of just the paper towel dispenser, but the mirror and the sink add to the feeling of reality. Do “Pull first with Dry Hands.”

Church in a Small Town in Nebraska

Wandering back roads, I saw many abandoned churches or ones reinvented as historical societies, antique stores, or an occasional house. This one stumped me at first. No church spire. A side door that upstages the boarded-over original main entrance with its funny bleacher-like steps. Had it been a school or the home of a fraternal organization? As I took the photo, I tried to capture the bulkiness of the building, its former grandiose facade. When I edited the photo, I pulled the building closer so the reader could more clearly see the two bikes leaning against the wall, the blank T.V. and the mattress on the lawn. The last iteration of this church was as a home of an evicted tenant. Many transformed churches have fallen from their mission of tending to the poor; this one has fallen a couple of bleacher steps further.

Chester's Welcome—A Lovely Reprieve

2025-10-22T17:53:00.000-07:00

The first dog my dog Chester encountered in Chester, Nova Scotia, was named… Chester. We had arrived minutes before and while I gathered bags to carry up to our lodging above a mercantile, a bulldog and its owner sashayed by. Chester met Chester in Chester. It’s silly to select one’s holiday destination by the name of one’s dog, but I knew nothing about any of the small towns sited up and down the outer shores of Nova Scotia, Canada. They were pinpricks on a map to me. Chester got his first whiff of the two Chesters and it set his butt a-wagging.

The town of Chester is a fishing village with an annual sailing regatta and a summer tourism season. Late September was the “tail-end” of its season. Some shopkeepers spoke of closing up in the coming week. My dog and I were there for the last wag. I was in need of it.

View to the southwest across Back Harbor

I had been traveling for a month. I crossed the North American continent with the first half of the trip in Canada and the second half in the United States. My travels would extend into late fall or early winter, so I prepared for a slew of worrisome conditions: ticks, rain, snow, and ice. I worried about encountering smoke from the fires in mid-Canada; I even bought a dog’s respirator mask for Chester. The evening skies in Chester were colored by the smoke from a fire in a nearby Nova Scotia forest, but the fire was almost contained and one couldn't smell smoke.

But then that dust storm was still blowing across the United States—causing grief everywhere, lasting far too long. No state left untouched. Dust storm? You might be thinking how did you miss that news? So, here is the gig.

In the Bahá’í religion it is said that when a person uses his words to harm another person, they put dust on the heart of the person whom they intend to hurt and likewise put dust on their own hearts. In the U.S., listening to broadcasts, podcasts, or casual conversations—any political side or persuasion, this “dust” gets scattered with abandon. Uncivil signage on bumper stickers, t-shirts, and flags flicks it intentionally at any passing targets. We seem to be a country of civilians suffering from self-induced heavy hearts—insulted, angry, and unhappy. We are a country under duress, capable sometimes of dealing with it with humor, but so often instead with offensive language. Although the portion of my travels through the United States had been delightful and I had been with interesting and gracious people, I was feeling the effects of the unavoidable incivility. I arrived in Chester hoping for a dustless respite.

Chester in his doggy way had no expectations beyond all the dogs he might meet be good dogs. Neither of us quite expected the reception we experienced.

Sign outside The Rope Loft restaurant

First off, I rarely passed anyone who didn’t speak to me. If they were walking in my direction, the conversation would be an extended one. Gracious. Casual. Friendly. Only twice, unsolicited, was there first an expression of sympathy about our American plight and then untoward disparaging remarks.

The Kiwi Cafe was the epicenter of my Chester visit. Its kiwi green walls and welcome to all who entered made me feel warm-hearted. After hearing I had a dog, one waitress hurried out to meet him when later she saw me walking Chester. Another advised me to take the commuter ferry to the Tancook Islands. On said ferry, an older island resident, a fisherman, engaged me in a lovely conversation; something that potentially in my country might have led to comments putting someone down.

My birthday gift to myself—lobster eggs Benedict at the Kiwi Cafe

Chester's welcome for Chester was the best. He was offered a treat at every counter, even at the post office where he got a handful of bites from the postal clerk, who then proceeded to call the other clerks from the back room to meet the new Chester. He developed a habit of heading for any counter in sight. Chester taught Chester the way of a civil world. He noticed the difference; his heart singing at every counter encounter. No disaster in Chester. No dust on his heart, nor mine.

Chester and I

Photo Journaling: Barrie, Canada, to Maine

2025-09-12T19:59:00.000-07:00

Even with the distraction of a gull sitting atop the head of a Canadian WWI infantry man, one cannot ignore the soldier's mournful look. His downcast gaze seems to express regret. We ask too much of men during war. In our sorrow for their fate, we glorify them by turning a likeness of one military man of any particular war into stone, an act oddly reminiscent of the plots in grim-ending fairy tales.

After I entered the United States at Niagara Falls, I wandered east along the Erie Canal through formerly prosperous industrial towns. Most towns hung banners with photos of their "Hometown Heroes" of all who who had fought in American wars from their communities. So many men. A few women. We Americans are good at war.

***

I admired centuries of glorious house styles across New York, traveling south down through the Hudson Valley, eventually across Massachusetts, and into coastal Maine. The ingenuity of man was everywhere.

Women were less in evidence. A muted pink in a garden reminded me of a color known to be favored by the female sex. A "scarlet A"—in actuality a half of a barricade hanging on a wall at Buttermilk Falls Park—made me think of women accused in that earlier time of adultery and where were the men then?

Essence of pink at Cornell Botanical Gardens

A new New England's version of a "scarlet A"

Henry Thoreau's Walden Pond... reinvented as a swimming hole.

I walked around Walden pond. I watched swimmers crossing and tykes a playing. Apparently the pond has been a swimming hole for some time. I was told it was once closed due to too much pee in the water. Now a bathing house is under construction at one end. A sensible solution. Still, I was expecting a meditative space. If one walks to the far side of the pond, one can stand by the original location of Thoreau's cabin; it is marked by four upright stones. There, it is quiet.

Men—once prosperous—leave tailings of rust.

Rusted factories in Amsterdam at abandoned Erie Canal mills.

A print of President Garfield hangs in the hallway of a house at Schodack Landing in Hudson Valley.

This Second Empire or Mansard style house was built by a man running an ice house at Schodack Landing.

The house was built in the year Garfield became President of the United States. Tom, the current owner and caretaker of the house, has thoughtfully filled it with period furniture and memorablia related to President Garfield and his Cabinet. Staying there was a wonderful historical journey.

Isaac Dunham, the first lighthouse keeper at the Pemaquid Lighthouse, was a distant cousin of mine.

I wandered the lighthouse's neighborhood looking for the grave of Isaac's father, Captain Cornelius Dunham. He had sailed the world before dying while visiting his son at the lighthouse. I had sketchy directions to his burial site. Although the lighthouse docents weren't sure where it was, one of them sent me off where he thought it might be located. I was thrilled to find it and returned to let the staff know where the little cemetery could be found.

A painterly-like view from Pemaquid, Maine shoreline. Rosehips and seagulls.

I visited various friends on the Maine coast. Each enthused about living in Maine and took me a wandering or directed me to sights. I could leave my heart in Maine. It tempts one to become an artist.

Shells at Carolyn and Tim's house.

View of lobster boats at sundown from Andi and Parke's couch.

Ladder descending fishing dock in Stonington.

A Stonington view that would make a good painting.

In Gouldsboro, Maine, this lobsterman once held a sardine can.

The Deer Isle-Stonington Historical Museum explained that when sardines had been over-fished on the Maine coast and tuna became popular, the sardine canneries closed and were replaced with lobster fisheries. Although only men worked as sardine fishermen, women worked in the canneries. The museum has a delightful film about how much the women loved their work and the friendships they found in the canneries.

Another statue of a man:

Quarryman statue in Stonington, Maine. Quarries nearby provided stone for numerous famous buildings.

There is still a working quarry on an island in the area. A beautiful, strong statue.

And finally a woman's "statue." A scarecrow in a community garden in Milbridge, Maine. It seems fitting it is a female. The garden gives vegetables away for the picking to anyone in need of fresh produce. When women have more sway in the world, nobody will go hungry.

A beautiful scarecrow.

Canadian Travels

2025-09-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

This is a Canadian morning: sunny-side-up, dressing of mist, and a lake which is not optional. Crossing Canada west to east, I camped by water most nights. Even the Alberta prairies had cow ponds. On one of the two long days it took to cross those prairies, I moved in tandem with a thundercloud running ahead of me as if it were the gingerbread man calling out, “Catch me if you can.” The vastness of the land under an uncatchable cloud made me meditate on larger things—of men unrestrained by wilderness, of women following, and the courage of both. I camped that night on an island in a lake with the sun dropping red through smoke from fires further north.

When I prepared for this Pacific coast to Atlantic coast trip, I considered a plethora of hazards and emergencies. I packed foul-weather gear, bought two brands of tick and mosquito repellants, and even purchased a smoke-repellant mask for my dog. But I was most worried about the hazard of not “seeing” the country I was to cross. Of fussing about the miles clicking by on the odometer and of arriving each evening weary and late at a reserved campground. I waylaid this worry by advance study. The Lethbridge train trestle (highest and longest train trestle of its kind in the world) is an example.

I camped that night on the edge of Lethbridge in a most unremarkable campsite, but with a host, who when I mentioned my interest in the bridge, enthused about the it and how to access it. I might have been tempted to go to bed early and see nothing remarkable, but instead I headed out to find the trestle.

The trestle’s construction reminded me of those antique Meccano child’s construction sets but upscaled to a giant’s play. The train trestle fit the range of the land and welded with my pondering the willingness of humans to go into difficult terrain and make things happened.

The endeavor to connect eastern to western Canada with train tracks and a highway were engineering feats. Later in the trip, as I passed rock walls with their evidence of blasting, I wondered how much dynamite built these corridors. And how many lakes they avoided. And how many trees were felled.

Although most of the trip was seen at a large scale, I also looked at the eye and macro level. The wider vistas needed something to ground them. Some days I stopped to hike with Chester and some evenings, I wandered campgrounds and took photo shots. I especially loved the curls of white birch bark. And the bird in the bark.

Short hikes brought me other views. Whispy grasses on the edge of a lake.

Chester’s view of Canada was mostly by smell. His nose led him to a Newfoundland, who was also named Chester. Their connection brought me to a most wonderful Canadian. Hearing him speak of playing hockey, of his cabin near a lake, and his devotion to his now deceased wife—who had endured a long illness, tallied with my image of Canadians—of their tenacity and grace under difficulties.

I am sure this leg of my journey will remain in my mind fondly.

Light in an Ill World

2025-08-14T11:45:00.000-07:00

I am setting off to traverse North America at a time when America’s contributions to advances in governance, education and science or to raising people out of poverty and eliminating prejudice is being truncated. It is a time when America’s promise to lead humanity into a more enlightened world-embracing perspective is being severed by snippets. Its light is dim in a world lit more by the illumination of weapons of war and flinty words than of the light of souls and of exchanges guided by respectful and loving qualities.

As I travel, I expect to find America a topic of concern both within and without its borders. We know we are all connected on this earth. What harms one part of its body resonates within another. There is a sadness to having our current illness.

Some years ago, when I was grieving the passing of my husband, I would turn lights on in rooms I knew I would enter later. The inviting light made me feel less alone as if someone was already there waiting for me. In this current world of darkness, I hope to find many spaces during my travels where regardless of political persuasion or world view, they are lit with the understanding of our common humanity and love for each other as individuals.

It is only in this celebration of our commonalities, can we reignite the promise of America or the hopes for the wellbeing of the world’s body of humanity.

Half-Light, Mitchell Point Tunnel

2025-06-20T19:03:00.000-07:00

Near sundown, angled rays of light scraped the underside of clouds to the west as I entered the newly reopened Mitchell Point Tunnel. Constructed in 1915 as part of the Columbia River Highway, the engineer, Samuel Lancaster, modeled the windowed tunnel after a Swiss version he had seen while touring Europe. Until 1953 car traffic enjoyed views looking out of the tunnel’s row of huge, elegant windows towards Washington State across the river. When Highway I-80 was built as a two-lane road around the base of Mitchell Point, it necessitated the closing of the tunnel above. The windows were cemented closed and the tunnel filled with gravel. In the 1960s, the widening of the highway below into becoming the four-lane I-84 highway required blasting away the tunnel’s windows, emptying it of gravel, and leaving its former roadway as a shelf to catch falling rocks from the point above.

Some time ago, I saw a postcard showing a Model T lit by the large windows as the car passed through the Mitchell Point Tunnel. I was enchanted. Not familiar with the tunnel’s history or its exact whereabouts, I would look for the windows as I drove the Gorge. I was never successful at spotting them until a day in 2023 when I was returning from Portland and looking up was startled to see windows appearing like an apparition of black-drawn holes in the gray basalt rock face. The state of Oregon had garnered funding to reconstruct the tunnel to become a stretch of the Columbia River biking and walking path.

I texted my friend Bryan who was in the midst of a cancer regime (Waiting for the Results of a Biopsy), sent him a link about the tunnel’s coming reopening, and suggested that when he finished treatment, we’d make a trip to walk it. He passed away five months later, never having left the confines of Seattle. (After Death, The Wake) When the tunnel opened in April of 2025, I visited and took a rock of Bryan’s, one he had gathered from the tiny Canadian island he had owned. The smooth black rock—Puget Sound tumbled—was hand-sized; Bryan's spirit held in its pleasing heft.

Chosing a day of partial sun and partial clouds, I envisioned taking photos out of the tunnel’s grand openings. None of the photos I eventually took and kept looked out the windows. The haunting light and the mostly inky black walls held my attention. Although the tunnel windows are monstrous, the northern light enters them gently. Each opening—rough cast with imprecise edges—lets in a half-light.

When you first enter the black maw of the western entrance, you walk in darkness a few moments before a curve in the tunnel reveals the first light. As you stroll through the tunnel, the echo of children entering behind you—the shouts of their initial trepidation followed by their laughter—announce their delight. I walked the tunnel back and forth a number of times and returned the next morning. Something about that sound of the children nagged at me until I remembered the name of a chapter titled “The Generation of the Half-Light” in When We Grow Up by Bahíyyih Nakhjavání. It was a Bahá’í-inspired book that influenced me as I raised my daughter.

Half-light. That was it. The shape of the light in one of my photos resembled a cartoon’s conversational bubble. If I had to fit the meaning (as it is defined in the book) of “half-light” into the bubble’s confines, I suppose I would describe it as: “Half-light is the dawning illumination of a spiritual dispensation.” The generation of children growing up in that light have one foot on earth and one stepping towards the realm of the beckoning enlightenment. Betwixt and between. As one walks the tunnel you pass through a repetition of darkness and light, darkness and light. The experience is like wandering into and between the worlds’ spiritual dispensations. Each dispensation, each prophet a light followed by darkness.

Stepping from the gloom into the light of each window, I— like the children—was delighted. The darkness a necessity to appreciate the light. We are walking through a dark time in the world right now. One in which a portion of humanity is bound as if blindfolded to their own capacity to become a beacon of love and kindness, to step out of a darkness of their own making. They spread chaos while stumbling blind. Exiting the Mitchell Point Tunnel, the fullness of the light seemed almost too much. And yet, I left with an exhilaration. Bryan’s rock in my hand, conscious of his good spirit in its weight. Buoyed by the illumination of the “half-lights.”

"Salmon Weather"

2025-04-23T19:01:00.000-07:00

March/April

It is “salmon weather” in the canyon. Cold nights, an occasional snow or sleet—the breath of winter lasting longer. A slight annoyance to those of us done with winter. During a brief warming period in early March, when we thought spring was here, the river was running high. It was tempting to begin planning what to put in my planting barrels. The river soon dropped enough to reveal new gravel beds where salmon might spawn in the coming summer. But for now, the return of wintry precipitation is making the water rise once again, sending its chilling effect towards deeper waters pooling downstream. The salmon will be happy with this infusion of cold water. They will need to traverse those pools during their upriver summer trek. Hot water kills salmon.

This year one of my measures of “salmon weather” was a spigot of water arching off a rock wall in a wooded area down from my cabin. On some mornings, the spigot’s flow has been edged with ice, but dangling in its funnel were green filaments and the carapace of a caterpillar, evidence of last summer’s largesse and this summer’s bounty to come. I was puzzled at how water could spout from solid rock, but the mystery was solved a few days later when a sheet of moss peeled off the wall and the spigot disappeared. Water coursing down the rock face had been hitting a protrusion of moss. Now the bare rock glints with water.

Just down from where the spigot was located is a little waterfall flowing out from under a skirting of tree roots. Both the water flowing down the rock face and the waterfall's width were a barometer of the erratic weather.

Underfoot by the waterfall's splashing, the earth is spongy. And under that, beyond what I can see and feel, more water seeps through dirt and around stones—water which will eventually carry its “salmon weather” chill into the nearby river in time for those fall upriver salmon runs. In the meantime, the wet weather is brightening the moss all around the canyon, itself a habitat for snails, red mites, and at least one purple caterpillar riding on the back of a snail.

When I feel disgruntled at the return of cold weather, I remind myself once again of the spigot, the mite, the moss, and the salmon. I can set aside my petty human annoyance.

Maelstrom: situation in which there is great confusion, violence, and destruction

2025-02-20T21:09:00.000-08:00

When I step into a stream to look for icicles, I come prepared with my insulated Salmon Sisters boots and a walking stick. My favorite stream tumbles down a narrow canyon across from my cabin. I tie my dog Chester to a tree and step into the near freezing water. Although I’ve come for the icicles, the maelstrom of bubbles at the foot of each small fall inevitably distracts me.

The bubbles rise and fall with a fury at the foot of each small rock shelf and sometimes construct creatures whose existence will be fleeting. I won’t see that exact same formation again.

The water follows the rules of physics. It flows downward, accumulating more water from the sloping Blue Mountain hillsides until it empties into Mill Creek, the Columbia River, and then flows onward to the Pacific Ocean. Flotillas of bubbles appear below each drop-off in the stream. In the heat of late summer, the flow will be reduced to a trickle and the pools of chaos dissipate. I visit in the winter when over a few days the temperature has dropped below freezing and icicles will form along the stream’s edges. Some icicles appear very ordinary and others fantastical.

This winter the apparition of a screaming soul briefly appeared in the water’s movement and I caught it with my cellphone camera.

It’s visage reminded me of how humans across the world are engulfed in maelstroms—whirling pools of hate and destruction, causing welters of pain, grief, and displacement. One might wish or even actively put a foot into these whirls like a boot in the stream and try to turn the tide into something more worthy of humanity. When I step into the stream with my Salmon Sister boots, I am looking for beauty in the ice and in the bubbles, but I know my presence is fleeting to the stream. I can’t change its molecules or its destiny. Likewise, even with the best of my intentions and heart, it is unlikely that I can deter almost any of the destruction fomented in the world today, but my Faith asks of me to do something different, something hopeful, something indubitably wise.

The Bahá’í Faith is the world’s newest world religion. It is a young one-hundred and eighty-years-old prophecy. It is also the world’s second most widespread religion, accomplished without paid clergy. I mention this fact because each individual Bahá’í is responsible for their own spiritual development. We are guided by the writings of the twin prophets, the Bab and Bahá'u'lláh, and an administrative order that includes The Universal House of Justice, but we each are responsible to endeavor to see that the laws of spiritual destiny follow their course.

Today’s world havoc was predicted—is predictable. As the old-world order crumbles, as old-world perceptions no longer function, chaos ensues. Consider one shift. Through science, we now know that all the people of the world are one people, related to each other in varying degrees of distance. We know that skin color has to do with a human’s adaption to the sun, to levels of melatonin in the skin, and has nothing to do with their intelligence, capacity, or spirit. If you were stuck in the old-world paradigm, you might be unable to see a person of color as your equal, as your brother, as your soulmate and therefore treat them accordingly.

Like ice facing ice and not recognizing its similarities.

The Bahai Faith, asks of me to observe the laws of the spiritual destiny of mankind. In my understanding (and this is only my interpretation of the Faith’s writings) it will only be in the transformation of man can there be an end to this world condition of dismay and discord. As a Bahá’í, I am asked to look for the beauty in every soul who crosses my path. To offend no one. Were each of us—worldwide—of every nation, race, occupation, political persuasion, wealth, social standing, or religion to find it within each of our fellow humans our common worth, the world would aright itself and begin abiding by the spiritual law of unity. It’s the joy, the delight, the intentional human connections that will eventually bring wide and lasting settled pools of peace.

Drop by drop, soul by soul it must happen.

Link to more information about the Bahá'í Faith: Bahá'í US

Uncluttering Peace; The Simplicity of Oneness

2025-01-06T20:14:00.000-08:00

On New Year’s Eve I didn’t stay awake until midnight, but on my way home late evening I exited the year of 2024 by taking a surreal parting snapshot of an old grain shed on Mill Creek Road. The fog-shrouded farm light struggled to illuminate the night, while odd reflections in my car’s side window inserted confusion into the scene. The blur of blue and white rectangles aiming for the barn’s peak looked like an extra-terrestrial neon-inspired attempt at communication. A slashed image of a white barn fence and a road in the upper right-hand corner appeared to be about to fall upon the old shed. The year-end photograph seemed to echo the past year’s shroud of world discontent with its puzzle of chaos and confusion.

War and war again. Numerous individuals and nations advocated for peace and illuminated the world with insightful, heartfelt, and thoughtful endeavors, but their efforts often seemed muffled as if fog-bound. Thwarted by things out of sight, beyond comprehension. One would think our capacity to communicate—like that illusion of a neon-lit message from outer space—would simply end wars. A phone call, a text, a posting: “Please, end war.”

Above is the same grain shed as the one pictured in the photo before. In a photographer’s lingo this photo is “uncluttered” with nothing in the image that distracts the eye from the subject. There is a dignity about this old shed now. A strength and a comfort in its stance. Our world aches for such clarity and assurance.

When I catch myself trying to make sense of the ongoing wars, trying to discern degrees of harm or what measures might end them, guidance from my Bahá’í Faith helps me “unclutter” the issues. Consider this: the simplicity of Oneness. My Faith speaks of this era being the age of humanity’s maturity, when mankind has evolved to the point of having the capacity to consider the entire world as one country, as guided by one God (through many prophets with progressive revelations), of men and women of one and the same degree of equality, and of one race—the human race. There would no longer be anything but a rare reason to defend one’s land, one’s faith, one’s equality, or one’s racial dignity. A world uncluttered from old prejudices would be at peace.

You may think this is naïve thinking. But this is the age of maturity. In my thinking, old ones of any age, who never gained the insights they needed, may find themselves in spiritual conundrums of their own making. A Buddhist friend of mine noted that in her faith, this is considered to be a dark time, but one of “quickened karma.” Acts that illicit bad karma will have quicker repercussions and those acts that gather good karma will be rewarded faster. Like adolescents who created chaos before they matured, there’s hope for everyone.

Peace, goodwill, and one blessing to all, and to all a good year.

Leafism—The Absurdity of Racism

2024-12-09T12:29:00.000-08:00

“Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch.” — Bahá’u’lláh

Rarely do I pass a gutter full of multi-colored fall leaves without some hesitation and renewed attention to the ground around me. Add a slick of rain, a sheen of ice, or a pooling of water and I’ll stop and take a photo.

The glory of leaves is irresistible. Even though I sometimes try and find the most photographic leaf, what will strike me is that it isn’t always the perfectly-formed leaf or the leaf in its prime that captures my attention. As with humans, each leaf is unique and each one contributes to the complexity of life forms.

If you look up the word “leafism” in a dictionary you won’t find it. But “racism” you will. For centuries now, humans have used their visual and mental capacities to define others by the color of their skin and then discriminate against them in an attempt to define who is superior and who is inferior. And yet, as in the quote above from the Bahá’i writings, we are like “leaves from one branch,” there is only one tree. We humans are many shades of color, but one unique category of living things.

“Leafism” — Belief in, adherence to, or advocacy of) the theory that all members, of each leaf (type) possess characteristics, abilities, qualities, etc. specific to that leaf, esp. distinguishing it as inferior or superior to another leaf or leaves: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism based on this.

Transposing the Oxford English Dictionary definition above of “racism” on to the word “leafism” (an imaginary form of racism among leaves) illustrates the absurdity of human's habit of niggling hate out of nuances of color.

Us. Them. Identifying someone by the color of their skin is an easy human visual task. As we continue to evolve spiritually, it is now within our capacity to eliminate the prejudice that has accompanied that simple visual reading. The sentence in the Bahá’i writings which follows this one: “Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch.” is “Deal ye one with another with the utmost love and harmony, with friendliness and fellowship.” Leaves haven’t evolved to having this ability, but as a member of the human race, you have.

Were you to shift your perception of people of color and look at them as a version of another lovely leaf on your branch, maybe you would find them to be more approachable, less unfamiliar, less “other.”

This is only my interpretation of the writings of Bahá’i Faith, but I hope you find it useful. Racism is a scrounge due for extinction.

After Death, the Wake

2024-07-28T20:15:00.000-07:00

Bryan passed away.

Passed this way with his wake upending our hopes he would remain longer. As a man who exuded lightness and effervescent warmth, we had assumed he had greater buoyancy and wasn’t anywhere near close to his last casting off. In his wake he left the wisdom of his advice to many a board, his stories, and a legacy of generosity. By the time I knew Bryan, he had learned to steer himself towards opportunities and friendships with an ease that maybe belied former times of tumult and uncertainty. The joy of his presence remains in his wake.

Bryan's Island on the Right

He owned an island. He loved his island. He loved telling stories about his British Columbian island. How he noticed an ad for it, crossed over to it at low tide, and ran all the way around it before having to wade through the incoming tidal waist-deep water to get back to its larger and closest island, Lasqueti. If you imagine his island, think of it as a stone, tossed from Lasqueti. Not too small. Not too large. Just right for one man. An island, which when it was plopped into the water, set off its own wake of pleasure that one day ensnared Bryan, a lucky guy.

Solitude was Bryan’s most constant guest on his rock, but he did invite a select few to join him in celebrating its water, eagles, old-growth forest, and its lovely sunsets.

Photo by Bryan

With Bryan’s methodical bent, he assembled island paraphernalia. No easy feat considering one cannot take a vehicle on the small local ferry from Vancouver Island to Lasqueti. His vehicle had to be parked somewhere. Generators had to be separated from their batteries for two trips on the little ferry. Kayaks had to be scheduled for hauling. Then, some arrangement was made to haul stuff from one end of Lasqueti Island to the end closest to Bryan’s island. And then boat it over. He had no running water. No cabin… not even one built of driftwood. A screened cook tent and a sleeping tent sufficed. Visits in the winter were near impossible. The island suited Bryan and he became its custodian for many years.

Photo by Bryan

Bryan’s choice of living mostly by himself meant his stories are archived with those he befriended. He never married—although he loved more than a few. Never fathered children. And yet it was obvious at a celebration of his life, he had birthed many stories and friendships. He left an archive of memories, a multitude of ripples.

Early in my friendship with Bryan on a morning walk along a wooded dirt road up my canyon, he told me a story from his college years. He said school came easily. He rarely studied and got straight A’s in high school. But when he got to college at the University of Colorado, he received a C on his first physic’s test. He was dismayed. He studied for his next test and earned an A. The instructor called him out, accusing him of having cheated on the second test. No one had ever before moved directly from a C to an A in his class. So Bryan provided proof. He took a friend with him as a witness. Upon arriving at the classroom where he was to meet the professor, he said nothing but went to the chalkboard and proceeded to write out the entire proof of the problem from the last test. From then on, he got A’s and became friends with the professor.

Proof. Although Bryan considered what might come after his death, he couldn’t find any proof of an afterlife. He expected none, but if there is one—knowing Bryan, he will quickly study up and insert the missing connections and excel in whatever comes next.

Last year, when Bryan waited for the results of a biopsy (Waiting for the Results of a Biopsy), he gathered those close to him and consulted on everything he thought was essential to tidying up in case the prediction of his demise would become reality. Harry, his brother, arrived in town to assist and his friend Jen stepped in to help orchestrate details. Those of us who accompanied Bryan on his last casting off have poignant memories of his leave-taking. Of his courage and of his optimism. His exhaustion. His efforts to greet visitors, usually dressed in one of his beloved plaid shirts and with hugs. Sometimes shaky with tears. Martie, his dear friend who housed him in her little cabin in the woods his last many months, and Lori, his love, kept the rest of us apprised of his course. But Bryan was at the helm, at times confident and at other times desperately examining the charts.

The ripples of his wake haven’t entirely subsided. Those of us who knew him well can still remember him in focus. His smile sharp. His wit lingering. Back on his island, Bryan must have spent many hours over many summers sitting on some chunk of driftwood on its shore while listening to the lapping of the water, the ripples from afar. He would appreciate that we derive pleasure in having known him and still are listening to the lapping of his wake.

Photo by Bryan

A Dog On a Walk...

2024-07-07T22:14:00.000-07:00

Chester on a Walk

A dog on a walk

Is like a person in love

You can't tell them

It is the same old world.

— as seen on a sidewalk in St. Paul, Minnesota, author anonymous

Although Chester and I went on a long, long trip, his dog walks were in the same old, same old world. Every location had interesting dog smells. Every location had dogs. Every location had people. With my six million olfactory receptors compared to Chester's maybe three-hundred million receptors, I experienced the world on the trip differently than him. How could I convey the difference in a human way?

After some thought, I decided to make every trip photo of him in a different phone-app style. Every photo (as it was taken) shifted to something radically-different than what I had seen and photographed. Each picture became not my view, but a view with three-million tiny differences distant from the original.

In Chester's "words":

I was game on walks even with the wind blowing my ears askew.

No smell. How wierd.

I hate wet feet, but Kathy had to come into this freshly washed restroom with water pooling on the floor. Is that my reflection? Good look'in dog.

Darn frustrating when Kathy's scent disappears into some place I'm not allowed.

I love following Art into the woods. He led me to those odd-smelling mushrooms.

If I were off leash, I'd be sprinting down that path. Who invented leashes? Bugger 'em.

Too hot to walk any further.

New dog to me. Adorable. He comes to the name of Opal.

We're best buds already. Couch-surfing together.

No, we weren't watching T.V.

I got a new dog toy for the journey back home. Quite fishy, hardly any smell.

Done walking where I haven't been before. Home is same old, same old.

Photos Not to Miss from an Adventure to the Midwest and Back Across Canada, 2024

2024-07-07T20:27:00.000-07:00

Alley View of Hotel Alex Johnson in Rapid City, South Dakota

I have a new phone with a great camera, a Samsung 21. Every morning, I slid it into my back pocket for the roadtrip of 4,500 miles, looping across America to the Midwest and returning via Canada. These photos aren't ordered in the sequence of the trip, but are organized to best display the diversity and beauty of what I saw. First off is the photo above taken of the graffiti in the alley behind the Alex Johnson Hotel in Rapid City, Sioux Falls. Rapid City was the surprise of the journey: creative purpose for graffiti (an entire alley's worth), great bookstore (Mitzi's), best book (Birding While Indian by Thomas C. Gannon), hiking close to downtown on Piss Hill (read the above book for the reason for its name), and a great outdoor store (Roam'n Around).

Below is my favorite photo from Hot Springs, South Dakota. I wasn't there long because I got a flat time and had to go up to Rapid City to wait three days for a replacement.

Building in Hot Springs, South Dakota

Jackalope in Walls, South Dakota

Who can't stop to snap photos of a distracted-looking jackalope?

Waterfall and Rainbow at Lundbreck Falls in Alberta, Canada

Provincial campgrounds in Canada are at stunning locations.

Cloud about to Grab the Road East of Winnepeg, Canada

A Wall Cloud Dragging Blue Rain

My campsite for one night was at the Stephenfield Provincial Park in Manitoba, Canada—just on the other side of these clouds. While I was on the gravel road leading to the campground, I drove into dense rain. The storm was moving so fast though that it was sunny by the time I had eaten dinner.

How about a few museum photos?

Of Its Time. Notice the Coca Cola Ad at the Foot of This School-Crossing Police Officer.

Popeye Says, "Eat Your Spinach!"

Irresistably Charming Zuni Pottery Bird

The Carnegie Historical Museum in Fairfield, Iowa (Jefferson County Carnegie Heritage Museum), has been collecting artifacts since 1876 and is an amazing museum. Recently relocated to a former Carnegie library building near the town square, it showcases local history and its collection of Native American pottery and baskets. Worth a visit to Iowa.

More reasons to visit Iowa:

An Eyelash Mushroom

Find the Speck of Orange above my shoe. It is the eyelash mushroom above!

An Artist's Mushroom. My drawing.

The Top Side of that Artist's Mushroom Above.

My friend, Art McBreen, led a mushroom walk in Brinton Timbers Park in Washington County, Iowa. The tiny orange eyelash mushroom and the artist's mushroom were my favorite of the many we saw. That rough-looking mushroom can be drawn on its underside with a sharp tool, and the image will remain. Here is a link to photos of the other mushrooms we saw that day: https://iowamushroom.smugmug.com/Forays/Foray-2024/Brinton-Timbers-15Jun2024

For those of you who are foodies:

A Latte and an Horchata Waffle at La Luna Café, Sioux Falls, South Dakota

The Cabrese Avocado Toast at La Luna Café again, Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Cat-faced Sandwich at the Cattitude Cafe, Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Sioux Falls wins the title of "Best Food on the Trip." The food at La Luna was as delicious as it was beautiful, and I could have hung out with the adoptable cats at the Cattitude Cafe. Quite fun. I missed getting a photo of the cardamon latte at The Breaks Coffee Roasting Company. I'd move to Sioux Falls on the basis of that latte alone! Their latte will at least entice me to return. It is only a twenty-and-a-half-hour drive.

More simply fun or artistic sightings:

Kiss me on the Balcony? Minneapolis, Minnesota.

More Rapid City Art. Sky Imitating Sky.

As Good as Graffiti, a Butte, Montana Wall.

What a pleasing trip. You might have noticed I have not included any photos of Chester, my canine companion on the trip (He'll get his turn next.) or people. So, here is a finale photo with people. This delightfully-engaged couple were taking a self-portrait in the Badlands. They did get a copy of this one too.

Get on the road! See what you can see! Travel safe.

When You Set Off on an Adventure...

2024-07-07T12:42:00.000-07:00

…you know not what you will find. Places abandoned, but once lively like in this photo taken through the window of Iona Cafe in Butte, Montana. How long has it been since a waitress (it was always a waitress) poured a cup of coffee from a glass carafe and drew those drapes against the late afternoon western sun?

What tragedy closed its door?

Recently, I returned from an adventure, circling from Washington state out to South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, and back across Canada. I had partitioned the trip into four episodes—the Going, the Purpose, the Returning, and the Welcoming back. The Purpose was to do some genealogy work, see old friends, and meet Swedish-descendant family members. Usually for longer trips, I forget the Welcoming home part, but it seems as essential as the journey itself, like the capstone on an arch. After all, if I have forgotten to insert the Welcoming back episode, I may forget to anticipate the adventure to be found on my home’s own stoop. Forget that leaving it didn’t mean I was tired of it or loath of it. The Welcoming back is an adventure in itself—the adventure of rifling through the trip’s experiences, images, and its tests while coming to a better understanding of what I didn’t know about myself before I set off. Back to Iona Cafe.

Butte, Montana was in the Going part of the journey. I stood across the street from Iona’s— derelict (even with an historic designation)—and considered what work the dear old cafe would need to be expertly renovated, coffee warming on the holding burners again. When I bought my cabin, it was in quite a derelict state—not as bad as Iona Cafe, but I was undaunted by the work it needed. I like that sort of thing. Throughout my journey as I walked city streets or drove through little towns sidestepped by highways both in the Going and the Returning, I saw lots of buildings, some of which like Iona’s set me again to speculating on how they might be rejuvenated, reimagined, or brought back to a condition conducive to the lively sound of footsteps.

Sometimes one element of a structure like this tile outside a building on the town square in Fairfield, Iowa would set me to thinking. My foot is reflected in a plate glass window, an unfortunate remodel to the front of an early 1900s building—currently empty. The wall with the plate glass window had been set on top of the older entrance tile, interrupting its inviting path. I could see the tile continuing inside on the other side of the plate glass window.

Even old commercial buildings with their advertising (fading but intact) appealed to my sense of possibilities. Ever optimistic, I considered options for their reinvention.

Butte, Montana

Bow Island, Alberta, Canada

Hot Springs, South Dakota

As I walked away from the Iona Cafe, I contemplated my limitations. I would never, never have the capacity to renovate her. By the third or fourth building I eyed with a contractor’s eye, I felt the sweep of impossibilities, followed by a small disappointment with my own financial or physical capacities, and then a chuckle. I am an optimist; an adventurer for whom some of the adventure is spotting old structures and speculating on their reconstruction into something useful. I saw buildings that needed work most days of my travels. Being a derelict-building spotter is as entertaining to me as birding or fishing or bar-hopping might be to others. This I know about myself. And for the first time, I considered that others, possibly many others, don’t engage in this form of entertainment. Their adventures—Going and Returning— will be different than mine.

The one project I know I could manage was this house in Fairfield, Iowa. As charmed as I was by the house’s dismantled expression, I could see the bricked-in doorway being cleared and a porch remounted. Then it would be a house which would be worthy of a Welcoming home after a long adventure.

Canned Curriculum, Underfunded Childcare

2024-01-12T11:03:00.000-08:00

In the mid-1970s, I graduated with a degree in education and a minor in history from a university in Arizona and could have taught high schoolers, but when my partner and I moved to a neighborhood near his work in his family’s business in north St. Louis, Missouri, the only jobs open in my field were in inner city schools in neighborhoods where there had been race riots over the previous summer. I was leery of my immaturity and my limited knowledge of Black history, so improvising, I walked down our hill and applied for a job-opening advertised at a childcare center. In a neighborhood confused between being residential or commercial, the former doctor’s office in an old brick house was squeezed between a service station and a commercial building, but faced modest brick homes across a busy arterial road. The house, now a daycare center, had a front door and second entrance door off to the side into the doctor’s former waiting room.

I was hired on Christmas Eve day as the fourth teacher in barely a four-months’ time for the same group of now wherried children, exhausted from being a recycled class thrice over. Turnover of teachers in the field of childcare has often been bested only by that in the field of garbage collection. A fact I did not know at the time.

I taught in three different classrooms at the center over a little more than a year. My first class of three-year-olds shared the living room/dining room with a group of four-year-olds. The first day I entered the classroom, I was confused to see the fours sitting in little wooden chairs backed against a wall facing their teacher who scowled at my interruption. I soon understood that the teacher had few materials and kept the children occupied and riveted with litanies of “Repeat after me.” The job site could have been the focus of a brilliant case study revealing the status of for-profit daycare in America of the time. After that first trial teaching the unhappy three-year-olds, but before my stint in the surgical suite, I was reassigned to teach the two-year olds in a former 10-foot-by-10-foot bedroom.

On my very first sighting of that classroom, it reminded me of those sad advertisements for grim unfurnished rooms. Supposedly the furniture was stored every evening for ease of vacuuming, but it was difficult to tell if the dark brown wall-to-wall carpeting had been cleaned or not. I’d gingerly cross the rug and raise the blinds on the far windows to brighten the space, but even the industrial-smudged light of north St. Louis seemed reluctant to enter into that foreboding nook. The light lit upon the sills and ventured no further.

I’d slide one of the closet doors open and tussle a table out clanking and banging, followed by seven little chairs drug and bumped across the nubby carpeting. The classroom was ready. Two small shelves in the closet held a pitiable cache of toys for the seven twos who would shortly arrive, be unbundled by their mothers (always mothers), and left to toddle about upsetting the chairs and sometimes me.

Once, I skipped uncloseting the table and chairs and we roustabouted unhindered by any furnishings. It was better. One of the un-tabled days I recall quite fondly. We were doing some kind of physics lessons with Campbell soup cans and ramps. Canned curriculum. I don’t know what the parents thought we did all day in those empty rooms.

The former doctor’s surgery suite was the opposite of the two’s room. It was sterile with low hanging florescent lighting blinging off the high, white-tiled walls—perfect for operating. I’d set my tools on the table. The Crayola’s colors seemed extra riveting under the fluorescents, particularly the blood red and vein blue. Jumbled in an old and quite unsanitary cigar box, the crayons were mere nubs with their paper slipcovers mostly missing. Next to them I laid a pile of Xerox pages. These were the only tools provided me for the delicate operation of teaching ten three-year-olds every morning for many months.

My skill of delighting the two-year-olds, earned me the childcare center’s position of morning supervisor, a lovely title seeming to convey that I would be responsible for the sun rising over the city or the dawn breezes wafting off the nearby Mississippi River beyond the railyards. I was naïve to accept the position.

Every state has licensing regulations. Some in the 70s were so minimal that the only requirement to become a preschool-aged teacher was if you thought you might like to become one. The field is better regulated now and the licensors have more discretion to shut down centers providing inadequate care. That is if they can catch them.

The morning I became aware of the childcare center’s cheating and hence the morning my administrative duplicity began, I was teaching in surgery. The owner swished behind me hurrying through my classroom to the little hall just beyond where there was a doorway to an attic classroom of four-year-olds. Moments later children flowed down the stairs, their momentum momentarily frozen when the first child saw me, uncertain for a nano second if I was the one they were all to avoid. Their hastily donned coats were askew, flapping open as each in turn pivoted at the bottom of the stair while they glanced back at me with their silenced stiff faces. Their teacher hustled them through the former doctor’s waiting room—itself another classroom— and out into the chill air to walk aimlessly about until the unannounced visiting licensor had taken her authority elsewhere. Late for lunch, the children returned and jostled noisily back up the stairs to their unlicensed garret.

A half a century on, there is more funding for early childhood programs, licensors, and tax credits for parents so they can afford to pay higher fees at better stocked centers. Still, the funds are often not enough. If you Google a former doctor’s office turned childcare center in an old brick house in north St. Louis, it is still a childcare center, looking forlorn between the now boarded-up service station and plywood-windowed commercial building. Fortunately the air is cleaner due to such things as the Clean Air Act, so possibly the back bedroom gets better light. Some things change.

I wonder what the attic is used for. State filings indicate the center is now licensed for twenty-four children. (In my day there must have been closer to fifty-four children.) But the current tuition for a preschooler at the center is $500 per month. A modest amount. Luckily for the teachers, Campbell soup cans are still available and cheap.

Postscript: I moved on to teach in a better-funded preschool the next year and then enrolled in a master’s degree in early childhood education. When I eventually became the director of newly-founded childcare facility on a college campus and stayed twenty-seven years, I leaned on what I had learned at that first center. Retaining staff, better funding, and having environments “dense with potential” were my goals. I had learned my lessons early on.

Winter Breathing on Fall—Photos

2023-11-29T20:49:00.000-08:00

I love the turning of seasons when fall lingers and winter breathes frozen fog on bright leaves.

In the past week, I have been walking a dirt lane on a hillside near my cabin seeking late afternoon sun. Pockets of deciduous trees between the evergreens have left piles of bright leaves. As the temperatures dipped at night, the frost left lovely laced skirts of ice on the ones lying in the deeper shade.

Sometimes it is foggy in town and sunny up here, but this week the fog moved in and didn't leave. All night long over a few nights it brushed frost on stairs, on car windows, and rough rocks.

By the third night of below freezing weather, I knew that if I turned off the dirt lane and hiked a small trail to a stream there might be icicles or if I walked along the river, I'd find something of interest. In the river I spotted a leaf holding its fall color entirely encased in ice. If I could have broken it off the rock where it was frozen tight, I would have had a leafcicle with which to enchant a child.

The stream held its own enchantment and unexpected humor. My macro lens caught the beauty of ice forming.

But it was the long icicles that made me laugh. What would their scientific name be?

Peniscicles?

A Precision Tool: Contentment

2023-10-12T19:07:00.000-07:00

When I remove the cork sheath from my Exacto knife’s blade, I always feel a small rush of pleasure. The ease with which the blade slices through paper—even if the cut produces an error—pleases me. Not long ago, I cut a backing for a photo and my dog Chester Muggins, PhD. (his actual name) seemed to share in my pleasure of the work. He was curious of course, a trait which earned him his degree, but likewise I think he intuitively felt my contentment and wished to participate in its benefit.

Contentment as a tool—as an instrument with which to engage in life's work—carves precise slices of joy even through repetitive, challenging, or lonely times and tasks. Recently I officiated at a wedding where a gentleman told me he loved traveling alone or how he could spend hours working in his gardens by himself. Some people I know are frightened of such solitude, but cultivating contentment with one's own company has its usefulness.

I took the photo above while sitting on a bridge—momentarily no one around—tucking my camera under and against the bridge edge. Most photos taken of Silver Falls on the Ohanapecosh River are of the falls, not the channel downstream. Ohanapecosh, which translates from the Yakima and Cowlitz languages as “Standing on the Edge,” is a place I have wandered both with and without company. My dear husband Gary loved Mt. Rainier and especially the western area of Ohanapecosh. Walking its paths and exploring its edges alone, I intentionally put contentment in my pack. I was content I once shared this place with Gary and content that now I have the bounty of being footloose, snapping photos without regard to time or inconvenience to a companion. At the falls I found contentment by exploring ways to take a self-portrait in the pools of water caught in the crevices of the rocks along the river. I might not have captured this image (which I am very happy with) if I had not been alone.

At the wedding I mentioned, the couple acknowledged the role of intentional contentment in their wedding vows. Sadie said this: "There are countless big life milestones that I look forward to doing together – but I’m just as excited to continue grocery shopping together, going on evening walks, and having coffee before we go to work. I look forward to every mundane day-to-day thing if it gets me to be by your side." Andy echoed her attention to being content together, making these observations: “I love every second I spend with you… I love how when we see an older couple who seem so in love we look at each other and telepathically say “I want that.”

These two dear souls have sharpened their tools of contentment ever since they first met. When I asked their former boss when she first noticed their relationship might be something special, she said, “At the Christmas party on the night they met.” Their connection was palpable to everyone who saw them together over the next few years. They already look like that older couple who seem so in love. Its lovely when two people bring the skill of contentment, the skill of loving the "mundane" to their marriage.

Photo Credit: www.katemiller.photography

May their tools of contentment be ever sharp.