View at Four Corners (Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona), which is Navajo property

Because my new hotel bar friend is a wind turbine engineer, he has detailed information about the weather, and was excited to show me graphs that signified another severe occurrence, this time snow. My first impression of him was not great, he reeked of cigarette smoke and played video games on his phone while sitting at the bar, (said the judgy old lady). But he's had a tough life, his mother was a trucker for the DOD and his father was a Hell's Angel. He moved around as a kid and then was deployed to Iraq twice, right after 9/11, causing him to not be able to do anything for two years after his return. We need to do better with returning veterans than just chewing them up, and spitting them out. 

But he loves his job now. There are 400 ladder steps he has to climb every day to get to the machinery of the turbine (not a windmill, I was told) up top, and the room is as wide as a bus. Sometimes he doesn't realize he's left a tool up there until he's returned to earth, and has to climb back up, viewing it as being paid to go to the gym. He gets paid well and his employer, the best wind turbine company according to him, bought him a 2023 Dodge Ram, pays for his lodging and gives him a gas card and a per diem. They are short 5,000 engineers like him, if you know anyone...

So, Phoenix it is tomorrow, like it or not, if I'm to avoid the weather. Then on to Palm Desert

Beautiful drive from Albuquerque north, one of the most remarkable roads in terms of crazy rock structures and weird land and the Continental Divide. Four Corners windy and dull, but I'd had it in my craw for many years so had to do it. A lot of the journey was through Navajo land, which was significantly different from Chickasaw land; well cultivated, nice houses, capital investments in those irrigation things on wheels, plants, trucks and large herd of cows.

I always seem to arrive in town right at the golden hour, and Winslow was no exception.. I'm staying in a funky place recommended by a correspondent in Brookline who has stayed here and it's charming and funky and Albert Einstein once stayed here. I had a real meal with a knife and fork, which was fun, delicious and slightly challenging after my recent life out of the back of.my car, or while driving. In the morning I have a Costco orange and a piece of bread either with Costco cheese or with Costco peanut butter and non-Costco marmite. For snacks, I have a head of cauliflower, bag of almonds, bag of Ghiradelli milk chocolate chips that melted into a glob in Amarillo along with a case of seaweed squares, that are consumed like potato chips. So, yes, knife and fork was nice.

Things from today:

• There was a sign for the Grand Canyon Centennial, which took place in 2019. I thought it had been there longer.
• There was a man peeing right next to his car on the side of the road, which I was not charmed by, but then realized that there aren't any trees or buildings or bushes to hide behind, it's really that or nothing.
• I have seen a few signs in the last few states for Indian Cuisine and wonder which Indian it is
• It is easy to obey a reduced speed limit (usually from 75 or 70) because it means there's a town and there's something to look at
• I saw.a man get handcuffed today, they were rough with him
• In the high altitudes, there's a sharpness to everything that is like the difference between digital and analog camera photos

Old school Texaco, Winslow, AZ

So there I was, listening to the two souvenir stores playing the Eagles song "I was standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona" on repeat. 

Due to the severe weather event, I decided to stay put, and of all things, work!. The only room they had available was a suite. Oh well. Their soup specialty is a yin./yan concoction with black bean on one side and creamed corn on the other. You have a sip of each and then mix, along with some chipotle something. I would say more a novelty than good. And then there was a cup of insultingly watery tea (you know who you are out there, disgusted as I was) for $5.95. Makes Blue Bottle seem like a bargain. I don't think I mentioned that this hotel, called La Posada, was built intentionally on the railroad, and was apparently swank at some point. But what's fun about it is that there are freight trains going by all the time. For much of the day I worked on my laptop while watching them.

I had to get my 10,000 steps in so walked into town in a howling gale to find that the two souvenir shops play Eagles all day every day. And of course on offer are hats and t-shirts that say "I was standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona" (which, btw, is not such a fine sight to see, I mean...). Someone call OSHA for those poor employees.

The hope is that tomorrow Route 40 will be open in Flagstaff after the zillion inches of snow they've received and I'll sail on to Palm Desert with nothing more severe than a somewhat square butt from the long drive.

Route 40, going east from Winslow. Could have had a picnic in the middle of the road

​My therapist would remind me that uncertainty is the most difficult and that peace comes once a decision is made. I'd agree, but given the choice between uncertainty and feeling hemmed in, I'd choose the former every time. The 18" of snow that were dumped on Flagstaff and a lot of Arizona meant that for the second day, I-40 was still closed from Winslow going west, as were many other roads around that area. I got it in my head that I needed to get out of my annoyingly inadequate for $250 a night hotel and decided I'd drive as far east as I needed. Having almost run out of gas on the Indian Reservation bypass road the other day, the first stop was Love's. There had to be close to 100 trucks parked in the lot, lined up near the exits and backed up forever, waiting for 40 West to open. I felt so bad for them. So, I headed east on 40, leaving grey, cold and windy Winslow behind me. It was an odd sensation to literally be the only car on the road. I pulled over whenever I wanted to take photographs and took the liberty of peeling an orange while I was driving.. When heading south, it was fine for a while, and then as the altitude increased, so did the snow, starting with a dusting in the city, not town, of Snowflake. I was awfully tempted to spend the night there because there was a high school production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which I imagined equalling Red, White and Blaine from Waiting for Guffman in its sincerity and tone. But I needed to keep moving.

Quickly, there was a lot of snow. The roads were very well plowed, but there were right turn markings on the road that led to 3 foot snowbanks, no sign of side roads at all. The trees were from a movie set, heavily laden pines with dramatically mountainous surroundings (who knew, in Arizona?), very very beautiful. There were two other trucks who travelled along with me for a while, but they both veered off and I was alone for about 20 miles with no houses or civilization of any kind, which was unnerving. Forty-five minutes later and many feet lower in elevation, I saw the first seguro staring down gravely, and half an hour after that, palm trees waving from above Starbucks. It's spring in Phoenix, which is cheerful and smells wonderful. It's nice to be here. 

On a walk, I passed a restaurant called the Fry Bread House, which has been the recipient of multiple James Beard awards, so went back for dinner. Really the last thing I was craving was fried bread, but it seemed one of those opportunities one takes when it's served up, pardon the pun. It was delicious and there were many native people there, leaving me feeling like an interloper. On the way there, I was standing on the corner of Indian School Road waiting for the walk sign (wicked hard to jay walk in Phoenix, I did try) when a native man (although he called himself Indian, hard to understand what terminology to use when) asked me if I knew where the Indian Veterans Hospital was. He said he was from Albuquerque and needed to have his thumb looked at (with good reason). I looked up the address on my phone, gave him directions and off he scuffled with his half eaten bag of Cheetos.

Feeling more goal oriented today, it was harder to be open to whatever came my way, as I have been for the last 12 days. It made me think of how, in my HR roles over the years, I have learned about things ending when people resign, and the difficulty others can have around this sort of thing. There's a shutting down that happens, a pulling away, and I can feel that it's time for me to pull away from wandering so that I can high-tail it to Palm Desert! So, that's where I'll be going tomorrow, to see my good buddy Sandra.
​

The hotel from hell, Clarendon in Phoenix

​My dad, who was stifled on his small, familial island, was a voracious traveller as soon as he was able. When we were children growing up in a WASPy New York suburb, he thought nothing of bringing home friends he’d met on his travels to India, France, Brazil, Japan, Scotland to name a few. Much to my siblings’ and my horror, our house was branded Ellis Island, ruining any hopes of fitting in to the American way. My dad encouraged us to be “international” (his hope was that I would become what was then called a stewardess) while being taught and quizzed about the natural resources of, say, Ghana. It was only after he died that I myself took up the wander and am proud to have passed it along to the next gen.

When Philip, Nat and I travelled together, I was the instigator and planner, the one who was most invested in closing the deal. And while never out of inspiration or enthusiasm, planning itineraries never quite materalised as a skill. When Nat was three, we went to Portugal. It was at a time when NYT Travel section had advertisements for shady companies, such as RA Travel, which I had previously used successfully. It’s hard to remember what transpired but when we finally got the tickets sent to us via DHL (it was a long time ago), there was a problem with them that meant we had to spend twice as much to put them right. Our last day of the holiday was spent in Lisbon, and not being a fan of carrying stuff and things, we made the ill-informed decision to not bring a stroller. But Philip being Philip, found a box top and some plastic shopping bags and rigged up a little sled that he pulled her around on the shiny tiles. It was brilliant. When we got back to the hotel from our day of touring, we learned that I had made a scheduling error and that we should have checked out of the hotel that morning. Chaos ensued.

About 12 years later, we were headed to Palm Desert for February vacation, arriving at our LAX airport hotel late at night. They had no record of our reservation and the hotel was full, so we got in a rental car and drove to Palm Desert in the middle of the night, with Nat chattering away to keep me awake while Philip slept. We arrived before our hotel could take us so all snoozed in the parking lot, waking to a magical sunrise through the palm trees. It remained one of our funny family stories.

So when I woke up in the middle of last night at The Clarendon Hotel in Phoenix with the unwelcome knowledge that I had been bitten by bedbugs, it was an easy decision to get in the car at 1:30 am and chase the moon west to Palm Desert. It was me and the trucks, the velvety night, vague dark mountain shapes, ithe smell of eucalyptus and very little else. And Nat, from London, texting me for quite a while. So sweet. A postscript that this hotel never acknowledged the bed bugs, they simply didn't return my phone calls or emails, so don't ever stay at this dump.

Those two layers of mountain (white higher up and then a different range in brown) and luxurious palm trees served as sentries to the city of Palm Desert, reminding me that while I might not have slept and may have to throw out all my things and shave my head, it would all be OK and was all worth it. I had just been thinking about how much I like writing and how it was much easier to do so when out in the world and experiencing things, rather than having a routine that varied little. And here, these bedbugs, was an experience. A gift? I guess... I won't bore you with the details of this cross between COVID and lice situation, but suffice it to say that they involved garbage bags, crazy texts to Sandra, the website bedbuglaw.com, a laundromat, scarves that now look like drink coasters, social distancing and me wondering whether an airline would let me use an Ikea blue bag as a carry on (they did, but the trick was to put all your things in a garbage bag and tie it to the Ikea bag. But the day also included the company of a good friend I hadn't seen in a long time, orange juice made from a freshly picked fruit, a nap on a pool chair, tennis, iced coffee, so much floral beauty and a delicious Mexican dinner. 

Tomorrow I drop my car off, I will miss her as she became my house, sherpa, dining room, living room, bedroom, guide, fireplace and viewing platform. And she would ask me, when I turned the engine off, whether I might have forgotten someone in the car, which always made me giggle. Aside from her amazing lumbar support, she has a sun roof and now, a pretty dirty drivers seat, a 6 inch crack in the windshield, two other divots in the windshield, a covering of Winslow salt and dirt and still lots of tumbleweed in the front grill. Thank you for your service, car. And to come full circle, I have been wondering why these California drivers are in such a great hurry and don't just calm down and be a little more polite.

I keep thinking that each post will be my last, but I have been thinking about some things that are of the wrap up variety. 

I also wanted to share what a friend replied to me when I was confused about the number of days I had been travelling. "I have a friend who doesn't know if it's Tuesday or July"

Uncircumcised palm trees at Palm Springs Town Hall

Beware: it can happen that if you are offered extra crispy bacon, it's deep fried after being regular fried. As my mom would say "Not my best".

Uncircumcised palm trees at Palm Springs Town Hall, good camaraderie, lots of exercise, and activities planned so all that's neededI is to show up. That there was a good baguette and Italian chocolate at the summit of our hike that looked out over the Coachella Valley was an additional bonus. But I should have said no to the pickleball, I knew I should have said no. The humiliation of limping away from the courts, beaten up and bloody, while the octogenarians played on happily. Ow.

The following day, we did some work in the morning and then went to Indian Wells to watch the Qualifiers, which was great fun. We watched Caroline Dolehide win a great match, I loved her powerful serve. The practice courts were full of celebs, Andy Murray, Diego Schwartzmann, Pliskova, Iga, Montfils, Sabalenka, Sakkari and my favorite, a doubles court with Salisbury and Ram playing the Colombians. It was hot and then it was cold when the sun went behind the trees, but we stayed on, entranced. It's a beautiful place to see tennis, but the lack of organization makes me feel like a bot.

It has been luxurious to be enveloped by my kind friend, an abundance of brightly colored flowers, people who read what I read, avocados and racquet-related activities. Desert white light, dry dry dry, exercise and early bed. White and brown mountains the backdrop behind the Indian Wells bleachers, dramatic, breathtaking. But it is the ones to the north that we don't see as often, the ones that are pastel and rounded, fading into the sky and the land, that pull me back to where I've been over the last weeks, like thoughts of an old, treasured love who has changed you.

Despite the plagues, floods, snowstorms, dust storms, big box chains and gas guzzling, I loved my trip so very much. I loved being sole decision-maker, problem-solver, luggage carrier, gas pumper, information gatherer, map reader, negotiator and thinker. I loved the people I saw and met, doing their best in their own way, finding their own version of contentment. 

And I am in love with the land that is America, its profound beauty and varying terrain. Seeing more sky and majestic (I don't use that word casually) expanses of land that is our country moved me in a way I couldn't have imagined. The expanses helped me to understand and feel abundance.

Being alone helped me to listen to my questions, likes, wishes, worries, things I might be curious about and things that I'm just gosh darn done with. It continues to be my belief that we all have a mission or a purpose, and that we have a voice inside us that guide us to exactly where we need to be, if we can figure out how to drown out the noise from everyday and listen.  Life gets muted by obligations, distractions, entertainments, annoyances and the expectations of others. Not much to be done about that, but if you can ever find the time, whether minutes or weeks, to listen to that voice, it does lead to a contentment that is profound.

Love you all,

Downtown Palm Springs

While I didn’t wander the desert for a full 40 days, it does feel as though there’s some movement towards a promised land. Having the opportunity to stand outside regular life allowed me to ask questions and listen.

Before I left, writing in the morning, I'd be look up at the Hopper-like Industrial Arts building across from my living room and it seemed to speak to me, a clear message that was freaky, so exciting and sometimes scary. 

Go. Now. A road trip.

Why?

Just do it. You're itchy. Find out what's next.

Where?

On Route 40 somewhere.

In the Amarillo canyon, an angry voice because it’s had to repeat this message so often.

Stop, just stop the round peg in the square hole of work. Work you aren't meant to do depletes you so that you can't do work you are meant to do. 

But, but, but… OK, OK.

Definitely some questioning, bargaining, and then acceptance.

Enough times, I'd experienced the passionate resolution on the last day of vacation, inaccessible when back home and faced with life's responsibilities, there was a cynicism greeting my recently enlightened heart. The familiar pattern would happen: accept, submit, deny, bury.

Sitting in the outdoor waiting room at Palm Springs Airport eating an empanada that had a stamp on top of it that said Spinach and Cheese, watching an adoring dad play with his toddler, I asked myself how I could break this powerless cycle of submission. The abundance and beauty of our land kept coming back; the way people who were part of it, moved more slowly, or was it thoughtfully? embodying their environment in their being. You could see the sky in their their smiling eyes. It felt like a pervasive spirituality that had nothing to do with the billboards, crosses and shockingly ornate new churches. We're all products of our environments.

Nature’s abundance led me to my first audio book, The Abundance Project, which has kept me honest, a week later; connected to my time away, the insights I was lucky enough to receive, and the commitments I made to myself. While having consumed a fair amount of the concepts in this book, it will take time to digest and even longer to turn to muscle, but I’m on it. 

I’ve handed off one search project and two clients. 

I had been pitching for a large search project and that will be the challenge. Will I be able to walk away from “easy” money?

My mom. Last Sunday we got the call that she had stopped eating and drinking and morphine had been administered. Though 93, immobile and with dementia in a nursing home, she had still been happy and full of life in her goofy way, so it was a shock to see her lying with troubled breathing, eyes that occasionally opened but registered no connection to me or the world around her. I held her hand, she pulled away, there was an irritation, something I’d not seen in her, as though whatever she was doing was being interrupted. My siblings and I said goodbye, I cried a lot and thought about the absurdity of being a 62 year old orphan, nonetheless felt like one.

Then yesterday, she’s up, she’s eating and drinking and conscious. She has such a strong life spirit. The trip and my new book prepared me so perfectly for this; for being present, for unashamedly and openly feeling, for knowing that absolutely nothing else in the world mattered, whether she knew I was there or not. When we heard she was “fine” again, I told my siblings I felt like Ricky Bobby’s wife, from Talladega Nights, who thought he was in a coma and was going to suffocate him with a pillow, only to be told that he was only sleeping. I imagined her listening to the three of us with our teary goodbyes, wondering why we wished her dead. Oh well...

Of course the book I'm listening to talks a lot about gratitude, all these books do. But the context within makes sense to me and gratitude had already been spurting out of me on the road, a natural reaction to my experiences. As I drove back to Brookline from Brattleboro, thinking that my mom was leaving the earth that day, I thought about how she was indeed the most grateful person I'd ever known, seeing something positive in everything, even nursing home food. So, back I will go to the gratitude factory in Vermont, soon.

I'm committed to writing every day, having no idea where it will take me but knowing it feels right. I want to learn how to take portrait photographs and how to use a camera when it’s not on automatic, despite being scared of technical stuff and fidgeting. And I am excited about continuing to learn how to meet life differently, to be open to things that I might not have though options previously. 

Thank you for reading. 

After the party

Because a drive to clean up immediately is not something I wrestle with, I will often leave a messy table until the next morning. It brings to mind the Gardner Museum, which during my time there, hosted the Program for Creativity, mirroring Mrs. Gardner's passion for bringing together different kinds of creatives. The first project involved a photographer, film maker, grandchild of the Eameses, and an Italian curator of furniture or perhaps specifically, chairs. An 'exhibit'  was a re-arrangement of the chairs in the Little Salon, creating a feeling that a party had finished and all had just left. It is of this that I'm often reminded when being greeted the next morning, temporal remnants of feelings that have quickly become memories. 

Someone from Israel told me this, but then maybe it was someone wearing the blue of the Israeli flag, or who had an Israeli intonation to the way they spoke: clearing the plates messes with dinner party juju, another reason to leave them. Last night a community took shape, allowing time to stand still, as we saw and listened to each other without distraction, a beautiful and fragile ecosystem. I was both a part of it and an observer, watching for the first person to look around and get fidgety, at which point I clear, which actually never happened. We talked about mothers needing care, how to make aging easier and the importance of friends.

The morning I was leaving the Room Darkening Shades hotel in Amarillo, there was only one elevator working for the many guests who had taken advantage of the hotel's three free drinks per adult and hot breakfast for all offerings. While waiting in a NY frame of mind, I noticed two guys with big Ts on their baseball hats and t-shirts, settling in to a relaxed and friendly debate. While one thought that leaving his cell phone ringer on at highest volume was necessary so that his kids could always reach him, the other replied that he always had his phone with him and could feel it vibrating when a call came in from his kids. Back and forth they went, deep in conversation, listening to each other, pondering answers, providing technical information (they were Android users), telling cell-phone related stories, replying respectfully to each other's differing opinions. While I admit to at first oozing judgement, it became evident that this was their way of connecting with each other, ignoring the elevator issues and being present in a way that eluded me. In that moment, I was able to understand how much of life I miss by being impatient and vowed to take tiny steps to change. As cliche as it sounds, it is those small moments that add up to a life, something I forget that way too often as I hurtle towards some undefined deadline.

I am grateful for last night's fragile ecosystem, for allowing me the luxury of connection and presence. It was a great reminder about what I want to be hurrying towards.

Susan, who worries that her hat is too much like a sombrero

The older woman with the pumpkin walnut scone at Coffee Obsession was trying to engage me, as frequently happens off-season in Falmouth, Massachusetts. We sat on opposite sides of the patio, enjoying the spring sun, she waiting for her friend, me pushing myself to deepen a conversation with a stranger. After a chat, I said goodbye as a power BMW with an older man entered the parking lot.

Curiosity about the BMW man nudged me to drive back to the parking lot, confirming that his vibe hadn't matched her colorless, white haired character who could have walked out of a Roz Chast cartoon (Marc made up this about someone else and I am borrowing it). My intention was to turn the car around, but I could hear David and Lisa challenging me to take photographs of people, and as I had already wimped out on doing so with a woman my age wearing a floppy hat, Tevas with socks and a large carry bag tied to her belt loop, I prepped my camera and approached them.

Jane, with an inviting aspect, was happy to see me again, but her friend, Susan more reserved, gave away only suspicion. I asked if I could take their photograph, they assented. Because they were older, I didn't want to ask them to move closer together, and because I am new to this and remember with trauma of being an adolescent and having to pose interminably, I didn't ask them to maintain any particular posture. But I did get some shots, not great but a start.

Jane and Susan were meeting because tomorrow, they were off to Egypt and while they were already packed, they needed to review their lists to make sure nothing had been forgotten. Turns out Susan really is ready to go, but Jane still has to put a few more dinners in the freezer for her husband, who is no longer able to travel. Logan to Frankfurt and then on to Cairo. 

• Can I bring scissors? Oh, no, not in carry on.
• We’re bringing lots of light colored flowy linens for layers.
• Women with white hair have to go to Egypt on a tour, we’re not young anymore.
• If we're tipping, only do so when we're leaving somewhere so we aren’t bothered the whole time.
• If merchants try to take advantage of us, we know to threaten reporting them to the tourist police.
• We’re going on a felucca down the Nile, about 15 of us. I haven’t been on a cruise since 1969!
• Don’t even dip your toe in the Nile, the parasites will eat you alive.
• Jane is into music and art so we’re going to go to museums and some local concerts.
• I wasn't sure about this hat, are you sure it doesn't look too much like a sombrero?

Happy travels, ladies.

New construction from 100 years ago. That's Mrs. Clapp on the left, probably with her father. 

On a drive back from Falmouth recently, I detoured for a coffee mini-eclair from French Memories Bakery, but really to check in, as Duxbury has been one of life’s constants. We first met when my siblings and I were little kids, living in Bronxville, NY. Our neighbors were descendants of Mayflower people, and they and their extended family owned land with summer houses on Abrams Hill in Duxbury. The sister we knew, we called her Mrs. Clapp because she was old and wrinkly and smelled like licorice, had added a house in the 1920s, right on the water, which, from a bird’s eye view, formed a Triangle with the other two, thus its name.

Purchased from a Sears catalog as a kit with assembly instructions; the cabin was guaranteed to last for 20 years and had two bedrooms, a living/dining room with a fireplace and mantle, kitchen and bath with running water, operational windows. I’m not sure there were holes in the walls when we started going as kids, but certainly as we got into our thirties, it had become a welcoming place for bugs and critters. As adults, we had a family member who one could say was on the cleaner side, who didn’t react well after the oven she'd preheated gave off the pungent smell of rodent urine.

But Triangle was good to us and within our family’s three generations, we have a much treasured shared history. As my brother said the other day, “We squeezed a whole lot outa that little old shack!” A significant part of my memories involve Kit, Mrs. Clapp’s spinster daughter, who ruled the roost at the top of the hill into her early nineties. A condition of staying at Triangle as adults was the spring/fall ritual of putting up and taking down the screens at The Big House, where Kit lived. She’d had them made to fit into her porch in the summer in order to enjoy the view of the marshes and long stretch of beach, bug free. Kit was great with her hands and would get frustrated by our lack of coordination or pride in our work. She’d stand over us, not shy about letting us know when we weren’t using the finesse needed to place the screen with 20 years of paint into a space that also had 20 years of paint. But I loved her stories of being a WAVE in WW2, or a professional working for the Carnegie Foundation, and delighted when she'd meet me for lunch at the MFA. So, like a body that loses a soul when the person dies, Triangle died for me when she did, and I never returned to stay, unlike my siblings.

Kit’s niece inherited both houses, selling them soon after, and with some regularity, because by then my mom was at a retirement home nearby, I’d stop by to see if anything had changed. It was not surprising to first see all the wild pink climbing roses, snowdrops and daffodils, all manner of flowering bushes gone, then later, the rickety old cabin itself, causing a mourning of all those physical things that tied childhood to adolescence to adulthood - the medicine ball (a pillow filled with horsehair that weighed 10 pounds), the teapot with pastel flowers on it, the potato chip chair, the apple cookie jar, the green glass depression era plates, the longhorns over the fireplace. Because of the cabin’s situation, it was only a matter of time before a monster house went up, as had already happened all over that hill. So it was with relief that the other day I saw something modest replacing it, respectful of the land surrounding it, and ready to begin creating a new trunk of memories for some lucky people. If it weren’t for global warming, I might be trolling zillow for it now.