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Grand Journey

Grand Journey

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Mom and Dad would have been married 67 years today. They made it to their 61st, which is quite a long run by modern standards. I bet I’m the only person remembering this today. Maybe not. My sister or brothers might be remembering it, too.

I was thinking a lot about their honeymoon when Drew and I took our road trip a couple weeks ago. Mom and Dad were married in Lexington, Kentucky, their hometown, but they took off immediately in an old Chevy bound for California.

The roads were barely all paved in 1952 — the interstate highway program officially began the next year — and though they were fine if they stuck to Route 66 … they didn’t always do that. They were prone to taking detours to “Kit Carson’s Cave” and other spots that piqued their curiosity.

Still, they made it to the West Coast, where they planned to start their married life. It was glamorous and exciting … but it wasn’t home. A few weeks later, they turned around and drove back.

It was the beginning of a grand journey together — and I’m thinking about it, and them, today.

Driving in the West

Driving in the West

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On Tuesday we drove from Moab to Denver so I could catch my afternoon flight. I took the first shift behind the wheel, as we left the red rocks and headed east.

Driving in the western U.S. is a completely different activity than driving here. The mechanics are the same, but the similarity ends there. The roads are wide open and speed limits are high (80 in Utah!).

I didn’t do much but hold the wheel, keep my foot on the gas and drink in the scenery. For the first two hours there were mesas and buttes and big skies. The Spotify music Drew found was the perfect accompaniment, especially the Jupiter movement from Holst’s “The Planets.”

In fact, the big brass and soaring melody seem to have been written not for the cold wastes of a celestial body — but for the awe-inspiring landscape I saw out my window.

At Arches

At Arches

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How to describe the wonders we saw yesterday — the sandstone arches and pillars and domes?

They seem to be designed for a Hollywood western stage set. And yet they were real: a rough beauty.

 Luckily, I was traveling with my brother, who among other fine qualities also happens to be a geologist. He could point out the striations in the rock and explain that Balanced Rock probably wouldn’t topple while we were standing beneath it — or anytime this century.

And as for the double arches, they would be there for generations of other tourists to stand beneath, and marvel.

Colorado Sunday

Colorado Sunday

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Springtime in Colorado, snow in the high peaks, streams running strong from the melt. And tucked away in the southern part of the state, the tallest dunes in North America.

Formed by wind and weather, the dunes are a natural playground. Dogs frolic, teens toss footballs, kids drag sleds up a steep slope and slide down.

It was a beach without the ocean, a hill without the pine trees. It was more like a mountain warm-up act, with snow-capped peaks in the background.

And afterward, there was a drive through a constantly changing landscape, ending with red rocks. More on those tomorrow.

Remembering Notre Dame

Remembering Notre Dame

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You tell yourself it’s just a building, not a person; that it was not an act of terrorism; that it’s silly to feel this way. But there is still something so sad about the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral.

Maybe because we already have so much destruction in this world, so much war and cruelty. Maybe because it is so beautiful and had survived so much.  Maybe because it has been with us so long and connects us with so many.

I find myself saying what we say in times of loss: How grateful I am to have seen the cathedral; to have climbed its towers and glimpsed its gargoyles; to have taken my children there; to have strolled through it as a young woman and a middle-aged one.

Once, long ago, I was ambling along the Seine on an April evening. The light was slanting low in the sky and throwing the old stones and the spire into high relief. It was a scene of incomparable beauty. I had no camera at the time, so I told myself, remember this, remember it always.  

I did — and I’m remembering it now.

Remembering the Light

Remembering the Light

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Traveling with a photographer for 10 days as I did last month in Cambodia has made me more attuned to light, to the waxing and waning of it, the quality of it. I’d heard of the golden hours, the ones early and late in the day, when light slants low over the landscape and casts a glow. But I was unsure of how far you could push it, how little light you could have to still capture a shot.

Our last full day in the field had us racing to reach a family before dusk. Even I, non-photographer that I am, was biting my nails. Would we get there in time? Would there be enough light left?

I’ve seen the photographs … and there was. The couple we wanted to capture stand arm and arm in the setting sun, the brickyard slag heap reflecting its final rays.

The young woman wears a red checked dress. She’s changed into it for this photograph, though her husband still wears his work clothes, which are streaked with grime and brick dust. This touches me greatly, the efforts she took, her simple gold necklace and flip flops, the way she cupped her stomach, cradling the baby she carries, due next month.

Life goes on; light goes on, too.

Naming Names

Naming Names

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One of the more light-hearted aspects of my work is the opportunity I occasionally have to make up names for people. The reason I do this is anything but lighthearted, though. It’s because I interview and write about people who have been trafficked and can’t reveal their true identities.

Still, this gives me a creative license typically lacking in most of my daily to-dos. This morning I’ve been reading about Cambodian names, about how family names appear first and given names second (which I knew) and how name meanings are especially prized.

So I’ve been having some fun with it. Should the lovely young woman who met her husband at a survivor’s forum be called Bopha (flowers) or Arunny (morning sun)? Should her young husband be called Narith (masculine) or Leap (luck)?

The mother’s name was easy. The smiling woman who greeted us as we pulled into the brickyard, who wiped her hand on her skirt and reached out to shake ours, she will be called Sophea (wise).

(School children in Cambodia, who shall remain nameless.)

St. Patty’s Redux

St. Patty’s Redux

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One advantage of having a tame St. Patty’s Day celebration is waking up and wanting to do the day all over again. It’s something that younger people (and my younger self) would have problems with.

But because my office is having a little happy hour this afternoon, and because I never get my fill of Irish music, I’m treating today as St. Patty’s #2.

I’m wearing green and humming tunes and yes, I’ll try to do a little work today, too.  But the spirit will be with me. The Irish spirit, that is.

Green Weekend

Green Weekend

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The Irish music has been blaring yesterday and today, pipes and jigs and ballads, from my laptop, iPod and CD player. I listen and am back in the little pub in Inishmore in the Aran Islands, or in Dingle Town, where the great Steve Cooney showed up to play at the Courthouse Pub.

I’m remembering the stones, the cliffs, the bare hills all green with lambs grazing, the ancient, ruined forts with rainbows all around them.

I’m tasting the brown bread at breakfast, the scones and the fish and chips and the Cadbury’s chocolate, which somehow tastes better over there.

I’m remembering how I felt in Ireland, which was … like I’d come home.

Tethered

Tethered

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Last night I watched a movie called “Free Solo,” a
documentary that chronicled Alex Honnold’s untethered ascent of El Capitan in
Yosemite.  Using only his hands and feet — and most of
all his brain (which apparently has a less-responsive amygdala than most), Honnold was able to climb up the sheer face of the 3,000-foot cliff.
No ropes, no belts, buckles or belays. Just the man and the mountain.
By contrast, I recently ascended 400 feet in a balloon to see the temples of Angkor Wat. It couldn’t have
been safer. The balloon was tethered to the ground and the passengers were
encased in wire mesh. I was still weak in the knees.

And last night, I was weak-kneed again. It didn’t even help that I knew the guy survived. There’s something primitive about it, something hard-wired in us to recoil when we see another human being clinging precariously to a sheer rock face. 

No doubt about it, the untethered experience makes for great cinema — but when it comes to my own ascents, I’ll take them tethered every time.