103//365

once

we drove through downtown tucumcari, new mexico with the windows rolled down. slowed to a stop in the middle of an empty street, sat with the quiet and the color for a minute. a truck pulled up behind us then, blasted his horn, yelled something out the window and that was that. spell broken.

83//365

once

we stopped for bones and I saw him with fresh eyes.

71//365

once

with our legs still dusty from the road, we pulled into new mexico's tinkertown, bought our tickets and marveled at the walls, which were embedded with over fifty thousand glass bottles. and honestly, felt a twinge of judgment while doing so. 

58//365

once

while we were passing through palm springs, I made my entire family wait in the car while I ventured inside the parker hotel. I had to see the place for myself. and it had to be done without two kids and a husband in tow, which was totally the right call at the time. and of course, completely worth it. 

42//365

once

we bribed our children with cherry slurpees so we could stop and marvel at all the old motels we saw along route 66. this will be the last one, we told them. really. promise. the last one. and they sat in the back seat, mouths stained cherry slurpee red and groaned in protest because they knew. this would not be the last one. 

31//365

once

I lied to my son. when he asked if it would take more than three days to drive across the country, I said no. though I did finally admit that maybe --maybe-- it might take a little bit longer. I kept my answers vague because three days was his scary number. three days was the answer he had hoped against all hope he would not hear. to a ten year-old, three days on the road to a is a lifetime but fourteen days on the road is, well, unfathomable. so I did what I had to do, I lied. I'm not proud of it, but I lied.

but after three days of driving, he stopped asking 'how much longer' and started asking 'what next'-- what city, what park, what mountain, what highway, what adventure, what next? what next?

I came to love the sound of those two words: what next.

16//365

once

while we were driving across the country, we stumbled onto a fence full of shoes in the middle of nowhere. or, what felt like the middle of nowhere. we'd been on the road nine days and were somewhere in the state of california on highway 67. but also, in the ether of the great in between. in between portland, oregon and atlanta, georgia. in between old city and new city. old home, new home. old life, new life. here, there. invariably, nowhere and everywhere.

san francisco

rewind to the big cross country road trip home, june 2014, portland, oregon to atlanta, georgia, days four and five (out of twelve!), one last road trip through san francisco. and it's not that we won't be back (we will, we will) but there won't be another road trip down to san francisco from portland, no more races down the I-5, no more meandering down the 101. we drove our car over the golden gate bridge one the last time, said our goodbyes and headed south on I-5.

p.s. that toast in the second photograph, it's the toast. the artisanal toast I talked about yesterday. the artisanal toast I said would make you cry.

p.p.s. that first photograph of ava and ward. it gets me every time.

backwards, forwards

(last look at portland for a little while, maybe a long while)

(crater lake before me, state of oregon behind me)

(northern california magic hour from the magic highway 101)

(majestic, magnificent avenue of the giants, smallest feeling self)

(fiery miraculous sky, outskirts of san francisco)

(southern california haze from an endless I-5)

(cloudy, cloudy monument valley, great state of utah)

(sunset over navajo nation, somewhere in arizona)

(sunset over route 66, somewhere in new mexico)

(and finally, the city of atlanta) (home)

across this great country of ours, as told by one humble rearview mirror. who knew it'd have so much to say?

this one

we were so tired that night. so tired. we'd been on the road for a week, spent the larger part of the day driving the streets of palm springs. the children were through with the architecture, done with adult conversations about easter egg color and mid-century everything. we made our way back to the motel 6, back to the swimming pool and the serious, serious business of cheap pizza and cable television. but the light turned gold, real actual liquid gold and just five short blocks from the motel, we remembered: the windmills. miraculously, the children did not put up much of a fight. large slushees had been consumed, extreme heat experienced, no one had much fight left. the day was still a fairly malleable thing. windmills, we said. yes, we said. let's go.

ten minutes later, we found ourselves out on the edge of town, parked as close to the windmills as we could manage. and we stood, in what can only be defined as a sort of desert wasteland. sandwiched between a stretch of highway and a chunk of train track, we stood. canyons to the right of us, windmills to the left, a sea of windmills, an endless, impossible chorus. below us, a desert floor so littered with trash we could not help but look down. palm tree pieces, glittery glassy bits, flattened cans from decades past. a toilet, a few tires, a flannel shirt, an old brocade couch. the deeper we wandered, the stranger the items. the stranger the items, the more excited we became. listen, the children were excited about the trash. you know what? so were the adults. collections were started, possibilities discussed. could we fit the ginormous tree branch aka wizard staff in the car? surely that palm tree chunk would make an excellent planter. hey, were those ray ban glasses? because we should not leave without those ray ban glasses. I don't know how long we went on like this. hours, it seemed.

the wind picked up, the last of the honeyed light fell over ava and I shot what would be my most treasured photograph of the year. as if on cue, a train rumbled past and the wind from it snatched that polaroid right out of my hands. we ran for it, all four of us, scrambled like animals to catch it before it completely disappeared. the same wind whipped hair into my eyes, sand into my mouth, picked up the edges of my skirt, flipped it over my head again and again. I should have been miserable, I should have been frantic. instead, I found myself laughing, half-running, half-stumbling in the direction of the polaroid. what i felt was joy. wild, delirious, unexpected joy. what was this strange, beautiful place we were lost in anyway? how did we end up here? how had it managed to completely charm us?

this. my most treasured moment of twenty fourteen, my most treasured photograph. 2014 holds a thousand different stories, a thousand different images but, this. the best of the best because I look at it and I remember and I think, yes. we said yes. in twenty fourteen, we said yes. when it was difficult to say yes, when we weren't sure about yes, when we were tired and didn't think we'd make it, we said yes. and certainly, it has been no walk in the park but the good stuff, the best stuff, happened because we said yes.

I don't know about twenty fifteen, I don't know how I feel about it yet. though there's bound to be some yes in there somewhere. I don't know about you but I'm rooting for the yes, for the running and the stumbling and the laughing in the general direction of yes, for unexpected desert wastelands and unexpected happiness and more honeyed light than I know what do with.

down the 101 we went

on day two and three (of the big cross country road trip), we hit the 101. highway of all coastal highways, charmer of road trip takers everywhere. there were trees, lots of trees, some of them, fallen. nothing to do but climb up inside and peek out. we wondered, is there anything better than a magnificent, monolithic root system? it was decided, there is not. somewhere outside crescent city, we said our goodbyes to the pacific ocean. breathed in that dense, salty pacific air one last time, promised to return. elk meadows were stumbled onto and the spectacular avenue of the giants traversed, both experiences that only confirmed my sincere belief in the existence of a brilliant, loving God. experiences that left me feeling infinitely humble, endlessly small. and well, wholly alive.

other things: a few large trees were driven through and the boots of paul bunyan climbed up on. he talks to people, you know. there's proof, should you need it. initials were carved into gargantuan tree trunks (thus, souvenir pocket knife collections put to good use). houses made from one log were visited, as were places claiming to defy gravity, as were eternal treehouses, as were many, many gift shops. urges to buy large wooden clocks were miraculously resisted. children were made to pose in abnormally large wooden shoes. a night was spent at the endlessly charming madrona motor court. well, charming til around midnight, when the toilet overflowed and we found ourselves wading through the kind of water you never want to find yourself wading through. lesson learned: pretty much everything about a 1940s roadside motor inn is charming except for the plumbing. still, I loved that little place, loved it to pieces, midnight raw sewage and all. I wouldn't trade our night there for anything.

by the time we drove through our third (and final) tree, we were all off schedule. this will not come as a surprise to those who know us well and would be a running theme throughout the trip. but early on, we decided we didn't care. and as we drove out of the last of the redwoods and down that last stretch of the 101, further away from our beloved portland, oregon, I loosened my grip on the schedule. I felt my resolve soften. about an hour outside of san francisco, the sky turned a fiery, incandescent pink. as it turned out, we were right on time.