It all broke (down and apart and finally let some light through) on the Loneliest Road in America

It all broke.

Well at least my car did.

Definitely me.

Finally.

To let some light through.

I drove her into the ground, literally.  She had been my trusty companion of 17 years.  We had traversed desert raves and Southwest road trips, Burning Mans and coming-of-age stories, singing out loud and screaming out windows, and driving to different schools and grocery stores and jobs and everywhere else a car can take you.

And there she was, on the side of the The Loneliest Road in America in the Nevada desert: one electric window down past the point of no return, a passenger-side wheel blown out across desolate desert asphalt, a driver-side wheel scraped to its metal innards, grinding out its own swan song, and the paint eaten away from the radiator fluid that had spewed over 10 feet in a breakdown two days prior.

What a great place to finally break.  She and I were Nevadans after all.

Oh epic journeys.  It’s funny how they actually work out.  I had visions of desert hot springs, Great Basin Bristlecones, cabin cribbage with a good friend in the Rocky Mountains, and a solo camp trip weaving through the layered desert colors and sandstone sculptures of Arches and Canyonlands.

And of me, finding myself somewhere in-between.

The calm before the storm was beautiful, as it usually goes, submerged in hot springs overlooking a desert meadow full of wildflowers under the full moon.  It was here I took out all I had left of a painful ending to a relationship of 3 ½ years that I have been desperately trying to let go of over the past year.  I thought I would cry, but under this full blue moon I took out letters and pictures and other assorted mementos and one by one held and thanked them.  Then I burned or bathed them in desert moonwater.  Afterward, I turned to this new man who held intimate space for me and, yes, we actually danced naked in a hot spring under the desert moonlight, a man to whom I was also saying goodbye.  The next morning I woke up early, walked straight in between the sand and sage, and buried what I thought I couldn’t let go of.

We made it another 100 miles before she gave out close to Ely.  And after side-of-the-road hitchhiking, desert-weathered car mechanics, a night drinking and playing pool in the locals’ bar, a small-desert-town-three-police-stop while getting my tent out of my car, and crying and camping in a train ditch, we got back in and headed to Great Basin National Park.  I thought I’d make it all the way to Colorado, but I realized within hours nothing was really healed.  It was all just temporarily fixed to get me to my next point. At least I made it to the Bristlecones Pines, some of the oldest known living things on the planet.  I touched my forehead to a 3300-year-old tree still gnarling toward the sky through winds and rain at tree-line, reminding me that all beings weather adversity.

I had started this pilgrimage with an intention.  In an effort to remember who I wanted to be, I decided I needed a trip to put me back in the right space.  As a seasoned traveler, that is often the way I roll.  I started this one with the intention of giving, receiving, and letting go.

So this is the part where I’ll interject to say that I highly DO NOT recommend a breakup trip. Nothing was quite as romantically parting-of-ways as imagined, except that night in the moonlight.  We fought too much, from too little sleep, too much car trouble, and from taking a trip to break up.  And besides the obvious, when you take a breakup trip things break, a lot…like everything.

Which brings me to waiting for a tow on the side of the Loneliest Road in America.  It wasn’t so bad really, with lots of caring passer-bys, stopping to make sure we were ok and one even giving us waiting-for-a-tow beers.  It was here I finally stretched out, looked into a cracking desert sky, and realized I had indeed let go to the best of my ability so far.

I let go of a pain that had turned my heart inside out for the past year, with a touch of gratitude.  I let go of Lola, my 91′ Toyota Corolla, who had literally navigated me through the majority of my adult life.  I let go of a man I still cared for, knowing it was time.  And I let go of the person I had been, thanking it all.

All these intentions and hurts and desires went out of me and into the Nevada desert, into the smell of freshly opened sage flowers, into the desert sky silhouetted in wraps of grays and silvers and streaks of sunlight.

That is where it all broke.

That is where I broke.

That is where it opened up and some light came through.

Ever break so much you fall apart in the best way possible?

Awe-inspiring In-betweeneness: The Hagia Sophia

There she was, Mary, looking down on us through two sublime prayers from the Koran, in-between. Reverence, resplendence, and a knowingness from two great faiths gazed upon on all who came to see how the sharing of such a majestic place could be, where co-presence created an alternate and transcendent reality.

I learned of the Hagia Sophia while traveling with a friend deep in the Andean mountains of Peru.  “It is the most beautiful place I have ever seen,” she told me, a lady who, to date, has been one of the most epic seekers I have ever met.  I knew I had to get there.

And so, five years later, here I was, looking up to Mary protecting with Mohammed’s prayers in a space so regal yet so simple.

The building itself impresses and some-what imposes.  Built as a church using collections of materials from many different locations (Egyptian quarry stones, Thessalonian green marble slabs, Bosporian black rocks, and Syrian yellow stones), its original construction employed over ten thousand people.  A slight rundown of history goes something like this: Originally an Eastern Orthodox cathedral (537–1204) converted to a Roman Catholic cathedral (1204–1261) back to an Eastern Orthodox cathedral (1261–1453) transformed to an Imperial mosque (1453–1931) and finally made its way to becoming one of Istanbul’s most famous museums (1935–present).

The story of this place is a good read, spanning many rulers, many earthquakes, renovations, pillages, conversions, murder and mayhem, and divinity and consecration.  It was in the mid 1800s that murals and symbols representing both Christian and Muslim faiths were uncovered, cleaned, or placed up fresh, with the space still officially used as a mosque.

But it is not simply the architecture, materials, or historical presence that bestow such an awe-inspiring character. Instead, this place is known for its peculiar in-between nature, where people can come and feel completely present with two symbols of faiths often split down the center in the modern world. Inside the Hagia Sophia, they are together, holding this space of connection and respect side by side.

If only we could find this space more often, where the most beautiful and dignified aspects come together, each holding its own, yet finding intensity in how they fit together.  This creation of such a sacred space is uniquely understood through two combined into one.

These spaces sitting in-between walls of politics, love, hate, faith, and inspiration embolden the possibility of co-existence, creating a truly magnificent place that attracts over 3 million people a year to witness such a powerful co-presence.

Here no one holds import.  Instead these colors on walls, these sacred symbols of two faiths often at odds, synchronize and remind us what can be experienced from the grace of the in-between.

Have you ever been to these awe-inspiring spaces in-between?

Image Credit: Natasha Majewski

Walking the Labyrinth

One foot, one foot, one foot in front of the other.  Walk in a line.  Walk zig-zaggy.  Walk side to side. Dance and do yoga.  Just keep moving, one foot, one foot, one foot in front of the other.  Because inside the labyrinth, you are walking yourself to center, however that needs to be.

Labyrinths cross through many cultures as a space that exists within itself.  It is a place to walk through you, a temporary moment to stop what you know and meditate meanderings of your feet, heart, head, and soul to whatever it is you are asking a question about to your own inner space. It is an ancient symbol of wholeness and wandering.  Unlike a maze, a labyrinth only moves in one direction.

It is a place to lose oneself without getting lost.

I often walk the labyrinth in one of my favorite parks in my city.  Hidden from most, it is a place of quietness.  Leading up to its entrance paves a pathway lined with bricks sketched with names of people who lead the way.  Names whose presence alone makes you slow down as you enter.

Sometimes I walk slowly, and sometimes I dance through the labyrinth.  Sometimes it is early morning, midday, and on rare occasion, in the light of a full moon.  Every once in a while, I’ll stop midway and do some yoga.  Other times I’ll twist and twirl. Sometimes I hear nothing, sometimes I hear the whistles of bystander birds, and sometimes the mood is set by an amazing Joanna Newsom song.

Often I am alone in this special place, and when I get to the middle, I often have a chance to pray and make wishes from the center of the labyrinth.  Not everyone knows this trick, but if I ever find someone in the center with me, I share this tidbit. Once a small boy about six walked it behind me, and when he made it to the circle where I was sitting, I told him this secret.  His wish was that everyone could breathe in space.  Totally an idea I can get behind.

We can all make these wishes in these in-between spaces of healing and movement leading oneself to one’s own inside.  Cultures around the world use labyrinths for prayer, mediation, and healing.  It is as if once you step inside, everything moves alongside your walking prayer.

What is it about these spaces that intersect our normality and allow us to literally step inside them for a moment, disconnecting from who it was we were supposed to be and allowing ourselves to surrender to who we are?  Walking the labyrinth allows for just this kind of jump in-between.

Have you walked somewhere in-between today?

Image Credit: “Duomo Lucca cathedrale Lucques labyrinthe” by Photo: Myrabella / Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – g

In-Betweeny Geographers

The power of in-between places has been studied by many earth explorers.  Here are a few that really delve into those abstract identities of what makes a place a place.

John Kirtland Wright: In the 1940s, John Kirtland Wright pioneered concepts of human perception as an important factor to geographical understanding, writing about how the feel of a place was as important as the actual material composition. Wright called to fellow geographers to embrace rather than disregard their perceptions of the world, allowing their own siren call of the imagination to lead them, and their aesthetic subjectivity, with creativity as its guide, to direct world discoveries (Wright, 1947).

Wright, J. K. (1947). Terrae incognitae: The place of the imagination in geography. Annals for the Association of American Geographers, 37(1), 1-15. 

Edward Casey:  Humanistic and philosophical geographer Edward Casey explores multiple concepts of place, with perception as an important part of the process of understanding the world around us, to which he called us placelings.  Casey writes:

“Minimally places gather things in their midst — where “things connote various animate and inanimate entities. Places also gather experiences and histories, even languages and thoughts. Think only of what it means to go back to a place you know, finding it full of memories and expectations, old things and new things, the familiar and the strange, and much more besides…(this) power belongs to place itself, and it is a power of gathering.” (1996, p. 24-25)

Casey, E. S. (1996). How to get from space to place in a fairly short stretch of time: Phenomenological prolegomena. In S. a. B. Feld, K.H. (Ed.), Senses of place (pp. 13-52). Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press. 

Keith Basso:  An anthropologist by training, Keith Basso’s work incorporates a philosophical search for place meaning beyond Western thought. In his investigation of Apache people’s connections to landscape, Basso concludes that “sense of place” is experienced in both the “heart and mind” (1996, p. 54). Basso scribes an elder’s poetic expression of his homeland, inspiring the title of his 1996 work Wisdom Sits in Places:

“Wisdom sits in places. It’s like water that never dries up. You need to drink water to stay alive, don’t you? Well you also need to drink from places. You must remember everything about them. You must learn their names. You must remember what happened at them long ago. You must think about it and keep on thinking about it.” (A passage told by Apache elder Dudley Patterson, p. 70).

Basso, K. H. (1996). Wisdom sits in places:Notes of a Western Apache landscape. In S. B. Feld, K.H. (Ed.), Senses of place (pp. 53-90). Santa Fe, New Mexico School of American Research Press. 

Yi-Fu Tuan:  A paramount figure in the formation of humanistic geography, Yi-Fu Tuan explored phenomenology and existentialism in the landscape, delving into ideas of sense and feeling of place, including how we bond to our environments emotionally. Tuan relates the fundamental importance of connecting an individual’s intimate  relationships to places, writing:

“The feel of the pavement, the smell of the evening air, and the color of autumn foliage become, through long acquaintance, extensions of ourselves-not just a stage but supporting actors in the human drama” (1974, p. 452). 

Tuan, Y.-F. (1974). Topophilia: A study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values (Morningside Edition 1990 ed.). New York: Colombia University Press. rs.

Doreen Massey:  Social geographer Doreen Massey investigates construction of place, arguing that human activity plays a large role in the constant shifting expression of place identity. Massey focuses on the complexities making-up individual identities which transfer to place-making identities  writing  ” conflict between interests and views of what the area is and what it ought to become.” (1991, p. 276).  Massey writes:

“Localities are constructions out of the intersections and interactions of concrete social relations and social processes in a situation of copresence…It is people, not places in themselves, which arereactionary or progressive. (1991, p. 278)

Massey, D. (1991). The political place of locality studies. Environment and Planning A, 23(2), 267-281. 

Who are your favorite in-betweenies?

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Were You Born to Travel?

Did your first savings account have a country you wanted to visit in the title?  Do you dream in multiple languages?  Do you feel safest and strongest and most in your skin on the road with a backpack holding most everything you need in life?

Were you born to travel?

Do you feel more anxiety from the time between destinations than from not knowing if you’ll eat/sleep/get to where you’re going?  Does moving to Africa with a month’s notice sound better than most other things?  Do you cook things you learned in random places while listening to music you found in other random places while drinking wine you tasted in other random places?  Do you know, really know how, to hitchhike/train hop/ walk through mountains?

Were you born to travel?

Have you ever mimed or used animal sounds to obtain something simple like an egg or a Q-tip because you didn’t know the word in the dialect of the country you were in?  Do you have friends from countries most people don’t even know exist?  Do you really know the value of a good travel towel and hiking boots?

Were you born to travel?

Can you sing songs you learned in Andean mountain villages?  Have you ever lived with shamans in the jungle?  Do you know how to navigate through borderlands with no money and no map?

Were you born to travel?

Do you dream of making random ethnic cuisines in other parts of the planet?  Have you seen the stars from different hemispheres?  Do you know the calmness of being lulled to sleep by the movement of the train under you?

Were you born to travel?

Can you fall in love in languages you can’t speak?  Do you know intimate histories of off-the-beaten-track places because the old man in the village told you their stories?  Have you ever danced fire on the streets and sold bracelets to get enough money for a bus ticket?

Were you born to travel?

Do you have at least three maps on the walls of your home?  Do you know the words to silly pop songs because you danced to them in Central European discotheques?  Have you seen the sun rise, standing all alone, on the highest mountain on La Isla del Sol?

Were you born to travel?

Will you remember where your feet have taken you?  Will you know that the stories of places you have walked through make you who you are today?  Will you smile at the memories of epic days filled with too much rain, too little money, being lost in a language you don’t understand, and still being excited to do it the next day?

Perhaps you were born to travel.

Tell me, how do you know you were born to travel.

Image credit: Carolyn Van Lydegraf

The Inside of a Small Home

I saw the inside of a small home today, a home built by four hands with dreams and passions and nails.  A home made to house future imaginings.  A home built for two made into one.

The builder talked about the way they had stained the wooden doorway piece to keep it resistant to rain and to create the start of a beautiful threshold.

He showed me the old tin lining they had collected from an antique store and painted, scratched, and painted again.

He talked about how they had found weathered pieces of wood from a torn-up barn waiting on the side of the road to be reused for something just like this.

He showed me the little hidden places underneath the bench, a bench that had just the right dimensions that had been sketched and resketched.

He told me how they had cut the ladder and painted it, and it had turned green, like it had been left outside for days.

He showed me how the wood turned colors form termites that had eaten away the inside of a tree, leaving an indigo swan song.

He showed me the pop up space in the bathroom for a hairbrush, popping it up and mimicking its use.

He pointed to the earthen paint and the small drawers to hide things away, and he told me of the utmost importance to have a large kitchen to have room for many guests with many dinners.

They had made it from nothing into something that two people could create.  A place to rest, to dream, to build, to create, to love.  And as I sat on top of the loft with the skylight built in for last glimpses at evening stars to send them off into the dream state, I saw how every place, every corner, held this intention.  The intention of creating a home.

I also saw how this home was never going to be as it had been imagined.  That this home was going to change and evolve into new dreams, new faces on pillows, new builds, new flowers in vases on counters, new books to fill a half-filled shelf, new laughter, new tears, new dirty feet, new mouths for new cups of tea, new snuggles, new life stories and processes, and new worlds colliding, contracting, and expanding.

This home this man had built.  This home this woman had built.  This home they had built together.

We build our dream houses, and we build them beautiful.  That is the only way.  And sometimes, their beauty only rests its head for a moment in the way we envision.  Sometimes we put our hearts, our heads, our blisters, our sweat, our nails, our designs, and our imaginings into spaces that materialize different than they are conceptualized.  But we build these spaces beautiful anyways.  It’s really the only way we know how to build our dreams, even though we know this man’s house, this woman’s house, this beautiful house, is always changing.

What are the stories in the walls of your home?

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A Small, Still Moment

It was early morning and the old Jeffersonian quad was quiet.  I was walking, slightly hastily as usual, to my 9:00 Saturday morning class when a strange sound slowly started to pull on my ears.  It was the sound of a violin softly singing into the air.  I slowed and saw her, a young girl standing behind one of the many trees playing.  As I walked past her, I slowed for a moment, but then carried on.

It was only when I could barely hear the sound anymore that I stopped to listen to it, really listen and register in my destination monkey-brain what was transpiring.  Here I was, in my normal routine, and here she was to break it.

I turned around and started slowly walking back toward her, this time fully looking up at the scenario around me and here’s what I had missed: The soft sun of a quiet morning sifting down through 100-year-old giant trees blotting shimmying leaves against a lightened blue sky.  The visceral reaction of a melody of strings moving through the ears, through the skin, and into the heart (strings are my favorite).  The sounds of birds, many different kind of birds singing many different tunes across the branches.  I had somehow missed this scene on my way through the first time.  I had only seen the long sidewalk I had to cross to get to where I was destined to be and that I was on the other side of where I was going.

I stopped and watched her for a while.  I was still aware that I needed to be somewhere.  But for just a moment I was enraptured in this morning gift, this space presented to me to remember that the spaces I walk through on my way to where I’m going fully exist in their own right.  That these spaces are always existing and perhaps I would connect more deeply into the world around me if only I opened my eyes and truly listened to it.

We so often are on track to our destination, that we forget to feel the breeze touching our ears or hear the conversations of birds over breakfast.  I am a definite culprit of living somewhere ahead of myself or somewhere behind, both places that do not actually exist.  This is not to say that that we should forget to put one foot in front of the other to get from here to there, but it is important to remember that the entire path is exactly that-a path, full of its own beautiful surprises and deviations.  Sometimes when we stop and listen, we can remember a bit more of who and where  we are in every moment.

I stayed listening until I needed to leave to make it to class exactly on time.  But it changed my entire day, that small, still moment.  A girl in a park playing violin for no one in particular and for everyone passing through who would stop and listen.

What still moments have you listened to lately?

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Why I Walk Through Mountains

The mountains are calling and I must go.  John Muir

I walk through mountains to feel my feet touch ground as they step up.

I walk through mountains to follow steps of ancient people’s paths.

I walk through mountains to remember, I’ll go high and I’ll go low, and it’s all the same mountain land.

I walk through mountains to listen to songs in languages that only mountain birds speak.

I walk through mountains to visit lakes in ancient craters.

I walk through mountains to sing to trees and birds and rocks.

I walk through mountains to view down below from up above.

I walk through mountains so they can tell me secrets nowhere else tells me.

I walk through mountains to know that I am part of everything.

I walk through mountains to see that I am a girl who walks, always, one foot in front of the other.

I walk through mountains to remind myself that when I reach up high I am only there for a moment, for soon again I will be low, then flat, then twisty, then high again.

I walk through mountains because it helps me remember that I must always be in process, that I am always fluid, that I am not a construct of a “good” student or a “good” girlfriend or a “good” daughter.  These are tents I sleep in, but they are only on the journey, never who I am.

I walk through mountains because they help me remember there is always a climb, and I am always getting stronger even when I feel weak.

I walk through mountains to reteach myself that them nor I are superior.  These mountains that rise so high will one day fall, but will grow and grow and grow in the process.  They are never still, they are never finished, they are never permanent, and we are the same.

I walk through mountains to remind myself that my footsteps move my heart which moves my blood circulating throughout, changing me every day with every step.

I walk through mountains because the movement reminds me that I am still alive and there is still so much more path to go and that all that I have learned will help me when I come across bears or high rivers or rattlesnakes.

I walk through mountains to show myself that I am always walking in my power, sometimes it is uphill, sometimes it is down.

I walk through mountains to retrain my brain to remember that my school or job or relationship or person doesn’t exist here, and yet I am me here, totally and completely, with all of these thoughts and learnings in my head.

I walk through mountains to remember that character, in part, is the effort to make yourself strong in your mind and your heart and the balance between the two.

Do you hear the mountains calling you?

Image credit: Carolyn VanLydegraf

Girls Who Ride Trains (or Don’t)

“The train’s not there!  It’s supposed to be here.  The tracks are on the map!” 

It was a winter night in Poland, and it was f-ing colder than any other place I’ve ever been.  The train that my travel partner and I were supposed to take to Ukraine no longer existed.  It just was no longer there.

And then my friend lost it.  I mean really lost it. This cool, calm, collected girl who could take anything (except no trains), just completely lost her marbles.

“No train…NO train. NO TRAIN!”

Yep.  No train.

In times like these, there is only one thing you can do.  Buy mulled wine from a street vendor, read Polish poetry from the book in your bag, sing a silly song, and jump up and down.  Bonus points if the street vendor will take a picture of you jumping and laugh.

It was quite hilarious to me, my adorable friend, throwing a tantrum walking down the streets of Krakow because the train that was supposed to be there just wasn’t. And she was pissed.

We all throw these the-train-is-supposed-to-be-here tantrums (mine take the form of this-is-the-most-f-ing-cold-place-I’ve-ever-been).  We have a plan dammit!  We want to ride trains that say they will come!

Now any traveler worth his or her salt knows that plans never actually work out.  But generally you miss the train.  Usually it, at bare minimum, exists.  There was an explanation, we just didn’t have enough Slavic vowels under our belts to even begin to comprehend.

It never occurred to either of us that it simply would not exist, and we’d have to find another way, and that way would just happen to be one of the best days of our entire journey.  And from this I learned, sometimes, even though they say there is a train, the train is just not there.  And there’s not much you can do about a train you want to ride that will most definitely never come. Sometimes No train…No train. NO TRAIN! is the best thing that can happen to you, you just don’t don’t know it yet.

So what did we do?  Took a bus that almost drove away with our packs, walked to Slovakia, ignored the creepy dudes saying strange things to us from a house where we waited for hours for a hitch, hitchhiked with a guy who liked Megadeath, hitchhiked with a guy who barely spoke but took us to the bus station, took a bus to Ukraine, got in a car with our friends, and passed through the border to a comfy former Soviet home and a welcome shot of vodka.  Three countries, three languages, and a lot of epic adventuring in the course of a day.  And that day was one of our most amazing of a 2 ½ month journey.

Girls who ride trains get it.  We ride them right through the split of the countryside.  We view life from our window seats looking forward and back.  We see the shortcuts through the borders.  We find freedom knowing we’ll fall asleep in one country and wake up in another.

Girls who don’t ride trains also get it and find other ways.  We stick out our thumbs and are taken through the highways by Slovakian men who love death metal.  We drink cold coffee on the side of snowy roads waiting for a hitch.  We navigate to destinations in languages we can’t even begin to understand, and yet we somehow get where we are going.

Because even when the train is not there, we’ll find another way.

Take a train lately?

Image credit: Tab Tuhin

Burn It

“I cried when they walked in with lit torches to blaze from the inside out.  It was so beautiful, I didn’t want this one to burn even though I knew it was the only way to make space for the new.” ~ from the Temple at Burning Man.

Burning things, like temples and letters and fears, is an ancient ceremony of letting go.  Through fire we release into the void uncertainties we have been clutching too close to our hearts. And as we currently enter into the space between less sun and more, humans often feel a desire to sweep out the hibernation of winter and throw wide the doors to spring.

As we scrub out from behind the stairwells and from inside the closets, sometimes we come across pieces of ourselves that we buried way back deep just in case we might ever need to retrieve them-notes and photographs and concert stubs and numbers on napkins.  But how can we honestly make room for the new when we cling so dearly to what fills yet disservices our lifespaces and mindspaces and heartspaces?

You can find it and honor your process with acceptance.  Admit to yourself where you are and ask if you are ready to let go, knowing that there is profound understanding of ourselves that comes from simply staying in process.  People with wonderful intentions have multiple instructions for how to deal with our most uncertain and unstable times.  Their advice so often stems from their own experience and what got them through. But your process is yours alone so let it sing, shout, cry, laugh, back flip, etc.  Know that it knows just what to do.

You can burn it and honor your process with gratitude and release. Thank it for what it has shared, and release it to the transmutation of what can only transpire when broken pieces reassemble.

The beauty of liminality is that it seats us inside the place of our own change.  We can struggle against it, and that is ok, because change is scary and sometimes just plain sucks.  But we can also embrace it, speaking our eulogies of anger, fear, sadness, and gratitude one last time before we fling them into the fire and watch them burn.

I often cry at ceremonies of burnt release, such as the Burning Man Temple.  I am not the only one. As it burns, I hear the thousands of people around me crying or quietly singing or silently wishing, knowing we need this transition of release after so much build.  After holding these loves and epic changes in us so deeply, absolution is an imperative part of the shift from who we were to who we are becoming.

What needs releasing from your deep down stairwell?

Image credit: Curtis and Peggy Mekemson