Closed

The traveling blog is closed for business. The Toyota Tacoma home has been sold and now I’m rockin’ an old 86 Toyota pickup with 226K miles of road under her for farmy, country life. Trading in wheels for roots. Follow along at www.wilderhome.wordpress.com

The Final Tallies

Place numbers:

Number of days on the road: 172 (11 days shy of 6 months) This doesn’t include the days that were driven pre-bicycle accident, even though technically I began on May 15th, the bicycle accident sent me home for a month and I re-began on June 15th.

Number of miles: Approximately 18,000 (+/- 1000)

Number of US states visited: 31 (I’m including DC)*

Number of countries visited: 2

Number of national and state parks visited: Approximately 13**(There was a lot more that I drove through but I’m counting the ones I noticed and/or visited on purpose)

Home numbers:

Number of hotels: 5***

Number of hostels: 2****

Number of campsites: 4

Number of couchsurfing.org crashes: 4

Number of friends and other people’s homes: 21*****

Number of parking lots: A lot

Safety Numbers:

Number of times car was broken into: 0

Number of things stolen: 0

Number of things lost: 1 sweatshirt

Number of times I was followed: 0

Number of times I was pulled over: 0

Number of times car broke down: 0

Number of car accidents with another moving vehicle: 0.5 (I did rear end a car in traffic but no damage done)

Number of scrapes on vehicle (from stationary objects): 3

Number of food poisonings: 0

Number of times I got sick: 1 cold in Washington DC

Number of injuries: Depends on whether we include the bicycle accident as part of the road trip. I guess it was, so 1. Except really that was more like 5 in 1. Whatever.

Number of females traveling alone in truck who survived (and thrived): 1

And…

I can’t count how many units of generosity I recieved a long the way. Astronomical numbers. I can’t count how many people made me feel uplifted and reaffirmed and thankful.

And…

Number of blog posts: 43 (including this one)

Number of readers: I don’t know but I’m deeply grateful to all of you for your comments, emails, and silence. This blog has kept me accountable to writing, to myself and to those I love. I thank you all for participating.

To be continued…

*california, utah, colorado, wyoming, montana, south dakota, minnesota, wisconsin, michigan, illinois, indiana, ohio, pennsylvania, new york, massachusetts, maryland, rhode island, new jersey, connecticut, washington dc, virginia, north carolina, georgia, florida, alabama, louisiana, mississippi, texas, new mexico, arizona, nevada.

**arches, jackson, yellowstone, glacier, black hills, badlands, catskills, smoky mountains, apalachicola, gulf islands national seashore, atchafalaya basin, monument valley, glen canyon

***springfield hotel, maryland hotel, north carolina hotel, new orleans hotel, santa fe hotel

****bozeman hostel, madison hostel,

***** (THANK YOU SO MUCH TO) julie, barrett, couchsurfer damir, weston, lauren’s grandma, emma,  bridgett, halley, yellow house lady, poughkeepsie girl, couchsurfer jess page, couchsurfer paul dickson, sam,  farm crew, lauren n james, toyin, tweed friends, brooklyn friends of friend, amy, abby, jim n becky, couchsurfer tony, mel, natalie, ale (did i forget anyone?)

on coming home

(dedicated to pam)

the quilt is laid out on the floor and it looks really nice. it’s much more colorful and complex than it was in west texas where, even though it was a good price i wasn’t sure i should buy it. it looked like another antique in west texas. now it looks like west texas.

i bought very little on the road to have as keepsakes. things seem so regular when they are in their places, so unneeded, or so quintessentially touristy. strings of red hot peppers in santa fe, masks exploding with feathers in new orleans, alligator heads in the swamp, cowboy boots in montana, old quilts in west texas. in thailand it was scarves and buddha statues packed thick into stalls.  i hate being a tourist, feeling trapped into a specific way of knowing and learning a place that is predetermined by what they sell me. so a lot of the time, i don’t buy things that i probably would really like, like dia de los muertos dolls and mardis gras masks. i did buy the alligator head, though. impulse buy at a gas station that sold them. anyways, it’s not for me it’s for my friend whose three years old.

i started collecting coffee cups as my mementos. i didn’t realize i wanted to collect cups until i was quite far along and now i think back to all the cups i should have got. c’est la vie. i have a cup i accidentally took from a hostel, a diner cup from massachussetts, a waffle house cup from north carolina, a cafe du monde cup from new orleans and a counterculture cafe cup from santa fe. the last one has a chipped rim but it was the cup i was drinking tea from when i realized that this feet dragging on the cold streets of santa fe that i was doing was simply me freaking out about change. about coming home.

which is exactly where i am.

home. home. home.

i was so excited i couldn’t sleep in tonopah where i had pulled into a parking lot, put up the curtains and laid down. someone was playing sound-music in a house nearby. i originally had thought it would act like a lullaby but instead the soft ambient melody drilled into my head that wouldn’t stop thinking.

road thoughts. i don’t even drive with music most the time. i just think and think and think. i cry out to the coyotes when they pass “Ya Ta Hey COYOTE!” and think, wow, i have found my voice in the desert sky. you see, i used to be nervous about howling at the moon. and i pee on the side of the road and i dance and stretch on the side of the road and i check up on the stars. but mostly i think and think and think. i can’t remember what i thought about the hour before. my hands on the wheel i can’t record my thoughts in writing. so i think and think and think. and shift in my seat to change the strain on my back.

i almost ran out of gas. i always almost run out of gas in nevada because i always forget that nevada can run for hours without fuel. as i watched my gas guage needle dip down lower and lower and the warning light come on and no lights on the horizon of the dark desert, i think and think and think. i think about what i would do if i run out of gas in the middle of the night. i think about pulling over into the sagebrush and the cardboard sign i would make asking for a ride or a gallon of gas. i think about how i would dress like a boy, layering all my clothes so no one would know i was a girl until they were right up close.

road signs that announce the name of towns, lie. in the twenty miles promised for this town and that town, there is nothing but more dark desert. damn. wouldn’t it make sense that on my last night of driving i run out of fuel.

finally there are signs for tonopah and i think i will make it. i drive fifty-five exactly for optimal mileage. i coast down the hills. i am careful about when i shift.  and there on the side of the road is a car pulled over. i see it for miles away in the clear flat dark but i don’t know what it is until i’m closer. a man is waving wildly on the side of the road.

you’d think by now, i wouldn’t stop. one time in idaho on a road darker and later than this, there was a waving man and a car on the side of the road. i was so tired then, i didn’t think. i just stopped and then i handed him my cell phone to call his family to save them. i just stopped all alone out there and handed him over my phone. my only lifeline. i was so stupid tired. nothing happened. he called, they said they’d come pick him up, he thanked me. the next morning i decided i shouldn’t do stupid things like that.

so here i am in nevada and there’s a guy waving his arms and i don’t even have cell phone service here. there are two cars following me which may or may not come to my service if i pull over, run out of gas, or get shot by this waving man on the side of the road. decision time. i pull over. i lean over. i roll down the window.

he is surprised to see a girl face in the car but still he asks if i have a chain to tow him up off the gravel. i don’t. the car behind me weaves around me and zooms away – they don’t want to see how this scene could end. he says thank you and i offer to call someone in town. he says he’ll ask the other car behind me, which has stopped also. i drive away.

i know he could have shot me or at least stole my vehicle. left me stranded and taken everything. i know this could have happened but it didn’t.

i make it to tonopah. i get gas and i try to sleep but my brain wont stop thinking. i wonder if i’m developing insomnia. i wonder if it was the coffee. i wonder if i should drive more. i imagine the long desert road and how tiringly long it will be in the night if i commit to getting to fallon. i can’t sleep, that music is killling me.

i drive and drive and drive. and think and think and think. the road feels immediately calming. much better than laying down. i feel more restful driving. i carry on to fallon and it’s five in the morning. i’m only two and a half hours away from home. i stop at a gas station, a random one, the first one, and i realize in the parking lot i have been here before, too. a random gas station stop over a year ago. i stopped here, filled up and had frozen yogurt. i even have a photograph of this station because it serves frozen yogurt. anyways, tonight i just go to the bathroom here. too early for frozen yogurt.

i drive to sparks and i’m so tired i decide to sleep. i don’t want to be so tired when i get home anyways. i sleep at a TA travel stop. oh TA., i will miss you. flying j’s. loves and TA. the warms nests for truckers and roadtrippers.

the next morning, or later that morning, i’m headed inside to pee when a man hollers at me across the parking lot asking if i was skiing. i guess i look like a skier in these clothes i’ve been wearing for an embarrassingly long stretch of days. two pairs of leggings. tank top. long sleeve. another long sleeve. sweater. jacket. i take my leggings off every day to change my underwear but then i put them all back on. “no, i wasn’t skiing. i was sleeping in my truck” i answer. we start chatting and his name is Eli. he’s half Navajo so i ask him what “ya ta hey” means and he says it means “hello” and then he says it the way it’s supposed to be said. we talk in the casino lounge of the AT traveler’s stop. i’m not sure why. maybe because he mentioned milledgeville, georgia and i slept in the walmart there a month ago and who in the hell knows where milledgeville is? or maybe because he looked right into my eyes so seriously and knowing. he was convinced i should act for him in a film he wants to make about recycling gasoline.  he’s driving back to monument valley, where i just was. he has property there and would have liked to show me around on horseback, the places where no one knows. he said he just went to the homeless shelter to see if anyone needed a ride to utah and the smiling old white man with him says “he’s such a nice guy”. the white man then shows me the pacemaker that looks like a small raised brick under the skin of his chest. he tells me and Eli about being a teacher and the newest computer software for interior design. i don’t know what to make of it. i listen to him. theni listen more to Eli and give him my number and tell him i don’t act.

i stop in truckee because i don’t know what else to do. i get coffee and gas and start crying there. i can’t find the coffeeshop my dad took me to here. i can’t find my dad.

i cry pretty much from truckee to the five mile house outside of nevada city.

i didn’t know whether i was going to cry when i came home. by the time i left the water slots in arizona i was feeling practical. let’s get this shit on the road. let’s go do something. i’m seriously tired of feeling. and thinking and thinking and thinking. jesus christ, it’s just a roadtrip. let’s be done with it already.

but here i am crying over the sierra nevadas and i’m caffeinated so i’m really going for it.

at home i head first for the river. this is not unusual. it’s the greeting place of home. i drive through the streets of nevada city. the first person i see, i know but i can’t remember her name. the stoop kids are still sitting on the stoop. that drunk kid is crossing the street and i don’t think he’ll ever leave nevada city. faceless tourists are touring.

at the river, i feel no need to cry.

at home i overdose on homethings. there is an order of operations for returning: bathe, eat, unpack. i do the first two. bathtime. popcorn. the first thing i did when i walked in the door was set white beans to soaking. i make a bean and vegetable soup in short time. the onions sautee beautifully.

it’s cold and i get to make a fire. i forgot about firemaking. i don’t even mind that my hands turn inky from the newsprint right after i just got them clean. glory be. i love woodstoves and firemaking.

i feel like it might be damaging to do to much homestuff too fast. i should probably ease into it. but i dont’ do “easing in” very well so i just wander around and look at things in the house. i stare at my computer screen. i eat soup. i read my book about feminism.

when it’s bedtime, i look around. i guess i’ll sleep here, then.

 

the shape of water

I’m home. Home. Home. Home.

Expect a post or two more to conclude this blog and in the meantime, here are the photos of yesterday.

(I’m emanating love and gratitude for all of you right now!)

Monument Valley at Sunset

Maggie at sunset

I drove to Glen Canyon to see the canyon slots. The Navajo run tours and you’re not allowed to go alone, which bummed me out. Nonetheless, I joined up with this crew of Malaysian kids and chatted it up with my tourguide.

Fortunately, the tours are very relaxed and I was able to just walk away on my own and explore in quiet. Here are some tumbleweeds that fell down into this little canyon.

Way ahead of the group, I laid down on the canyon floor and just laid in silent amazement at the walls around me…

Peeking out.

This is where the seasonal water runs down from the ground above into the canyon. This is the moment where it goes from above ground to below.

Houston to almost home…

houston.  dinner in austin. western texas forever. albuquerque. santa fe where i realize i’m freaked out about ending my time on the road. coffee and pumpkin pie in kayente. monument valley at sunset.  getting to page, arizona and realizing i’ve been here before.

walmart’s sign shines in the dark. my nemesis whose teet i suckle. it’s a balmy 37 degrees in the truck at night, much better than the 21 degrees from the night before.

i wake up the next morning and buy hummus, cheese, carrots, crackers and a pomegranate. this is general road fare for me.

walking through canyon slots at lower antelope. seeing the shape of water in the desert.

i drive on. i open and eat the pomegranate without a knife while i drive. fingers only, seed by seed.

in kenab, utah, i realize i have been here before, also. i stop to get coffee and my car rolls away down the street and as i leap to stop my runaway truck a dog barks at me really meanly and the owner harnesseses it back. i jump past the dog, run alongside my rolling vehicle while unlocking it and finally hop in to pull the emergency brake.

for some reason this doesn’t really fluster me. i sip on steamed milk and coffee and feel absolutely alright.

when i leave the world is cool colored, even the yellow stripe on the road is grey.  the only warmth is a belt of purplish pink strapping a grey cloud to the ice-bright sky.

i drive on into the snow and past columns of ice that stretch rock roof to the ground.

i fantasize about my dishes. they are in a cardboard apple box in my dad’s basement and i daydream about unpacking them and stacking them in my kitchen. lately, i’ve also had visions of blankets folded in my closet.  i can barely wait to work on the details of a four-walled home.

Nola to Houston: A Thanksgiving Story of Swamps and Sisters

When I had declawed myself of New Orleans, I thought I was free of Louisiana. I jumped on I10, jumped off at a Wal Mart in Baton Rouge, slept and was planning to get to at least San Antonia by the evening. Then Louisiana pulled out a wild card: the Atchafalaya basin. The interstate, propped up on huge cement pillars, crosses over this gigantic swamp. Semi-trucks trundle by bald cypress.

I pulled off and checked a map and found a backroad that seemed to go near the basin so I turned around to get a closer look. Before I knew it I had signed up for a 3pm swamp tour and was learning the real meaning of Cajun country; I am officially in Acadiana.

Atchafalaya means “long river” in the Choctaw language. It is a stunning place and I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves on this one.

I made friends with the Captain of our tour and had fallen all back in love with Louisiana by the time I bought some crappy gas station coffee and headed for Texas proper.

In Houston, I decided to grab some food since I knew everything would be closed by the time I got to San Antonio. I was chowing on a salad and got a stomach ache so I laid down in the back of my truck to rest for a bit before getting back on the road.

Meanwhile, an Italian girl name Alessandra was going to sleep in Houston.

My snazzy new phone allows me to get on the internet easily so I updated my facebook status to say I was in Houston.

Alessandra couldn’t sleep because, randomly, she had a cup of coffee late in the day. She woke up and for no good reason, checked facebook.

“When? How? Call meeeee!!!” she wrote to my facebook.

Alessandra, from here on out called Ale but pronounced not like the beer but like Ah-lay, was an exchange student in Nevada City seven years ago, my senior year of highschool. During that time I hung with a group of girls who called each other sisters and when we met Ale, she became our Italian sister. I completely forgot she lives in Houston now.

A couple of texts later we had set a meeting place for the next day. It was past midnight when the plans were settled and her boyfriend was asleep and so it was decided I would sleep in the truck. Without knowing where she lived, in the whole big urban sprawl I parked about four blocks from her home to crash out for the evening.

The next day, we reunioned. We last saw each other during a visit she made to Nevada City for  Thanksgiving, exactly five years ago. “You have to stay and have Thanksgiving with us,” she said. “When is Thanksgiving,” I asked in reply. “Maggie!? It’s tomorrow! You have to stay tomorrow. It’s one more day. What’s one more day?” I spread my hands, gave up on getting through Texas and said okay.  ”You still drink wine?” she asked a little concerned. “Of course,” I responded. “Great. That’s all you have to do with us. It’s an Italian Thanksgiving.” There was really no way I could say no to the offer. Sisterhood, you know how it is.

I was fully expecting to be alone, somewhere in the middle of Texas or maybe New Mexico for Thanksgiving. As it turned out I was in Houston with approximately twelve Italians, two Romanians, one other U.S. woman and her two little kids. Despite the international majority, the spread was still more traditionally Thanksgiving than I’ve had in years: turkey, honey roasted ham, sweet potatoes, peas, mashed potatoes. I made cavoletti di brussel e fagiolini con parmegiano (brussel sprouts and green beens with parmesan).

I can’t say much about Houston, it’s a collection of buildings and stores. Ale had a few things to say about it including “glacial”, “empty” and “without a soul”. Her boyfriend says it has no vibe and Ale added “it gives you no feeling”. This is all true but nonetheless warmth abounded here in the form of friendship.

Here’s for giving thanks and the best kind of ruined itineraries. Thank you, Ale and Luigi!

Each X tells one small Katrina story.

Driving over Atchafalaya

Driving under Atchafalya

I think it’s my next home…

The Captain let me drive for awhile

And I love Louisiana because I can sit on the side of the boat while we cruise through alligator country and no one says that’s a legal liability and I need to get down.

Meeting up with Ale

Day before Thanksgiving drinks

Figuring out what “brussel sprouts” are in Italian

Good wine all day long – my favorite kind of Thanksgiving.

Smoke time after eating.

Espresso time after smoke time

Kareoke time

Dessert time

More kareoke

Poker time

Leftover time

Brunch time the next morning

Smoke time after brunch time

When in Rome, when in Houston

Love Letter to New Orleans

Dear New Orleans,

Sometimes when I get depressed I listen to this song by M. Ward and he sings “Seems like everywhere I go, the sky is falling. And the waitresses all meet you with a frown. When I come to town, I ain’t gonna lie to you. Well every town is all the same“. New Orleans, my dear, you are the exception.

I know we just met but I think there might be something here.

It’s okay, I know everyone else who meets you thinks so too because your arms are always flung out wide. It’s how you move.

Your piano player has the longest fingers. Your tall trombone man the flirtiest eyes. Your saxophonist the lowest dips. Your drummer the most lovely arms that disappeared and broke glass windows with their rhythm. I think men are at their best playing jazz.

Your bricks are hundreds of years old and covered in fresh graffitti.

Every night promises that you might fall in love. And for that might you risk everything. Your sleep and your hydration and your balanced meals and your itinerary.  Your diurnal life.

Every morning you wake up sounding sexier – your voice box ragged with second hand smoke, your own applause, and the recitation of street poetry.

I’m not quite sure how you’ve managed to adorn yourself so well in voo doo tattoos, mardis gras beads, feathered masks, rhinestone fleur-de-lis jewelry and Who Dat T-shirts but baby, you pull it off.

Throughout the day you’re the most generous of hosts offering pralines and jumbalaya, beignets and muffaleta, po’ boys and  everything doused in creole seasoning.

In your embrace, I’ve been studying your tattoos and track marks – X’s painted on walls that decode the time, the team, the toxic chemicals and the number dead.

I think I love you because I like things that don’t pretend they can’t fall apart.

And the musicians play like this ship is sinking, which of course it is. The poets sandwich their words in slabs of song. Transplants from all over the United States give away their gifts and become native.  Hare Krishnas heap styrofoam plates with free food. The old marble coffins crumble. The water rat dips into the bayou. The grass grows up through all the cracks in the road that aren’t waterlogged with what  got wrung out of the pavement last night.

Everyone does what they’re supposed to do: the nihilists share their chaos humor with each other and the grimy sidewalks, the beggars ask for the same change every night, the addicts polish their glasses, the police stay up all night, the whores smile for a new john, the catholics call out with the fervor of the final salvation of all these sinners’ souls, the poor purchase vehicles nicer than their homes, the young liberals suffer their middle class guilt, the out of towners drink to puke, the mansions of st. charles lean on their pillars, the antiques dealer kidnaps your afternoon for the price of a conversation, the tarot reader tells the fortune of the mississippi river.

Everyone here is transformed into your worker bees, humming your breath to one another.

Oh Nola, dear, it was a hard day when I finally pulled away. I kept thinking I was going to cry until Interstate 10 straightened me out. Here’s the thing, I know we’re probably not meant to be together forever but I’ll still call it true.

Love,

Maggie