You can't take it with you...?

J-cat on the keypad:

So the rockabilly/punk song goes..."You can't take it with you".  As I was standing in the cold night air, huddled behind the Aggie Theater in Ft. Collins, Colorado, the lyrics about what is really important in life made me smile.  Kind of cliche, kind of trite, but also pretty right on.  My good friend from way back in Santa Cruz, Anatola, knew just what I was thinking since we'd been having these conversations for a while, trying to figure out what is really important in life...? Spending time with close friends like her, for one, and listening to great music from our teen years, like Social Distortion, who was ripping it on that new song at the crowded Aggie.  

Social D's lyrics and my time reminiscing and talking about future ideas with Anatola inspired a series of thoughts over the next several weeks of our trip, most of which are somehow related to our travel experiences though I am still trying to figure out all the connections and whether there is an overall lesson.  During this phase of travel, we drove from Colorado to Utah, camped and hiked in Zion National Park, made a pit stop in Las Vegas, hung out in Los Angeles, drove up to Santa Cruz, and then flew up to Seattle to re-visit the beautiful Pacific NW.  Since then we've driven and taken trains down the coast from Victoria BC to Seattle to Portland, and we are now in Humboldt County, California.  Liam and I are both feeling energized by being "back out west", and we have thrown around many ideas about how to meld our desire for adventure and travel with an inclination to bond with family and friends.  Visits with people all over the country have got us thinking about lifestyle choices and how to find long-term satisfaction....and that got me thinking about Wendell Barry.

There is an essay by Barry in the collection entitled "What Are People For?" in which he writes about the evolution of family roles and the way family interacts with society. He wonders about the negative aspects of mobility and unrootedness in modern life...he seems to suggest that a more rooted, community-focused lifestyle would do better by our children and offer us adults a more grounded, communal existence. Though I was initially turned off by his patriarchal tone, so much of what he talks about resonates with me lately.  I think about the supportive community of friends and family in Fayetteville and how I felt like somebody would be there for me if I got sick, if I lost my job, or just needed someone with whom to walk and talk. It's common in Fayetteville, and probably in many other small towns and tight-knit neighborhoods, for friends to band together around somebody who had become sick or just needed help. Several times during my four years living there, I attended benefit concerts, poetry readings, and potlucks in support of a friend or friend's child who needed help, be it physically, emotionally or financially. One of the most touching and beautiful examples of this was the network of loving friends, including my mother and father-in-law, who grouped around Nick and Ginny Masullo. Nick was an incredibly blessed person in too many ways to name and he left this world too soon...but from my perspective, I found it wonderful that he had fostered such deep friendships with people in his life, friends who would do anything for him and Ginny and lent a helping hand during the last years he was with us. Similarly, my parents and a close group of Santa Cruz friends took loving care of our family friend Geno in his last months.  I can only hope to have such a loving support system.  

Having reflected on all that, I am getting to a point that has been brewing in my head for weeks now:  We ALL need that kind of loving support system, we really do, no matter how independent and self-sufficient we think we are.  **We are not islands!**  I am a very private person, but our travels are teaching me something: We are social creatures who need community and are enriched by diverse friendships and family interactions.  Even when those interactions are difficult or painful, it is up to us to generously put ourselves out there and offer support, or maybe to know when we need to accept support.  This is the kind of energy I want to take with me in the long run.  And, like it or not, this "support of the soul" is not going to come from your bank account or your job. I don't count on either of those to be around and give me a comforting hug when I'm old and gray. And since I'm working on that every year (thanks for the early-gray genes, Mom!), this issue seems to come to the forefront of my thoughts and discussions with Liam and others, particularly along this fantastic journey of continual uprootedness!  

All of this is still simmering in my thought-process, and it hasn't led us down one particular path or another.  But, Liam and I are asking questions of ourselves about how to deal with modern life...how do we create a lifestyle that has a more communal feeling...how do we draw in the skills and experience offered by so many of our friends and family members? We are freshly re-aquainted with our "network", spread all over the place, and I am feeling inspired about the possibilities. 

This inspiration is leading me to think that one of the most precious things you CAN take with you is the love and generous energy you have shared with family and friends, or even with a stranger in need.  Such caring actions or words create concentric circles of good energy that ripple on through the years, and these warm memories will stay with you forever (at least as long as you can remember)  Back to this journey and how it all relates:  beyond a practical need to seek job opportunities, one of the primary motivations to start this long adventure and leave our cocoon of comfort in Fayetteville was to offer our energy and design/construction/landscaping skills to my parents in their relocation to Hawaii.  Our time of transition offers us the opportunity to help my parents in their time of transition, so to speak.  We began the process two years ago with my design drawings and then Liam, my brother Elijah, his girlfriend Karla, and my mom and dad all pitched in to build the house frame and make the land livable. There is still a lot more to do in order to get my parents moved in to their tropical abode and I'm excited to arrive and get to work for them.  We've been traveling for almost 2 1/2 months now, and while the continual excitement of being on the road is still enticing, I'm ready to settle in for a while and give back some love and support to my family.  It should be a great project, and I know it'll make for some lovely memories that I will take with me.

ps - we are flying out to Hawaii in one week!...If you're looking to get ahold of us, that's where we will be for at least the next 3 months, same ol' cell phones should work fine.  Aloha to all :)

To the Pacific

Lee-dog on the Mic:

We're now sitting in Casey Andrews and Lisette Polny's cozy living room, where we've been sleeping for the last few nights. We zoomed into L.A. three days ago, on the evening of Sep. 30. Memories sparked by familiar geography entered my consciousness as we drove out of Las Vegas and into the desert. Driving toward Pasadena, I remembered my time here 10 years ago. This is my first time back to L.A. since living here just after college.

Backing up a bit to our stay in Colorado, I'll give a brief overview. We spent a couple of nights in Denver with Dan, Michelle, and Claire Nesson. What a treat--and what a little sweetheart Claire is. Brother Ben met us at Dan's, and I soon gave Jessie a ride up to Fort Collins, where she visited with Anatola and Brent Swan (old Santa Cruz pals) for a few days. Meanwhile Ben and I headed to Buena Vista for some time in the Arkansas River Valley. Ben and I chilled, went for a hike to Ptarmigan Lake, sipped beer, and partied in downtown BV before I headed back to Fort Collins to catch up with the Californians. After hanging with Jessie, Tola and their boys at Oktoberfest, Brent and I had an awesome day fly fishing on the Big South River, a tributary of the Poudre.

Departing FC we were bound for the Pacific after a two night stay in Zion National Park--a truly enchanted, spectacular place. Jessie and I took a thrilling and vertigo-inducing eight mile hike to Observation Point, which overlooks Zion Canyon. A blustery night forced us to pack up our tent around midnight and sleep in the back of the car. The next morning we took a short hike and watercoloring expedition, and then jetted toward Vegas and L.A.

Now we're here, overlooking the San Fernando Valley from Casey and Lisette's Mulholland Drive bungalow. We're getting the true L.A. experience: a chic salon haircut for me, hiking in the mountains overlooking the valley and downtown, and trying on clothes at Lisette's fashionable "three dots" office.

Like trying on cool t-shirts, this trip is an opportunity for us to try on different places. We've been highly motivated to consider the questions: Where could we live? and What could we live with? We've reached conclusions about what type of habitat we'd enjoy. Walkability, tasty and eclectic dining, good music scene, an open-minded populous, educational opportunities, minimal reliance on the automobile--these are all attractive aspects of place. Areas where we differ: Jessie loves the energy of the big city (i.e. NYC and San Francisco); I like to visit these places but would prefer to live in a place where I can find a quicker and easier escape to the freedom of the natural landscape--and away from the madness of men and machines. We both loved Fort Collins; we both dislike Vegas. Parts of L.A. are fun, but the enormous sprawl and lack of easily accessible public transportation is uninviting. Seattle is great, a little large for my taste, but the mountains and ocean are only a short drive away.

Ultimately, though, I've come to the conclusion that the comfort of place is often more related to comfort with yourself and with those around you. And, we've encountered so many places on this trip where we've felt welcome, at home, and surrounded by loving friends and relatives. Additionally, we're very at ease with each other and continually adaptable. These qualities of place combined with our grounded, loving relationship allow me to conclude that we could truly make any number of places home. Thankfully, we have some exciting ideas for where that might be--The Big Island, The Pacific Northwest, The Front Range? Across the Pacific? Where will it be?

Luckily we have plenty of time to answer this question--and many adventures in between...

next post: Jessie shares a story of friendship and punk music in beautiful Colorado...