My Love of Travel

For a writer, reading and writing are two halves of the same breath cycle. Reading is breathing in; writing is breathing out. 

Yet, all the reading and research I can muster is, for me, a mere pittance when compared to the insight gained by travel. The experience of doing, of seeing firsthand how things work, how people live and thrive in other countries and cultures, how a certain road feels beneath your feet, how a certain fragrance wafts through a city at a certain time of day; it's irreplaceable.

Travel is both my hobby and constant aspiration. The process of preparation, the planning, the weighing of individual interests, the consideration of time and cost variables are equally satisfying. I love nothing more than thinking about our next great adventure.

My office bookshelf holds a variety of travel books. My favorite magazines are AFAR and National Geographic Travel. I have paper files crammed with articles ranging from quirky roadside statues, to enticing bistros on other continents, to historically obscure ruins, to contemporary technological wonders. My Google Favorites menu has a 'travel' file with subcategories divided by interest and country. 

Travel suits me. I am, by nature, a restless spirit.

But I am a restless spirit whose love of family has weighted the flightier aspects of my personality.

The idea of travel, as well as travel itself keeps me both enriched emotionally and grounded in my own life. While the fantasy of travel could be called escapism, for me it provides motivation to appreciate my daily life just that much more. Because the travel I envision, and most often experience, is a bridge into the unknown, but it's one shared with the people I love most in the world.

Travel opens us. It bonds us to greater humanity. It makes us better versions of ourselves.

Because of travel, I become a better writer.

When I am locked in my own head working on a project, I am far more likely to fret over the results than when I step outside my routine.The more I learn about the world, the more I learn about myself, the more relevant my writing is to those who might one day read it. 

And while my travel fantasies may find me hopping a flight to Paris or Mumbai, the reality of a busy household with two young teenagers, combined with the usual time and financial constraints, often keep my adventures much closer to home.

Still, the right attitude can turn the simplest adventure into a sparkling moment of serendipitous return. Art museums and libraries fill the gap between elaborate holidays. As do untried cuisines, new artisan shops, or simply meeting friends for tea. Spending active time outdoors never fails as a balm for this restless spirit. 

Travel, whether local or abroad, reminds me that my thoughts and stories are both my own and part of some greater conversation.

Travel is a window into the world. But more importantly, it is also a doorway that leads us straight into the heart of who we are as individuals. Stepping through that doorway, we learn what is most significant to each of us, and to those we love. 

                                                                                                        Bacalar, Mexico 2015
Be strong, and travel well. 

Friendship is Strange

I'm going home this summer.

I have visited my family every other year, more or less, since moving away from my hometown fifteen years ago, but this will be the first time in more years than I care to count that I will be seeing friends that I haven't spent quality time with since high school.

It feels strange. A good strange, but strange nevertheless.

Sixteen was a bad year. My parents divorced, and I lost my first real love, only to fall immediately into an unhealthy relationship that lasted nearly three years. By the time it ended, I had retreated into a tangle of self-doubt that took a long while to shake.

In my misdirected attempts at self-healing, I became an emotional nomad. I denied who I was at my center in favor of creating a version of who I wanted to be.

Along the way, I pushed some pretty amazing friends out of my life. Friends I'd had since I was in grade school. Friends I should have rightfully had well into adulthood, middle age, and beyond. Try as they might to stay with me, I became practiced at side-stepping, avoidance, being really busy or occupied with other interests, and generally moving in a direction away from where I had come from and everyone I had known.

Not an easy task in what was basically a large logging town in southwest Washington state.

Having lost my grounding, I gathered new friends, who hadn't known me early on. I married my college professor. I pretended that I was better than where I came from. I pretended I was worldly, and disinclined to acknowledge I was from working class beginnings. I espoused varied, sometimes conflicting, worldviews.

Insecurity wracked me as I made my way in the world; I felt like a fraud, because I was a fraud.

Eventually, I got it together. I finished my degree. I began really working at my career. I divorced my first husband, and remarried. I became a mom. I moved to Alabama, and became a stay-at-home mom. I'm working at being a writer, and best of all, I'm raising my kids.

I teach them: be authentic.

Don't be a chameleon. Pretending can't last, and no matter where or in what circumstance you find yourself, you are still the same person, and you are accountable for your choices.

In a world filled with chimerical personalities that shift and comply with whoever happens to be sharing their immediate space, I teach my kids to be true to themselves.

I teach them: don't shut out the people who really care about you.

The friends they've had since kindergarten, or first grade, or fifth grade: they matter. Even if they grow apart, those friends will always matter, because they matter now. The people they need someday, as they grow up and grow old, could very well be the people who knew them best when they were young.

So, this summer, you can bet I'll be celebrating the chance to reconnect with the friends of my youth. They're still here. Truly, they never left, even though I tried very hard to ignore their importance for a time.

Still apart, but always a part of me.

It's a Dog's Life

There are few moments that bring me more joy than watching our three Pembroke Welsh Corgis running to greet me. Those familiar with these short-legged, rabbit-rumped, big-eared wonders will attest that the Pembroke swaggering waddle (or swaggle as I like to call it) is its own flavor of exhilaration.

Whether I am gone for fifteen minutes or fifteen days, Riley, his half-brother Andrew, and the little one, Oliver, are the purveyors of a riotous frenzy of adulation generously bestowed upon this human object of their affection. The display may vary in its duration, but never in its exuberance.

While I know for a fact that being so highly esteemed has little to do with my own merit, and everything to do with the nature of these lovely four-legged companions, I willingly accept the gift and everything it represents.

Loyalty. Trust. Faithfulness. Unconditional love. Relentless optimism. Categorical forgiveness. Irrepressible happiness.

Recently, a neighbor shared the story that as a younger man getting ready for deployment overseas, he was faced with the dilemma of leaving behind his two dogs. Unable to find them homes, time ran out and it became necessary to turn them over to a shelter already overrun with animals waiting for adoption or death.

Rather than bringing his dogs to strangers to be euthanized, he made the heartbreaking decision to do it himself. He resigned to shoot them with his own gun and bury them in the woods near his property.

When it came time, he was able to put down one dog with little effort, but the second dog was rightfully spooked and reacted too quickly at the essential moment. When he fired his gun, the dog was injured, but not killed.

Instinctively, he called her back to him.

And the most incredible thing happened. She came.

Bleeding and broken, she willingly returned to his arms, wherein he immediately finished the horrific task.

It haunts him to this day because when his wounded dog responded to his call, this man was shown the truest meaning of trust. 

Children know this instinctively. When mine were little, they would practice spelling words by arranging plastic letters on the refrigerator door. One afternoon, my daughter announced, "Mama, dog is God spelled backwards!"

I shared the Native American legend of the Kato tribe wherein God did not simply create dogs; God Himself had a dog. So important have dogs been to the humans through the ages; they are both companion and counterpart to the human heart. 

My son, barely four at the time and still transitioning his primary language from Mandarin to English, listened intently to my words. He then reached down to pet our aging Corgi, Raleigh, who rested at his feet. As my son stroked Raleigh's fur, I could see him carefully forming his words as he leaned in close to Raleigh's ear. 

"Good dog," he whispered. "My dog. Your boy."

In those six words my son successfully described the intricate and complex relationship that has existed between human and canine for thousands of years. Six simple words to sum up the emotional interdependence of two very different species that has lasted across the millennium.

Raleigh on South Padre Island, Texas 2002

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Please support: www.dogsondeployment.org

It Calls You Back

Sometimes it takes me awhile to process the intensity of emotional connections. Days, weeks, months, even years pass before I fully decipher the meaningful nuance of situations I have experienced in my lifetime. Often I must withdraw from a situation entirely before I can understand the significance of what transpired.

I'm not alone in this. This delay in emotional comprehension fuels countless human regrets, bittersweet memories, and misplaced longings. The desire to return to a moment, to regain someone or something lost to us, has played out in every human heart at one time or another.

Places pull at me in this way.

Prince William Sound, June 2015

There are places I have traveled on this globe that hold such an emotional draw, given a quiet moment, I can invariably recreate the very scent of the air, the angle of light, the sound of the streets, the touch of the wind in my mind's eye.

My list is varied. It includes the far-flung places of Guangzhou, China; Paris, France; and Bacalar, Mexico. Consistently, Alaska remains near the top of this list.

Alaska is unique in that it's greatest draw for tourism is not man-made. It's a place of such unyielding natural beauty, such momentous landscapes, and such breathtaking scenery that I find myself utterly gushing descriptions when asked. So beautiful. So rugged. So majestic...there are not enough adjectives to describe the depth and breadth of my visceral appreciation. It stays with me, Alaska does. And for the life of me, it shouldn't.

It's too cold, too remote, too rainy, too many earthquakes, too expensive.

So, I am most fortunate that I always have reason to return. My step-daughter lives in Anchorage, so every other year we are able to indulge our appreciation of the place without financial commitment beyond airfare and a few restaurant meals.

She warns the four of us, traveling from this temperate state of Alabama, that the remoteness of Alaska's devastating beauty comes at a price. As a police officer in the highest crime city in the United States, she knows this well. As a decade-long resident, she has lived through her share of miserable winters in that "last frontier."

But we visitors have the luxury of seeing only the romance of the state. We overlook the harsh weather, the dark winters, the cold. But with good reason. As outsiders (and we are considered outsiders by Alaskans, hence the term 'lower 48'), we see everything in the best light. Literally, because we're only there during the near 24-hour days of summer.

Travel is usually divided into two categories: the familiar (visits to friends and family) and the foreign (travels to new places). For me at least, Alaska represents the best of both. No matter how many times I visit, it remains completely fresh and new. It yields great adventures, but provides the comforts of the familiar. It's remains the same, yet vastly different with each subsequent visit.

So every time, I enjoy it anew.

Recently, we were dining next to a couple that took up a conversation with us, which oddly turned to their travels in Alaska. As we shared stories of places familiar to all of us, the wife looked me squarely in the eye, challenging me to understand her love of the place.

"It calls you back, you know?"

Indeed I do. I most certainly do.

For Cecil

"The wild life of today is not ours to do with as we please. The original stock was given to us in trust for the benefit both of the present and the future. We must render an accounting of this trust to those who come after us."    
                                                                                ---Theodore Roosevelt

First, let me be clear. I do not oppose lawful hunting of game animals within reason and for consumption. I currently have a freezer full of deer meat, provided by a family friend who is an avid hunter. While there are always exceptions, I believe hunters as a whole to be the best examples of conservationists, and often have the keenest appreciation for the natural world and our place in it.

But the killing of Cecil the lion was not about hunting for meat or survival. It was about something else. It was about ego, and a cowardly one at that.

I understand, in theory at least, the symbolism of the hunt, the visceral charm of the kill. Hemingway is one of my favorite authors. Green Hills of Africa is one of my favorite books. Through his descriptions of big game hunting, the very foundation of a man's soul is laid bare with descriptions of a path cut through the menace of the natural world. It is gripping, and compelling in its raw beauty.

But I protest.

We do not live in a Hemingway novel. And Cecil lived on protected lands. He was lured to his death, then killed by a man illegally. And he's not alone. Tens of lions are killed illegally every year. To what end? Trophies.

So, I protest further.

Big cats offer a beauty to this world unlike any other, and killing them for any reason beyond threat to life or property seems counter-intuitive to me. The allure of such an animal resides in its natural beauty and wildness. Like a vapor in the wind, that essence will dissipate once it's needlessly stuffed and mounted for display. It is a false victory, and one that comes at great cost to the natural world.

One of the characters in my novel, Among the Grackle, is a photographer by profession who uses his familiarity with the African landscapes as a way to set upon poachers intent on killing elephants, rhinoceros, and lion. As a protector against those who would needlessly dispatch these animals, his passions lead him to commit acts that are morally questionable.

And while I don't condone his methods, my heart is with him in his mission because they do need our protection. They are dying. Their numbers are rapidly diminishing before the hubris of mankind.

For Cecil, it is too late. But his death stands as potent reminder there is much to be done, and too few to do it.

Before it's too late, please support: www.iapf.org

A Mother's Day Love Letter

Every Mother's Day, I take a moment to reflect on the past year with my children. I think about how much they have grown and matured in the preceding twelve months. Then I marvel at how the time between Mother's Days seems to shorten every year.

When we moved here nine years ago, my daughter was just a toddler. My son was still waiting to come home from the other side of the world.

Through the years, we have commemorated Mother's Day with all the traditional array of remembrances: fancy mother's day brunches, bouquets of flowers, chocolate-covered strawberries delivered to the front door, handmade cards and store bought cards filled with thoughtful sentiments and perfect expressions of childish gratitude. The earliest cards are signed in baby scratches, then shaky block letters, then practiced cursive.  

But my favorite Mother's Day memories are those that, for one reason or another, didn't follow the typical patterns of the day. Like the time at the Nashville Zoo, where I watched my kids slurping down snow cones as they argued whether the tapir had a nose or a trunk. Or the time we spent the afternoon picking strawberries, then came home to eat fresh strawberry shortcake while we watched our favorite Disney movies. Or the Mother's Day with both my children home and together as brother and sister for the first time, my family complete at last. We did nothing that year but lounge around the pool and grill hot dogs for lunch and dinner.

The years go too fast.

Where once I was changing diapers and exchanging baby teeth for money beneath pillows, I'm now counting the months until driver's permits, and high school proms, and college applications, and...goodbyes. Because I've become keenly aware of how little time I have left with them under my wings. Soon, very soon, they will be taking to the skies to follow the trajectory of their own dreams. 

So before another moment goes by, I want to say thank you. Thank you to my beautiful children for the opportunity to be your mother. Thank you for filling the deepest corners of my soul with your joy and wondrous imagination. Thank you for making me a better person, a better woman, a better daughter, a better friend, a better mother than I could have ever been if both of you hadn't blessed my life.

And thank you to the women who gave birth to my children, who chose to become ghosts within their distant memories. Our shared legacy is two lives rich in love and experience and opportunity and dreams fulfilled. Though we may never meet, we are forever bound together through our children.

When we watch movies, my daughter often checks on me:

"Mom, are you crying?"

Inevitably, the answer is yes, because I cry at movies. It doesn't even have to be a sad movie; it can be a comedy with a touching moment. (Seriously.)

But give me a movie that has themes of mother love, and I am a complete mess.
Maleficent had me in tears throughout, actually stifling outright sobs when the "no truer love" scene was presented as that of a mother to her child.

Finally! I thought. Finally, someone got it right!

But Actions Still Speak Louder...

My heart seems to be breaking a lot these days. And that's a good thing, I think. There's still hope if my heart can break.

It means my humanity is still in tact. It means anger and violence isn't the last measure of who we have become. It means that there is still love and hope in this world.

And that is good. Because more than anything else these days, the violence being perpetrated within the Middle East is breaking my heart. 

I am currently doing research for a novel. The topic requires that I alternate my research between the Bible and the Koran. While I have long known that Christians consider the rift between Islam and Christianity to trace back to the division of Abraham's sons, Ishmael (with Hagar) and Isaac (with Sarah), I recently learned that Muslims believe the same thing. The difference is, Muslims believe it was Ishmael that Abraham was to sacrifice, not Isaac as the Christians believe. Therefore, Ishmael is considered the true and rightful progenitor of God's people, not Isaac as is the Judeo-Christian tradition. Two sides of the same coin.

The basis for fifteen centuries of war and cultural mistrust.

I have never been accused of being reserved with my opinions. I most likely disagree politically and religiously with about fifty percent of people I encounter on a daily basis, including members of my own family. Yet, I have never once had the urge to take out my machete and lop off someone's head to prove my authority in, no matter the import. Nor have I ever come close to acquiring a level of insolence and rage (or devotion and loyalty, for that matter) that would inure me to the idea that such hand-crafted violence is a viable means to an end.

Let me make this clear: unless we've just entered the zombie apocalypse, beheading someone in the name of Allah is wrong. Period. 

Such actions are supposed to be scarce within the realm of human activities, so scarce that the perpetrators are viewed as emotional aberrations, sadistic individuals who stand apart from the general population. Yet lately, there appears to be a steady stream of hapless young men (and now to my great sadness, young women) who are literally seeking their own moral damnation by embracing this philosophy of violence and rage.

Yes, I know Islam has been hijacked by a bunch of charismatic zealots who are now bent on creating a world-dominating caliphate that wasn't in the original considerations of any self-respecting moderate Muslim. Yes, I've got it. You know what? I don't care.

Not after having to stomach footage of stonings, and beheadings, and so-called honor killings, all in the name of a religion that once produced some of the greatest mathematicians, astrologers, writers, artists, and inventions of the ages. It sickens me that such beauty and poetry and greatness is being erased both within Islam and before the rest of the world by this bloodthirst of the wicked few, and that too many within Islam stand by and let it happen.

These men and women who have chosen this dark path are dedicating their lives to revenge upon an enemy that is largely imagined. The reasons are many, but always the same. Such a reason is an excuse, a cop-out, a needless fury. Instead of seeking understanding and crafting lives full of promise and hope, they bury their souls in carnage and death. To what end?  

I am have the unique privilege of raising two children not born of me, but whom I carried within me for years before I met them. I know what it means to cross the globe in search of God's greatest treasure, to find your meaning in a child's eyes you have never before met but have always known. I know how unlikely the odds are, that among the billions, you find the one (or in my case, two) that was truly meant for you. Your child. Your soul. Your everything. 

They have always been, and will always be, my truest love.

But what if they had never existed? What if someone else had made a choice, a horrible choice, before I had a chance to arrive and bring each of them to where they were destined to be. What then? Would I have gone on searching? Or lived empty, forever?

But someone didn't make that choice. Instead, a selfless choice was made. A painful sacrifice, for which I am the eternally grateful beneficiary.  

We cannot know the impact our actions have on others, but we can at least understand that they do have impact. The more severe the act, the more severe its swath of destruction. Death is only momentarily visited on the dying, but those that remain (both the persecutors and the persecuted) will suffer well beyond that fateful moment. 

Like the Twilight Zone episode: Push this button, someone you don't know will die, and you'll receive a million dollars. So you push the button. Then the man hands over the million, takes the device from your grasp, and he promises to bring it to someone you don't know. Suddenly, to our deepest horror, the game is understood.

Our actions toward others determine our own fate.

In the end, the tyranny of terror won't hold. The persecuted will eventually rally. What may seem to the executioner to be submission is actually the stillness that foretells a gathering strength.

They will rise. They always rise. Then more blood will water the earth. Some will be deserving of their fate, but many more will be simply snatched up in the wash of retaliation and counter-retaliation. A vast and terrible dance played out against the promise of what might have been, if only one, or another, or yet another had chosen to act differently.

And so my heart will break. Over and over. Again and again.