I should have left an hour earlier. That’s what I said to myself when I was in bumper-to-bumper traffic for almost an hour, just after leaving Jacksonville, Florida with a seven-hour drive ahead. My rental car was due back at Raleigh-Durham airport by 8:00 p.m. and I didn’t want to add an extra day of … Continue reading Happy Wanderer
#solojourneys
Bridge St. Breakfast: People in Our Path
Saturday morning of my Florida pilgrimage began in the usual way; taking my morning walk and praying for God to bless me and the people in my path. Starting with this intention fills me with curiosity about who I will encounter along the way. While most of the day would be spent with my cousin, … Continue reading Bridge St. Breakfast: People in Our Path
Celebrate Your Life
In four days, I’m having another birthday. My husband, David is just five months older than me and once we hit sixty, several years ago, he took on a particularly disenchanted attitude about having birthdays, saying he just wanted to “forget about it.” But I came back at him with, “You should celebrate every year … Continue reading Celebrate Your Life
Stepping Over the Threshold
One week from today, I’ll leave on my yearly pilgrimage. For months those days have been blocked out on my calendar with very little thought about the actual journey. Now that I’m almost one year into my retirement from school nursing, I find that my life has been filled with new activities to take the … Continue reading Stepping Over the Threshold
Better than a Pen Pal
One of my favorite classes in elementary school was geography, especially in Miss Harrington’s fourth grade. I loved how we learned about the lives of people in faraway places. Back in that day, we would say they lived ‘overseas’ and that seemed like an insurmountable distance. The only people in my family that had traveled … Continue reading Better than a Pen Pal
Sedona: A Serendipitous Journey
Taking yearly pilgrimages started after my serendipitous journey to Sedona. What made that such a pivotal point, was the juxtaposition of entrapment with freedom. During the preceding eight months of cancer treatment, I’d been closely monitored; by the clinical trials research company I worked for to see if I was able to do my job; … Continue reading Sedona: A Serendipitous Journey
True Nature
I spotted the girl from across the room. She was the one, looking unabashedly into the camera, with eyes that are serious, like they’re gazing into your soul. I was at the Art Cats Gallery in Petoskey, Michigan during my solo journey several summers ago. The photograph had been applied to a fiber art collage … Continue reading True Nature
The Rhythm of the Day
I arrived at the two-week writer’s residency in central Kentucky, expecting to have to juggle my time between farm chores, shared kitchen duties with fellow artists, providing a community educational program, and writing. But when I got there, nothing was as I expected. The herd of cows had been sold, there was no garden, and … Continue reading The Rhythm of the Day
Not Like Me
I watched that ‘hunk of burnin’ love’ from across the crowd. It had been a fun day, riding my bike around Mackinac Island in northern Michigan and then happening upon the outside summer concert. I wasn’t content to just watch ‘Elvis,’ I wanted to get up close to him. As soon as he finished his … Continue reading Not Like Me
If I Live to be 100
It was a lazy Sunday afternoon on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. I was fifty-two and staying at my first hostel while on my solo journey that June. Since Sunday had always been a family day, I felt drawn to visit one of the sites on the island, Polly Hill Arboretum, that reminded me of a … Continue reading If I Live to be 100
