After we deposited our firstborn in Northwest Arkansas for college a year ago, my blog went dark. Though the RV remained mostly stabled in my sister-in-law’s barn, we managed some small adventures. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to write about them.  My sense that the party-was-over stubbornly sullied many lovely moments.  I missed Jane, and a much enjoyed season in the life of our family had ended. My anxiety was confirmed when she came home at Christmas, delightful as ever, but palpably distinct from that former girl, whose world had been primarily shaped by the rest of us.

I tried to make allowances for sadness and track my progress back and forth across the stages of grief according to Maslow, but somewhere along the way, I gave up on “healthy” grieving and camped out in despair.  Eventually, I was comforting myself with food and entertainment, picking fights (or avoiding all company), and finding it difficult to sit through corporate worship.  I couldn’t even fully enjoy Jane’s summer return. Finally, an email-devotional entitled “How to Fight for Joy” caught my eye.  It was a list of strategies for addressing depression–a summary of the John Piper book When I Don’t Desire God.  His book asserts that joy must be continually pursued by practicing spiritual disciplines—contemplating scripture, praying, participating in community, enjoying creation.  It was not new information, but the idea of actively going to battle against my dark mood was appealing. More importantly, it reminded me that my soul was made to be delighted by Christ, and nothing else—even really good things—can satisfy me. For a few weeks I flew high, but as the date for Jane’s return to school approached, resentment crept in again.  Waging war is exhausting.

In two cars brimming with well-wishers and Jane’s “necessities,” we set out once again for Siloam Springs.  Tom and Jake stayed behind because their classes had already started, but we substituted Cousin Faith and a well-worn couch (for Jane’s new digs).  As I’ve mentioned before, driving through the Panhandle of Texas and Southern Oklahoma is not for the faint of heart, but as the drab, no-nonsense plains gave way to green, hilly pastureland, I became a little giddy with anticipation.  Instead of feeling last year’s anxiety over the unknown, we were excited to return to a charming, familiar town full of people who made us welcome. Jane genuinely enjoyed every class she took last year, often calling home to discuss what she was learning or debate some idea she was considering, and this year’s classes sounded just as interesting. She was moving into a townhouse with seven other girls and making plans to “join” and “try-out” and “apply for.” It was astonishing to discover I was looking forward to the new school year.

Downtown Siloam Springs

After unloading in Siloam Springs, we drove up to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville.  Jane’s boyfriend, Teague, had worked there all summer, and he gave us an “insider’s” tour of the sprawling campus, which is as beautiful outside as the artwork inside.

An endangered New Jersey Frank Lloyd Wright house that was rescued and reassembled on the museum property

Dale Chihuly’s glass sculptures were hidden along a wooded path like giant Easter eggs for a special summer exhibit.

Since we were only a few hours away from the upcoming solar eclipse’s path of totality, we decided to drive to Kansas City and spend the night with some Lubbock friends, the Obenhauses, who’d moved over the summer.

We enjoyed getting a taste of their leafy, stroll-able, 1920’s Midwestern neighborhood.  But there was a problem: rain in the forecast.  Eager visitors like us had flocked to town (KC had sold out of Moon Pies), but because of the weather, it was unlikely anyone would be able to view the eclipse.

Having purchased appropriate eyewear (my mother called me repeatedly to double check the manufacturer, ISO, and product numbers on our eclipse glasses) and gotten so close to the action, we were not willing to give up the quest. Brandon and I studied traffic patterns and weather radar, trying to guess where the clouds and crowds would break.  Early Monday morning, we drove east supplied with PopTarts, peanut butter, water, and toilet paper (in case the predicted traffic gridlock stranded us in rural Missouri). We trolled music apps for sun-related songs to inspire us.

We pressed on past one town after another, even skipping the very tempting party at the stately, domed capitol building perched above the Missouri River in Jefferson City. As the weather maps updated, we could see a narrow band of clear skies in a rural area outside St. Louis, but if we overshot it, we’d be back in cloud-covered territory again. Glancing across a long open pasture, we noticed church at its edge. The sky above the area was a happy, cloudless blue. “Maybe that’s our spot,” we both wondered aloud. Brandon turned around and followed a dirt road off the main highway to St. John’s Lutheran Church of Boeuf Township, where the Reverend Paul Landgraf, oblivious to the August heat in wrist-to-toe black and a crisp clerical collar, invited us to watch the eclipse. He and several parishioners were finishing up a Bible study. Across the parking lot, an amateur astronomer from New York City was setting up a camera and binoculars, and some metalwork artists from Iowa were testing out their welding helmets. We donned our eclipse glasses and gazed up with caution. Already, a black apple-bite was missing from the sun.

An eclipse-ready sign above the bathrooms in the church’s fellowship hall

Eclipse watchers in welder’s helmets

Peter Tagatac, of the New York City Amateur Astronomy Association, teaching us about the different types of eclipses

For the next half-hour, we exchanged stories with our fellow stargazers, fiddled with a homemade pinhole camera, and looked for crescent shadows on the ground.  Peter Tagatac, the astronomy enthusiast, shared his equipment and expertise with delighted children (and adults).  As the crescent of sunlight still visible narrowed, we noticed an eerie change in the light, as if we were looking at each other through a sepia-toned filter.  The air cooled. Cicadas, who’d been singing with gusto all around us, suddenly went silent.  The sky grew darker and darker, and our group murmured to each other in excitement, eyes glued to the sky.  “This is really gonna happen,” an astonished onlooker whispered.

When a bright ring glowed in the black sky, we pulled off our glasses and admired the eclipse with naked eyes, almost-strangers marveling to each other without inhibition. To the right of the sun, Venus popped out brightly. Confused crickets struck up a nighttime chorus. I may have cried a little.  And bounced.

Too soon, a bit of light peeked out on the other side of the moon, and all the preceding events began to unfurl in reverse.  We were most amazed by the power of the sun when a thin sliver of sunlight immediately brightened the dark landscape around us.

We watched a while longer, but conscious of the long drive back across the state, we finally began to pack up and say our goodbyes. Even the congested highways couldn’t shake us from our state of happy wonder, and when we finally crawled into bed back in Arkansas, we were still smiling.

This morning we helped Jane move into her townhouse, lingering longer than we should have over questions of curtain height and rug placement. No one really wanted to leave.

In the car, we replayed our favorite eclipse road trip song “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles. It most evoked the joy of that first bit of sunshine bursting out and lighting up the eclipse-induced night. I sang along through my tears, but in the moment, I identified more with the lyrics of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”  (That song is a good deal longer than I recalled and a perfectly campy 80’s lament, so I will spare you the link to the video.)

I have always considered myself a cheerful person, but I am beginning to think melancholy will be a continual companion as I grow older, particularly since I am so prone to base my happiness on a very specific, fleeting set of circumstances.  Struggling against sadness may always be a battle, and the sunshine I seek may be elusive until the cloudless day of heaven.  Still, a passage from Micah that I discovered this summer reminds me that I do not fight alone:

“Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;

when I fall, I shall rise;

when I sit in darkness,

the Lord will be a light to me.

I will bear the indignation of the
Lord

because I have sinned against him,

until he pleads my cause

and executes judgment for me.

He will bring me out into the light;

I will look upon his vindication.”

At low points during our travels, I’ve wondered, “Why are we doing this?” Especially when the source of the dark moment was a sullen, tearful, or frightened child, the patent “It’s for them!” didn’t always sound convincing. This summer, I blushed to see an answer to my question in print when I read Adam Gopnik’s Through the Children’s Gate: A Home in New York. In one chapter, Gopnik describes the earnest, hilarious efforts of private school parents to produce the best-yet kindergarten production of Peter Pan. The parents are captivated with the idea of making their little actors fly on stage: “The flying children haunt us; we see them hovering overhead at night, free of wires and entanglements, launched without obvious trickery or cheap effects.” The ridiculousness of the situation is not lost on Gopnik. He asks, “But do the children really want to fly? This is kindergarten, after all, they’re doing well just to tie their shoes and use the bathroom. Is the whole elaborate apparatus we construct ‘to keep from disappointing them’ for us or them?”

It’s a question I frequently ask, not only when planning routine-disrupting, year-long excursions across the country, but whenever I’m slogging through the various rituals of “the good life” as prescribed by suburban American culture. Is all of this necessary? Gopnik continues, worrying that the child’s response may not be what we hope for at all, but something more like: “You made me fly, and there I was, so happy on the ground.” Gopnik has hit the mark; this is the exact response of one of my children to our great adventure. He tells people who ask how he liked our travels that he will never leave Lubbock again.

Sometimes, it’s delightful to find kinship with a character or situation in a book; other times it’s horribly convicting. “Oh, no,” one shudders, stomach sinking, “That’s me.” I laughed to see myself in Gopnik’s ambitious kindergartener parents, but I’m shaken to think about the implications of another book we listened to recently. Toward the end of our final road trip, we played some stories to prepare for the upcoming start of school. Tom and Jake will read Inferno this year, and I thought listening to Rod Dreher’s How Dante Can Save Your Life would help them see how relevant the poem can be to modern readers. What I didn’t realize is that the context for the story is Dreher’s personal battle against making an idol of his family. In the book, Dreher confesses that he has made family relationships, rather than God, the object of his worship to the point that he is physically ill. I’m not new to this dilemma! I have a difficult time loving a thing without enthroning it in my heart. Think Gollum, moaning after his “precious.”

Had the prospect of family change–Jane leaving for college–so terrified me that my instinct was to shoo everyone into an escape pod and exit the situation? I thought this must be at least a little true. It didn’t invalidate the experience; there were many rewards over the course of this year, but it disturbed me, nonetheless. And now, like Job, the thing I dreaded was upon me.

The week before Jane left was mercifully busy, and the parties, visits, notes, and texts from well-wishers were a soothing balm. I kept my tears in check.

Like many parents, I slept more soundly before having children. Now, I often wake in the night, for no apparent reason, and feel compelled to check on the kids sleeping down the hall. There I was, at 4 A.M. on Jane’s last morning at home, peering worriedly into her dark room. It was still remarkably messy despite being almost empty! This made me smile, but I couldn’t go back to sleep.

The narrow ribbon of highway winding through the Texas Panhandle is loooong. We drove in silence for awhile, still recovering from the first wave of grief that followed last goodbyes to Tom and Jake when Jane dropped them off at school, and the waving, receding figure of a friend, who lingered in the driveway as we pulled away. I kept thinking that I should be imparting some nuggets of wisdom, since it was our last stretch of time together for awhile, but nothing sounded right in my head, so we turned on the radio and sang loudly. Thank goodness for 80’s pop.

As we pulled up to Jane’s dorm, cheers erupted, and a hoard of undergraduates surrounded our cars. In thirty seconds, Jane’s belongings were lifted from the vehicles and deposited in her room. Buoyed on their cheerful greetings, we floated into her room and rushed along the rapids of freshman orientation. It was loud and friendly and busy. No one seemed to notice that Jane trailed an entourage of small children wherever she went. We met nervous parents, giddy students and cheerleading RAs, DDs, and OLs. A staff member, who used to work with a friend at our Lubbock church, stopped by the room to meet Jane and invite her over for dinner. The owner of a shop we were visiting downtown offered her a part-time job. Strangers everywhere, on campus and off, said how glad they were she’d come. The much-adored president of the University, Dr. Pollard, provided one of his signature welcomes, quietly inspiring and reassuring.

 

Last Spring Break, Dr. Pollard’s face was printed and pasted on sticks so that students could take him on vacation.

 

“This is like a big hug,” Brandon commented in amazement, remembering the sink-or-swim introduction to our big state university. (Which we both loved, by the way. But oh, the allure of a small, liberal arts college. They don’t have everything, but what they do have, they do very, very well.)

I went to bed that first night after drop-off reasonably pleased. Getting Jane settled had been a happy whirlwind. But about 4 A.M., I awoke again. Jane and her roommate, Grace, had bunked their beds, and Jane took the top. Just before we left her room, I noticed there was no guardrail for the top bunk like the ones we have at home. I lay awake, sure that Jane had fallen from her bed. Was she on the cold floor, right now, paralyzed or dead? Perhaps she was minutes from disaster, and if I texted a warning now, I could prevent the fall? Or what if my text startled her and caused her to fall? Now I was paralyzed. I poked at Brandon, who was snoring contently. He listened to my concerns with genuine sympathy, I think, but he really was very groggy. That left me with only God to appeal to. God, who I know loves Jane and me, but who also seems to work important growth through the very terrors I try so hard to avoid. Tricky. Finally, I went back to sleep with Monday’s handwriting assignment, which I’d given Georgia (cursive) and Nan (print), running through my brain: I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety. It’s a psalm of David.

Feeding the campus deer, Doug. I posted a photo of Doug and Jane on Instagram, and some folks thought Doug was stuffed. Doug is alive and well, patrolling the campus. He’s also featured on a series of tshirts by a local screen printer.

Pete approved of the excellent tree-climbing possibilities at JBU.

“Our” inn at the springs

All the younger kids liked Siloam Springs. Nan, especially. As soon as she got out of the car, she announced, “Is this it? I LOVE it. I’m definitely going to college here.” I’m choosing to dwell on the cuteness, rather than the possible reality, of this statement for now.

In typical Mulkey fashion, we were so busy enjoying our inn room that we missed a couple of parent events, one of which instructed parents that it was now time to leave. Oops.

Back in Lubbock the next evening, I stood in the doorway of Jane’s room, which was soon to be overtaken by eager brothers who’ve been (in their opinions) stacked like sardines in one room for twelve years. A low moan rose out of my belly, one that’s only familiar from the few times in my life when death has visited me closely, and I began to cry. Should I be this overwrought? I wasn’t, like David, being called to entrust my child to God in death, merely to sleep peacefully in Texas while she sleeps in Arkansas. Yet, I couldn’t shake free of fear.

I watched nesting birds fly in and out of the eaves outside Jane’s window. I hate fledgling time. It makes me terribly uncomfortable watching all those ill-equipped babies hopping around on the ground and flapping weak, uncertain wings. I keep my cat on house arrest, and I wonder how the bird mothers can push them out of the nest. I know, as well as their mamas do, that they can’t survive in the nest forever. They have to fly.

How to cope with the sadness that has inevitably arrived, despite my 10,000-mile long escape plan? Then David arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, and changed his apparel, and came into the house of the LORD, and worshiped: then he came to his own house; and when he required, they set bread before him, and he did eat. (2 Samuel 12)

In his welcome to students and parents, Dr. Pollard addressed the anxieties of leaving home and starting something new. “Be at peace,” he urged, “You are a beloved child of God.” These are not idle words; Dr. Pollard, like so many other parents, has actually walked David’s road: I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.

So, I will wash my face and worship. I’ll teach math and reading and go to swim team practice and football games in Texas. Jane will wash her face and worship. She will go to class and work and make friends in Arkansas. We will be at peace. We are beloved children of God.

If you’d like to know more about Jane’s college, John Brown University, here’s a link to an article written by its president, Dr. Charles Pollard:

This is not Disneyland

and some fun youtube videos:

 

 

Mount Saint Helens was a highly anticipated stop for the whole family.  Brandon and I remember the news coverage of the eruption from when we were little, and the kids, well, what kid doesn’t love an active volcano?  The park was full of enthusiastic, young rangers, who bubbled over with tasty, geological tidbits.  While there was plenty of discussion about the scale and drama of the 1980 eruption, many presentations focused on the astounding, almost immediate explosions of life that followed the devastation. Prairie Lupines bloomed, for instance, in the nutrient-poor pumice, fixing nitrogen in the soil and preparing the ground for the return of other plants. Wildflowers blanketed the ground, and it felt like Bluebonnet time in Texas.

Here’s an interview with some folks who were flying over Mt. St. Helens when the 1980 eruption occurred:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/witness-archive-2012/id1003007466?mt=2&i=368638068

In Portland the next day, we visited a church Jane read about in byFaith, our denominational magazine.  Nathan Lewis, the pastor, had written an article about the church’s efforts to be good neighbors to a nearby Islamic Center. Here’s a link to the story:

http://byfaithonline.com/can-muslims-and-christians-be-good-neighbors/

I often describe myself as a “cradle Christian”. For as long as I can remember, church-life has been the backdrop of my memories. However, it took a long time for me to understood why corporate worship is so essential to my spiritual growth. As we stood among strangers, speaking familiar words of praise, confession, forgiveness, and assurance, I was suddenly connected to a much larger body of worshippers, near, far, past, present, and future, all acknowledging a worthy king.  It made me long for heaven.  It also made me want to get back to my particular band of worshippers in Lubbock.  “I think we should try to make it home in time for church next Sunday,” I announced as we loaded up in the RV.  A cheer rang out.  The race was on.

To fit the remaining ten days of our trip into six, we began cutting or abbreviating our Oregon and Northern California plans. We satisfied ourselves with the mountains, rainforests, and beaches we’d already visited in Washington, and we gave up coastal redwoods for the giant sequoias we could examine at Yosemite. We skipped the lava tubes at Lassen when we discovered there are also some in New Mexico. Instead of camping at Crater Lakes, we made a brief stop. We almost regretted the out-of-the-way drive until we peaked over the edge of the crater. Six miles long, 1,900 feet deep, and just this blue. Breathtaking!

The kids are studying the Medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation periods in history and literature this Fall, so we were fortunate to see a production of Hamlet at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.  The acting was fabulous, and occasional gloomy choruses accompanied by electric guitar added a gothic-rock mood to the show.  We’d listened to Charles and Mary Lamb’s story version of Hamlet on the drive down, so even the little girls could follow the play.  Brandon, who prefers a story with a happy ending, was disappointed that despite the updates to the play, Hamlet still did not redeem his mom, patch up things with Laertes and Ophelia, and win back his crown.

Just outside San Francisco, we spent a couple of nights with our friends, the Shargels.  We last saw Lynn and Steve seventeen years ago when we passed through Jackson, MS on our first move out to Lubbock.  What a fun reunion!  We were delighted to see our kids become fast friends.

The Shargels live on the campus of the school where Steve teaches.  It’s on a hill overlooking the ocean. Fog and cool temperatures roll in each afternoon, and a sharp, sweet scent of eucalyptus and pine hangs in the air.

I trimmed our San Francisco tour down to one day, and the Shargels, a little horrified at the thought of our trying to park an RV in the city, lent us their vehicle.

After watching Escape From Alcatraz, the kids are still debating the fate of some of the inmates.

Sea lions and sword-swallowers at Pier 39

Jake, showing off some of his card tricks, in the magic shop

In Chinatown, we peeked into a fortune cookie factory in Ross Alley and found good dim sum (Thanks, Emily Angehr, for training us young).

CRIME…

Usually, there is a point on these trips when my plans are thwarted in some way, and I REALLY lose my cool. This time that moment occurred on a street corner in Chinatown. It may have colored my family’s vision of San Francisco forever.

In order to get to all the places I wanted us to see, I purchased all-day transit passes.  I fretted over the expense, but concluded it would be worthwhile because a single ride on the cable cars is pretty pricey, but we’d make up the cost hopping on and off all along the line from Fisherman’s Wharf to Chinatown, and then we’d take a bus to Golden Gate Bridge, farther away.  What I did not anticipate is that once we got off the initial car, it would be impossible to get all eight of us back on a cable car for the return ride at the height of tourist season.  We stood on the hot street corner, full of Chinese food and watching one overloaded trolley after another pass without stopping.  I fumed as time slipped by, and I mentally conceded the Golden Gate Bridge walk. We walked up a steep hill to another cable car line.  They were full, too. I was so angry, both at my miscalculation and the MUNI sales charlatan, that I may have stomped my foot at a cable driver and cried.  (It’s all a little hazy, but I’m sure my kids could write a book about how not to respond to disappointment.)  Finally, we decided to walk back, and as I struggled to calm down and enjoy the moment, I realized we were seeing all kinds of neighborhood details we’d have missed from the cable car.  Soon, I was embarrassed by my nasty, public display. How will I ever convince my children to exercise self-control after that hissy fit?

The little girls recognized spots like Lombard Street from the cartoon versions in Inside Out.

When we’d walked almost all the way back to the wharf, an absolutely unmerited miracle occurred.  There was room for us on a cable car! In my zeal to board, the kids say I elbowed in front of some foreign tourists, who are probably still cursing my American entitlement attitude.  I waved my all-day passes at the attendant and cried, “This is our last chance!” We squeezed in, Brandon and Tom clinging to the outside of the car, and we swooped up and down rollercoaster-style from Lombard to the Bay.

…AND PUNISHMENT…

Steve’s mom, Marilyn, is a most delightful Californian, gregarious and outdoorsy. “And what did you learn from that experience?” she’d ask one after another of my kids after thoughtfully interviewing each about his likes and dislikes. She did not approve of attempting to grasp San Francisco in one day, and she was proved right, as my ugly-tourist episode evidenced.  But Yosemite in one day?  That idea was anathema. She could not help but warn against it.  I contended that we were tired, anxious about the start of school, and missing our friends and family, but she shook her head.  I stubbornly pressed on, but I paid the price.

While we drove through the Yosemite Valley, oohing and aahing at the skyscraper granite, I read aloud from a biography of John Muir, champion of wild places. “We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every nerve and cell of us.”  Suddenly, I was aquiver!  Was Muir driving home his point from the Great Beyond? I dropped the book and fled to the RV toilet.

The Mariposa Grove, home of the largest sequoias at Yosemite was closed, but a ranger directed us to another grove on the road to Tioga Pass. By the time we reached the trailhead, I felt a little better.  We filled our water bottles and loped leisurely downward in search of big trees, taking little note of the ragged faces of the returning hikers we passed along the trail.  Soon, however, John Muir’s Revenge visited me again.  I glanced around desperately for some off-trail privacy.  There were a few broad-leaf trees, but I didn’t recognize them.  Could they be trusted in an emergency?  “Between every two pines is a doorway to new worlds,” Muir urged. Finally, I located a clump of dogwoods, and telltale bits of toilet tissue assured me that I was not the first to seek shelter among them.

We reached the end of the trail, all of us a little more winded than we expected for a downhill hike, and I pretty dehydrated after two more off-trail excursions.  Immediately, we noticed just how “up” we had to go to get out.  I labored along, pausing every few minutes to gasp for air and wondering if this sojourn was an exercise in penance for my San Francisco sins or my irreverent attempt to whisk the family through Muir’s favorite haunt.  I would not escape so easily now, I lamented.  In fact, since I’d already left so much of myself behind in the woods, why not just drop down dead and become food for the sequoias? Perhaps this would satisfy Mr. Muir? “Another day in the Sierras in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed…” he seemed to cajole.

“Just toss some brush over me and keep going,” I urged Jane, who had a hand on my back by now, pushing me forward.

Eventually, we made it back to the RV.  Having chastised me for my arrogant haste, now Yosemite delighted us with views of sparkling lakes and dramatic glacier carvings as we drove through the high country toward Mammoth Lakes.

Smoke from a fire burning beyond the hills

…AND GRACE

Washed, fed, and rested, we steeled ourselves for the long two days of driving it would take to make it back to Lubbock.  Despite our united home-going efforts, coexisting in a stinky RV on leftover provisions is a test. We were in our pew on Sunday morning with plenty to confess, and thankfully,  we found sufficient mercy to cover us.

Ghost towns and Joshua trees and miles and miles of quiet on the road home

My mother’s cousin, Suzy, and her husband, Pat, moved from Virginia to California in the 1970’s. They enjoyed city-living in San Francisco, finished medical school, and traveled with friends. But when it was time for a family, they joined the “urban refugees” of that day and made their home in a rural logging town in need of an internist. Suzy worked in the school system and raised two boys, and the family’s spare time was filled with hiking, mountain biking, swimming, and skiing. Suzy and Pat hosted us at their lake house, entertaining us with stories of their adventures in small-town Washington and delighting the kids with water escapades.“Uncle” Billy, friends with Suzy and Pat since they met 40 years ago in Bolivia, joined in the fun.

Learning about the northwestern logging industry

Gorgeous (and slightly terrifying) drive through the Cascades

In Seattle, we started with a tour under the city. The first years of the city were a muddy mess. The town flooded daily with the tides; sewage and seawater created deadly pools in deep wagon wheel ruts. When Seattle burned in 1889, the city constructed buildings of brick, at least three stories tall. Then they built the streets at second-story height. (For the two years until sidewalks joined the streets and buildings, ladies climbed ladders to reach the street after shopping.) Under the raised sidewalks, the lower channels remain, and we wandered through them, listening to stories of scrappy Seattle, a town that avoided financial ruin in the late 1800s by outfitting Klondike-bound prospectors with gold-sniffing gophers and stolen house pets, like Buck from The Call of the Wild, for use as sled dogs. The city improved its earnings from $325, 000 to $25 000,000 in eight months. Our tour guide reminded us that Boeing in 1916, Microsoft in the 1979, and Amazon in the 1994 are evidence of the continuing legacy of financial genius in Seattle.

Glass prisms in the sidewalk above light underground lanes

Underneath the J&M, where Wyatt Earp introduced faro to Seattle, and Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain brought new sounds.

As we wandered the lively, green city, I marveled at the gritty determination that possessed the early settlers of the Pacific northwest. One of my favorite books about this time is The Living by Annie Dillard. It’s a big, sprawling adventure story, and Dillard’s descriptions of the area made me long to see it for myself, but a reader shouldn’t get too attached to any one character; the environment is so harsh, they almost all succumb!

The car-crushing Fremont troll under the Aurora Ave. bridge

Excellent people-watching opportunities at the fish market

Captured by a savvy saleswoman, we left with a pound of chocolate pasta!

Here’s a fish thrower:

From Seattle, we boarded a ferry to Bainbridge Island, and from there crossed a few more big bridges, to reach the Olympic Peninsula. There we explored foggy beaches, tide pools rich with odd sea creatures, soggy temperate rainforests, and dry mountain meadows dotted with lavender and Roosevelt elk. We listened to The Boys in the Boat, the story of the working-class Washington rowers who win gold at the Berlin Olympic Games. Even better than the tense sports drama of the story is the transformation of Joe Rantz, a young man who has survived the poverty of the Great Depression and abandonment by his family by steely self-reliance, into a member of a team that performs in absolute cooperation.

Ruby Beach

Crescent Lake

Oil-distilling contraption at a lavender farm

Whale watching in the Strait of Juan de Fuca

We saw lots of humpback and gray whales. When one giant followed  alongside our boat for awhile, just underneath the surface of the water, I may have jumped up and down, clapping my hands in the style of a small child.

Visiting national parks during the centennial celebration and in the middle of the summer is not a solitary endeavor. (Thankfully, as it turned out.)  Jackson, WY, fifty miles from Yellowstone, was the closest camping I could find.  A motel with an RV park in the back grudgingly granted us a little sliver of earth next to the road, and we were glad to get it.  Hearing horror stories about the crowds in the park, we rose before the sun to ensure a good spot in front of Old Faithful.  We hadn’t calculated the fifty miles further we’d have to drive to reach the geysers and thermal pools, but we had a favorite western, Ralph Moody’s Little Britches, to entertain us as we drove along with our faces pressed to the windows.

My dad worked in the Tetons for two summers during college.  He said he mostly cleaned toilets and emptied garbage cans, but he had a lot of fun.  “What kind of fun?” I asked, as we were planning the trip.  “The kind of fun college kids have,” he winked. I was a little alarmed at this vague confession, but he smoothly filled in the murky blanks for us.  “I was a bad guy in a Wild West shoot-out for the tourists.” He demonstrated a dramatic demise for the grandkids.

The brilliant blues in these thermal pools are created by heat-loving blue algae.

Since we’re  visiting several parks on this trip, we decided to focus on the geothermal features: hot springs, geysers, mud pots, and fumeroles. We followed a park restaurant employee, who seemed to have inside information on when then geysers would go off. She’d brought along an umbrella and a fold-out chair. “When I’m not working, I like to watch water boil,” she quipped.

Our Lubbock friends, Kyla and Tom Sell, were traveling back from Montana as we were heading up from Utah.  We had decided to meet at Yellowstone and see the park together.  Again, we underestimated the size of the 3,500 square-mile park. Approaching from opposite entrances, there was no way to spend a whole day together, but we did finally meet up in the afternoon at Old Faithful.  

30,000 people per day visit Old Faithful.

We made plans to go rafting together the next day, since both families would spend the night in Jackson. Then we headed back to the campground, while the Sells did a little more Yellowstone exploring.  A few miles out of the Old Faithful parking lot, an approaching car honked at us.  “Do you think we forgot to strap something down?” I wondered aloud.  There was a paved pull-off area just ahead, so we stopped to check the RV.  Everything looked fine.  As Brandon began to roll back onto the road, the engine croaked out death cries and came to a halt. “That sounded bad,” he said, and climbed out to check under the hood, his head already hanging.  He came back with a large, broken circle of metal.  “This is the main pulley for the engine.  We’re in trouble.” It was about 3:30 in the afternoon.

One of things that made our rendezvous with the Sells difficult was the lack of cell phone service anywhere in Yellowstone park.  The boys stood on top of the RV hoping to catch the attention of a stray satellite that might communicate our problem to some helper out there in the universe.  I prayed with the same goal in mind.  Finally, Brandon decided he should hike the three miles back to a service station we’d seen at Old Faithful.  I opened a bottle of wine and started a movie for the rest of the family.

An hour and a half later, salvation appeared in the form of Tom Sell.  As they were leaving the geyser area, the Sells spotted Brandon and Jacob walking along the road, turned around, and picked them up.  Tom emptied his vehicle of his own family, and drove to the RV to pick us up. The Sells reloaded and squeezed the four members of our family with the skinniest hips into the car along with them for the two hour drive back to Jackson.  They fed everyone and rode around vainly searching for a vacant hotel room for our family. The rest of us made the slow trek back to Jackson in not one, but two tow trucks. (I should mention that the reason we stuff ourselves into this tiny RV instead of, say, our regular vehicle pulling a trailer, is because I’m terrified of towing.) The tow truck from the Yellowstone service station could only haul the RV to the edge of the park.  Another truck from Jackson reloaded the RV on a precariously high trailer and bounced down the hills at an achingly slow pace, but with no injury to us or the RV. The driver said their company picks up about seven vehicles every day during the high season.  Once the RV was resting at the Dodge service station in town, Tom Sell picked us all up and deposited us at the motel in front of our RV park, which miraculously received two room cancellations just as we finally came into cell phone range outside Jackson.

Everyone crawled into bed around 12:30, and we went to sleep immediately.  We were tired, and worried, and pretty sunburned, as well, but this trip was not gonna beat us.  We were determined to go rafting at 7 the next morning.

You’d think the Sells would have had enough of the Mulkeys at this point, but they pride themselves on conducting their vacations in true Griswold style.  Apparently, we were the cherry on top of an already ignominious trip of their own.  They picked us up from our motel, undeterred by a sky smokey from the three fires burning around the Jackson area, and we embarked on a whitewater escapade.  We were sore afterwards, but more from belly-laughing than working hard to paddle.

We napped the rest of the day, and then we met at Teton Village to ride the gondola up the mountain and eat supper.  It’s the most fun I’ve ever had being stranded.

The next day we rested, and low and behold, the RV was fixed. When we picked it up, the repairman said that in all his years of working on these engines, he’d never seen that part break.  “It’s a miracle the replacement only had to ship to us from Denver, ” he mused, “It ought to have been in Germany.”

A day of driving brought us to the Flathead Lake region of Montana. The lake was trimmed in cherry orchards, and we made ourselves a little sick feasting at a roadside stand.

Shuttling two million visitors through Glacier National Park within a two-month window is a daunting project. Since our RV was too big for the narrow Going-to-the-Sun road that winds across the park, we parked at McDonald Lake and joined the masses on buses, which toiled up and down the road all day, pausing at trailheads and scenic overlooks. In the crowds, we met a couple who have a brother in Jane’s major at JBU, and at our campground, we were surrounded by a large group of UGA students on a geology trip.

Jackson Glacier, one of 48 little alpine glaciers. (The park is named for the giant glaciers that carved the park.)

The girls were delighted by all the mountain goats grazing along the trail to Hidden Lake.

Besides the gorgeous landscape, my favorite part of Glacier was chatting with the local folks, who drive the park shuttles. One man said his great-great grandfather came to Canada from France in the 1870s, and he trapped his way to Montana to homestead. He married into the Blackfeet tribe. Another woman’s family emigrated from Sweden, but most of the family couldn’t tolerate Montana and settled in Kansas, instead. She drives a school bus and works in home healthcare after the tourists depart. She said her father worked side jobs in construction in order to hold onto their little sheep farm. “He used to say ‘Flathead is a millionaire’s paradise and a working man’s nightmare.’ That was the 1950s. Not much has changed,” she sighed.

Day 1:  Groggy after a late night of RV doctoring with Jason (installing a new battery and an alternator), Brandon chauffeured us west toward Mesa Verde National Park in the southwest corner of Colorado.  The little girls watched eagerly at the windows for “purple mountain majesty,” but the rest of us were preoccupied with home.  We were determined to take one final road trip together, the northwest loop we had delayed last fall because of forest fires.  However, our minds had already moved on to the next thing–resuming the routine of school and church and work.  It was hard to leave Lubbock.  That first night in the campground, we snapped and grumbled in the hot, cramped RV and wondered, some of us quite loudly, why we were still doing this.

Day Two:   Scaling wooden ladders and squeezing through rock tunnels to visit cliff dwellings helped revive our sense of adventure.

Ancient Puebloans lived in the Four Corners region for about 1500 years, but they only inhabited these cliff houses for about eighty years before migrating to other regions.

Once we started to unwind, we grew friendlier towards each other, and I remembered a “why” of these trips that is more satisfying than any of the learning moments I’m always struggling to organize; we enjoy each other. I tend to stay focused on the schedule of activities I have planned, and I get antsy when the morning prep drags on or when everyone wants to hang out around the campsite instead of attending an evening ranger program. Brandon keeps me at bay, hoping I’ll eventually notice the richness of the relaxed family banter. It’s hard for me to recognize because the talk is mostly debates about the legitimacy of various comic book heroes or lengthy arguments over which Disney princess a sibling most resembles. When I’m willing to drop my agenda for a little while, I realize how funny the kids are, each in his own style, and how much I like them.

An artistic rendering of the first 600 miles of our trip

Day Three:  Next, we traveled through the Martian landscape of southern Utah.  We watched 127 Hours, the gruesome story of a climber who amputated his own arm after it was pinned between a boulder and the wall of a remote slot canyon in a Utah park.  This is not necessarily a family movie night recommendation; we hoped the kids would remember the cautionary tale as they scrambled over high, rocky places as if they were invincible.  (Jane was practically a teenager before she caught even a glimpse of the scary witch in Sleeping Beauty; now Nan declares proudly that her favorite part of the movie was all the blood.)

Delicate Arch at Arches National Park (Viewed from a distance since we were to wimpy to tackle the 3 mile “march to the arch” in 100 degree heat.)

Balanced Rock, which weighs around 3500 tons

I tried to stay calm as I watched one child after another disappear over a high ridge above me.  It’s the conundrum of the helicopter parent; I want the exhilaration of adventure and exploration for them, but in a careful, antiseptic way, so as to avoid any injury!

Day Four:  In Salt Lake City, we enjoyed a reunion with Matt and Michelle Salada, friends we hadn’t seen since we lived in Nashville, and their son Miles. It’s funny to hear other Southerners describe the transition to western living.  They echoed our longings for various elements of the old home while appreciating refreshing aspects of the new.

Temple Square in downtown SLC

On the road, we listened to Unveiling Grace, the story of former Brigham Young University professor Lynn Wilder’s thirty years in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It is a helpful book for someone like me, who never knew any Mormons growing up, but is now surrounded by friends and family members who are LDS, and who wants to understand the cultural and doctrinal distinctives of the LDS church. Wilder finds herself in the uncomfortable position of having to entrust her child to God when the exercise of his young-adult independence seems to be dividing him from his family.  It’s a theme of this trip, rightly managing the panic that erupts in my belly every time my children cross some invisible boundary I’ve set, whether I’m anticipating a misstep on the steep mountain trail in front of us or considering the looming separation that college will bring in a few weeks.

If southern Utah is Mars, then the terrain around the Great Salt Lake is the Moon. Driving over the long causeway to Antelope Island, which is in a corner of the vast dying lake, ghostly clouds of salt blew across the white flats all the way to the horizon.  The state park maintains a parking lot with showers for visitors, but getting down to the water is not for the faint of heart. We dashed across hot sands, stumbled through rocky exposed lake bed, and tiptoed through a graveyard of tiny brine shrimp before stepping into the chilly water.  Once we waded in, though, it was marvelous to find ourselves effortlessly bobbing like corks.

It’s all fun and games until you swallow a mouthful of salt.

Day Five:  In what will probably be recalled as the VERY BEST STOP ON THE WHOLE TRIP, we spent several hours in Preston, Idaho, scouting out film locations from Napoleon Dynamite, a family favorite.  Giddy, and communicating primarily in quotes from the movie, we drove up and down the streets of the little town and out into the surrounding countryside, occasionally pausing for a photo.

We read online that a local farmer, Dale Critchlow, was persuaded by his neighbor, director Jared Hess, to participate in the movie, and Critchlow welcomes visitors to stop by his home to chat about his role.  We had to pay him a visit.  When it came down to knocking on the door of a stranger’s house in the middle of nowhere, we felt a little sheepish, but Mr. Critchlow cheerfully donned the hat and shirt of Farmer Lyle and came out to meet us. He’s still farming at 86-years-old, and he’s still full of the same sage advice he offered Kip and La-Fawnduh while presiding over their movie wedding.  Hearing that Jane is headed to college, he cautioned, “I hope you’ll go for more than the recreation.  If you just go for recreation, you won’t get much out of it.”  She’s thinking of cross-stitching that piece of wisdom on a pillow for her dorm room.

Brandon with Farmer Lyle

Napoleon’s house

I’ve visited New York City a few times because I have a good friend, Alicia Hansen, who has lived there for many years. She once hosted our whole family for a week in her one-bedroom apartment. Even with our best tip-toeing efforts, we nearly caused her to be kicked out of the building! This time, we visited her in the Berkshire mountains, where the neighbors are not directly underfoot.

While Jane searched in vain for traces of the wilderness mission outpost described in the Jonathan Edwards biography she was reading, we did find evidence of the novelists and artists the Stockbridge area has long attracted. Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne lived, worked, and mutually admired each other for a time here. (They seemed have left a footprint in almost every place we visited in New England.) We also stopped in at the nearby Norman Rockwell studio and museum.

The museum docent told funny stories about various local people who served as models for Rockwell’s work over the years.

Rockwell’s work was often criticized by fans of the modern art movement, which developed during his career, and it might be tempting to dismiss his art as dashed-off magazine illustration. However, a tremendous amount of planning went into each picture. The scenes were staged, photographed, and sketched before any painting took place. And the paintings are much larger than what fits on a Saturday Evening Post cover. Rockwell was a perfectionist, and he worked in his studio for hours and hours almost every day. To me, his great achievement was storytelling. My grandmother had a Norman Rockwell coffee table book that I poured over as a child, and its picture stories deeply shaped my sentiments about America.

Alicia’s boyfriend, Adam Chinitz, is a Mulkey-kid-whisperer.

After a weekend getaway, Alicia and Adam were back to the city and NYC SALT, an after-school photography program for high school students. The last time we visited New York City, we enjoyed hanging out in the photography studio with all the students and volunteer professionals who participate in SALT. Now many of those students are graduating from college! Last year, the Today show interviewed Alicia about the program, and we got to see her on TV!

http://www.today.com/parents/photography-program-nyc-salt-teaches-high-schoolers-life-lessons-beyond-t34651

After traversing miles and miles of green, rolling farmland, we reached the Finger Lakes area of northwestern New York. We passed by quaint town squares on mirror lakes surrounded by brightly colored, 19th-century homes. Every green thing was in bloom.
In Auburn, we visited the Harriet Tubman home place. Tubman bought a farm and retired to Auburn, where she also operated a small hospital and retirement home. Until recently, the museum has been run by an enthusiastic, but underfunded group. Now, President Obama has declared the property a National Historic Park, so we are eager to see what it will look like in the future.

 

Next, we stopped at Erie Canal Discovery Center in Lockport. The Erie Canal was an engineering marvel that reduced travel between New York City and Buffalo from two weeks to five days and opened trade to the west in the early 1880s. The mostly amateur engineers who designed the canal navigated the sharp elevation change at Lockport by cutting five consecutive locks into the Niagara Escarpment. Outside, we watched the two remaining locks in action.

Brandon loved this part of the trip; he spent an hour chatting with the lock keeper, while we watched this party barge.

 

Finally, we reached the grandaddy destination of our tour: Niagara Falls. (I confess, we were not wholly in New York for this part of the trip; the Ontario side was too alluring. The kids were disappointed to cross the border with very little difficulty. “We could have been drug mules!” they complained.)

The falls made such a gorgeous racket that they mostly drowned out the tin trumpets of all the cheesy, surrounding tourist traps.

We loved it here!

Even Nan.

Brandon wanted to see Maine most. For years, he’s talked about how much he’d like to visit the Maine coast and taste its famous seafood. May 1st is a little early in the tourist season, though, and many of the campgrounds were still closed. We finally found one close to Acadia National Park; it opened the day we arrived! Our early visit meant we had the park all to ourselves, but as a downside, places like Monhegan Island—a must see, I’d been told—could not be accessed. The park also no longer allows RV’s to drive up Cadillac Mountain, so we could not join the Sunrise Club. This disappointment was actually a relief to some members of our party, who did not fancy the 4 AM wake-up call required to haul ourselves up the mountain in time to see the first rays of sunlight strike the United States. And even though Maine was not in her full green-leafed glory, just yet, she was still a feast for the senses.

Just over the state line in Portsmouth, we tried lobster and clam rolls at Bob’s Clam Hut. Clams are an acquired taste, I concluded, but Brandon’s lobster only whetted his appetite for more.

So, we took a break from classic New England literature and listened to Trevor Corson’s The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean. The author spent a few years living alongside the lobstermen of Little Cranberry Island, which we could spot from Acadia. He paints a vivid picture of the lives and personalities of the people who have made their living from Maine waters for many generations. It was a peak behind the curtains of the tidy, clapboard houses we wondered about while driving through one coastal village after another.

Through years of keen observation and self-regulation, these fishermen have pioneered some very effective lobster conservation practices. However, they need the research and cooperation of scientists to help negotiate the increasing governmental restrictions designed to regulate lobster populations. Thus, readers meet some seriously obsessive scientists; since 9th grade, one researcher has been so captivated by lobsters that she suffers sleep deprivation in her zeal to observe lobster behavior for 18 and 24-hour stretches. Readers also learn more about the sex lives of lobsters than they may have ever wished to know! Sometimes the book’s description of lobster courtship contained such erotic language that the kids would scream for mercy, and I’d have to fast-forward the book! Despite the periodic censoring, we soon admired the complex creature. There’s a good reason scientists stay up all night watching lobster tanks; their behavior is mysterious! From a molting process so violent the lobster can actually die ripping-off the old shell, to kidney-bean-sized “super lobster” larva leaping into the air with outstretched claws to do the only actual swimming in its lifecycle, to the bizarre, weeks-long mating ritual which ends with a female “unzipping” her shell for the male she has “knighted,” lobsters are downright fascinating. The book is worth a try, especially if you are in lobster country. And if you worry all the science will kill your appetite, never fear; the last chapter is about how to cook a lobster properly!

Steam rising from the pots at the lobster pound across from our campground in Trenton

Walking across the “bar” of Bar Harbor, a strip of land that emerges between the big island and the little one when the tide goes out

We searched for beached treasures, but the gulls and terns beat us to them!

Acadia is the oldest national park east of the Mississippi.  It was started with a great deal of donated land from private citizens, and it includes a large portion of Mount Desert Island (pronounced “dessert” or “desert,”depending on whom you ask) and several surrounding islands.

Investigating tide pools along the rocky shoreline at Acadia

Waiting for the big boom when a wave rolls in and forces air and water out of the cavern at Thunder Hole

We mostly kept to the outer loop road at Acadia, but the interior trails were fun, too!

At Sand Beach, the kids attempted to stay submerged to the neck for a full minute to win the prize of a daily soft drink for the rest of the trip. They looked like steamed lobsters when they emerged.

For most of our time in New England, the weather was chilly, gray, and damp.  It set an appropriately foreboding mood for listening to books like Moby Dick, The House of Seven Gables, and The Witch of Blackbird Pond, as we drove through Massachusetts. However, the clouds parted for a gloriously picturesque day on Nantucket Island. I’ve wanted to visit Nantucket ever since I read Joan Aiken’s Nightbirds on Nantucket, a delightfully cockeyed adventure tale, full of winks and nods to Mr. Melville’s big fish story.  The book’s plucky British heroine, Dido Twite, is rescued by an off-course Nantucket whaling ship skippered by a Quaker captain, who is obsessively chasing a pink whale.  While stranded on Nantucket, Dido uncovers a Hanoverian plot to blow up St James’s Palace by firing an enormous cannon across the Atlantic, the side-effect of which would push Nantucket Island into New York harbor.

Nightbirds was the first real chapter book I read on my own.  It was also the first book given to me by another woman—in this case a young schoolteacher—with the urgent instructions: “You have to read this; you’ll love it.” It set me on a search for my own elusive quarry, more Joan Aiken stories.  I scoured the card catalogs of every elementary, middle school, junior high and city library of the small South Georgia towns in which we lived in the 1980s, here and there finding a new volume in the loose series of Dido books. I learned that Aiken’s father was Conrad Aiken, a Georgia poet laureate, and my feelings of kinship grew.  When I exhausted all of my library resources, I wrote an admiring letter to the author asking for a list of her other titles.  I addressed it:  Joan Aiken, Sussex, England.  She answered my letter and included a long list of book titles.  I was in my thirties, when, with the help of the internet, I found the last unread title, but I’ve never given up the ritual of searching Aiken, J FIC, as soon as I visit a new library. Aiken died in 2006, but her daughter recorded an introduction to a recent audiobook version of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Aiken’s best known children’s story.  She says her mother did not attempt fiction writing until her forties, after a career in journalism, followed by child-rearing and the unexpected death of her husband.  She worked on Wolves for ten years before it was published.

At the Nantucket Whaling Museum, we were horrified by tales of the doomed whale ship Essex; the tragedy supposedly inspired Moby Dick.
Visitors arriving by ferry for the annual Daffodil Festival.

Outside Boston, we ate supper with a UGA friend, Mary Frances Giles.  Mary Frances is a worker at one of the L’Abri study centers, and she gave us a tour of the Southborough campus.  L’Abri, which means shelter, was established by Francis and Edith Shaeffer as a retreat for visitors wishing to study and consider their religious and philosophical beliefs. We loved wandering the beautiful old house and hearing about Mary Frances’s role there as a counselor, speaker, and hostess.  Here’s a link to a Friday night lecture she recently presented:

Living with Longing

 I didn’t know that visitors are not required to stay for a whole semester.  As long as there is room in the house, anyone may study for as short a time period as a weekend.  I was also surprised to learn that L’Abri study centers—9 worldwide–are still completely funded by unsolicited donations.

In route to MA, we stopped in Newport, RI to enjoy ocean and mansion views from the Cliff Walk.

At the Wampanoag village in Plymouth, we learned about companion planting.   Corn, bean, and squash seeds are planted in the same mound.  The corn provides support for the bean vine and shade for the squash.  The squash controls weeds, and the beans replenish soil nutrients.

Plimoth Plantation was one of our favorite stops.  It was fun to talk religion, politics, and farming with William Bradford and Miles Standish!

This house inspired the setting for The House of Seven Gables. (We only counted five, though.)

Here’s the custom house where Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote an angry diatribe against Salem in his introduction to The Scarlet Letter.  He didn’t enjoy all the government bureaucracy, despite having won the job because his friend, James Polk, was elected president.

This is the narrow, winding stairway to our rooms in the former home of a scandalous sea captain, whose wife (a daughter of America’s first millionaire) paraded prostitutes into court to support her divorce case circa 1813.

Orchard House in Concord. The Alcotts encouraged daughter May (Amy in Little Women) to practice drawing on the walls of her bedroom. Her “doodles” are still on the walls, doors, and window trim.

Visitors leave pens and pencils at Louisa Mae Alcott’s grave on Authors’ Ridge in Sleepy Hollow cemetery.

We argued politics with a Redcoat at the (new) Old North Bridge.

 ‘Tween decks in a tall ship, we tried out tools for measuring distance and location at sea. Sextons are still required on Navy vessels in case some sort of cyber terrorism disables the high tech equipment!

My favorite line from Moby Dick is not the opening sentence, but the closing one. After the deadly climax of the story, the reader catches a last glimpse of Melville’s narrator, riding his coffin-turned-lifeboat in a calm sea: “On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.” Oh, the delicious melodrama! But what a meandering journey to get that last, plaintive note.  I know we’re supposed to read deep  to get the most out of good literature, but frankly, I was worried all those words would exhaust, rather than inspire my kids. (We opted for a nicely abridged version!)

I was happy to find that the book hasn’t lost all appeal to a modern audience, though. One night, we pulled into a Cape Cod campground after closing hours.  We were in dire need of clean clothes for the next day’s activities. The night manager drove me over to the laundry facility, so I wouldn’t have to stumble around in the dark.  He looked and sounded like a baby-faced Affleck brother from Good Will Hunting. After asking about our impressions of the area and adding some commentary of his own, he said, “I heard you playing Moby Dick in your the RV when we were loading up your stuff.”  He reached over, popped open the glove compartment, and pulled out his own worn copy. “I can’t get enough of that book,” he confessed reverently. “I like a book you have to think about for a long time.”

Our quest to visit all corners of the continental U.S. is pressed for time. We wedged a trimmed-down trip to New England between prom and graduation, but to pull it off, Brandon dropped us off in Nashville and flew back to Texas for a work conference. That gave us a few days to visit our old home on Peachtree Street, where we lived in the early 2000’s, and to do RV repairs. Again.

When Thomas Wolfe said ‘You can’t go home again,’ I suppose he had something metaphysical in mind. When we visit Nashville, we get to stay in the actual house we lived in, on a street populated by many of the same neighbors we enjoyed fifteen years ago. Our friends, Connie and Tom Michael, bought the house when we moved, and though the home is distinctly theirs now, every corner of it is full of our happy memories, too. On this trip, the Michaels were finishing up their school year, so we tagged along and found ourselves retracing the familiar routine of our old Nashville life.

The Michaels participate in the same national homeschool group, Classical Conversations, which we attend, so we were excited to watch Paul’s CC mock trial competition. His team won!

The Frist Center is a gem. Though it has no permanent collection, great traveling exhibits rotate through this museum, which is located downtown in a beautifully renovated Art Deco building. Each Spring, we used to attend special seminars about the newest Frist exhibit at our local library branch, and the final program included a visit to the museum. This year, we arrived just in time to visit the Frist with our former librarian, Lana White, who marveled at how tall her little art students had grown.

“Miz” Lana and the kids at Thompson Lane library just before we moved in 2005.

We’ve worn-out most of the tried-and-true Nashville field trip options over the years, so we drove down to Maury County to see the James K. Polk Museum.

Visiting the (Nashville) Parthenon together circa 2003

Reunited with Brandon and operating a fully-functioning (fingers crossed) vehicle, we sped on to Columbus, Ohio, where we spent the night with Nicole and Jonathan Kelly, old friends from our early days in Lubbock. They were newlyweds when we met them, and they credit then-toddler Jane with inspiring them to have babies. Now they have three cute girls, and the youngest is called Jane! We had a fun time catching up with them and exploring  Columbus.

Jack Hanna’s Columbus Zoo

Next, we visited Gettysburg. We listened to Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels, on the way. In the introduction, Shaara’s son, Jeff, tells about a family visit to Gettysburg that inspired the novel. Though the book won a Pulitzer prize in 1975, it was not commercially successful during the lifetime of the author. His son says that Shaara felt like the project was a failure. While our tour guide was careful to point out some inaccuracies in the book, the haunting voices of the novel powerfully colored our impressions of the battlegrounds.

One phrase, “All those young hearts, beating in the dark,” kept sounding in my mind as we plodded along on horseback through the fighting of July 1st, 2nd, and 3rd 1863, tallying the terrible expense of the war. I’ve never understood the enthusiasm of Civil War buffs; perhaps because I’m a Southerner, I feel a sense of shame and discomfort at places like Gettysburg. But I do think it’s important to visit these monuments sometimes. Underneath whatever other political and economic reasons given are given for the  war, there persists a bitter truth; we built our country using slave labor and repeatedly hardened our hearts against the correction of that injustice. I had to reminded myself that I can love my country and its unique graces, while simultaneously acknowledging its brokenness.

Later, we watched a documentary called The Address, about students with various learning disabilities, who memorize and perform the Gettysburg Address. Georgia immediately started working on it, too, and she spent the rest of the trip four-score-and-seven-year-ing us.

One might think a tour of New England should involve the major cities of the area, but since we visited Boston, Philadelphia, and New York a few years ago, we decided to focus on parks and smaller cities this time. We couldn’t miss the chance to stop briefly in Philadelpia to see some old friends, though.

We ate lunch with Stacy Bartholemew, an Athens friend who encouraged and nurtured me when I was a college student. I’ve enjoyed following the Bartholomew family adventures over the years, and their enthusiasm for big cities has infected me. I remember marveling at how well their children navigated New York City after spending their early lives in smaller towns and suburbs. They moved to Philadelphia several years ago to plant a church in Center City, and their affection for this adopted home makes me view it with friendly eyes.

Just across the Delaware River in Collingswood, New Jersey, live our friends, Jim and Emily Angehr. They are church-planters, too. We loved touring their neighborhood and watching our children play together for the first time since the Angehrs moved from Lubbock four years ago.

(Emily took these pictures. See more of her work at junedayphoto.com)

Last, we dropped in on Rocky. Our children like to believe he’s an actual person, and their wish was fortified when they learned (spoiler alert) there’s a gravestone for Adrian Balboa in the local cemetery.