THE NOVEMBER SAGE WRITING CHALLENGE:
Vacations and Travel
This is a NON-Fiction category featuring vacation, or travels. Participants submitted up to 1,000 words of non-fiction travelog – a journey about a place or traveling experience, or perhaps an info piece that gives travel advice.
Thank you to all our participants and we hope you’ll all continue to send a plethora of diverse tales to the monthly Sage Challenges!
We hope you enjoy these stories submitted by the following SWW Members:
- Donna Pedace The Road to Sundance
- C.L. Nemeth In Praise of our 47th
- Mike Whelan Presenciar el Efecto Mariposa (Witness the Butterfly Effect)
- Kira Córdova Working at Height
- Cynthia Mclean Appreciating the Dead Sea
- Carol Hall Trying to be a Good Travel Companion
- Brandon Caudle Highway Fourteen
- Eva Newman/S. Moorman Travel Tales
THE ROAD TO SUNDANCE
by Donna Pedace
In 1981, Robert Redford gathered a group of colleagues and friends at Sundance, Utah, to discuss new ways to enhance the artistic vitality of American film. The result was the establishment of the Sundance Institute. The Institute became the major sponsor and host of the annual Sundance Film Festival.
In January 1998, I had the good fortune to attend the Sundance Film Festival as Redford’s guest. At that time, I was the Executive Director of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, and Redford served on my Board. The O’Neill has been the training ground for many theater and movie celebrities, including Redford. He began his acting career by spending a summer at the O’Neill, mostly performing “gofer” tasks. However, he credited the O’Neill with giving him his first exposure to acting and directing.
After working till noon, I caught an afternoon flight to Salt Lake City, arriving at 6:00 P.M., as a blizzard was blowing in. I rented a four-wheel drive Ford Explorer and started for Sundance, a normal drive of about 45 minutes. Unfortunately, traffic became caught behind an overturned tractor-trailer accident that blocked most of the highway.
It was the most harrowing drive of my life. Wind-driven snow blinded me, and I could see little beyond the trucks directly ahead and beside me. The swirling whiteout left no option but to inch along with the rest of the traffic. Every road sign was buried under snow, making it impossible for visitors like me to know where we were or when to take an exit. This was before GPS was available to civilians, so I relied on the truckers around me to tell me when I’d reached my exit.
Once off the highway, I crept up Provo Canyon and finally arrived at Sundance just before midnight. When I walked into the resort to register, the young man at the front desk looked alarmed at my condition. Worried I might not find my cabin, he locked up the office and personally drove me there. Then, to my astonishment, he even drew me a hot bath, insisting that I looked ready to collapse. I had a fleeting moment of concern about his intentions—but, thankfully, he was simply being kind.
Early the next morning, I discovered that the Sundance Resort sits in a quiet canyon at the base of 12,000-foot Mount Timpanogos. More retreat than resort, it was refreshingly free of sprawling condominiums and flashy shops. Instead, a small cluster of cedar cabins and a few private homes nestled among the trees, blending seamlessly with the mountain landscape.
Every building, inside and out, was constructed of rough-sawn cedar boards left unpainted and unstained, giving the entire setting a warm, rustic harmony. My cabin had a fireplace in the bedroom, and there was nothing more soothing than drifting off to sleep while watching the flames flicker and fade. Each unit featured either a deck or a patio overlooking the canyon, while above, narrow private roads wound up the mountain to where Redford had his home.
That evening, Festival guests drove to Salt Lake City for the opening-night premiere, followed by a VIP reception at the Salt Lake Art Center and the Opening Night Gala at the Marriott Hotel. The featured film was Kenneth Branagh’s new release, A Midwinter’s Tale, and Branagh himself attended, along with several members of his cast.
The Mayor of Salt Lake City and the Governor of Utah were among the many dignitaries present, but it was Redford who drew the most attention. The press swarmed him so completely that he couldn’t move toward the screening room. Eventually, security had to be summoned to carve a path through the dense crowd of reporters so he could make his way inside.
The following day, I drove to Park City. The town reminded me of Aspen or Vail, only smaller. I attended the Piper-Heidsieck Tribute honoring Dianne Wiest, which featured an engaging interview interwoven with clips from many of her films. She turned out to be unexpectedly funny and utterly charming, offering candid insights into her life and career.
On Sunday morning, Redford hosted a reception for the independent directors and producers participating in the Festival, along with a few invited guests like me. After addressing the crowd of several hundred, he made his way from table to table, taking time to greet each person individually.
Redford was a private and intense man, yet the chance to meet and talk one-on-one with filmmakers seemed to give him genuine pleasure. Media attention, however, appeared to be a burden. That familiar crinkle around his eyes – so recognizable from his films – was a result of poor eyesight. He usually wore glasses, and when he removed them, he would lean in, squinting as he focused on the person before him.
Although the O’Neill Center was devoted to live theater, I wanted to include training for television and film. Redford had expressed interest in supporting that effort and had offered to accept O’Neill students as apprentices at the Sundance Institute. My trip to Utah was to work out the details of that collaboration with him and his staff. Our meeting took place over a long lunch. Redford was demanding but gracious as we discussed the structure and expectations of the proposed apprentice program. By the end of the afternoon, we had finalized the agreement that would open new doors for young artists.
My trip was a success in every way. In addition to my complimentary cabin and Festival tickets, I returned each evening to find a new gift basket waiting for me, brimming with gifted Sundance merchandise.
During my five days at Sundance, more than three feet of snow fell, transforming the canyon into a winter wonderland. Fortunately, aside from the nerve-racking drive on my first night, the roads remained clear and well-maintained. Utah, it seemed, was well prepared for winter.
In Praise of Our 47th
C. L. Nemeth
Halfway between Vaughn and Roswell, on a sunny June morning, I slowed and pulled the truck onto the roadside. Stepping out I walked around the back of the truck and relieved myself. What takes your mind the first time you stand in the desert, Like I had, was the total lack of sound, no sound at all. It is like looking at a painting. Everything was still, no movement, and quiet, almost eerily quiet. Then, as you kept looking into the distance, you began to see Antelope grazing. When driving you had to keep a sharp eye to see them, but now, standing by the truck they were not all that far away. Several of them were staring at me, then they returned to grazing.
There isn’t much of this country I haven’t driven through; But nowhere, Wyoming, Montana, Kansas, no other place does you become so aware of the silence. Only in New Mexico. It is almost like being in a church waiting for the priest to start the liturgy. But there, in the church, you hear breathing, movement of clothing. In the desert, nothing, no sound, even my Tinnitus seems quiet. I am not, by nature, religious. Yet out here, if a God exists, then this is as close as I have come to understanding man’s need for a higher being.
But the Land of Enchantment is like that. No other place where I’ve been can match this land. From the east, with those flat endless plains, the Llano Estacado, to the Pecos River, another unique feature of this state, to the Guadalupe, Manz Zano, Sandia, and Sangre de Christo mountains. The remains of the Colorado landscape existing in northern New Mexico ,to that famous river, the Rio Grande. The Mogollon Moe-goy-yon)of the southwestern. part of the state the two lava beds, “Malpas” (mahl-pah-eze) the Navajo, Hope, Zuni, and Apache reservations, just to name a few. New Mexico ranks 5th among the largest states. Yet it more than holds claim to equal, if not exceed, a history so varied and of such interest that it just may be number one in that category.
You can go anywhere and find natural phenomenon, historic ruins, the selection is endless. I could not begin to list all these wonderful places to visit. Let me just give you a few, some well-known, others – obscure except to we natives of this wonderful state.
White Sands National Monument, Carlsbad Caverns National Monument, Shiprock, Taos, Santa Fe. Others, such as City of Rocks, Chaco Canyon, The Malpas; a large of expanse of lava from an ancient volcano. Bandolier National Monument. Trinity Site, where the first Atom bomb was detonated. Historic Las Vegas, said to have more dedicated historic buildings than anywhere else.
Indian tribes more than one can count on fingers. Acoma Pueblo, occupied since early time, much before the Spaniards first explored the Land of Enchantment. Tribes now long gone, such as the Gallina People who built some 300 towers in the12th and 13th century, then disappeared. Some ruins of these towers remain. Three Air force facilities, two national laboratories (Los Alamos, Sandia). And then there is the city of Albuquerque.. Growing at an almost frenetic rate, it is now the 39th largest in our nation.
And then there is our goodwill ambassador, the Chaparral /Cock, more commonly known as the Roadrunner. A member of the Ani, Cuckoo, family its antics always bring laughter and hilarity to those who watch him run swiftly down the road, only to suddenly dart into a brush pact. When you see him chances are he has a Gecko, small snake, or scorpion, in his mouth. He looks like he was assembled from spare parts, yet a more lovable wild bird I cannot bring to mind
Let me conclude by returning to where I started, between Vaughn and Roswell . The sunrise out there is almost beyond description. The eastern sky begins to redden, deeper, brighter, then all colors began to decorate the edges. The sun bursts into view, I turn my head and look west. Some 30 miles away the mountain tops are bathed in red, slowly descending downward.
A few birds, and a distant Coyote, breaks the silence, and the day begins, just as it has done for the pat, who can tell, how many years. It is for us to enjoy and consider ourselves blessed. Oh yes, blessed to live in this wonderful land.
Presenciar el Efecto Mariposa
(Witness, the Butterfly Effect)
by Mike Whelan
“Papers!” the soldier ordered gruffly in English as he slung the machine gun to his other shoulder. Military checkpoints were unexpected but commonplace on the Argentinian plains of South America. We were headed to the community of Allen. It was a worrisome start to an exotic travel plan.
Allen is a city of 10,000 that swells to over 25,000 after harvest. Located on the Patagonian plains, three-quarters of the population are poor, seasonal migrant workers who labor in the numerous groves, vegetable farms, and vineyards along the Rio Negro.
As President of my Rotary International (RI) Club in 2002, over a late-night bottle of wine, I had offered to help a visiting Rotarian from Argentina attempt to raise $1,000 during his five-day visit to our district in Florida. His club hoped to purchase a surgical lamp used in the maternity room of their indigent clinic. Currently, midwife nurses deliver babies, often after dark, using an aluminum-shrouded bulb, or by flashlight during the frequent power outages.
My club voted to match an initial $100 donation. Several other clubs threw in one or two hundred dollars each. Then, two pediatricians each volunteered $1,000. Other members donated as word spread. In a day and a half, we raised over $12,000. I’d given to Rotary causes before but never raised money through them, so I was unaware of the multiple, dollar-for-dollar, exponential matches by the RI District, Region, and National divisions that resulted in an astounding $96,000 total!
While I boasted about the success of this short campaign, a colleague mentioned the rampant corruption in South America and how such funds often fail to reach their intended destination. This offhand remark prompted me to plan a vacation to Allen a few months later and verify that the money had indeed gone to its intended purpose.
Allen has a distinct class divide. There are business operators, some professionals, and vineyard owners living there in well-appointed homes and haciendas, many of whom were members of the local RI Club. On the outskirts of town were migrant huts huddled together in what could only be described as a large slum. On the edge of this barrio stood the once-abandoned hospital, now serving as a clinic for the poor.
During a tour of the medical facilities, the Rotarians explained that peasant patients were required to purchase and bring with them all the surgical supplies, bedding, and food deemed necessary for their hospital stay. EMTs from a neighboring town saw patients there three days a week, and a midwife/nurse lived close by.
We made our way past several mongrel dogs and into a darkened hallway. Oddly, where door handles would ordinarily be, there were large, jagged cut-outs in each of the doors that led to patient rooms. Our guide told me that local migrants often lift a child through the broken windows, instructing them to unlock the main doors from inside so an adult can then enter and cut out the door handles to sell as scrap.
We visited a room with three expectant young women, waiting to give birth. They slept on cots with well-used mattresses and no sheets or pillowcases. Flies were everywhere as the metal window screens had been salvaged long ago. Unlike the US, there were no radios, TVs, cell phones, or magazines to occupy the women’s minds.
At the end of the hall was a well-lit room, about the size of a walk-in closet, with a brand-new surgical lamp illuminating the new delivery bed. Pictures of happy babies and mothers adorned the walls. A new generator had been purchased, and numerous other improvements were underway. The attending nurse/midwife told us that the brightly lit delivery room provided the expectant women with great comfort during this otherwise stressful and life-changing event. Additionally, many injuries were experienced by the migrant workers, and the additional improvements to the clinic would soon provide better care, some of which would be lifesaving. These local Rotarians were earnestly improving the plight of those less fortunate.
Relieved that funds were in good hands, we got on with learning what Argentina might have to offer in terms of vacation activities. Our host pushed us to drive to Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi, a national park in the Andes. “You will not be disappointed,” they promised. Because of their urging, we made room reservations at a hotel within the park.
In mapping our scenic and mostly safe route, the Rotarians cautioned us to stay on the main highway as Chilean guerrillas were known to jump the border and sometimes kidnap tourists for ransom. On our way, we experienced two military checkpoints, and if we hadn’t already made reservations, we would have turned back at the first sign of a uniform.
After the second military check, we left the straight road of the plains for the elevated twists and turns of the Andes. Rounding a heavily forested curve composed of thousand-year-old Patagonian Oak trees, Lengas, and Douglas firs, we took in the breathtaking view of the huge glacial Lake Nahuel Huapi, with its crystal-clear water and the city of San Carlos de Bariloche nestled on its far shore. The surrounding Park is over 2700 square miles of beautiful mountainous landscape, with exotic birds and flowers everywhere. Giant wispy waterfalls cascaded down Andean slopes to the lake below as we drove to this bustling city of 135,000. Known regionally for its chocolate, wine, and alpine architecture, Bariloche offered a world-class golf course and opportunity to participate in a multitude of adventure sports every day of the year. From snow skiing to sailing, this Andean paradise has it all.
After a week of hiking and boating, the long flight home gave us time to reflect on our journey. Initially, we didn’t understand the significance of the lamp or the dire poverty surrounding the clinic. Through a humble fundraising effort, a vital community clinic was pulled from atrophy, kind and lasting friendships developed, and a faraway place of astounding beauty discovered.
Witness, the butterfly effect.
Working at Height
by Kira Córdova
“Go up there and see what’s broken.” The chief bosun’s mate on Eagle, America’s only active military sail training ship, didn’t seem worried when he told me and six other civilian sailors to inspect all the rigging our second day underway en route to the Panama canal.
“Up there” meant 150 feet above-deck to the royals, the sails at the top of Eagle’s fifteen-story masts. I’ve never hung off the side of a fifteen-story building, but I went up anyway.
“Do things break often?” I wanted to ask, but I knew from working on other tall ships, mostly replicas of historic boats, that they do. Eagle looks more like a pirate ship than a military ship, but she’s really a floating classroom. At 295 feet and propelled by miles of moving rope and cable and thousands of pounds of sailcloth, she was bound to break a few parts training Coast Guard Academy cadets down the West Coast from Canada to San Diego that summer, where I boarded as part of a professional exchange program through Tall Ships America.
In exchange for the opportunity to sail America’s largest traditionally rigged ship from California to Connecticut, we Tall Ships America sailors would inspect Eagle’s rig, working our way down each mast from fore to aft in our first days on the boat until we had a running list of everything we could fix during our month onboard. Then we would fix it.
Which is how I found myself standing on a rope, fifteen stories above the Pacific ocean, looking for problems.
* * *
I began my climb to the royals on my butt on the deck, wrestling on a full-body harness. Feeling like a child in a car seat with it secured, I climbed the shrouds, the ladder-like rigging from the deck to the tops of the masts, on the windward side, so the wind would blow me into the shrouds and not off the ship. In hindsight, I should not have packed a skintight synthetic black t-shirt for a trip that would bring me within degrees of the equator. It makes a fantastic base layer, but under the August sun off the coast of Mexico, it held sweat against me like seawater in a wetsuit, and when the wind blew against my back, it only dried where my harness straps didn’t cover, leaving a v of moisture over my shoulders to the top of the children’s extra extra large Carhartt pants I bought on sale when I first started working on traditionally rigged ships in the summers as a teenager. I didn’t think they would still fit, but I also didn’t think I would be back on a tall ship.
I’ve worked in sail training on and off for years, but the precarity of seasonal work and the unlivable wages on tall ships burnt me out. When I boarded Eagle at twenty four, I had not worked on a tall ship for over a year. I worked in a library. I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to work on tall ships again, but I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to take Eagle through the Panama canal. It was like getting a recruiting call from NASCAR after giving up drag racing in high school parking lots. Of course I said yes.
I developed a rhythm as I climbed. One foot up, step, move hands. As you climb higher, the shrouds get closer together, and you have to wedge your feet between them. With my eyes closed, except for the smell of salt, I was in the desert, climbing a crack in sandstone. When I opened them, looking up—never look down for long—I saw the first platform on Eagle’s masts.
The shrouds to Eagle’s royals pass two platforms, where the different parts of the masts meet. To climb above each platform, you have to climb around the overhangs where the shrouds bend out and over them. When I reached the first on the foremast, for a moment, the roll of the ship toward in the long swell of the Pacific pulled my torso out toward the sea. Then the ship rolled to port, and I pushed the sea out of my mind and grabbed the shrouds above the platform. I hauled my right leg onto it. Then the left.
I kept climbing.
* * *
Each sail on Eagle hangs from a yard, a long cylinder perpendicular to the masts. So sailors don’t have to hang by their armpits from the yard to furl and unfurl those sails, each yard has two footropes beneath it, reinforced rope running from the tip of each yard forming two loops like layered necklaces. Beneath these ropes, there’s nothing until you hit the next yard down.
When I stepped onto the royal footropes to begin the rig check, I felt the sun, still on the starboard side of the ship as it ambled toward sunset, reheat my right shoulder. I wrapped my arms over the yard, resting it against my collarbones, and leaned against it as a drop of sweat wormed under the cuff of my right sleeve and dripped onto the sail where my arm draped over it. I turned my face to the heat and felt sweat well from the pores under my eyes too. The sun left a watermark, like ripples from skipping a rock, on the tips of the waves heading west. Heading away from land.
I let myself fully study the ship below me for the first time. The fine details, the individual planks on her deck and the door handles on the hatches, blurred into blocks of color: the white paint on her superstructure, her tan masts and beige rope, and blue folding around her from every direction.
I sighed, and at the bottom of my exhale, the next civilian sailor stepped onto the footropes.
“Alright,” I said. She smiled, taking a moment to search for Mexico on the horizon before she turned back.
“Let’s get to work!”
Appreciating the Dead Sea
by Cynthia Mclean
On the lengthy flight overseas from New York to Israel, I experienced an allergic reaction to a recently purchased pair of travel pants. I had pre-washed them, but the fibers created an itchy rash on my upper legs. I could not acquire a remedy. To add to the dilemma, we arrived at the hotel after the shops had closed; no one I spoke to had on hand any ointment for the, by now, angry red rash on both upper legs. The next day was Shabbat; stores everywhere were shuttered. Our tour must go on as scheduled. It was several days before our stop at the Dead Sea, where I was told I might experience relief by way of the healing minerals.
During this, my first of two visits to Eretz Israel, our group of twenty-five enjoyed a lengthy day trip to the shores of the ‘Salt’ Sea; a frequent stop on any guided tour itinerary. Typical highlights, for appreciating what this foreboding area offers tourists, include learning about the buoyancy of the brackish water, and the importance of never allowing facial orifices to submerge the murky liquid. (Imagined ‘Ouch’!)
I was not happy to don a bathing suit and display my skin condition to the world. But under the circumstances, I dutifully waded waist high into the murky water. ( a real ‘Ouch’!) When rash met saltwater fire was instantaneous. I could stand there only a moment, and in haste, off to a shower on the beach I did go. I repeated this routine twice more, and after the third shower, was pleasantly surprised. The rash and its redness had disappeared!
I proceeded to follow many other novices into the sea for instruction on popping up into a seated position. By tucking knees upward, allowing feet to leave the sandy bottom, and a slight lean backward, a comfortable seat could be realized. Several enthusiastic men had come prepared for an iconic photo-op. Holding a fully opened newspaper, a cigar dangling from their mouth, they bobbed on their derrieres, feet or knees peeking above the water, displaying their newly acquired skill for the camera.
Choice spots, for daring playful adults, were oases of deep, dark, and slippery mud ringing the water’s edge. Special care was needed to navigate this terrain. All the while laughing uncontrollably, one friend became immobilized for minutes before discovering that intentionally falling and crawling to shore was the best solution. Any attempt of mine to assist her only expanded on the comedy of errors. Once on dry sandy shore, we made the most of the luxurious and abundant mud. Slathering copious amounts over every exposed body part, it did not take long before the smooth earthen masque made movements uncomfortable. We strode as zombies to the nearest unoccupied shower, but not before shooting a selfie of our mischievous smiles that carved furrows deep in our facade.
As l consider what relief the sea provided my angry skin-rash, the biblical story of a leper who found healing after instructed to wash repeatedly in the Jordan River, comes to mind.
I have long expressed, if I was granted the blessing of residing in Israel, I would live as close as possible to the Dead Sea. The reason, its healthy and luxurious benefits to skin and spirit. Unique and uplifting (no pun intended), that visit to the Dead Sea is a stamp in my soul which can revive joy with each telling.
Trying to be a Good Travel Companion
by Carol Hall
Whenever we travel, my husband seems to get stuck doing all of the driving. Of course I offer. I think he feels better having control of the vehicle. I prefer to sleep, read, crochet and just look out the window while zoning out. Therefore, wherever and whenever he wants to stop to eat or take a break his choice is fine with me.
This past summer we had eight days in Destin, Florida with our three adult children, two spouses, four grandchildren and a widowed mother in law. Everyone needed to be in survival mode trying to get along with each other in the same vacation house. Before leaving we made a decision to accept the fact not everyone has the same interests or concept of a vacation. My interpretation of a good time is to trying get along since we have a variety of personalities and interests. Two of the grandchildren are nonverbal autistic. The younger one with Down Syndrome likes to hang with Papa and Grandma which is fun for us.
Grandma and Papa were awarded the master suite at the vacation house. This trip was hard on me since I was getting over a broken ankle. What I did not want was to feel I was in the way or should I just say I did not to be a cantankerous wife, mother, mother in law or grandma. What I have learned is you cannot have it your way. When others go to the beach, it is best not to go in case you are unable to handle the difficult long trek though the deep sand. When others have a desire to shop it is best not to go because you will tire out and not have a favorable disposition. I did go with five others to the museum at the Pensacola Naval Base but I used my walker.
Two months later we left for Albuquerque, New Mexico where I graduated in 1969 from the now defunct University of Albuquerque. Almost every year there is a small group reunion of alumni usually in the West. However, the first one I attended was an hour away from my home in Indiana. More than half of the reunions have been in New Mexico, mostly in Albuquerque or Corrales and once in Angel Fire. Over the course of twenty years or more, the size of reunion group has shrunk due the death and health problems of the participants. One couple who had attended all the reunions was unable to be with us this year because both husband and wife had serious health issues.
This was the second time we rented the same house near Rio Grande Boulevard on the west side of Albuquerque. The house was just east of the Rio Grande. Luckily for me we were given the opportunity to stay in the master suite. This was good since at this point I had acquired a medical condition which was causing mobility problems and my fellow alumni were looking after my comfort.
Two of our former classmates had married and remained in Albuquerque. They bought a home on the west mesa not far from our former college which is now St Pius X High School. The house faces the Sandia mountain and it is always a real treat when we are there finishing a meal and experiencing the wonderful view of the pink mountain in the sunset. With my own Zoom account I was able to plan a meeting with our most faithful couple not able to attend.
What I have learned from this group over the years is having to go along with the crowd when it comes to meals with either restaurant selection or what we grill up at the house. Most of the participants are guys who claim specific dietary expectations.
The highlight of the trip for this group was the experience of a train ride out of Santa Fe on the car used in the movie Oppenheimer. Just before we boarded the skies opened to torrential rain. The only drawback was the trip did not live up to its name sunset ride since the skies took a cloudy look after the rain. We did have the availability of an open bar, a wonderful flamenco guitarist and most importantly our camaraderie.
Somehow the date of the reunion worked for me. At the University of Albuquerque reunion this year among the things I was able to experience was attending a meeting in person with SouthWest Writers and purchasing a copy of Kaleidoscope.
* * *
Highway Fourteen
by Brandon Caudle
Just about twenty years ago, driving between Cedar City, Utah, and Page, Arizona, we made a life-changing decision. For many people, long road trips and scenic drives stir emotions, evoke feelings, and heighten senses. For our family, the stretch of Highway Fourteen known as the Markagunt High Plateau Scenic Byway was an epochal event.
We were a young family on a much-anticipated two-week vacation, a 2,000-mile road trip, staying with family members, packing our own food, and seeing the American West on a budget. It was roughly the mid-point of our journey, leaving her family in Salt Lake City and heading to see my sister in Phoenix. After that, we were headed to Disneyland for a few days, before heading home to our cozy, three-bedroom home in the Sierra Nevada foothills, with our two very happy, very content young children.
We, the parents, on the other hand, were stressed. The early Noughties were rough in the tech world; a wave of people sold their Bay Area homes and invaded Sacramento. Cash purchases made the housing market a challenge for working-class, middle-income families. Four years earlier, we had lucked out and finally found a starter home in a small development in a tiny town, just one county over from our two-bedroom apartment and my work. We were ecstatic. Our year-long search was over. We no longer had to choose between the fifty-year-old ranch-style homes with broken windows and a leaky roof, and the pre-WW2 fixer-upper with teenagers smoking something not-quite-legal in the front yard. The American Dream would finally be ours!
After touring the model home, we plunked down an earnest money deposit and started picking out wall colors, the front facade, and what kind of trees for the front yard. Our excitement in the next few months built and grew, and very soon, the three of us moved in. In just a few years, our family expanded to four, and with an affordable mortgage and a yard for the kids to play in, life was good. What a change from our tiny apartment, we laughed every time one of us called out “where are you”, there was so much room in our home. Our home. Ours.
A few years in, and the blissfulness faded. Small annoyances with the town became stress. Aggravations with our house and community manifested instead in our family. While the one hour commute was mine alone, the entire family felt the eleven hours I was gone each day. The only grocery store in town was often priced twice what we paid if we made the thirty minute drive up the hill. A drive which was terrifying to not just us, but many families in town, nervously watching the logging and gravel trucks barreling in both directions, seemingly without brakes. Community parks were non-existent, public lands to hike and camp and play were extremely limited and when she locked herself out of the house by accident, my wife and kids waited several hours until I got untangled from work and made the long drive home.
Despite the challenges that emerged, we threw ourselves into the tiny community, volunteering and participating in church and local events. We were welcomed, at least as much as one could be welcomed among the fifth-generation families with deep roots and roads named after their great-great-grandparents. The reality was that the future for our children seemed bleak, job options in the county were limited to the prison and lumber mill, and we found ourselves driving an hour on weekends, just for grocery shopping and any sort of entertainment.
Pressure bubbled and percolated and built up until we decided we needed a vacation and we embarked on our giant road trip and adventure. Nine hundred miles in, driving south on I-15 in Utah was new territory for both of us. We had seen much of the country, thanks to Uncle Sam; however, we had never been to this part of the West. Leaving the highway at Cedar City, we climbed east, our two children chattering happily in the back of the van, tiny voices spouting stories to entertain each other, a comforting babble in the background.
As we ascended, the pressure and stress that had built up over the past few years evaporated. The forty-mile stretch of scenic highway provided us with not only amazing views, but also uninterrupted time to talk with each other, to listen and realize and accept that we needed to move. As we often said in the ensuing years, the challenges of the last four years were staring us in the face; that drive allowed us to stare back.
We were no strangers to nature. While in the military, we had always taken advantage of seeing wherever we were stationed or moving through, camping from Mt Lassen to Niagara Falls, exploring the outdoors, and all that it offered. That particular scenic highway, though, did something for us. Rugged cliffs, a myriad of trees with fall colors, majestic sights, they all unlocked something that we desperately needed. It allowed us to talk and surface ideas and ask “what if” and open wide the doors that were begging for us to cross and enter.
We continued talking when we reached Highway 89 and drove down into the famous red rock area of southern Utah, across the Colorado river, through the Navajo Reservation at dusk and into Flagstaff, Arizona. The tiny voices in back babbled as we drove and wondered and asked and planned. Back home we put our house on the market the very next month, it sold in six weeks, and we moved back into the suburbs, back to the city and comforts our family wanted and needed, and most importantly, back to options for us, for our children and their future.
Travel Tales
by Eva Newman
Late one night I was alone and asleep in a corner room of the only tourist hotel in Bhutan’s capital, Thimbu—when I was shocked awake by an uproar outside the hotel. I heard crashing and screaming, like a mob in full fury.
“A riot?” I wondered, and got up and cautiously peeked out a window. The street below was flooded with people rushing past my hotel, many with bundles or pushing carts. I ran to another window to see what they were fleeing—and screamed!
The entire next block of buildings was on fire. The night sky was red with flames that flared a few feet from a wall of my hotel. I grabbed belongings and ran too. After that I kept vital documents–passport and money–with my clothes near the hotel room door, and try to stay on lower floors.
A Muslim country that seems modern may still have Man Rule. In Jordan, my husband was not feeling well the morning we would check out of a hotel. He was slow getting ready and I worried we might miss our scheduled taxi ride. To speed things, I carried my suitcase to the hotel lobby before him, and tried to pay our bill. But the young male desk clerk said firmly, “Man pays bill.”
I explained we were in a hurry, but the youth insisted, “No! The man pays!”
In frustration I said, “Accept my money or not, but we are leaving the hotel now!” This deviation from custom clearly disturbed the youth, but he finally let me pay.
In foreign lands, forget the sanctity of crosswalks. One pleasant evening in Bombay, our tour group was strolling to a restaurant near our hotel. We came to a well-marked crosswalk, which at the time was an unusual sight in India. A couple in our group was so immersed in conversation they stepped into the crosswalk without glancing left or right, a foolish thing to do anywhere.
“Look out!” I screamed, which stopped the pair just short of a bus roaring by. They were fortunately struck only by its whoosh of wind.
Thankfully alive but quite shaken, they were outraged at this violation of their pedestrian rights. The man exclaimed, “This would not happen in our country!”
Well, I thought, none of us is in “our country.”
On trips I take good clothes, though often bargains bought at thrift stores. Then I don’t do laundry on the way but leave the outfits as a tip for hotel maids. This empties my suitcase for souvenirs, and is usually well-received. But not in Turkey, where I learned that pride kept people from accepting second-hand belongings from anyone.
Worse, most hotel workers there were men. I still cleared my suitcase of dresses and blouses, hoping they would be given to sisters or girlfriends. I left a note, “Do what you want with these,” and suspect those nice clothes were discarded with trash.
Submitted by Sam Moorman