It has been a long while since I last popped in here. I have been wondering what I want to do with this space - how best to share the place where my writing and our travels intersect. Looking for some new inspiration to bring to these posts.

A part of me wants to continue exploring what travel writing looks like for me. How my own voice in this genre might be different from other voices and bring a new perspective.

A part of me likes sharing where we’ve been and what we have been up to and staying connected to those we love and have met on the road.

And another part of me wonders if I am supposed to be doing some other form of writing in this space.

But here I am again, wanting to share something from what we have been doing on the road, and that must mean something.

Yesterday I watched, what I first I thought were a couple of squirrels (turned out they were chipmunks), being chased out of a tree by a very upset bird. I am assuming the bird had made a nest in the tree and did not want any interlopers visiting her new nursery.

I don’t think chipmunks eat eggs but maybe?

Anyway they were very persistent. The bird would chase them out of the tree and back they would come again. Making their way up the trunk and then being forced down as she pecked and flew at them. Four, maybe five times they did this same dance until they finally moved onto another tree leaving the bird in peace.

I have been thinking about those chipmunks all night. Maybe because they were trying to climb the same tree I have been doing yoga with each morning since we got here- something that has become part of my yoga practice now that we are on the road.

As you might remember from past posts, I don’t have much space inside Betty to do yoga, so when it is relatively nice weather I go outside - always befriending a tree close by. As I lay on my mat the tree might stretch its branches wide over my head and shake its leaves in greeting. Or maybe, on the ground next to where I lay, she has spread her roots wide across the grass. Or in this case, during a standing pose, I found the tree growing on the edge of our campsite.

This tree and I have been getting to know each other while I work on my balance poses. As I stand in a balance pose, I fix my eyes on its sturdy trunk and try to imagine myself rooted to the ground through my toes and feet, able to move in the breeze but not topple over. The tree has been a willing teacher but I have been a slow student.

This has started a sort of obsession - looking at the roots of trees and the diverse ways they anchor themselves to the ground.

Currently we are just outside of Cleveland, Ohio and last weekend we hiked in Cuyahoga National Park on a popular trail called “The Ledges”. What makes the trail so interesting is the limestone that has been carved away by wind and water to create these amazing overhangs, cliffs, and caves. On the edges are the most amazing trees. Their roots span the expanse of rock, finding nooks and crannies to secure themselves despite the slowly disappearing rock that once surrounded them. I spent most of the hike snapping pictures of roots, in awe at the way a tree can plant itself so firmly in the ground despite the obstacles.

The following day we visited a local arboretum and climbed to the top of an observation deck installed above the tree line. It is 120 feet in the air and has 202 steps to the top. They designed the observation deck to act like a tree, rooted at the bottom but able to sway the higher and higher you go. When we were about half way up we stopped and felt the swaying for the first time. It sent strange signals to our brains creating a sense of vertigo and unstableness. We both held onto the railing to help anchor ourselves back into our bodies.

And maybe that is the lesson that my current yoga tree really wants me to learn right now - that stability is hard and takes a willingness to go deep and find even the smallest foothold where you can attach yourself. That in that swaying you have to find something to hold onto, some way to anchor yourself so that the movement can happen without toppling over.

I am reading the strangest book right now called “How I Became a Tree” by the Indian writer, Sumana Roy. It is a book that can only be digested in small pieces - so strange in its beauty - requiring the mind to be transported into another culture, another way of seeing the world, another way of linking words together. When I read it I feel otherworldly. I find I must read it outside, and I often glance up at my tree wondering if what the author writes is true. But my tree just watches me silently, forcing me to find my own footholds in the strange words and stories pouring out of the book.

We have had a full couple of months of travel, finally making our way into the northeast in preparation for the rest of the year exploring New England and the Eastern Seaboard - something that we wanted to do as soon as we set out in Betty but couldn’t make happen right away. And we traveled to Germany to celebrate the marriage of our son to his beloved partner. We are straddling a world of children almost in their thirties, parents edging closer to eighty, and a dog that is aging before our eyes.

In the midst of this I have begun the phase of working with an editor for my first book of poetry and joined with two other women to form a writers group so that each of us can finish our books. It has been a time of physical movement, family expansion, heart opening, and pursuit of long held dreams and goals. There is so much life swirling around us that it is a wonder I don’t feel dizzy all the time.

But somehow I don’t. Perhaps it is the practice of doing yoga regularly with the trees. Maybe it is joining my Benedictine community regularly in prayer. Maybe it is the truth that although we are not rooted in one place, we carry our home on our backs each place we go. We are rooted now in things that are harder to point to than in the past but somehow feel more firm and grounded then ever before.

Yesterday on my morning walk I happened by a tree that I had not noticed before. It was a huge old thing hiding away on the hillside - an American Birch I believe. Her trunk was one of the largest I have ever seen and was embedded with scars from the decades, her huge expanse of branches reaching higher than any of the other trees surrounding her. I stood there and just stared up at her in awe. Then I asked politely if I could have one of her leaves to add to my collection of things I pick up on my walks.

It is these moments of holding still that stand out. When all of life is swirling around, and for just a moment, I press pause and take a deep breath. To notice. To name. To be. To listen to what wants to be whispered into my awaiting heart.

I am still not sure what kind of travel writer I will be in the end. Or how I would like to use this space going forward. But that is okay. I am giving myself time to grow.

Maybe one day I will be able to tell a story that somehow captures the essence of what we are doing. here on the road.

Maybe one day I will be able to stand in a balance pose that honors the rootedness of the tree and doesn’t have me toppling over when things get windy.

I will just keep on trying.