the beach in front of the Pelican Retreat House

Heaven. I'll risk the hyperbole. For all of my tendencies to whine, taking pea princess into cartoon land, my loudest inner moan today is not wanting to leave tomorrow morning. Of course I may ask to stay longer, however I am booked into Bon Paul and Sharky's Hostel (can you believe it?) in Asheville, to the west and in the mountains. At least close to the mountains. I'm not prepared to cancel the hostel's one private room.... just yet. 

I'd booked this self-directed time here at the Trinity Conference Center's Pelican Retreat House (that was a mouthful) called Personal Time. I found it by scouring through various websites with criteria such as "retreat centers," "Episcopal," "religious communities." Piecing together this so far wondrous USA Road Trip has been a bit of a hiccupy process....but stumbling across a beachfront Episcopal retreat house in North Carolina felt like finding an enormous chest of golden treasure. I have a room with a view, like-minded and really interesting retreat housemates, catered meals that are just way too delicious for words, the Holy Spirit present while two-lane resort traffic zooms by on Hwy. 58.... for $70/night. I had felt edgy about having 'five whole days' with less structure than my normally manic whirl of a life is used to. It is in fact such a sacred and restful space in which to sink that I have abandoned otherwise laudable desires to explore the Outer Banks (Kitty Hawk, Nags Head, every lighthouse imaginable), particularly since realizing that it's just not a day trip unless you have your own boat. 

Instead I sit in the sand and watch for ghost crabs, who are more hypervigilant and skittish than I can be. I do not envy a life of being constantly on the lookout for sea birds who are constantly on the lookout for their next meal. This might be analogous to the movie Finding Nemo except I have not seen all of it although I do remember one crab holding up another above the water line with the diving gulls crying, "Mine! Mine! Mine!" A ghost crab and I got into a staring contest. The crab won. 

I have not been in the ocean in many many many years. The water is warm here, unlike the Pacific. I last lived close to the ocean in Venice Beach in the late 1980's and early 1990's. The Santa Monica Bay was and is still renown for being so polluted it could send you to the local ER, so I wouldn't even wade. Yesterday I went in up to my chest. I felt like an exultant 5-year-old. Today - if the waves and rip currents are kind - I shall dive in as long as a strong swimmer is close by. One of the retreatants is a young lad who claims he was on his high school swimming team. Score! For the record I have taken swimming lessons three times in my life - at ages 6, 14 and 35. In spite of this, I have almost drowned on perhaps four occasions. Deep water and I keep a cautious distance. Today we explore the friendship. 

Susan & Klaus & Jesus & the Goddess

Deep breath. I feel inadequate to express the enormity of this precious visit. It took my heart, gently embraced it and said "here, breathe!"

Susan & Klaus & I met at the Findhorn Foundation in northeast Scotland in 1993. It is an international spiritual community and education center that began in the early 1960's; those unfamiliar with it can readily score its history online. Susan & I worked in Cluny dining room; Klaus worked in Accounting. They fell in love and married; we all grew to be friends. After years of Christmas cards and invitations to visit them, I did. 

I spent a very long time vehemently dismissing my "new age years." I think that one of my core issues now is not to dilute my relationship with the Risen Christ but to consciously breathe in a similar manner to Thomas Merton's open-hearted ecumenism. Focus ought not translate to closed-mindedness; attention need not grasp at rigid dismissal. I'm not advocating polite whitewashing or avoiding conflict at all cost. I'm a mere mortal learning sometimes clumsily that "your God" and "my God" need not be glaring at one another in the Shootout at the OK Corral. 

One of the many gifts of my time at the Foundation is the emotional intimacy I encountered there. When people asked you how you were, they stopped what they were doing and wanted to know. Really know. How you really are. I stopped saying "fine, thank you," although I do that now. We began our work shifts with a time of speaking personally with one another called "attunements." One might glower that it reduced efficiency. This is not The American Way! It altered my inner landscape however in a manner that stays with me today. My visit with Susan & Klaus in a sultry Atlanta suburb brought back memories, healed old wounds (not every day was bliss and joy) and reminded me that love is a grace of God. Here are some more photos! (I hope your browser gets along with my MobileMe Galleries! If there are glitches, downloading the latest version of Firefox could help. The photo opps might cough and splutter on older software.)

Susan has worked with the Chattahoochee Nature Sanctuary over the past decade. The photo album linked to this post includes a visit with some of their rescued wildlife. I've waited for years to get that up close and personal with owls, for those of you recalling my Seattle folk-Celtic trio of the same name. I even got to scratch the back of Camden's head! We also visited the Holy Spirit Monastery in Conyers. The merging of dualism was not lost on us as we wandered the grounds and saw a snake in a tree. A large nest was high above in the branches. It was lunch time for all including us as we joined the retreatants in a silent meal. Jesus, the Goddess, the black snake and the tame geese all nodded that day. 

the circuitous route to the Atlantic shore

This is my room at the Pelican Retreat House in Salter Path, North Carolina. The link is down below where the links live. It's part of the Trinity Conference Center which I found by Google slogging my way through various Episcopal diocesan websites. My room is called St. Hilda and the waves are so loud at night I don't want to fall asleep because I am so enraptured hearing them. I've driven over 3,000 miles to hear the sound of the waves breaking, a memory from my childhood growing up in Venice Beach. When I walked into my room, my heart leapt and I cried. 

Yes, I realize that as a Berkeley resident I am about an hour and a half from the Pacific. I like sharing the idea that I felt like going to the beach, turned around 180-degrees and hit the road. No, not this ocean; that ocean.

Getting here I had a less than graceful encounter with what had at the time seemed like a great idea: Heading to the Coast from the Atlanta area, spending the night north of Charleston, South Carolina (to avoid resort mayhem) and then meandering my way up Hwy. 17 to these lower Outer Banks. I took goofy silly back routes to pass through Denmark, as one of my Roswell friends is half-Danish. I landed at a reasonably cute and unremarkable Jameson Inn in Georgetown, adjacent to a huge bridge and a fog-shrouded bog. I wanted wifi, a nice bed and palatable coffee after I arose. Check. I headed out after a leisurely morning and slammed head-on into a really old, dilapidated billboard living in the nether reaches of my mind. Why I thought that driving up the coast would be something out of a 1962 TV commercial, with big ole cars and a sea breeze blowing.... I don't know. It was bumper to bumper traffic. It was one of my worst city-fried, claustrophobic nightmares. After crawling 35 miles in 90 minutes while what might've resembled my patience dribbled into a crumb-scattered corner of my messy Honda, I'd had enough. Another 140 miles of that was not something I was willing to gamble on, so I drove an extra 100 miles inland and staggered into the Point of Arrival at Trinity after another 8-hour driving day rather than a leisurely 4-1/2 one. Sometimes I can seamlessly shift out of expectations into life on life's terms. Yesterday was not one of those days. 

It's worth it being here. I jogged on the beach this morning, hot and muggy before 9 am. I saw pelicans, and small planes from a local airport. I eyed the seashells and saw a ghost crab dart back into its burrow. I'll sniff around for some friendly adult supervision and splash in the water. I hear the rip current danger is low today.

Happy Birthday!

How could I not have a yum yum THANK you happy birthday when my friends Klaus & Susan have said that every day I'm here is my birthday? The last two natal whirls have been not too good to say the least, particularly having the big five-oh subsumed under a miasma of neo-community blur when with the Iona Community. This week I feel loved, cared for.... yes. All that. And with cake, too!

I'll upload a new photo gallery in the coming few days to include photos of the three of us, the owls and eagle from Chattahoochee Nature Sanctuary and today's eagerly quietly yes-anticipated visit to the Holy Spirit Monastery in Conyers (Georgia, in case you forget where I was). 

first, the virtual or at least a nod to memorabilia

I know grown men who were traumatized as little kids by seeing the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. Decades later I still cry when I hear Judy Garland sing 'Over the Rainbow', which I cannot imagine anyone else in the entire universe attempting to do. I am a sap. And with a 2-day driving trip that was SO not smart I still managed to budget an off-road jaunt to a little Kansas museum filled with Ozesque memorabilia. I think I am still trying to atone for having attended the 1970 MGM Studios sale and not paid $5 for some used period dress. For my $6 admission fee (with AAA card), I wandered, I gawked, I roared in silent mental outrage at the tchotchke markups, I bought, I left. 

It was worth it. I couldn't not have gone. It was silly and I loved it. 

Driving nearly a thousand miles in two days was not terribly bright. However I arrived at Susan and Klaus's beautiful home in Roswell, Georgia (it's a gracious Atlanta suburb) with 45 minutes (rather than the 3-4 hours originally hoped) in which to shower and stagger into their car for a BRILLIANT Wynton Marsalis concert at the Atlanta Symphony Hall. I do not have a fine-tuned lust for jazz. I don't listen to it for the most part. I was jaw-dropping stunned in sheer delight. What a birthday treat and as well to reunite with my beloved friends!

I'll write more later on where we met 15 years ago, musings on why some resonances continue while others sigh and wander off.... and say thanks to you who sent birthday emails and calls and real cards waiting for me in Berkeley, to which I can only respond monosyllabically for the present moment. Yes. Thank you again.

from Kansas to Georgia

I was talking to my dear friend Ruthie today while motoring along I-70 through Missouri. I shared that it didn't make a lot of sense to be catching up with cherished friends after a 14-year absence and then excusing myself to huddle in the basement and write about it. Bilocation remains a dream, but perhaps that is for the continued desire to multi-task. Sort of Whites Out the present moment. My time with Carlisle and his wife Geri (plus their dog and two cats) was heart-warming. I would have preferred more time outdoors in their rural orchard (Coyote Oaks) but alas my wimpy California limitations had me lunging back to the air-conditioned car after even 15-minutes in the 95-degree direct sun withering heat. Cold I can dress for and huddle against. Extreme heat demands acclimation. You can only take off so many clothes and then it's still a meltdown. I nod to the generations of prairie farmers who have a non-coddled intimacy with their land. 

Carlisle is a magnificently talented multi-creative who has lived several lifetimes in this one, from professional recording artist to landscape architect to creator of Vantage Quest... well, I'll leave many things out, I am sure, but currently he is a therapist, author and turning his 80 acres into a space for sacred gathering, a vineyard and soon a home. 

He's building it from scratch (photo at right with a mind of its own):

It is hot in Kansas. I wilt in the heat. I knew I'd be catapulted into one of my 'no nevers' on this trip and it is a worthy venture (if at times very uncomfortable) to push this envelope. I'm not a ditch digger. I can find air-conditioning eventually. I can walk in the still sultry dusk and hear cicadas, see fireflies and a few bats, catch sight of wild bunnies in the overgrown neighborhood yards. The local laundromat vending machine had Hostess Sno-Balls. A meeting room I visited had Decoupaged plaques on the walls straight out of the 70's. Midwest towns have more taxidermists than the Bay Area. 

Parts of the Kansas landscape via I-70 remind me of the Grampian region of northern Scotland. I'm startled to have noticed this, but there's a beauty to Kansas that I did not expect to encounter. Missouri flew by in a blur. I drove 12 hours (around 550 miles) today to arrive in Mt. Vernon, Illinois before I reconnect with my dear friends Susan and Klaus outside of Atlanta tomorrow afternoon. A birthday gift of a Wynton Marsalis concert and seeing them again are pushing me to not drive smart but with adequate vitamins, hydration, prayers, rest stops and judicious use of sugar and caffeine (plus beddie bye time soon), I think I'll make it in one piece. I'm spacey, grateful and very excited!

Goodland, Kansas and heading to Salina

Why is it both so tempting to make some idiotic Wizard of Oz comment and so utterly clear that it is just too goofy for words? Aha. Fooled you. Now you can think the phrase while I send hellos from yet another (yes another!) Holiday Inn Express, this time in Western Kansas. I am so far driving smart. This time I prayerfully consider stopping when I am very tired, unlike the olden daze when I would motor along in a completely altered state of phasey dissociation before thinking, 'hey, it's 11 pm, I've been driving for 14 hours, like, wow....' My birthday is this Saturday. Enough already for midlife!

My long weekend retreat at St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado was so heart-expanding and head chatter-quieting that all I can do - and in fact, with huge excitement - is to say, please, check out the photos. I can't find the words right now. Drink in this place. Those of you with an eagle eye will also see a change in the URL. Apple is busy shifting .Mac to "Mobile Me." I have no idea why. But be on the lookout for future email address confusion.

My photo gallery of St. Benedict's is HERE

I'm torn between sharing insights and foolishness. I'll settle by offering a dollop of the mundane: There is no gas crisis in Colorado. You wouldn't believe the number of spaceship-sized SUVs and trucks that went blazing past me and my 4-door 2003 Honda Civic LX as we went a top speed of 70 mph. I made a mental note to not only return to St. Benedict's but to explore the Glenwood Canyon and Glenwood Springs in particular. Wanting to hang in something called the Vapor Caves is particularly appealing. It is gob-smackingly beautiful in this part of the world. And I only had to stop myself 4-5 times from mentally cooing John Denver tunes. (I'm not joking). In 12-Step land we say 'some are sicker than others'.....

Gasoline costs vary, for those of you curious. I filled my car at $4.48/gallon in some high-falutin' Rockies Conoco before sighing at the collection of later stations boasting $4.09 for regular unleaded. I'm topping off this morning for $3.98. It is amazing what my chipmunk mind can attach to.... look, 35-cents cheaper! Hello? My Prius-envy however is being assuaged by finding that, with sensible road speeds of around 68 mph and cruise control (Thank You God for cruise control), I've been getting 44-46 mpg with the a/c on. Whoa! 

Of course I know people who would've walked or bicycled across country, so I'll be quiet now.

I have no GPS or weather-tracking devices in my car but when I see thunderclouds looming unlike anything Berkeley has shown, I call my friends. "Any tornadoes?" I tuned in to the local radio stations but the one I found spoke of putting on your snow chains early. 

To Salina! My friend Carlisle's book "The Coyote Oak" is linked below. It's been, what, 13 years? We met 30 years ago at Cal's Corral in the South Bay of Southern California. Some friendships stick and I am grateful this one has. 

and a Google Map or two

Here's the scoop for the 1st two legs..... 

You've noticed by now that I'm a fan of hyperlinks......

And from C to D will get me to Snowmass, Colorado

from Green River, Utah

I can thank my friend Greg and a combination of my propensity for "contempt prior to investigation" (friends of Bill W. will know that phrase) coupled with sheer exhaustion in finding me at.... at.... a Holiday Inn Express. Normally the terminally cute, quaint and unusual call to me (speaking of accommodation for now). On my 2nd day of hours and hours of driving, this town reminded me of junior high school days listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival and as well told myself, 'I'll stop here, somewhere, anywhere' rather than motoring on to Grand Junction, Colorado for the night before my private weekend retreat at the Benedictine Monastery in Snowmass.  

Greg is a soft-spoken and unassuming man. He's generous and kind, deeply philosophical and talented. Here's a photo of him (I may hear about this):

So I'm spending the night at a cookie-cutter box joint and am grateful. The air-conditioning leaves a sorry carbon footprint but eases the outside air temps in the mid-90's. And while Day 1 out of Berkeley was a 533-mile slog all the way to vaguely cutesy Ely, Nevada, today's 330-miles came to a halt with another two hours looming for Grand Junction by 7:30 pm. It's cool, it has wifi, I had a lovely salad for dinner while a big fat red sun set over the Green River, and it is a very good thing to have stopped driving for the day. Last night I collapsed at the Bristlecone Motel in Ely (pronounced ee-lee). I'd perused the online reviews and it was a pleasingly, middle-of-the-road thumbs up. The huge room boasted multi-toned thick carpet, a bordello-themed bright red sink in the corner, faux wood paneling and probably die-of-asbestos-poisoning ceiling tiles. I loved it. 

The smoke throughout the Sacramento Valley (is it?) was so thick I felt ill. The visibility was 1-2 miles at the most, and this was for over an hour. It was mildly smokey all throughout the drive towards Reno. I sent a silent blessing to the firefighters and those struggling with the losses from these. The heat only added to its weight.

I drove Route 50 throughout all of Nevada and so far much of Utah. It's called "The Loneliest Road in America," and has a quaint history. Its beauties are subtle and sometimes stark. In western Utah it is far more remote, reminding me of one of those classic images of a single road extending in a straight line forever. There was not another single car on the road for long stretches of time, neither did I have a cell phone signal (thank you, AT&T). I pondered being stranded in the 95-degree heat. I stopped that thought as quickly as possible. 

This portion of Utah through which zooms I-70 is a kissing cousin to Sedona, Arizona where I once lived and still have good friends. Red rocks and otherworldly formations are strewn in all directions. I felt rebellious and took photos from my iPhone rather than stopping every mile or so. Perhaps I used up my daily quotient of Doing Something Stupid by taking blurry low-res photos while cruising along at 68 mph and so could stop in a pleasingly ordinary place for the night without driving myself into bleary-eyed oblivion. I can thank Marilyn for that one; "Drive safely and be smart." I think I've got a sliding scale for grading with the internal peanut gallery for that one....!