O! The Spontaneous! The Joyous! The Raucous Beauty! Go West and greet a future of wildflowers, rainbow waters, and adventure. Infinite thanks for Mama for being the kind of lady who knows it’s right to spontaneously throw your arms wide when you crest a hill and see that, and for making sure I became that kind of lady too. Here, some selected beauty from our trip:
Tag: Adventure
What we did…
We couldn’t help but wonder at the places we found ourselves, the swimming holes and animals, the music and marvel, and how fast we remembered that each others’ presence in our lives isn’t a luxury but an absolute necessity. The best part? It all starts again in three days. Stay tuned, campers, Summer is at full flush and wanderlust is being realized.
Just. Say. Yes.
Infinite thanks to Chaaaales (at right, below) for building his small corner of paradise and allowing us to call that our destination.
Also thanks to Miss McKay and Mlle Elizabo for a few of these shots. Thanks also to Bill for turning off the blinkety noises and beeps on my camera for stealth shooting.
I bet you wished you…
Early this week, the starry pull of New York and the stronger gravity of possibility and serendipity allowed for the four of us— two far flung wanderers and two of us still tethered to the C train— to be all together in the same place at the same time. We ate well and stayed up late after making music, drinking wine, laughing and talking and filling in the gaps around the bullet point plans of our futures until we had to force ourselves to go to sleep (and—in the wisdom of our years— decided against our 24 year old selves’ standard midnight whiskeys). The next day, the plan was for the wanderers to continue wandering, to leave in the morning for adventure unknown. Their departure happened to coincide with alternate side parking, so as they left my block, scarves flying, horns tooting farewell, I went to do the mundane city things: drop off my laundry and move my car from one side of the street to the other. When I came back to the block to see, if in the intervening minutes, a parking spot had appeared, they were back, something forgotten, something lost in the shuffle, a phone in the wrong pocket. So, instead of trying to find parking, I just ran in, kissed sweetheart goodbye, and followed them into the wilderness. On our way out of town, we passed this billboard on the BQE, crookedy typeface graffiti: I bet you wished you… Open ended, something there wistful, maybe unfulfilled… but not for me, not right then.
So, we’re off, drafting on the winds of the power of yes.
picture from first mate, navigator, red-shoe wearer, and ultimate wing woman Ann Marie, via Instagram.
Happy Trails
Just got back from an absolutely incredible Jubilee! hiking trip out west with my Mama… we averaged 8 miles a day, hiking along misty river rainbowed canyon edges, skirting glacial freezing mirrored lakes, and counting infinite wildflowers along the trails. What a time… I’ll share more pictures tomorrow. Lovelove!
Jubliee!
Have you heard of Jubilee? You may think that it’s this nonsense with the queen, but in fact “Jubilee” is what it is called when you are celebrating a birthday that has a zero at the end of it and so you celebrate it for the whole year. JUBILEE!! My ever-lovin’-Mama thought that up, just in time for her 60th birthday, and sweet jesus if I don’t think it’s just about the best thing I’ve ever heard (perhaps since next year will be a Jubilee for yours truly?). Mama and I embark for points west together today, to bask in our nation’s magesty at Yellowstone and Grand Teton, hiking from bed and breakfast to bed and breakfast (like only Jubilee celebrating ever-lovin’-Mamas do). I’m signing off for the next week in the name of jubilee, but of course you can follow our adventures over on Instagram (@featherbyfeather).
awesome old Yellowstone image from here.
Bless my Heyerdahl: Easter Island Heads have Bodies!
Maybe it was Daddy’s worn copy of Kon Tiki that got me, the one that he loved when he was a boy, with its slick blue and adventure tan illustrations, its grainy black and white photographs of bearded, devastatingly handsome Thor Heyerdahl catching a shark with his bare hands on his way in his reed boat to prove possible trans-continental contact by ancient Polynesian navigators. Sigh. Ever since I was little I’ve loved that thought of far flung adventure, the possibility of discovery, of ancient people, of quipus and carved paddles, of petroglyphs and monoliths, and of the sea: of celestial navigation and of lodestones, the way ships grow from the horizon as the earth curves, the green flash, the dog star, and the southern cross. These mysteries somehow greater than humanity, and maybe almost older than it too. Here is Thor perched atop one of his principal pieces of evidence as to the seaworthiness of balsa rafts, the mysterious and giant Moai Easter Island Heads.
Ahhh the mystery! Who built them? How did they get there? Why were they put there? Why did they have stonework dopplegangers in the Peruvian rainforest? Some questions have only suppositions as answers and some answers lead only to more questions. The most recent answer: OH MY GOODNESS THEY HAVE BODIES NOT JUST HEADS! Leads to the next question: Why??
It’s all there: the ancient wonder, the human spark, the surprise and delight of revelation, and the Catch 22 bittersweetness that with each discovery there is one less thing to be discovered.
Ghost Party
For Miss McKay’s birthday she threw a Ghost Party in the sea islands. All in attendance were asked to choose and channel one of the many spirits of Cumberland, the most mystical and undoubtedly magical tide and mist limned island of the lot. This was certainly cause for a most unearthly celebration. We went to the boneyard and gathered armadillo skulls, deer jawbones, and miscellaneous backbones from the woods, and, like all good ghosts, everyone had a bone necklace and placecard.
We went into the saw palmettos, foraged mossy branches and long fronds and festooned the room with bones, vines, and spanish moss.
We dressed as timacuan squaws and revolutionary war generals, the ghosts of great great uncles and bastard octoroon daughters, as ghost dans, zoave blockade runners, french pirates, notorious brides, and wayward travelers. The birthday girl herself went as fierce and beautiful Aunt Lucy who answered to no one and rode her horse with a crow on her shoulder, and Miss Mia made our portraits. 
We ate shrimp and grits, drank champagne and rum, and played music and danced mystically into the night. It was perfection.
So much love and supernatural joy to Miss McKay on this occasion of her birthday.
And infinite thanks and sharkteethbrujaja to the divinely talented Miss Mia Baxter, timacuan squaw and photographer extroidanairess, for the majority of these stunning images.
Home to Roost, for a bit
With a sigh, with a laugh, with a parking spot right in front of our apartment we returned home last night as the very late tendril of daylight savings light left our block. Rail weary, road hard, laden with burdens and gifts, sunburnt, bugbit, a bit heartsore, but happy: we are home.
This trip south was to celebrate living: one friend’s wedding, another’s birth, my small family taking each other’s hands to honor the what and why of everything that has come before and to keep on keeping on together into the thankful brilliant wonder of everything that lies ahead of us. Being home there and coming home here, I’m reminded of this little verse from Emily Dickinson that my Mama holds dear:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—
Wanderlust, Realized.
Wanderlust. When it gets just warm enough and you have to jump off of high things into wet things with your best ones. Get it? Got it. Good. Let’s roll.
Today, the Thon heads south.
So, a gift from Deke: the best starting-out-on-a-roadtrip-song I’ve heard since “Stranger in a Strange Land”.
image: from McKay’s holga, Smills in the water, me in the air, last summer, Oregon.
Last days of summer….
I came to simultaneous epiphanies the other day:
Summer is almost over! I haven’t had a lobster roll yet! AGHHHH!
No, this just won’t do. I’m a grown ass woman, master of my own destiny. So:
Thankfully, sweetheart and I had already planned to head up to Connecticut to see Bruce and Bela so we decided to make a day of it, take the slow road, and have what may be one of our last adventures of the summer. Le sigh. Lobster rolls from crookedy old Lobster Landing- Connecticut style of course (meaning hot in a griddled bun and doused in butter- after all, this was the Friday before Hurricane Mothra/Irene was coming to destroy New York, so we had better have our last hurrah and make it count). Then on to a curvy route north and inland that had us cruising by scenic (and perhaps magical/gypsy headquarters) Lake Zoar for hand dipped chocolate ice cream (for sweetheart) and (for moi) all-time-summer-favorite-and-somewhat-hard-to-find, a peach milkshake. Ahhhh, summer.
Here are some Lobster Roll Rules for those of you who, like me, enjoy rules exclusively governing sandwiches.
Feather By Feather 