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.
The Exercise: I feel wanderlust when you start to think about the temperature rising and the slant of the sun as the world opens itself wide because even though this has been the most wild winter in memory it’s still left an early-dark melancholy down deep in the bones.
Sunglasses on, let’s go.
Thanks to Meags for The Feeling Wheel.
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.
Our Valley
We don’t see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.
You probably think I’m nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you’re thrilled and terrified.
You have to remember this isn’t your land.
It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
who carved a living from it only to find themselves
carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.
Philip Levine
from Meags, who I do love so very much, and who I wish I was having adventures with, constantly.
We had been in California for less than 12 hours when we debarked for the Pacific Coast Highway and our dear friends took us to Tomales Bay Oyster Company. We got two spidery mesh bags of 50 oysters each (yes, 100 oysters), buttery and fat and still fresh wet from their briny homes, shucked and raw with fresh lemon and tabasco or smoked and yawning open on the grill. Add a cast iron skillet full of sweet butter, caramelized onions and squash from the Bolinas Farmstand, crusty sourdough bread, haloumi cheese, and plenty of cold beer and, well, we are doing quite well for ourselves.
Here we are just starting out. The summer after we all graduated from college we traveled cross country. Under the guise of moving Sara to San Francisco the four of us packed up and headed west. We saw the painted desert and slept on the banks of the Rio Grande, we took to coastal roads and desolate flats, we danced honkytonk and airstream, we mapped our days in terms of smallest road and sweetest spot to swim, and, like so many before us, we discovered and loved the riches of California. It was wonderful, it was the birth of adventures.
Here we are now:
Time has passed, years have flown, we have gained much, lost some, and lived around in our bones a little. We now revolve around each other in elliptical orbits, drawn at once by the gravity of our pasts, the omnipresent weight and luster of New York like a great sun, and the distant call of the star-flung west coast. Soon (but not even soon enough!) we’ll all be together again to pick up the thread of our traveling like the best conversations: after much time and distance, right at the point where we left off. And this time, we’ll have Molly:
So, I have some travels coming up and, of course, instead of thinking of the actual practicalities (why don’t I own a sleeping bag?? two pairs of boots: too many? too few? I don’t have any black tie events on the books… but you never know?) I’m spending my prep time envisioning myself in (and searching for new) large coral necklaces, perfect shorts, striped scarves, and french sunglasses made of real glass. Constructive.
But seriously, folks, the necklace is a pretty good price! And it would be so perfect with my heretofore nonexistant dream outfit! Should I buy it and have it express shipped where I’m going to meet me there? I think probably.
necklace: Melodies Memories.
Feather By Feather 
