Looking Up, Instead of Out

Somewhere along the way, my 80-day summer writing series turned into a 90-day writing series. Not sure how that happened. Originally, I imagined this summer writing series would enter a 120-day process of three intersecting wilderness journeys. I would journal part of the 90-day WildFit Challenge and the month that followed, as I work to shift a challenge into a lifestyle. 

At some point, I forgot that the last ten days of the WildFit challenge were the first ten days of the third Wilderness journey.

Out of curiosity I checked the 80th post. It was the New Haven Pizza Jaunt on Labor Day, an apt ending to a summer writing project, date-wise, and a curious ending topically. 

I've been caught up in a flow, and allowed the river to carry me.  Now, on day 84, I am wandering around the question of duration. I'm also realizing that sometimes we can be in the Wilderness so long, we may not quite get that we've come out of it. I think about the landscape and it makes sense that, unless there's a sign or a river or an oasis, you might not quite realize you've reached the end.  

The Green Wilderness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Stepping Back into Normal

Yesterday felt like a lost day after arriving home so late with the train delays. I honestly can't remember what I did, beyond unpacking and writing. I felt down this morning. Off. The two days of eating non-supportive foods have worked their way through my body, and my joints are sore. It's good to keep this in mind. Fortunately, I am still on vacation and can take a couple of days to take things easy. 

I joined Costco to get a good price on Vital Proteins Collagen Peptides. I'll be adding that to my self-care regimen to strengthen the vulnerabilities created by my experience with Lyme disease three years ago. Food, for the next few weeks will be simple. Green smoothies in the morning, salads at lunch, a protein and veg at dinner. Coconut yogurt and paleo granola when I feel like something sweet. If the days get cooler, I'll make some roasted vegetable soup. It was 96 degrees today and way too hot even to cook. 

Here's the recipe for my favorite green salad. I had it for lunch today.

Arrange tender baby lettuces on the plate and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil. Add a squeeze of Meyer lemon. A little salt and pepper. Add marinated artichoke hearts and pine nuts. Sometimes I'll also add a little avocado, scooped with a spoon.

I love this salad with roasted red pepper soup. It's nice also with a little bit of leftover roasted chicken. 

The Green Wilderness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience. 

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

When Things Go Wacky

. . . and they do. Sometimes.

Take, for example, our well-planned mini-break to New Haven. Airbnb. (check) Train reservations. (check) Planned itinerary. (check) Unstructured free time. (check) There was enough structure for the trip to have good bones. There was enough flexibility for the trip to experience some serendipity.

Take, for example, breakfast on Tuesday morning. The Airbnb listing said breakfast was included, provided. It wasn't. But Charlie was on top of things, and notices things, and during our walks around town he noticed a bookshop-café called Atticus. So, when we were packed and heading out, I mentioned I'd been looking at the map of the Yale campus and would like to take a different route than the ones we've been walking. I said that we might see somewhere fun to get breakfast along the way. 

He said, "I've got breakfast covered, Mom." And he did. He's really good at thinking of things that combine different elements with the things we love, and coming up with a great plan. We put his idea together with my route and came up with something new that included some of both. We spent a great morning at the café-bookshop. A leisurely breakfast and time to talk, browse, talk some more. Both our bags were two books heavier when we left.

After lunch at the third pizza place of the trip, we decided to head to the train station a couple of hours early. We figured we might find someplace to sit down, have a cup of something, and wind things down in a leisurely way that left us free from rushing at the end.

HA.

We did sit, for almost four hours, and watched as there was, first, a 20 minute delay with our train, and then a 40 minute delay, an hour, and then it just became a flashing DELAYED on the board. Train after train. There was some kind of obstruction on the track and no other information. We looked into trying to switch our tickets, but everything was sold out. 

Until . . . 

All hell broke loose at the station and Charlie said, "Get your stuff, Mom. We need to run for the train. They're holding it for us." The scene reminded me of one of those metallic shavings and magnet sets, as people started moving like long lines coming together to get through the doors to the track, and then splitting again to get from the passageway to the different platforms.

We came up to an empty platform. The Vermonter had just pulled away. As we went down from the platform, an Amtrack staffer sent us up to another platform. The Acela. It was nearly empty, and going to Washington via Stamford, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. 

My stop is Trenton. 

"Don't worry," she said. "Just get on the train. You can figure it out later." 

Long story, short. Charlie stayed on the Acela to Philly. I got off in NYC to catch the Jersey Transit to Trenton. They'd changed the way the parking garage worked, so I walked across an empty lot after dark to get to my entrance only to find it locked, walked back to the station, called the parking authority number and learned there was now only one way in after dark. Walked there, paid for my parking, took the elevator up, got my car, exited and headed home for a quick shower, and fell into bed. 

What about food and eating when things go wacky? Here's the thing. You do what you need to do and eat what's available. For me, it was a chicken salad, spinach, and avocado sandwich on a croissant from the train concession. For Charlie, it was mac and cheese. It was one meal. And, hey, we'd just spent the last day and a half eating pizza, anchovies, and Caesar salad. Laughing just a bit as I think about the final meal of a foodie jaunt being cuisine de Amtrak. 

T

he Green Wilderness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience. 

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Tuesday Morning, I Look Out Over the Yale Campus

Old Campus, with its beautiful towers and deep green canopy of trees. We're staying at the edge of campus, in a third-floor walk-up Airbnb. A funky loft with ceiling timbers in a traditional building. Old touches and new. A loft with a roof deck. Perfect for a Millennial and his late-Baby Boomer mom. 

A pizza jaunt in a colonial college town is a great idea. 

As we stood in line at Pepe's before lunch, we got into conversation with people who thought it was interesting, and probably a little quirky, that we'd take the train up from Philly to eat pizza in New Haven. Of course, it's more than that. It's spending time together around a common interest. Trying something new. Seeing someplace new. Exploring the world around us. Doing something other than a traditional cook-out in the backyard on Labor Day. And talking about it all. Getting to know each other beyond the childhood-parenting identities, and seeing who we've become as time has gone by.

I'm having a rare cup of tea this morning. 

And I'm pretty sure that, after today, I won't have pizza for a very long time.

I look up from the keyboard and my eyes are drawn to the campus once again. I thought about going back to school after my marriage broke up. Getting a PhD. At Princeton. I thought to myself that seven years would be way too long to invest in that. That I'd be so old when it was done. It's now five years beyond when I would have completed it. I laugh at myself (good naturedly, of course) over my imaginings around age. At 50, I could not imagine being 60. To tell the truth, I really couldn't even imagine being 50. 

But there I was. And here I am.  

The Green Wilderness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience. 

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life. 

New Haven Pizza Jaunt

It has been a long, wonderful day. From the train ride up. To lunch at Frank Pepe's. To a rest at the Airbnb during the hottest part of the day. To the long walk past Yale, the New Haven Green, over 95, and back to Little Italy for dinner at Sally's. To a fun movie on Netflix back at the Airbnb after an unsuccessful hunt for gelato. To falling into bed exhausted. To jumping up when I remembered I was going to post my blog after dinner, and a quick write up for the day. 

This trip was imagined toward the end of a three-day water fast about six weeks ago. I was trying to distract myself, and came across a documentary about New Haven pizza while scrolling through YouTube. I was so pulled into the story of its origins and reputation that I found myself planning a New Haven pizza tour. One day while hanging out with my son, I told him about it and he said, "When are we going? What are you doing on Labor Day?"  We arranged an Airbnb and bought Amtrak tickets. 

It's so easy to decide to do something fun with someone you love, and then just do it. 

The Green Wilderness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience. Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life. 

A Day Between

Between this and that. Between the beach and a Labor Day jaunt with my son. A day between one week of vacation and another. Almost another. The first week was a little longer than the second. 

But who's counting?

I spent the morning at the park in town, stopped in at the bakery and got a little something to have with my S'well of cool water. Did my Morning Pages in a tiny peace chapel, a shady park bench before a Peace Pole. There are many ways to worship.

Stopped in to pick up a few things at the store. I'll make some sandwiches for the train. There's nothing like a good sandwich on a train for breakfast.  As you're going someplace you've never been before with someone you love. There are many ways to be restored.

Picked up some flowers. Small sunflowers for the kitchen and blue and purple blossoms for my bedroom and writing room. I really don't write in my writing room, but I do keep a writing table there and my library. Some nice art. There are many ways to refresh a home.

The afternoon and evening slipped away from me. The days go that way sometimes.

The Green Wilderness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience. 

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.   

 

Morning Songs

Morning songs are layered here at the beach. Sounds of surf. Songs of cicadas. Occasional passing of cars in the distance and people walking to the beach closer by. I forgot how lovely it is to have a screened porch. There's one here at the beach house. 

My favorite home from over the years had one, that's the one where we lived when the kids were little. We moved when my daughter had just started high school and my son was in fourth grade. The next house had a guest room. And a little woodland at the end of the property. Each place I've lived had something special that I will remember it for, and I love the early mornings when something in their songs brings up memories of songs from long ago.

The Green Wilderness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience. 

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.  

Afternoon Lull

The weather turned yesterday. Late afternoon. High winds throughout the day blew the humidity and bugs away. Today is glorious. The next nine days expect to be glorious. I'm going home tomorrow. Stretched it as far as I can. It's the Alanis Morisette kind of ironic, which is not actually ironic at all. 

I'll have a day at home to get ready for Charlie's and my jaunt to New Haven on Monday and Tuesday. Not much to do. Pack an overnight bag and go. Of course, there's the mail that's come in while I've been away, watering the plants, and little things like that to handle but even all that can wait another couple of days.

Michael Hedges, Aerial Boundaries, plays in the afternoon lull. I'm munching on some nuts and sipping water. The sunlight has moved to the other side of the house. The light is soft here in the room where I type. A sea breeze blows gently through open windows. Cicadas begin their evening songs. 

Sitting on the beach today, I remembered a family trip here in 1978. We rented a house a block from the beach, in town, for a month. Dad came up on the weekends. My grandparents came down for part of the trip. I worked at the pizza parlor on the small main street for spending money. Spent the days on the beach, the early evening carrying pizza and soda to tables, and the best part of the night with friends, usually on the small boardwalk in town. When we went back home, I started my senior year. I was 16.

The town is much the same today as it was then. Maybe a little busier. They call the Delaware beaches The Quiet Resorts. Or used to. Not sure I paid attention to the signs on this trip. The coastal highway through Rehoboth Beach is more built up than it used to be. The town still has it's quiet character. Someone is building loads of housing for retirees, especially around Bethany Beach. Dewey is Dewey. So far, this stretch of sand and marsh has been able to avoid the development you see at the Jersey Shore and the high rises of Ocean City, Maryland. 

I'm thinking about the evening. Whether I really want to cook tonight, or have one more dinner out at Matt's Fish Camp. There are lots of other places I could go, but Matt's is just so darn easy. Close. Relaxed. And when you come out after a good meal, the sun is setting right in front of you.

The Green Wilderness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience. 

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.