A break to show some beautiful things....

 I am still working through notes and it is keeping me from actually writing. Bah.

Here are some beautiful things I can write about.

After the conference I took a train from San Diego to Los Angeles.

About an hour of the train ride was this view. The ocean. I stared in wonder and terror until....I fell asleep. Or passed out. Let's just say it was sleep, ok?  Ha.

I am still unsure how to work through this terror of mine. I guess I am lucky I live land locked in Iowa. Maybe. We'll get to that.

So beautiful view. Train ride. I highly recommend it. There was a cafe on the train. It was comfortable. Everyone was really nice.

Then? Hello LA. Nice to meet you.

I was so excited to see my friend Bridie. She's a pastor now and a community organiser for human rights. In many ways, nothing has changed and everything has. It is amazing how much we are the same and grown at the same time.

I have so many Bridie stories and they all end with her rescuing my stupid teenage angsty self from real trouble. She extended me so much grace, much more than I deserved for sure. She stood for me at my wedding too. Lifted me with her friendship from the dark ages of self destruction and saw me into this life, which sometimes feels like a parallel universe. And now she does the same for others as her life work. Seriously. Amazing. Lady.

And this is who showed me her LA. Her California. This is how I like to travel to cities. Have people dear to me show me what they love about where they live, you know?

I even ate raw oyster. And then later? Squid. I ate squid. And soft shell crab. And Korean candy. Because travel is the chance to experience a place through someone else's life and I did not want to miss even a taste of it. Plus, seafood is so much better closer to the source.

Soon, I will post photos from all the adventures and places we went. Just a Monday through Thursday morning, then back home to Iowa. I'd post them now but I can't find the sd card. Ah. Photographer problems.

A Look Back, Travel 2014

 Ossabaw Island was my first adventure in 2014. This was way, way out of my comfort zone. I made every excuse I could to talk myself out of it. A wonderful group of friends and a select few family members kept me on the path to go to this.

What was this? This was a writer's retreat, sure, but it was also a returning to poetry, to writing, to taking myself seriously, to finding out who I am now that I have children and years of experience under my belt.

I took a bus. I saw the country through the highways. I also experienced helplessness and poverty in ways that shook me to my core. I arrived on the island and the quiet and the spiritual quality of the wilderness brought me home. It was from this place that took heed. 

I have more to write about this experience, but I blogged it live here: Ossawbaw.


Next up: Rio, Wisconsin. Madison Area Permaculture Convergence. This year Chad took a certification course for Permaculture design and we shifted our farm goals to meet this design theory. I had been pushing towards Permaculture since we bought the farm and my friend Sabbath first used the word in conversation with me, my curiosity and discovery led me to embrace it. Convincing Chad was another challenge all together.  He finished his design certification work, attended a week long work shop at Versaland, and then he really wanted me to attend this weekend in Wisconsin. Only he wanted me to go alone or with friends. Nope. I wanted to go together, as a couple.

He said yes.

This may not seem like a big deal, but the truth is that we do not travel together. We just don't. He's a food miser and hates touristy blah blah. I love it. So honestly, I was not expecting him to say yes and I was not expecting it to go well. How sad is that? Very. Like I said, we didn't travel together before kids, and children and farm livestock certainly make travel complicated even when we leave them home. Chad's parents volunteered for both duties and we were off!

Camping. Vegan food (which was admittedly a huge challenge for me), and lots of hiking. I even had Lego foot (that condition of tissue swelling that happens post stepping on a Lego in the middle of the night). I brought my camera and adventurous spirit.

One of the things I began to see is missing from our farm operation is the second tenant of Permaculture- Care of the people. Oh sure, we care for ourselves and the people on our farm, and others in our community but we are hermits at heart. So this coming year we have ideas that have rooted that will involve helping others begin farming too, teach skills, and build more community.

 Late August our friend Jessica called and said, "Hey lady, wanna go cave exploring? Today. Leave now?"

Normally, this is where I hesitate and make excuses. Nope. Loaded the car in under an hour, the kids in less than 5, and headed north. It was challenging physically, but amazing and totally worth it. This really drove home the idea that we can adventure closer to home too and easily. I have some pretty big travel ideas for the next year, actually, and I know my kids are up to it.

And last but certainly not the least.......I flew to Europe. This is a trip I have dreamt of since I was little, but more recently the last two years.

I have always said we should create our lives to be so good we don't need to take a vacation from it. I stand by that. However, I thrive on the beauty of landscape and art and history. I wanted to visit my friend who has lived abroad for the last decade.

This trip was not easy. Just getting a passport took me 2 years and a government shut down, a new drivers license, and so much paperwork that I thought for sure it was just not meant to be. Passport in hand though, I booked the tickets. Could I afford this? Nope. Responsibly I should have remodelled the downstairs bathroom that I ripped out last summer. But I didn't. I bought tickets on Air France and told Chad to figure out child care (he quit his job instead! Ha!). And then I did it.

I went to Prague. I visited Wencelas Square, The Bone Chapel, the castle, and so many churches. I did karaoke, walked the streets of Prague in the rain, took a paddle boat on the river, and rode a train through the country side.

Did it change my life? No. I am the same me. Unplugged and open to adventure, camera in hand, I saw the sites, hugged my friend when she needed it, and now I have a passport and 3000 amazing pictures.

How will 2015 ever live up? Oh, it will.

Where will the year take you?

Prague Castle: a few photos

Day Three in Prague: In which I demonstrate that I can actually take decent architectural photos.......

Day three was so overwhelming and amazing that I can't even remember what I ate. Seriously. Ok, Actually I think I had eggs for breakfast with an amazing Czech bread for toast and then frozen cheese on a stick later.....but I know there was other food somewhere in the day and I cannot remember it at all. Why? Architecture. All of it. And the history. This first picture is the place where thousands of people gathered for the Velvet revolution, Wenceslas_Square, but it was also the site of a great many historical gatherings and protests. The sense of greatness and historical importance was dense in the air.

Day Two in Prague

Day two. I slept most of it. Yes I did. I could not sleep the night before. I got up at lunch time and washed my hair, then spent about 45 minutes trying to clean the purple out of my friend's bathroom. Freaking poor planning on my part- freshly dyed hair + staying at someone else's place= frantic cleaning. I did remember to bring my own pillow case and towel though (always travel with a towel because...).  

Day two was spent studying maps, making lists of places I wanted to visit, writing, and getting grounded. Plus, Adrienne had to work and I did not yet have a key to the flat. When she returned we headed out.

Dinner was an amazing beef and gravy dumpling plate and aloe vera tea and then we headed out to a Pub Quiz! Ha. It was fun and I got to use my mad trivia skills....also humbled by my lack of pop culture knowledge in general.....though I did correctly identify Kurt Cobain as a kid.

This was the first time I started noticing the beautiful tattooed doors, but did not yet think to photograph them. Actually, this day I was still getting my artistic mind around how to photograph buildings again. My first job out of college was survey work for the State Historical Preservation Office, taking digital photos of buildings. I even had a portfolio of churches and commercial buildings, but it has been over a decade that I have mostly taken action and macro shots of flora and fauna on the farm and my children. It is a very different kind of photography and requires a different eye. I am posting these terrible shots from my second day as record of the progress I made artistically.

 

Day One: Prague

Waiting for take off.

In the air!

Flying was interesting. At our local airport,  there was much fuss about Swamp Fire, our signature farm seasoning, that I was bringing to my friend as a thank you gift. My joke that it is "the bomb" but not "a bomb" was not appreciated. Neither was my observation that my boarding gate was C4. Also, at each check point I was taken aside for "special" treatment and reassured that I do not fit the profile of the Panty Bomber.  Not something I was able to find online with a quick search, as the underwear bomber is not someone who looks anything like me.  Still, I made every connection, sometimes breathless and last to board.
 

I was relieved and travel weary when the plane landed in Prague.  Thank goodness for good friends, seriously. I was so happy to see Adrienne! All the way around the world for a hug. It took me two years to follow through on a promise, but I did it. Well worth the effort.

 And this is the neighbourhood that I spent most of my time in. This particular pub had fantastic gnocchi in spinach cream sauce, so good I hope to make it soon for the family. Mmmm, mmmmm.

Mostly, day one was just getting settled, and day two the same. 

People keep asking me why I went. I answer a couple ways:
One: it was my pig escape money goal. Every time Chad needs help with escaped livestock and swears at me, I get 50$. Ha ha. This is no longer an issue and it actually did not generate enough money for such a trip.
Two: Bucket list, true. Going to Europe was a long term goal. Living there was actually a childhood dream.
Three: In grad school, I had a nursling when I should have been taking the semester abroad in Italy that other Architecture students were required to do. I have always felt this was a gap in my education. This short trip is far from filling that gap, but I have a lifetime to do so.
Four: A vacation? I feel so guilty even allowing myself to admit this outloud. I grew up poor. Free lunch poor. Taking a trip like this is a luxury I don't deserve. It makes me one of them, the not poor. That is a hard thing to swallow, especially after our new transition to grow our farm in which we will have to use government programs for health care and the like. Confused? I don't want to admit we'll be poor or admit we were well off enough to send me on a European vacation. 
Five: Opportunity knocked. The set of circumstances that made the trip affordable all lined up.
Six: It was a personal reward, if I followed through with sending my work out into the world and it was accepted for publication, I would do this. I would have earned this.
Seven: Travel unravels us in ways that are intangible. I needed that unravelling at my seams so I could take up the pieces and reassemble with stranger threads.

Details of the trip budget, since this is the next question I get:
Ticket: I watched flight prices for more than a year, fluctuate. I could have gone to Priceline and a round trip ticket I scoped out was $600 but not refundable and lots of layovers. I opted instead to fly AirFrance/Delta and even pay an extra $75 each way to fly out of the Atlanta hub. Ticket total was around $1300 with all the fees ect.
Passport: $200 with the fees and photo and new driver's license required. That's its own story.
Food and Museum fees while there: $200 for ten days.
Train: less than $20. It was 220 crowns I think and I am too tired to do the math. 1000 crowns=48$.

Lodging was free- stayed with Adrienne the whole time. Huge savings and pretty much what made the trip doable and worth it. She was a guide and translator, and really made the trip fun and local.

The weather was perfect, warm and sunny or overcast and cool (perfect for photos). Fall was full of colour too.