travel

The 10,000 Things.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 7 Comments

The last night I am in New Mexico, I can’t sleep, so I slip on my sandals and walk. The moon hangs over my parents’ house, luminescent as a giant drop from a sun-shot waterfall. It’s dark yet, a cool-nearly-cold breeze stirring the desert. No human wanders at this early hour. It’s just me and the singing crickets and birds, the sun pushing a golden curve over the black mountains, the desert stirring in a language I have no words for: the rush of lizards and hustle of rabbits, the sharp-eyed coyote and fox, the wild sunflowers silently bending towards the rising light.

So many pieces to this journey — from the shuttle driver who happily counsels a passenger not to rush as “we’re in the Land of Mañana,” to the flight to Chicago where the Brandeis student beside me whispers about her fear of flying, to the stunningly beautiful flight over the Great Lakes through voluminous white clouds. I keep thinking how unworldly, but that word is ill-chosen. Better said would be of this world. Then the brilliance ends as we fly into the soot of the Canadian wildfires. All through this day, I read Lily Brooks-Dalton’s The Light Pirate (the novel Ben Hewitt told me read), this novel about a family and the collapse of our world, and the brutal irony doesn’t escape me for one moment that as I’m mourning and fearing those sooty clouds I’m entirely part of this 21st century….

In Vermont, my daughters greet me with their 10,000 stories and cheerfully announce I’ve missed the two good kayak days through the lily pads. The humid night air stinks of diesel exhaust. In the parking garage, I strip off my leggings. My youngest drives out of Burlington, along the river through the Winooski Valley, and through the state capital. The girls tell me sunflowers are blooming around the statehouse, and my daughter’s dog fell off a dock into a lake (what clumsy dog does that?) and the swimming has been stunning in Caspian, the water perfectly clear.

My youngest tells me about exploring Burlington with her sister. She says she can’t believe how lucky she is to move there this fall.

In this dew-soaked morning, I realize I haven’t missed the hollyhocks’ bloom. Lucky.

…. Seriously, can’t recommend The Light Pirate enough.

Because everything is changing…. We should all be curious about it, because the way we live has to change, too.

— Lily Brooks-Dalton

Lonesome Trails, Amazing Views.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

New Mexico is scorching hot. I’m visiting my parents for a few days, and even at nine, ten o’clock, the desert day hasn’t shifted to cool evening. The heat lies thickly. In Vermont, my daughter and a friend head to swim, as heat has moved into Vermont, too, bringing humidity and hail. In the hot desert, I think of the pond where they’ll swim, the cool clean water, the blooming lily pads like buttery jewels on emerald saucers. By dawn, though, a cool breeze rushes over the desert, under the moon.

I’ve spent nearly my whole adult life in Vermont, learning the names of wildflowers and trees, the rhythms of the seasons, how loons dive and surface, the brilliance of the Milky Way in January. In New Mexico, I know far fewer of the plants’ names, but the scent of the desert — the unmistakable piñon — is intimately familiar to me. My youngest years were in this country, so many hours spent in the red sand, collecting pebbles, white quartz. The scent — always near mystical with so much life in this vast space, from lizards to jackrabbits. Add to this, the sweep of the wind in the piñons and sage, that ancient breath.

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.” 

— Edward Abbey

The Pleasurable Stink of Wet Wool.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

Rain begins spitting midday. I’m on a clearing-my-head walk through the forest, and the songbirds are crazily lovely, singing mightily away, simultaneously solo and in concert, and the flowers — my goodness — the flowers. The forget-me-nots trail me like loving, silent cats.

There’s a thousand things going on — that thickening rain, the myriad leaves in ovals and spikes, the blooms and the seed heads. I take the long walk back to civilization, emptying my mind as I go. When I return to the human threshold, there’s a little reluctance to head on back in… I stink of wet wool, the better for these minutes.

Revision.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

On the most perfect spring morning, I’m driving along route 107, a stretch of highway I’ve always loved that curves along the river. I’m listening to a This American Life story about two boys (and if you listen, listen all the way to the end, please), when the revision path for my novel abruptly unfolds before me, like a Jacob’s Ladder toy.

I’m in somewhat familiar territory, and so I pull over and scrawl down a few sentences. The day is suffused with dandelions and violets. I get a little lost to where I’m going, but not too lost. Later, I take a different road home, up route 100 along the White River Valley. Last year’s corn stubble patterns black fields that stretch to mountains where leaves freshen the gray with new green. The fruit trees are blossoming. I stop and finish the remains of my sandwich —pickles and sprouts and a coarse sharp mustard — keeping company with pink petals and pollinators.

My lunch companion remarked how a forest will do what a forest will. As I eat, I remember how poet David Budbill railed against writers taking themselves too seriously. He wrote, wrote hard, wrote productively, and revered the mystery of the imagination, the murkiness of creativity. His advice to writers, “Don’t think. Listen.”

On my way home, I listen to another This American Life story about a bird who sang to itself. I’m not making this up.

Remember.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

Not long after dawn, under circling pigeons, we get on a train to the Rome airport. I’m nearly certain our tickets aren’t valid. My phone’s app shows me a mixed message of a cheery You’re all set! and a stern Seats reservations required! I can’t figure out where the tacky-tacky box to check to shell out for reservations might hide. The train car is nearly empty. My daughter and I sprawl out with our suitcases and backpacks. In a luminous honeyed light, the train winds out of Rome. We pass immense apartment buildings with balconies crammed with tables and chairs, hanging plants, yesterday’s laundry.

A conductor walks by, returns and holds out his hand. He speaks to me in Italian. I answer in the one language I command and point to the cheery sentence on my phone. The train picks up speed.

“Remember,” he tells me and disappears into the next car.

Remembering has always been my strength and my weakness.

As a girl, my family used to take the train from New Hampshire to Boston for the day, excursions crammed with cobblestone streets, swans, pastries, history, the ocean’s salty breeze. On this Italian train, my daughter, 17-on-the-cusp-of-18, presses her suntanned face to the window. Crimson poppies bloom along the tracks. Before we left on this trip, a friend told me the adage about pedestrians in Rome — the quick and the dead. Quick we are this morning, on this train with our baggage of wrinkled clothes, a few gifts, those library books I finished reading. A man stands on a sidewalk, smoking a cigarette, studying the train as we sway along.

The next morning, not smoking a cigarette, I stand beside an apple tree in my yard, studying a woodchuck who’s set up housekeeping in a den, the creature returning my gaze, eyes glossy, inscrutable.

Espresso.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

Florence is crammed with tourists. My daughter and I sit on a stone bench in the shade and watch pigeons and people. Midday, we climb stone stairs into the duomo while the organ plays. I’ve never been in a structure like this, such an awesome concert of art and size, art and music. My daughter whispers, You’re going to keep talking about the organ, aren’t you?

Later, we eat pizza. At our table, strangers strike up a conversation with us, give my daughter wine, offer shopping and college advice, and an espresso appears before me. I lift the tiny white cup and drink the brew.