We drove through the fall foliage of upstate New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire. We made it all the way to Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor, Maine. We drove through historical towns in Massachusetts, visiting the stony cabin of Robert Frost and Thoreau’s Walden Pond. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and walked the streets of Brooklyn. We stood in Liberty Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was drafted and signed, and had a Philly cheesesteak sandwich in Philadelphia. We walked the gardens of Monticello and drove the fields of Gettysburg. We maneuvered our way through the Blue Ridge Mountains and spent a Friday night walking the streets of Nashville, Tennessee. I bottled my own whiskey in Kentucky, shotguns in Colorado, and laid my head in Monument Valley. We saw the most epic scenery at the Grand Canyon, in Bryce Canyon, and Zion National Parks, truly taking my breath away and bringing tears of gratefulness at beholding such beautiful scenery. On the last day of our trip, I stood in the valley of Yosemite, taking in the air and the images of Half-dome and Angel falls. It was Thanksgiving Day.
I got to visit with my three sisters, family members in Indiana and New Jersey, and my father, who I hadn’t seen in over 10 years. I stayed with Liz’s aunt and we planted a tree with her ashes in the front yard of her home. I learned transcendental meditation in Iowa and spent the afternoon with my Aunt at her monastery in the Canadian Rockies. I never really advertised to people I met why I was so far from home, I mostly kept to myself. But if you caught me and I felt Liz’s nudging, I shared our story. The kindness of strangers is truly remarkable and signified to me how substantial a common love that flows between all of us can be.
There was Sue, who bought me a pizza and a beer at a pub in Port Townsend, Washington. There was Judy Sparks, who took a picture of me as I sat on a canyon ledge in Yellowstone National Park while thinking of Elizabeth. She approached me later in tears, wanting to send me a copy of the picture, not knowing any part of my journey or why I was out there, she was just moved for some reason. There was Sharon in the Badlands, who conveyed that her mother is still with her and comes to her as a swarm of butterflies and that Liz is always with me. I told her I understood. There were Dave and Lisa who bought me the best clam chowder soup I’ve ever tasted in Cape Cod. There was Allister Finley, a homeless man from Ireland begging for change outside Harvard University. There was the pack of friends who took me in as part of their group at a show in a dingy punk rock club in Nashville. And there were the two French sisters at the Grand Canyon, who cried in honor of Elizabeth as I told them all about her.
