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WELCOME, TRAVELER.Why "wonderlust" instead of "wanderlust"? You'll find out. This is not travel just as adventure, but as spiritual gift. Bring your mental camera, tie on some imaginary hiking boots and join me.
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On page 199 in Blue Highways, I read where William Least Heat Moon discovers Spencer Hot Springs on a Nevada map and detours south off Highway 50 (“The Loneliest Road in America”) to wash himself clean. As I read, I was sitting 300 feet from Spencer in my first full day discovering the springs. Is this serendipity for real?
I imagine my 26-year-old self reading Blue Highways for the first time, loving the writing, but moving on to countless other reads that, over the next 35 years, scatter all his details from my mind like so such dandelion fluff on the breeze. Ah, but did they really? Perhaps my larger mind held onto those Blue Highway coordinates, waiting for the just the right moment to put me in the cross hairs. Like a connect-the-dots game in 3-D, William and I collided at Spencer Hot Springs through time and space: he in his travels, me in mine so many years later, both in May. But to what end? “There are no coincidences” I tell people, so why this pointed crossing? Thinking back to when Blue Highways came out, my 1982 self wrote for a living as a newspaper reporter. Writing was my first passion. Words have vibrations, and good writing gives me that feeling you get when a child smiles at you. It makes me whole. My 2017 self writes my just-started travelogue, RV Wonderlust. But my efforts so far are weak. I wobble on my new wonderlust legs and I hesitate to do the deep digging that is required for first-rate prose. Maybe, just maybe, I brought William and his superlative travel book back into my life as inspiration. And it took this Spencer serendipity to wake me up, to take notice. “Mary, connect these dots, like so many small towns and lives strung across the blue highways. See what grace and wonder words can bring if you set your heart to it,” William whispers. Just in case I needed more proof, I read a few more pages to find that he travels next to Austin just down the road, then through Reno to Quincy, CA. That's my route. I had already booked a stay in Quincy for a week starting May 18. I smile at the sway serendipity has in life, when allowed in. And the challenge it invokes. Yes, invocation. May I be my best, give my best, always.
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WHO
Metaphysician. Vegan chef. Jewelry artist. Writer. Star gazer. Seeker of hot springs. And now, wonderluster. Meet Mary.
WHAT
1995 was a good year. They made this 21-foot Chinook RV, now my home as I wonder in what writer Ellen Maloy described as, " . . . attention to the radiance, a rise to the full chase of beauty."
WHY
Nature + travel. Why do they inspire us so? I believe we discover -- and connect -- to our deepest selves in those spaces of beauty. Despite what separates us (politics, geography, philosophies), the stories and photographs here show our world as connected and whole. Imagine the finest fabric, woven in never-ending creation, on the loom of the universe.
I will meet you there. WHERE
Current location: Southwest USA
WHEN
There's no time like the present. Actually, now is a pretty cool space to hang out. Yet another reason to join me on my travels.
ARCHIVES
February 2019
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