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Two Travel Books

Posted in Art, Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged Catherine Watson, Dark Star Safari, Home on the Rpad, Pau Theroux on January 25, 2015| 6 Comments »

“The best travel is a leap in the dark. If the destination were familiar and friendly, what would be the point of going there?” – Paul Theroux

Recent art: Just as writers see through different eyes, so do artists. I call this recent pieces, with it wrong-way leaning trees, Runoff. The scene reminds me of the mountain backdrop in my former Ogden, Utah, home.

Recent art: Just as writers see through different eyes, so do artists. I call this recent piece, with it wrong-way leaning trees, Runoff. The scene reminds me of the mountain backdrop in my former Ogden, Utah, home.

“There are still too many places to go, too many people to meet, too many good stories to hear, and they all tug at my imagination. Home and away, I see now, are the yin and yang of travel. Both are part of the same journey.” – Catherine Watson One is Not Like the Other I’m not sure how it came to be, because while I’m always reading five or more books at the same time, only one of them is usually a travel book. However, there are currently two in this genre on my reading table, “Dark Star Safari” by Paul Theroux, and “Home on the Road,” by Catherine Watson. Theroux, whom I once heard speak at a writer’s conference, has written over 35 books, his best known being “The Great Railway Bazaar first published in 1975. It’s about a 1973 four-month journey by train from London through Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and a return trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway. It is considered a classic in the travel-writing genre.

I had this scrap of good art paper, 6X11 inches, and decided to do a quick watercolor of some flowers from a photo I posted a week or so ago. I added the cat as s surprise.

“Home on the Road” is just Watson’s second book, her first being ”The Road Less Traveled,” which was first published in 2005 – during the second of my nine years traveling full-time across country in my RV. I’m not sure where I was when I bought the book, but I did so without a second thought. Its title perfectly matched my goal of traveling only backroads and avoiding interstates and freeways as if their paths were flowing lava. Theroux’s writing constantly sends me to an atlas, a dictionary or Wikipedia. I love it, because I’m always learning something new. But the reading is slow; I’m sure the deliciously exotic “Dark Star Safari” will be stuck on my reading table long after “Home on the Road” is back on my bookshelf or passed along to another reader. Watson’s writing, meanwhile, has a quite familiar flavor to it. Not only are the author and I of the same gender – there is no doubt in my mind but that men and women see and think differently – we also share journalism backgrounds. We’ve learned to seldom use a word readers don’t understand, and we both have the knack of letting a reader stand beside us and see what we are seeing. It’s easy reading — even when the setting is foreign. Both authors are writing award winners, and reading them together and having a prime opportunity to compare their writing styles, is a fantastic writer’s dinner. Like most things in life, it is not that one writing style, or book, is better than the other, just different. I Bean Pat: Gray plovers and ruddy turnstones http://tinyurl.com/ovtg3m9 This blog and photos remind me of the wonderful walks I take with my son Lewis when I visit the Texas Gulf Coast and we walk out on the Quintana Jetty. It is where I saw my first purple sandpiper, plus lots of ruddy turnstones.

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A Simple Question

Posted in Journeys, Writing, tagged achievement, creativity, Louis Arstrong . laughter, love, Wants on January 15, 2015| 9 Comments »

“Writing something (or doing something) you want to write is never a waste of time.” – Tracey Barnes Priestley

Playing around with art is one way I get a sense of achievement even when I feel what I have created is not very good. And that happens quite often.

What Do You Really, Really, Really Want?

I came across the above question this morning, and it stopped me in my tracks. While I have goals as a writer — the No. 1 current priority being to get my book, “Travels with Maggie,” published – I knew that wasn’t the answer.

After only a few minutes of contemplation, I wrote:

I want to live out my days with lots of laughter, love, creativity and a daily sense of achievement. I think this answer may change how I look at life in the coming days.

So what do you really, really, really want?

Bean Pat: Talk to the Animals: http://tinyurl.com/ndxgtj2 If you like Louis Armstrong and animals, you’ll love this. I smiled through the whole video

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Reading Habits of a Book Addict

Posted in Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged Libraries, Ray Bradbury, reading habits on January 14, 2015| 6 Comments »

“The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.” – Pablo Neruda

I’m addicted to books like butterflies are addicted to flowers … — Photo by Pat Bean

Books are like a Road Trip for this Non-Wandering Wanderer

I’m addicted to books. But then you probably already know that if you read my blog even infrequently. I should have an “I Brake for Bookstores” sticker on my vehicle’s bumper – because I do.

Walking up and down aisles filled with the work of beloved authors, smelling the crispness of paper and ink, and reading first pages of books with exotic titles, gives me a John Denver high without the Rocky Mountains. My purse is always lighter after such an experience. While I allow myself the luxury of buying one book each time I visit a bookstore, the plan doesn’t always work.

… and lizards are addicted to rocks. — Photo by Pat Bean

On one recent visit, the treasures I couldn’t live without included “The Creative License,” an art instruction book by Danny Greggory that I found on a sale rack; “Living on the Wind,” a book about bird migration by Scott Weidensaul; and a mystery by Sara Peretsky, whose heroine V. I. Warshawski brings Chicago alive to the reader better than most travel writers.

When I later tried to balance my limited budget, I chastised myself and promised I would go to the public Library more. It’s easier to do now that I’m not wandering the countryside in my RV, Gypsy Lee, on a daily basis. But not foolproof, as my Amazon purchases can attest. .

I use Amazon – couldn’t live without my Kindle – for any specific book I simply must have within the next 60 seconds.

A better plan, when I can wait a few days, is to put the book I want on an online Pima County Library request list. My branch library then notifies me when they have the book ready for me to pick up.

It’s a marvelous service.

But I also like to lazily browse the library bookshelves when I have the time, and pick out a few books I wouldn’t otherwise read. I usually always leave with a fantasy, a mystery, a travel book and an art book.

I also like to begin at the first shelf in a library room and peruse it down the line until I come across a book that looks interesting. On the next visit, I pick up where I left off and repeat.

It’s a fascinating trick that helps me learn something new each day.

My library habits, however, pale to those of Ray Bradbury, who spent three days a week for 10 years reading every book in a library. He said it was better than any college education he could have received.

Blog pick of the day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: Writers will understand http://tinyurl.com/lusjka6 This blog gave me my first laugh of the day.

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Road Trip: Alamogordo to Tucson

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Journeys, Nature, Writing, tagged missiles, monuments, New Mexico, road trip, White Sands on January 12, 2015| 9 Comments »

“Sometimes you have got to look at things really positively – without putting your head in the sand, you have got to manage the negatives and keep putting a positive slant on it. Keep trying to find answers.” – Brian McDermot

I just got a glimpse of these white sand dunes as I passed by them just outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico. — Wikimedia photo

White Sands: Beauty and Missiles

When you think of White Sands in New Mexico, what’s the first thought that pops up in your brain? Monument or Missiles?

White Sands National Monument, whose dunes of glistening gypsum sands I passed on the final leg of my trip home after three weeks in Texas, is a place of both. I didn’t stop this day, but have taken the time to explore the 275 square miles of glistening white sand on past road trips.

But I did stop long enough in Texas Canyon, 50 miles east of Tucson, to snap a few pictures of the area’s rocky landscape. == Photo by Pat Bean

The National Park Service claims that this is the world’s largest gypsum dune field, and that its rising from the heart of the desert in the Tularosa Basin is like no place else on earth. The Park Service also notes that occasionally the monument is closed to the public because of testing events at the nearby White Sands Missile Range, which Wikipedia claims is the largest military installation in the United States.

The seemingly oxymoron of beauty and missiles crossed my mind, sending me back in time to when my youngest daughter served on a destroyer tender during the Gulf War. Her ship was the USS Acadia, named after Acadia National Park in Maine.

Whose bright idea was it to name military ships after National Parks, I wondered at the time?

Such thoughts occupied my mine again during the next hundred miles or so driven beneath low-hanging clouds. I hit the rain at Texas Canyon in Arizona, with its own unique landscape of giant granite boulders. Although eager to get home, which was just 50 miles away, Pepper and I took a brief, damp break at the canyon rest stop.

By the time we did reach home, the drizzling rain that accompanied our last leg of the journey had turned into a downpour. I took it as a sign that Mother Nature was welcoming us back to Tucson.

Blog pick of the day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: Blood-Red Pencil: Breaking up is good to do http://bloodredpencil.blogspot.com/ I like this writing advice, probably because I still have a journalistic habit of short paragraphs. Some editors like it, and some don’t. It just goes to show that writing is never like math. Two and two are never four when it comes to words. What one editor thinks is wrong, another editor loves. So sometimes you have to choose between pleasing yourself, and pleasing the editor who wants to publish your writing. At various times in my life I’ve done both.

“You can’t sit around thinking. You have to sit around writing.” – David Long

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Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Journeys, Nature, Writing, tagged Alamorgordo, Highway 82 through Texas and New Mexico, Weather on January 10, 2015| 4 Comments »

Road Trip: Lovington, Texas, to Alamogordo, New Mexico

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E L. Doctorow

I went from fog and clouds to clear sky from one side of the mountain to another. The silver lining was actually waiting for me to arrive. — Photo by Pat Bean

From Cold Fog to Warm Sunshine

I’ve always loved the way Carl Sandburg describes fog: “The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits, looking over harbor and city on silent haunches, and then moves on.” These are words that sing to me.

Another snowy, foggy day, although this photo was taken while driving over Galena Pass in Idaho. — Photo by Pat Bean

But I wasn’t singing when the second part of my day’s drive, which had begun with 30 mph winds adding chill to the thermometer’s 28 degrees, became blurred with fog. It began in serious after I passed through Artesia, and had left the passing scenery of cattle, oil rigs and cotton fields behind me.

The landscape along the 92 miles on Highway 82 from Artesia to Cloudcroft rose over 5,000 feet — from 3,382 feet to 8,668 feet — and the fog varied in thickness from letting me see one vehicle – always a slow-moving truck — to two vehicles ahead. I decided, wisely, to just relax, not try to pass and enjoy as much of the passing, often snow-covered scenery as possible.

Being a wimp, I didn’t stop as I usually do to take photographs because my dashboard kept informing me that the exterior temperature never got above 27 degrees, and was often lower.

And then an amazing thing happened. As I started down the mountain into Alamogordo, I found myself in sunshine with the outside temperature rapidly rising. When I hit the Alamogordo city limits, it was 61 degrees. You can’t fool Mother Nature but sometimes she sure fools us.

Blog pick of the day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: The Return of the Modern Philosopher http://tinyurl.com/nfamnct This is usually an off-the-wall blog that makes you think. Today, the blogger was a bit more serious and asked a question that is probably been running through all sane, peace-loving humans who inhabit this planet.

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Road Trip: Lubbock to Lovington

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Journeys, Travel, Writing, tagged Texas roads, tumbleweeds on January 9, 2015| 4 Comments »

The tumbleweeds blew across cotton fields… — Photo by Pat Bean

“On day one of the drive, I saw my first dome sky. The world was so flat that I could see the level horizon all around me and the sky looked like a dome. Skies like that will give you perspective when nothing else will. The second day, a tumbleweed blew across the interstate. I’m in a western movie, I said to myself, laughing.” — Kimberly Novosel

Tumbleweeds and Bilbo Baggins

By definition, a tumbleweed is any plant which habitually breaks away from its roots and is driven by the wind. If you’ve ever driven across West Texas, I’m sure you’ve seen them. This day, an army of them pursued me as I began my journey home.

and past oil rigs this Texas day. The lowest price I paid for gas on the trip, just fyi, was $1.84 a gallon. I never thought I would see gas so low ever again. It was up to $4 a gallon when I quit traveling full time. — Photo by Pat Bean

When I left Lubbock at 9 a.m., it was a chilly 28 degrees with a wind speed of 30 mph, which made it hellishly cold when you factor in the wind chill. But no sooner had Pepper and I gotten warm and comfy in Cheyenne (my bright red car) when the tumbleweeds started to attack.

They mostly blew across Highway 82, but occasionally they put on a frontal attack. I missed most of them, but not all. One, however, was a monster. It was as if a two-story bush had yanked up its roots and decided it had wanderlust, like me.

Fortunately the wind, which was already blowing briskly, became gusty and yanked the giant tumbleweed off the road just before contact. Whew!

As Bilbo said, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Of course that’s the best thing in my book about being on the road.

“The Road goes ever on and on, Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say”

Blog pick of the day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: Bobby’s Photo Blog http://tinyurl.com/k3ffnrv Comet Lovejoy. I’ve long followed Bobby Harrison because of his birding photos, and that he was involved for a while in trying to find and photo an ivory-bill woodpecker, after it was thought not to be extinct. This night sky photo, meanwhile, speaks to my soul

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The Chaos of Life

Posted in Journeys, Writing, tagged crisis on January 4, 2015| 10 Comments »

Shortly after the daily crisis in my life went away, I took up white-water rafting. I have to admit I loved the challenge of conquering the rapids. I now wonder if this was a way of creating an artificial crisis?

“There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.” – Henry Kissinger

”Any idiot can face a crisis – it is day to day living that wears you out.” – Anton Chekhov

You Can’t Escape It

I once made a comment, when my daily life required moving through a debris-filled landscape dotted with landmines, that I knew I would be all right when the crisis was over.

“And what will you do when you have no more crisis in your life?” came the reply.

That comment, made 40 years ago, has stayed with me. Perhaps because a couple of years later, the daily calamities I had been facing went away. Overnight I found myself with holes in my days.

Sometimes it is easier, I realized, to have a crisis to face because they give purpose to your life. You have to be strong, and usually have no choices to make except what it takes to survive.

Isn’t life strange?

Thankfully, I found new purpose for my crisis-free days and the freed up hours; and now a crisis in my life is a rare occurrence. But when one does pop up – and it does because this is life we are talking about – the crisis doesn’t freak me out as much as it did when I was younger.

That’s the silver lining the years bring.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: On a Dollop of Dali: http://tinyurl.com/nfj2lh5 Fun quotes from a strange artist. I love ‘em.

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Sense of Place

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Journeys, Travel, Writing, tagged sense of place, Texas on January 3, 2015| 6 Comments »

“Life is short, break the rules. Forgive quickly, kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that makes you smile.” — Mark Twain

One of the highlights of my trip to Brazoria County on the Texas Gulf Coast, where I lived for 15 years, is an opportunity to go birding with my son, Lewis. He is as avid a birder as I am. We always see great egrets on our outings. -- Photo by Pat Bean

One of the highlights of my trips to Brazoria County on the Texas Gulf Coast, where I lived for 15 years, is an opportunity to go birding with my son, Lewis. He is as avid a birder as I am, and we always see great egrets on our outings. — Photo by Pat Bean

Texas in my Soul

I arrived in Texas, my native landscape, on December 19, after leaving my current home in Tucson and traveling all the way across New Mexico. I spent the night in a two-star hotel in Van Horn before traveling on to visit a granddaughter and her husband in San Antonio.

On December 20, I drove to West Columbia, to my oldest son’s home where I celebrated Christmas with two sons, seven grandchildren, three spouses, and a brand new great-granddaughter. It’s a family of large personalities but all was peaceful – perhaps because everyone was enthralled with the sparkling personality and cheerful giggles of Savannah Kay, the youngest family member.

Sam Houston played a prominent roll in early Texas history, and so like most things in Texas, here he is — larger than life. — Photo by Pat Bean

The day after Christmas I took the half-hour drive from West Columbia into Lake Jackson, where my middle son currently lives. The city’s moss-covered trees, winding streets and green-green landscape felt familiar, perhaps because I lived in Lake Jackson for 15 years, from 1956 to 1971, when I left Texas — and never permanently came back.

A few days and another road trip away, I celebrated New Year’s Eve in the suburbs of Dallas with my oldest daughter and her husband, a granddaughter and her partner, and a niece and her husband. Dallas is where I was born and lived for the first 16 years of my life.

I remember back when Dallas, the Big D, was Texas’ largest city. Now it’s only third having been surpassed by both Houston and San Antonio. While the Texas landscape of cotton fields, oil rigs and live oak trees still feels like home whenever I see them, Dallas never again felt like home after John F, Kennedy was killed here.

I can’t help but wonder how much of who we are is tainted by where we lived, from our accents to our way of thinking. I think of Utah, where I lived for over 30 years, as a full-blooming flower in my life; Idaho, Nevada and now Arizona are the leaves of my plant-being, varying in intensity and color like the seasons. Texas, however, contains my roots, the first glimmering of whom I would be and the catalyst of my personality.

But it’s the still the road itself that has always been the place I felt most at home. I was born, I believe, with wanderlust in my soul.

On Monday, I’ll be on the road again, although staying in Texas just a bit longer. I have one last Texas family member to visit, a granddaughter, along with her husband and my first great-grandchild, 5-year-old Junior. They live in Lubbock.

And then it’s back to Tucson, where I’m letting the desert creep into my being.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: Miss Pelican’s Perch http://tinyurl.com/nmv9zeh Looking at the world in a different way.

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Soul Searching

Posted in Journeys, Travel, Writing, tagged blogging, Chincoteague, tucson on January 2, 2015| 10 Comments »

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world.” – Neil Gaiman

A scene from my past: This pier is located on Chincoteague Island in Virginia, and I sat on it in 2006 and watched birds. — Photo by Pat Bean

I’ve Become a Non-Wandering Wanderer

I started this blog when I was traveling full-time with my canine companion, Maggie, in a small RV I called Gypsy Lee. I blogged mostly about the places I visited.

Today I live in a small, third-floor walk-up apartment in Tucson that sits in the shadow of the Catalina Mountains. I have a new canine companion, Pepper, a joyful Scottie mix who helped ease my grief when Maggie went to doggie heaven.

The Present: The view looking out over Tucson from my third-floor apartment. — Photo by Pat Bean

My feet are still itchy for the road, but I’m finding new ways to scratch them by sight-seeing closer to home, traveling via books and photographs, and reflecting more deeply about the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met. The latter is a luxury of time gifted to me for having survived in this world for three-quarters of a century. I love being an old broad.

The things that I still have great passion for include writing, Mother Nature, birds, family, learning new things daily, books, art, travel and helping make this planet a more loving and peaceful world. And these are the things I will be writing about in my blog in 2015.

I’m looking forward to the journey, and am thankful for readers who will be traveling with me. Life is good.

Bean Pat: Soul Writings http://tinyurl.com/q88ltoz The world would be a better place if everyone lived by these 10 rules.

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New Year’s Resolutions

Posted in Journeys, Nature, Writing, tagged new year's resolutions on January 1, 2015| 11 Comments »

“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 — Photo by Pat Bean

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” – My grandmother, Mamie Truesdale

A Plan for 2015

My New Year’s resolutions are to start each day with a cup of good, cream-laced coffee, write in my daily journal, and plan my day.

May you keep your eyes open, and be appreciative to the little things like desert phlox, that help make this planet so beautiful. That’s my resolution for my readers in 2015. — Photo by Pat Bean

These are resolutions I finally think I can keep, unlike my usual January First list of goals in which I promised to write four hours a day, take a daily two-mile walk, don’t play computer games, do more art, and don’t forget any family members’ birthdays (my kids tell me I’m better at remembering where and when I first saw a bird species than their birthdays). These resolutions, however, are just the tip of the iceberg of the ones I made over the years – and broke before the first week in January was over.

This year’s resolution to plan my day was inspired by one of the 20 suggestions I came across in an article on how writers can be more productive. Reading it was an AHA moment for me. I suddenly realized that my days were always more productive when I started them with a plan, and especially when the list of tasks on it were prioritized.

Today’s plan included writing this blog as a first priority. I want to get back to daily blogging because I find it easier than writing one less frequently. But if I do miss a day or two in 2015, at least I won’t be breaking a New Year’s resolution.

So what are your New Year’s resolutions?

Bean Pat: Interesting Literature http://tinyurl.com/m7r2zpy Start the New Year off with these “verified” writer quotes. As a former journalist of facts, I love it that this blog points out the inexact fluidity of the internet

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