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(WILMINGTON, N.C.) — My friend, Erik, and I have a thing for quirky towns and cities that others might overlook. The places we like are the ones that, if they were kids in middle school, would get beat up by bigger, glitzier locales like New York, Toronto and London. I’m talking about El Paso, Texas and Leadville, Colo. and Astoria, Ore. I’m talking about my two favorite tiny towns in the West: Silver City, N.M. and Moab, Utah. Erik and I are different in so many ways, but when it comes to a sense of place, I feel we are on each other’s wavelengths. We like our towns to be remote and weird and our cities to be sweet and personal. Above all, these places must have a feeling of magic to them, one that not everyone agrees is there. When I find some spot that matters, Erik is someone I can call up and gush to — and he usually gets just what I’m talking about.
This is why I know he would have loved the Hampden section of Baltimore.
I was there a month ago, and I think it has taken me so long to post these pictures because I was afraid of screwing this up. My experience of Baltimore was so delicately strange and homey, so unlike any other city I have been to, that I didn’t want to short change it. As you might guess, that’s a good way to never get something written. But I suppose that’s normal. I mean, aren’t all the things that really matter the scariest do to?
OK, deep breath. Here it goes.
I liked Baltimore. I liked it a lot. It wasn’t my hometown, but I could feel its colorful funk tugging at my heart, asking me to take it in like an sweet, scraggly, stray puppy. I didn’t see much of downtown, and that was just fine by me, as the part that really spoke to me was Hampden, a neighborhood that was a pretty good mix of hipsters, artists, and rough, poor folks who have lived there forever. The homes were narrow, tall and interconnected — row houses, a term I had never used before I landed there. While I walked the traffic-free streets, there was no consistency around me, which I believe I mentioned in an earlier post. One house might have been decked out with cutesy lawn ornaments and a mailbox that looked like a duck, and the next house over might have been this side of abandoned, with a stroller in its front yard and a broken down car alongside that. Something about this lack of uniformity touched off a little spark in me, and I was continually elated whenever I explored this section of town. It reminded me of Moab and Silver City, actually, by how its creativity could border on junky. I couldn’t imagine any homeowner’s associations around there. It was as though people had their personalities on display without much editing. That made me smile.
For a week, my car and trailer were parked on a quiet stretch of street near an auto repair place in the same neighborhood. No one bothered them. No one seemed to care. Live and let live, just the way I like it.
It was in this personal kind of environment that I reconnected with Meredith and Avelino, old friends from New Mexico. I doubt I even would have stopped in Baltimore if it hadn’t been for them. I had this feeling as I was driving up to their home, another insanely tall and thin structure, that our hanging out for days on end would be just fine, even though we hadn’t seen each other in more than two years. And it was. They have this cute, coupley way of interacting that is so disarming and good-hearted that even when my mood took a lonely turn every once and a while, I didn’t begrudge them their adorableness. They are both artistic, smart and well-read, and they’re also the kind of people who love Christmas and get googly eyed over their cats. Being with them I felt taken care of in a very genuine, comforting way. What a nice respite before I moved on to the hectic world of D.C. and northern Virginia. God, I must think of a way to give back to them.
It seems weird that was just a month ago. Now, I’m by the North Carolina ocean, and I’m staying with a woman who owns a vintage clothing store downtown and who reminds me so much of Cary Bradshaw. I like it here, in all its damp, green glory, but I will admit to having little daydreams of Hampden. I like that about traveling, how you carry the places you really care about with you all the time. As much I love to discover all these new towns, it’s also such a comfort to be able to close my eyes and think back to the places I hold in my heart. To Baltimore and Silver City and Moab and so many other towns, I miss you. And think of you often. Same goes for you, Erik, Meredith and Avelino.
Here are a few shots from Baltimore and around.
 Avelino and Meredith's kitties, Squishy and Nutmeg, in their domain.  My New Mexico friends, Meredith and Avelino, experiencing a very non-New Mexican annoyance/joy: leaves. 
 Photo by Avelino Maestas.  I don't know what these are, only that I probably shouldn't eat them.  Hampden. This is Baltimore to me.  If it looks like there's a story here, that's because there is. This fellow, the owner of a Hampden music store, was my conversation buddy for about an hour-and-a-half. He talked mostly, and I listened, and it was strange, but it was also kind of perfect. By the time I walked out of there, I had no idea what had just happened. I still don't. But at least I have photographic evidence. I wish him the best.  A Baltimore-centric joke. This city is the home of the Hons — fabled stereotypical women with beehive hairdos and cat eye glasses. This is the kind of woman who might be your waitress at a pie diner and call you "Hon." Or she might appear in a Gary Larson cartoon. 
(SAN RAFAEL, Calif.) — It’s strange to be on shore leave from my trip. Right now I’m sitting at my parents’ house, an old converted barn in the heart of Marin suburbia, and my trailer and travel life seems so far away. Part of me is anxious to get back to it; part of me is scared to resume it. I have this overwhelming sense that when I get back to North Carolina, I will have to create something completely new. My money situation and sense of daily structure demand it. I’ll still be on the road of course, but it will have to be in some fresh way. So far, my trip has been a string of long, introspective drives, punctuated at times by old friends. Now I don’t know anyone for 2,000 miles — and the money’s running dry.
Time to get creative. Some part of me is excited by the challenge, by the feeling of having to stand on my own. Just like my dad’s motto has been informing me for the last 20-plus years: Whatever it takes.
On an unrelated note, here are some photos from one of the two days I spent in Washington, D.C. recently
 Entering the belly of the subway in Bethesda, Maryland. 
 In the presence of greatness: Julia Child's kitchen at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.  Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C.  Rockets, man at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C  Veterans at a Veterans Day Ceremony at the Viet Nam Memorial, Washington, D.C. 
(ARCATA, Calif.) — I can’t believe it has been so long since I’ve written. I know explanations (at least mine) are usually boring and kind of defensive, so I’ll just give a short one. I’m on shore leave from my trip right now, visiting California and my family (I flew out from Wilmington, N.C., where my trailer is temporally parked). My grandparents just had their 60th wedding anniversary, and I was in Redding for it. It was good to see my mom’s big, extended family, and I’m realizing that the more I know my grandparents, the more I like them. My grandmother can’t hear well but she’s friendly and unfailingly supportive. It seems my grandfather gets funnier and intentionally goofier all the time. This time around, he made sure I got a picture of him bugging out his eyes. In short, the whole trip was pretty good. Now, I need to get back to myself. I’m visiting the town where I went to school, and it feels so good to be here, in the wet, crisp air and small-town vibe. A lot of people and businesses smell like a combination of patchouli and pot and body odor, and I just don’t care. I plan to be showered and to wear decent clothes today, but I love that I don’t have to do either of those things. A lot of people I’ve met recently in other parts of the world don’t like Arcata, but none of them had a reason to spend three years here like I did. The beautiful truth of this town is that it doesn’t have a lot of rules. It’s not just a hippy haven. It takes everybody. I think it’s like Australia or New Mexico, made up of misfits and troublemakers and artists who aren’t afraid to live off the grid. And it makes me proud of it every time I come back.
Hey, enough of what’s going on my head. I’d rather talk about kittens — and my trip. Here’s something about my last few days in Harrisonburg, Va.
On the night of Friday, Dec. 20, I was clasping two wet and shivering kittens to my chest. Swaddled in towels, they were still steaming after the first bath of their lives. When they looked up at me with their huge, innocent, kitten eyes, I melted into a girly puddle of goo that pooled onto the floor. This was such a nice surprise.
Sometimes, the idea that you can plan anything feels like such a joke.
My original plans for the night had been to avoid myself. All I wanted to do was forget my world for a few hours and dive into Paranormal Activity. I was on day three of squatting in Harrisonburg’s Wal-Mart parking lot, and I was surrounded by corporate sprawl in every direction. While I loved the access to free WiFi and lack of camping fees, the corporate culture all around was beginning to wear me down. In a strange, big box half world like that, nothing feels quite real, and absolutely nothing has character. While I find people to be just as friendly in those strip malls as they are anywhere else, I never feel quite like myself. After a while, I start to become heart sick for the rest of reality.
That’s where I was at nearly two weeks ago. I just wanted to write and get all my stuff done, but I simply couldn’t. I was too distracted by the aggressively impersonal nature of my location. That’s when I hatched my cinema escape plan. It was 4 p.m., still matinee time on a weekday, so if I knew anything, it was that the movies would be both depopulated and cheap.
A select few reading this right now are smiling and asking themselves the same question: Oh my God, does she live under a rock?
You see, that Friday was the opening day of New Moon, the latest installment in that teen vampire saga, Twilight. The theater had begun showing the movie at 10 a.m. that morning and was starting a new show each half hour until 11 p.m. But that was not enough to contain the swell of Edward Cullen-loving teens, tweens and their parents. Not only were all of the Twilight screenings sold-out until 10:30 p.m. but nearly every other film was also filled to the max with the overflow of vampire devotees.
Grumbling, I trudged home across three packed parking lots. People and cars were everywhere, and a resentful mood filled me. I so badly wanted to escape from all this and couldn’t. I felt sorry for myself for about 15 minutes, but when that was followed by self-loathing, I decided to really get out of my head and go for a run — my first in two months. It was one the best ideas I had had all week.
The instant I hit the pavement, I started to feel better. After 17 years of running, I’m amazed that I ever forget the alchemy of it. Traffic was still intense but the scenery changed quickly. Soon, I was running alongside a graveyard and little, scrappy houses made out of brick. After about a mile-and-a-half, I turned onto Harrisonburg’s Main Street and was greeted by the comforting sight of historic storefronts containing old-time sandwich shops and a hipster-looking coffee house. There were signs pointing to the colleges in the area and a downtown square, and I felt so relieved to know that this town had a soul. I had actually tricked myself into believing that that commercial mess in which I had been camped really was the town (as if people could survive on that alone).
It had just begun to get dark, and I was feeling pretty good and energized, when something stopped me dead in my tracks.
Kittens.
On my left was a spacious storefront filled with kittens and cats running freely around a 10-year-old boy. He was wielding a laser-point, which was driving the kitties crazy, and when he saw me he gestured me inside. There was no way I wasn’t following his lead.
What I found when I entered Cat’s Cradle is a rarity, I think — a friendly, welcoming animal adoption center, where I didn’t feel weird for just walking in. The laser kid was kind of like me, just there to hang out and get his cat fix. I was sweaty and hadn’t taken a shower in a few days, but for some reason I didn’t feel that self-conscious. The situation was too enjoyable and kind of perfect for that.
A kindly volunteer was part of that perfection. I asked her, a 50-ish woman who seemed so put together, if I could hold the kitties, and she said yes and then left me and the kid alone to play with them as she did paperwork. That little act of trust was touching. Soon, she was done with her work, and the kid left, and she and I were alone and talking as I picked up and petted the slightly resistant, squirming felines.
It turns out that she knew all about the desire to travel across a country — she had done it herself, back when she graduated from nursing school. It was 1970 then, and she left with a friend for two months in her Volkswagen Beetle and traveled from somewhere in the middle of the country (Minnesota, maybe? Damn, I can’t believe my memory is fading so fast) and then across Canada. She looked proud and wistful when she talked about the trip. She said it was beautiful. She and her friend even entered Québec at one point, even know neither of them spoke any French and though it was not a particularly popular time to be an American in that province. No matter where they were, they did everything on the cheap. When it was time to stop for the night, they would drive from one motel to another, looking for an option they could afford. They ate cheese and meat out of a cooler — until someone stole all of that in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.
“What a scummy thing to do,” she told me, “Steal someone’s cooler. Who does that?”
When she and her friend finally returned back to where they had left (and damned if I can remember where that was), they were offered their old jobs back, like they had never left. They began working as nurses again, as if nothing had changed, but I’m guessing that in reality everything had changed, at least within her. She said that after that, she began to move around a lot and didn’t live anywhere too long. When I asked her, somewhere in the middle of our conversation, why she had left in the first place, she answered quickly, like it was a question she was used to.
“I was afraid of getting bored,” she said.
I understood then — even though I probably wouldn’t have a couple of years ago.
On a side note, let me say that since I graduated college, my whole life (financially, romantically, socially) has been so on the edge of crisis that I haven’t had time to get bored. Sure, I’ve made ends meet, and I’ve made some great friends, but I’ve always felt very spurred on by the idea that my world might crash and burn at any moment. My world had been beautiful at times but always risky. Yet, those few days living in the Wal-Mart parking lot hadn’t felt so edgy. They had been ordinary and unworried, and I had been content with doing very, very little except writing and watching DVDs. My life had become, finally, boring. And by that last night, I was impressed with how much I could not stand it.
The volunteer and I became more and more engrossed in conversation, and soon she was closing up and getting ready to wash the littlest kittens — the few, tiny love bugs who had actually let me hold them close to my chest and coo over them. When drenched, they looked like angry, yet adorable, little monsters. Wordlessly, the volunteer handed two of them to me, and I cuddled the precious cargo through their bulky towels. I was smiling so wide, and I was so pleased. I felt lucky in a way I could not have predicted.
Sounds like the definition of a good night to me.
(HARRISONBURG, Va.) — When I look back on New York City, where I was almost a month ago, I see a blur of people, street food and jolting subway cars. It’s a happy blur now. But when I wrote my last blog posting about the city, I was at odds with it and couldn’t understand why. I still don’t completely, but the angst is gone and with it went the worry. Sometimes I come across some person or some place that challenges me in some deep way. I try hard to be cool around him/her/it, but the more I work it, the more I stick out. And the more I want to get it right. I usually don’t know who started the competition, only that I’m bound to lose it. I’m basically describing all my time in middle school here, but that’s a terrible comparison because unlike those devilishly painful years, my relationship to New York City had the grace to change near at the end. By the day I left, I was sad to go. I had finally forged a minor connection with the place. It just took me a little while to wake up and smell its possibility.
I remember the moment my attitude changed. It was like someone turned on the light, unexpectedly, in my mind, and all of a sudden the world was shining again. It was sometime in the afternoon on a weekday that wouldn’t stop raining. Because of the constant drizzle, I (and hoards of other people) had escaped into the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Everywhere I looked there was a crush of damp patrons, and for the first hour or so, I was overwhelmed and hungry. It was just a bad mood, but at the time I took it to mean more, as I was so desperately looking for a sign about New York. I wanted some unwavering sense, one way or the other, about it.
I wandered around, always going a way I hadn’t planned but realizing there was no point getting angry at my lack of directional sense, as everything was fascinating (Native American baskets? Dammit! I wanted Tibetan amour). There was only one thing I really had my heart set on anyway, and it was a photography exhibit by Robert Frank. I knew little of him, really. I was just hungering to see some photos that mattered.
Somehow, I navigated the floor plan and come up on the exhibit, and only then did I realize what I was actually about to see. It was a collection of the images he used in this book, The Americans — all 83 black-and-white photos, blown up to a pleasingly large dimension. Frank traveled around the country for two years in the 1950s while making this book, and when it was finally published, it included writing from Jack Kerouac. When this burst on the scene, the pictures’ blunt view of America had scandalized people.
I learned all that as I walked from photo to photo, each shown in the order they appear in the book. These aren’t happy pictures. They’re kind of bleak, with a hard edge and absolute lack of Americana-flavored romance. And yet, I loved them. As I circled the space, I made sure to give ample attention to each image. I read almost all the captions, and when I couldn’t understand a concept, I stood there and soaked in the words and photograph until I did. I was looking at an America I don’t really know anything about, one with rough cowboys and black nursemaids and old-school starlets, all looking a little lost. Even though people doing the same grand tour hemmed me in on most sides, everyone else in the room hardly existed to me. I shifted from image to image for what must have been an hour-and-a-half. I let them settle, slowly, into my system. I had been in New York for a week, and finally I had found something deeply personal in it.
There is so much to do and see in that city that it’s hard to choose one thing to care about, but once I did, it felt so right. As I left the exhibit, something in me was restored. The rest of my day felt better, looked better, tasted better. That evening, I shared beer and nachos with an editor with whom I had done some work months before. As she lives in New York (she works for Fodor’s Travel Guides), we had never met in person before, but it went well. She was friendly and real, and in turn, I felt like I was being myself, too. I looked at her life, as a young editor on the make and then at mine, as a young writer, traveling and looking for direction, I appreciated both these realities. I was absolutely impressed with the prestige of her job, and at the same time, I didn’t lose sight of what I’m doing.
A friend of mine recently said that maybe part of me wants to play with the big boys in the world journalism and publishing. Part of this is true. Part of me wants to settle down in a big city and gear down into making myself a somebody. But I can’t forget one of the huge differences between me and those up-and-coming artists that live and breathe New York City as they launch themselves into the world. To them, New York is home. But I can come to their city, take in it, and then leave. For me, right now, that’s beautiful.
I’d like to thank Robert Frank some of this clarity.
Me and Elizabet, one of my favorite couch surfing hosts to date.
 She pointed at the sign behind her which read "Don't Feed The Birds" and laughed. It's because of her, she said, that they put that warning up. She feeds the pigeons every day. 
 I had no idea I was hoping to see the Naked Cowboy until I did. I stood in his presence for several minutes, taking in the bravado and strangeness of him.  Keeping Times Square beautiful.  Unfortunately, this is as close as I got to seeing a taping of the Late Show. 
 Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  More of the Met.  Jana and Rita, two sisters nice as can be, who chatted me up right when I need a good chat.  My old friends, David and Arielle, and their little daughter, Olive. I swear that I have never seen a kid more full of energy. She was so awake. It bowled me over.  Scarecrow contest, Central Park.  Central Park, in a moment without rain.  Chinatown. 
(HARRISONBURG, Va.) — The ups and downs of this trip take my breath away sometimes. Of course little is permanent in this life, but this journey is an exaggerated version of that rule, and effect is exciting, exhausting and stomach churning. I am not complaining — um, I don’t think. I am simply amazed. Boredom never enters the equation for me these days. I’m too busy wondering what the next tidal of emotion will bring.
 The most curious cows I have ever met happen to live in Luray, Virginia. Like right now, as I sit in my chilly trailer in a Wal-Mart parking lot. I’m hunched over my computer, and I feel like crying because all I want to do is to write words that matter. I know I can (I think I can), but I worry about my dedication. I get so afraid that distractions like Facebook and viral video and my desire for a partner will waylay me. I’m scared I won’t make things happen, won’t sell articles, won’t search for that gem of a story. I want to step into being the writer I think I am. God, I want to create.
I find this sudden insecurity strange, because the last few days have been so pleasant. They have felt fated, even. When I first rolled into Luray (about 30 miles behind me) I spent several nights at the Country Waye RV Resort under the warm wings of its owners, Erich and Sulamith. I had not been in the South for years, and I loved basking in the genteel, green beauty of rural Virginia. The retired couple told me their life stories and brought me to their end-of-season park party. There, I felt popular, as people many decades older than I beamed over the idea of this trip. They asked me about the trailer; they asked me about my writing. I was all too happy to just talk and talk. I went to bed that night a little drink on white wine and pumped up with the support of strangers. Everything felt as I was hoping it would, months ago, before I left on this thing. It’s amazing how sweet it is to be appreciated.
 Downtown Luray, Va. I coasted on that feeling into Tuesday, when I met up with Sherry and Tom, a cool couple my parents’ age. They’re friends and kin of my friends Starr and Mitch of Silver City, and they welcomed me into their home so fully that I was taken aback. When I drove up to their little house, perched over pastoral Luray, they even had a place to park my rig. There was this instant intimacy between Sherry and I especially, and I loved it. I could have easily talked myself hoarse with her, a bubbly former-Deadhead hospice nurse who likes to knit and make beaded jewelry. Without reservation, she brought me into her history and showed her art and family photos. Tom was great as well, and I was completely dumbfounded as he led me around his collection of more than a thousand Native American arrowheads, tools and various chiseled points. He has a sixth sense for finding them and seems to do so wherever he goes. He has probably a dozen framed collections of them all over this house, and they look like a scientist’s grouping of butterflys or bugs might, propped up against a plain background, enclosed in glass. He has even more filling drawers and cabinets. I had never seen anything like it. Talk about manifesting your dream. I would never know how to even start to look for such things. I wouldn’t even know finding them was possible. Tom looked subtly proud but also played it off like it was no great shakes, just a hobby like anything else. I was fascinated.
Right before I left the pair, I got to see another side of Tom. He received a package, and he looked puffed up with excitement when he realized what had arrived. I watched as he unfolded a plush, dark red Santa suit, apparently a step up from the one he had worn for years at his family Christmas party. As he modeled the jacket, he explained that there was enough room for his belly pillow and that, with this new get-up, Sherry probably wouldn’t even have to hem the pants or sleeves. All he needed now to fully transform was some white dye for his bushy, salt-and-pepper beard and a pair of those little, round-rimmed glasses, which he showed off as well. The scene was so good-hearted.
Another friendly thing that took place in Luray was a dinner party that Tom and Sherry threw that one night I was at their home. They invited two of their friends, and we all talked about things like politics and adoption and regional accents and my trip over mounds of tasty, carefully thought-out food. Sherry and Tom insisted I sleep inside their house, and while I usually prefer my own digs, I was happy to be enclosed in their world. It made me feel warm and safe, and it was as though, for about 20 hours or so, I was visiting my own extended family. Later that night, the three of us went for walk with their old, lumbering dog around their quaint, green, staunchly conservative town (they, by the way, are not). The next morning, Sherry and I went for a run. I felt so at home and content. This is why, once again, that my original idea of this trip centering on me being completely alone is a sham. Just as much as I need and crave my solitude, I need people. Nothing makes a place make sense like some genuine folks welcoming you into it. In some small way, I feel I get Luray now. Damn, I feel lucky.
 Sherry and Tom, some nice Lurayians. So what, you might ask, is this moodiness a day later? Why plunge into doubt and worry after experiencing so much kindness? I think, like everyone, I just don’t want to mess this up. As clichéd as this is to admit, I want to make something of myself. And sometimes I worry I won’t take the risks to do so.
Is that justified? I don’t know, though I’m sure my fear is in no way original. These feelings make me want to write out a strong, cinematic decree about my intentions and myself. And since I have no editor to advise me not to, I’ll give it a whirl.
Here it is:
I am on this trip, and I’m open to wherever it takes me. Even if that means getting another newspaper job, even if that means meeting someone and settling down. Even if that means traveling for two years. I just want to work hard and support myself and make art. I want what I do to matter, whatever that happens to be. And I’m not going to give up. That’s my promise to myself.
Does that read like things I’ve written before? Oh, probably, but that’s just because the same feelings have been with me for months.
Time to get back to myself and to start putting all this into practice. Step one: Get the hell off Facebook — at least for a couple hours.
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