This blog began three and a half years ago as the chronicle of a journey. From the drivers seat and on foot, I explored the contents of this country and was amazed. Each place etched itself in my memory: the swollen sun setting over an Ohio cornfield; a three-toed woodpecker feeding nestlings by my campsite; my toes seeking secure footing as I followed a dipper downstream; redwoods, tallgrass prairie, the Medicine Bow, Pyramid Lake, red rock.
But as I drove and hiked, I sifted through the contents of my inner landscape as well, a journey without and a journey within. I found fear and shed it. I sunk into solitude, relaxing into it the way I relax into water, floating, letting it hold the whole weight of my head. Other journeys played out in these pages. A trip to Tamale, Ghana, and another along the spine of the Andes through Ecuador.
Recently I found myself again on a plane, and again using my pen and paper to sort the thoughts that tumbled through my mind. This journey, however, has been different. This journey has wended through death and grief. This journey began with an email in which I learned that my beloved Aunt, whose name I have carried all my life, was once again in the Emergency Room. In the following hours, I learned that this time, suddenly, but perhaps not unexpectedly, she was dying.
And so this journey begins. The latest journey. My journey through the landscape of grief.
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