Nature has kinda saved me

I feel like I fared fairly well over 2020 during the pandemic. That is to say, I have been very lucky and very fortunate. I avoided the news which helped me keep my sanity. I met with my book club online, and had virtual zoom birthday parties and baby showers like everyone else. And feel so grateful that I live in Austin where even in the winter you can sit in a friend's backyard, socially distance and still feel like you're going out for a cup of coffee.

 But I do love to travel.

 That was the thing that started being the stressor for us at home. Feeling cramped up in our small house with two big dogs was starting to get us down. We'd had plans to work out of Ireland all through April. Cancelled. We had a two week European vacation planned after that. Cancelled. We didn't even think about going overseas. Visiting my in-laws in India was dream more distant than the miles that separate us. But that's when we really looked at the country we did have access to and questioned how we could have an escape safely, in our little bubble, and still feel like we were getting away and taking a break from the day in and day out of our lives.

 And that's when we really embraced nature.

 We used our Texas State Parks pass as much as we could. We took roadtrips to Colorado twice and immersed ourselves in the Rockies. We drove to North Carolina and walked on the beach even though it wasn't summer. We kayaked in Florida with manatees and alligators. We figured out how to work from our airstream and like so many others cherished the newness of camping and the ability to be away, but home, in our camper. In the wild, but still accessible to civilization. In our bubble, we able to keep our distance from others as need, but stay close to the trees and water and wildflowers.

 I feel so lucky that we were able to do this, but also I really cherish all that this country has to offer. My parents had taken me when I was sixteen on a two month cross-country journey in a conversion van towing a pop up camper. We drove from Kentucky up through the Dakotas, through Yellowstone, to Seattle, down through California, and back through Las Vegas. My husband always tells me how lucky I was to have such an experience as a child. All I remember was being a terrible sixteen year old who crept off in the campgrounds at night to sneak cigarettes and detested being away from my friends for a whole two months that I whined out the window at the glorious rocks jutting up from Monument Valley instead of being absolutely awed by them.

 I don't have a lot of regrets in life, but one is that I really truly wish I could go back into that summer before my junior year of high school and slap myself in the face. Tell her that twenty years from now you won't care about two months in your teens, that you'll wish you could have knocked off that hormonal devil on your shoulder, and appreciate the privilege you have to go on such a trip, and how that trip would set the stage for so much that you'll do later in life.

 Because now, all I can think of is another road trip. Retracing those same steps, hopscotching across America on its national and state parks and appreciating this giant chunk of land that we have.

 Part of that appreciation of nature is what led me to write THE NAME CURSE, which releases in August, 2021. It's a small homage, in my way to the glory of the American landscape, centered in Alaska, and looking for the next adventure that we all need.