You might feel the same way. If you have land, whether it’s a postage stamp area in front of your urban apartment or a massive suburban lawn requiring a riding mower, you probably do what most of us do. You try to make it as pretty as possible with as little effort as possible. Maybe you care for it yourself or, if the lawn is too big, you pay a lawn service to fertilize, spray insecticide and weed killer, and then mow it into beautiful chevron rows.

And perhaps because you love flowers, you select beautiful flowers and shrubs from a big box store, plant them in beds along the house’s foundation and maybe by your mailbox, and leave it at that. That’s what most of us know how to do to beautify our properties.

I don’t blame you. It’s all I knew until a few years ago. However, what I’ve learned since is that many of the plants, shrubs, and trees sold at big box stores are not only nonnative and some are invasive. That means that they take over native habitats, provide insects and pollinators with little or no food, and squeeze out native plants. In other words, they turn a healthy buffet into a fast-food haven.

Butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii) is a great example of this. Butterfly bush is a fast-growing, deciduous shrub native to Asia, widely cultivated for its fragrant, nectar-rich flower spikes that attract butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds. People love it. I’ll admit that I’ve planted it and thought I was helping the ecosystem. However, not only is it highly invasive, it offers little value as a host plant for caterpillars and can displace more beneficial natives. Fortunately, some states have banned its sale and hopefully, more will join in.

Instead of butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii), nourish your pollinators and hummingbirds with butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae), or Joe-Pye weed (Eutrochium species), to name a few.

How I discovered the truth about gardening

When I ran across entomologist, ecologist, and conservationist Doug Tallamy and his bestselling book, Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants my understanding of gardening and lawn care turned upside down. I’m not sure where I found it or why I read it, but it changed my life. I’m hoping it, or one of his other books, might change yours too.

In Bringing Nature Home, I learned that all the investment we make to develop and maintain the perfect lawn is destroying the local ecosystem. Pesticides and herbicides don’t only kill “bad” insects, they kill pollinators and other beneficial insects, too. In many regions, maintaining thirsty lawns requires water that could be conserved.

Here are five lessons I learned from this book:

1. Native plants are the foundation of local ecosystems
   Tallamy argues that native plants evolved alongside native insects, birds, and other wildlife. They provide the food and shelter those species need in ways many exotic ornamentals cannot.

2. Backyards matter more than people think
   Conservation is not only about national parks or wilderness areas. Millions of private yards, gardens, and suburban landscapes together form enormous potential habitat corridors.

3. Insects are essential, not just pests
   Caterpillars, bees, moths, and countless insects are the base of the food web. Birds especially depend on insects to raise their young. Eliminating bugs harms the larger ecosystem.

4. Small choices create large environmental change
   Replacing lawn space with native shrubs, trees, and flowers, reducing pesticides, and planting even a few key species can significantly increase biodiversity over time.

5. Homeowners have the responsibility and power to make a difference
   Tallamy’s central message is hopeful: ordinary people can become active stewards of nature. You do not need to own a forest preserve to help restore ecological balance—you can begin at home.

What is a native plant?

A native plant is defined as a species that naturally occurred in your state or ecological region before large-scale modern human introduction. Native plants usually have long relationships with local pollinators, insects, birds, soils, and climate patterns. Those relationships often make them more ecologically valuable than introduced ornamentals.

A plant from China or Japan is, by definition, not native to North America. A plant found in the American desert is typically not native to the East Coast. In fact, something native to one side of your state might not be native to the side you live in. What’s most important is to learn about the ecoregion in which you live. Here are some of the characteristics that define an ecoregion:

• Climate – temperature, rainfall, humidity, frost, and seasons.

• Soils – fertility, drainage, acidity, texture, and organic matter.

• Landforms – mountains, plains, coasts, valleys, and underlying geology.

• Water systems – streams, wetlands, groundwater, flooding, and watersheds.

• Plant communities – forests, prairies, marshes, savannas, bogs, and shrublands.

• Wildlife communities – animals and insects adapted to those habitats.

• Natural processes – fire, drought, storms, erosion, and ecological change over time.

Just because you see a native wildflower on a hike in the mountains, doesn’t mean it can or should survive in the coastal area where you live. The trick is learning your ecoregion’s characteristics and planting based on that.

Three steps you can take right now

How do we put these lessons into practice? Here are three important steps to get started.

Step 1

The first step is to make an inventory of the plants in your yard. If you know what a plant is called, even the common name, you can look it up at the North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox, LadyBird Johnson Wildflower Center Native Plants Database, or the Missouri Botanical Garden Plant Finder to find out more about it.

However, these resources will not necessarily tell you if a plant is native or nonnative to your ecoregion. For that, you’ll need to consult a local resource. A web search for your state’s native plant organization will probably help you with that.

To identify plants I don’t know, I use Picture This. It’s an app known for accuracy and fast identification. I use it every time I’m in the garden to remind myself what I’ve planted and identify volunteers to determine if I should leave or pull them. In addition, Picture This provides detailed care information, disease diagnosis, origin, and toxicity warnings. Here are some other resources, including some free, options you might consider: PlantNet, LeafSnap, Plantora, and Plant.id.

Step 2

After you know what you’re dealing with in your yard, develop a plan to remove nonnative invasive plants. Start with the most invasive or with the easiest to remove. However, be sure to research how to remove them. Some trees, such as Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima), which should be called Tree of Hell, loves to be cut down. For your effort, it can trigger aggressive root suckering and many new shoots. So, to avoid making the problem worse, find out before you cut!

Step 3

Incorporate native plants into your garden/yard planning:

1. Plant native trees, shrubs, and flowers
   This is the single biggest step. Native plants support native caterpillars, pollinators, and birds in ways most imported ornamentals do not. If space is limited, start with one native tree or replace part of a flower bed. Even one native plant in a pot on your apartment’s patio can have impact. According to Tallamy, planting a native oak, willow, cherry, or other highly productive native tree is a great first step because these trees support the most life. If you’re not ready to plant a tree, identify one or two flowering native perennials (plants that come back every year) and plant them in groups of three or five in a small garden area. I promise you, when they appear on their own next year, they will inspire you to learn more. Take your time. You don’t have to do it all at once.

2. Shrink the lawn and diversify the yard
   Although you may love it, traditional turf grass offers little wildlife value. Convert portions of lawn into planting beds, meadows, layered borders, or small habitat zones. You don’t have to get rid of all of it, even a modest reduction in grass can make a real difference.

3. Stop routine pesticide use
   Insecticides, herbicides, and broad chemical treatments often kill the very organisms that keep nature functioning. Tolerate some leaf damage, hand-pull weeds when possible, and use targeted treatment only when truly necessary.

Don’t worry about perfection. Make progress instead.

I’ll be the first to admit that becoming a native gardener is not an easy task. Garden centers often make native plants surprisingly hard to identify. Read tags carefully and double-check your native plant sources to make sure you’re getting a native plant.

Especially in the early days, you’ll probably have to pull out as many invasive plants, if not even more, than the natives you plant. Don’t give up!

Even after six years of being intentional about native planting, I still have nonnative and even some invasive plants in my yard. It’s a slow process that requires study, dedication, and hard work to learn. I guarantee you, you will make mistakes, and you might encounter resistance from your family or even an HOA.

Family members might resist cutting down a favorite Bradford Pear (also called Callery pear). “But it’s so pretty in the spring!” they might exclaim. And yes, that might be true. But their flowers don’t support native insects nearly as much as native trees do. In addition, they spread with abandon and displace native wildflowers, shrubs, and young trees. And those are only a couple of the issues with nonnative, invasive trees like Bradford Pears.

Homeowners Associations (HOAs) often have strict rules about the look of your yard and expect well-trimmed grass and limited vegetation. More homeowners, however, are fighting back and, as a result, some of the rules have started to change. Native gardens don’t have to be chaotic and messy. Through careful planning, you can incorporate native plants that enhance, rather than detract, from the beauty of your home. Just be planful and advocate for native plants.

Whether it’s true or not in every case, the old adage is that when you plant natives, the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, and the third year they leap. The moral of the story is that restoring your ecosystem takes time and patience. But I can guarantee that the first time you see a Monarch butterfly land on the butterfly weed you planted, it will be all worthwhile.

Put yourself on the map

After you’ve converted even a small plot of land to natives, I encourage you to include your accomplishment on Doug Tallamy’s HomeGrown National Park Biodiversity Map. It’s a nationwide effort to showcase your commitment to restoring nature and inspire others to take action. By adding your garden to the map, you contribute to a growing movement that regenerates biodiversity and strengthens local ecosystems. Together, our individual efforts create meaningful change!

Although Wendy might still not love working in our gardens, she loves the native habitat we’ve created. With the exception of the Monarch caterpillars (I had to go into the garden to get those), these photos were all taken from our sunroom window within about 15 minutes of each other on one September morning. What an incredible gift for all our labors!

Start with one tree, one bed, or one pot. Nature knows what to do next.

Yours in peace,

Annette

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Its mix of beaches, marshes, forests, and wetlands supports over 400 species year-round and many more during migration season. In addition, Monarch butterflies gather in Cape May on their extraordinary migration to Mexico. Combined with favorable coastal winds and many designated viewing sites, such as the Hawk Watch Platform at Cape May Point State Park, it offers unmatched opportunities to witness massive migrations.

Let me be clear, though, Wendy and I do not consider ourselves “birders.” We don’t maintain life lists or travel great distances to see a particular bird, and, quite frankly, neither of us is very good at identifying birds, by sight or by sound. However, we do gravitate toward birding events, are fascinated by the lives of birds, feed birds in our backyard, and participate in eBird, the Cornell backyard bird count. To most outside observers, we are birders. We’re just not very good at it. At least, I’m not.

I do love photographing birds, however. Sadly, I’m also not very good at that either, although I’m getting better, and I have gotten lucky a few times and captured some beauties, like this bluebird I captured through my study window a couple of years ago.

Unfortunately, the winds were not in our favor during our visit to Cape May. The weather was beautiful, 65-75 degrees, sunny skies, and calm winds. Birds and butterflies, we learned, are not too keen on making the 17-mile long flight from Cape May to Lewes, Delaware, without the wind at their backs. In fact, one of the naturalists we talked with said that the more experienced birds skip Cape May entirely, preferring land routes over the Appalachians to the more treacherous sea crossing. Make sense to me!

Still, according to BirdCast.info, 28.5 million birds have crossed at Cape May so far this autumn. From American Redstarts to Warblers, Indigo Buntings, and raptors of all kinds, birds are on the move.

October 8th, just a few days after we left Cape May, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, using the US weather surveillance radar network between sunset to sunrise, reported the highest night of bird migration it had ever recorded: 1.25 billion birds had migrated across the Eastern and Central US! 1.25 BILLION birds in one night!

If you’re interested, you can enter your county and state in the Migration Dashboard on Birdcast.info to see how many birds are flying over your head tonight. Chances are you won’t see any of them in the sky. Most fly at night almost two miles above our heads.

Flying from 15 to 600 hundred miles per day, depending on the species and the conditions, they take advantage of colder air temperatures, which reduce the danger of overheating and allow birds to fly further without having to stop and cool down. And, dark skies tend to hold fewer predators, although today’s increasing light pollution seriously impacts migration patterns and safety.

Regardless of whether I see them, knowing they are there gives me hope for the world. Granted, bird populations have declined significantly in the last fifty years. According to a Cornell Chronicle report from 2019,

If you were alive in 1970, more than 1 in 4 birds in the U.S. and Canada have disappeared within your lifetime.

Habitat loss, destruction of native plant habitats, free-roaming cats, collisions with buildings and glass, pesticides reducing insect prey, power-line/tower/wind-turbine impacts, and other causes seriously impact bird populations.

And, still, birds haven’t given up. They still mate, reproduce, and go on about their lives no matter what we throw at them. They are intrepid (mostly) little creatures.

Here are a few actions we can take that will help protect birds in our neighborhoods:

• Keep cats indoors.

• Grow native plants.

• Avoid pesticides and herbicides.

• Apply decals, patterns, or screens to large windows.

• Turn off night-time lights during migration seasons.

• Reduce plastic use and pollution.

• Participate in citizen science projects like eBird or Project FeederWatch.

• Support bird conservation organizations.

• Advocate for habitat protection and environmental policies.

For more about steps you can take to mitigate bird loss, read more about the study and ways we all can help Bring Birds Back.

Birding for a Better World

While in Cape May, we visited Barrier Island Books & Art, a funky new and used bookstore right across the street from Dockside Dave’s Seafood Market, where Wendy devoured her birthday lobster roll and I joined in with a delicious crab roll. Not surprisingly, the bookstore had a lot of books about birding. However, Wendy was surprised to see one written by one of her work colleagues, Peter Cashwell, The Verb To Bird.

Two other bird books caught my attention, The Feminist Book Club’s Birding for a Better World: A Guide to Finding Joy and Community in Nature by Molly Adams and Sydney Golden Anderson and Birding to Change the World: A Memoir by Trish O’Kane. I had to buy them both!

In this tumultuous, destructive, unethical, violent time, I need birds. I need birds for solace, for humor, for beauty, and for inspiration. Learning that others had used their love of birds to augment and support their commitments to social justice gave me all the permission I needed to embrace my identity as a birder.

Adams formed the Feminist Bird Club in 2016 in order to:

Make birding and the outdoors inclusive and affirming to people who may not have safe access to it, and leverage people’s passion for the environment and social justice to help create lasting social change.

In Birding for a Better World, Adams and Anderson close each chapter with a writing prompt to help readers think more deeply about their experiences with nature and how they are formed by these experiences. For example, readers are encouraged to reflect on the following:

What terms or concepts are important to you when you envision worlds more just, livable, connected, and joyful? Define them here. We’d love to learn how you define better futures for everyone.

Page 28

And this one:

Locate yourself within the complex network of life. Where are you? Who came before you? Who are your teachers (human and nonhuman)?

Page 124

In a few short years, Feminist Bird Clubs have sprung up in cities across North America and in the United Kingdom, including one in my town of Richmond, Virginia. I’m excited to go birding with a diverse group of socially conscience people from my community. I’ll let you know how it goes.

You can find out if there’s a chapter near you at this link: https://www.feministbirdclub.org/chapters-and-sibling-clubs. If you don’t find one, I’m sure they’ll help you form your own.

In Birding to Change the World: A Memoir, author O’Kane shares how birds who showed up after their home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina gave her hope and inspired her to become a passionate birder, community organizer, and environmental educator. I haven’t finished this one yet but I’m enjoying it so far.

We all have a lot to learn from these beautiful, flighty creatures. I hope you’ll join me in appreciating all that birds have to offer us.

One more tip, if you don’t know about the app, Merlin Bird ID, I strongly encourage you to install it on your phone. In addition to offering a ton of info about birds and how to identify them, you can turn on the recorder and let it tell you what birds are singing in your backyard, in your local park, or while traveling to far away places. It’s an incredible free tool (although if you can, it’s great if you can donate to the Cornell Lab. They do an awesome job!) that will amaze and delight you. At least it does me!

Bird photos I love

I didn’t have much success photographing birds in Cape May. So, with the exception of this first one, I’ll share a few of my favorite bird photos with you from our trip to Alaska earlier this year.

I hope you take the time to enjoy the birds in your community. They have a lot to teach us, while at the same time, bringing relief from stress and occupation with the state of the world.

Happy birding!

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If you missed them, you can read prior posts here:

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On my first camping trip, the nuns at my Catholic boarding school took the junior and senior classes to a nearby farm. I remember the campfire, the guitar strumming, and the big tents packed with rowdy teenage girls. I loved being out in nature and especially loved being away from dorm life. I knew camping would become part of my future. I just didn’t know how.

In college, my first girlfriend and I went camping numerous times at, among other places, Hocking Hills State Park in Logan, Ohio. By then we had our own gear, though I don’t remember the details—only how much I loved sleeping outdoors. We hiked from the campground to Old Man’s Cave then on to Cedar Falls and finally to Ash Cave before returning to camp. Hiking what is now known as the Grandma Gatewood Trail (named in 1981, after native-Ohioan and the first solo female thru-hiker of the Appalachian Trail), we loved to explore the incredible formations we saw along the way: Devil Bathtub, Eagle Rock, Old Man’s Cave, Turtle Rock, and Sphinx Head, to name a few.

On one hike, we discovered a hidden waterfall and pool below the trail—a perfect hideaway for two teenage girls to swim in. Each visit to Hocking Hills meant returning to this secret sanctuary we liked to believe was ours alone.

In the 1980s, my life partner, Anne, and I camped regularly, including a memorable trip to Baxter State Park in Maine. It was a cool August night. Cuddled in our sleeping bags on the floor of our roomy four-person LL Bean tent, Anne had just dozed off when I saw flashing lights through the tent ceiling. “Northern Lights!” I shouted, jolting her from her slumber.

I scrambled out of my sleeping bag and dashed outside certain I’d see the Aurora Borealis. I looked up. I looked around. Clouds, illuminated only by a sliver of a moon, hung heavy over the trees. No other lights were visible in the night sky. I stood there in my pajamas deep in the Maine woods trying desperately to make sense of what I saw, or rather what I wasn’t seeing.

“It was a firefly,” Anne grumbled, as she stuck her head out of the door. “Caught between the rain fly and the tent. It was just a firefly.”

“What?” I shouted back at her. “A firefly? You gotta be kidding me.”

“No, you silly woman. Now come back to bed,” she said as she crawled back inside, her laughter muffled but obvious as I sheepishly skulked back into the tent.

I never lived that one down. And Anne and I never saw Northern Lights together. Years later, I stood in awe on my deck in Northern Michigan as the Aurora Borealis blanketed the sky. It looked nothing like a firefly.

As we got older and less agile, camping mostly meant one week a year at the Michigan Women’s Music Festival. Camping with thousands of lesbians in the Michigan woods made all the discomfort of sleeping on the ground more than worth it. Later we bought a pop-up camper with a softer mattress, and tent camping faded into memory.

In 2015, Wendy and I bought an egg camper, ‘Idgie,’ with a stove, fridge, and table/bed. By 2018, we upgraded to a sleek Winnebago Travato, complete with solar power, shower, and writing desk. Blissful but expensive, we adventured in “Wanda” (Wendy and Annette) three years before we sold her at the end of the pandemic for a surprising profit.

A Tent, Really?

So, with no van, no trailer, and new cars that couldn’t tow, what are outdoor lovers to do? Surprising to me and astonishing to some of our friends, the idea of tent camping resurfaced as an option. I don’t know which one of us brought it up, but soon, Wendy and I purchased a roomy tent big enough to hold both our cots and a little toilet for those middle-of-the-night emergencies. A tent would allow us opportunities to travel economically, enjoy campfires, and spend quiet times in the woods and on the beach together.

Our new roomy tent was perfect—until I tried setting it up alone. Smaller pop-up tents I tested were easier, but too low to crawl into and too small for a cot. I began exploring other options—state park cabins, KOA cabins, renting RVs, etc.—but the idea of tent camping kept nagging at me.

My friend, Sharon, a skilled world traveler and solo camper, pointed me to the NEMO Switch —a two-person tent that’s easy for one person to put up, (almost) tall enough to stand in, a wide and tall door to get in and out, and a surface area big enough for my cot and toilet. I fell in love! She even found a “pristine” model online for half the regular price (I later discovered that Nemo doesn’t sell it anymore, so, sadly, if you’re tempted, buying it used appears the only way to get one).

I spent the next couple of weeks assembling the rest of my camping gear: cooler, tarp, cot, sleeping pad, sleeping bag, pillow, telescoping tarp poles, camp chair, kitchen and fire accessories, and all the other basics to stay warm and comfortable out in the wild!

Setting Out!

When I set off on my 3-4 week adventure on September 1, I felt confident that I had everything I needed to camp and, should I choose to do so, could make this work. I hoped! But I figured the worst thing that could happen is that, if I couldn’t handle it, I’d throw everything back in my car and check into the nearest hotel. It didn’t seem too big a risk.

After my exploratory drive through Pennsylvania and Ohio (see my September 18^th post, Reflections on America’s History, for more about this), and spending time with friends in Ann Arbor and Jackson, Michigan, I headed north into the Michigan woods. I still didn’t know where I’d end up, or if I even had a modicum of the nerve it would take to attempt real, live camping. As I pushed into what is affectionately known to Michiganders as “The Tip of the Mitt,” I knew I had to try—even if only for one night. But where?

Because I’d never spent much time on the Lake Huron side of the “mitten,” I decided that that’s where I wanted to end up. I quickly discovered, however, that two state park campgrounds in northeastern Michigan were closed for renovation. That was almost enough to dissuade me from camping at all, but I pressed on.

Google Maps reminded me of a campground I’d heard about years ago, back in my RV camping years, which sounded intriguing. With a mile of Lake Huron shoreline, two hundred acres of woods, a well-equipped park store, bathrooms, beautiful views, and only five minutes to Mackinaw City, Mackinaw Mill Creek Camping, offered everything I needed for a safe, low-risk, camping experience. I smiled when I read on their website, “We even have sites for those just wanting to pitch a tent.” That’s me!

Picking a camp site is always part of the adventure. With over 300 sites and most of them spoken for, it took a while to identify a site that would work for someone “just wanting to pitch a tent.” I wasn’t thrilled with the site itself, but I couldn’t complain. First, it had electricity so I could plug in my extension cord and surge suppressor to easily charge my devices. Secondly, and even more importantly, it was only a short walk to the Lake Huron shore, visible from my site through the trees.

I pulled into my site, took a deep breath, opened the backseat door, and began to unpack. A picnic table provided a perfect surface to lay everything out. Mimicking an instructional YouTube video I’d watched, I dropped the tent bag on the ground and got to work.

Because the poles were color-coded and the tent attached to them without having to thread them into tent sleeves, the tent frame went up in just a few minutes. Even positioning and securing the rainfly posed no real challenge. I hammered the tent stakes into the ground making it appear like I knew what I was doing. In fact, I even assured a woman in a large fifth-wheel across the way who offered her help that I was fine. Thank you very much.

Then I was stumped. How do I get two telescoping poles attached to the tent’s long awning to stand up on their own? I struggled with the poles unsuccessfully for a few minutes before flopping down into my camp chair defeated. That’s when I saw two neatly wrapped guy lines next to the tent bag, which after emptying, I’d placed back on the picnic table.

Although I didn’t know how they would help or what to do with them, I figured they must be the answer. And they were. After some fiddling, the poles finally stood tall and I felt triumphant. I’d done it!

Now all I had to do was cook dinner over a Bunsen burner, make a campfire, and, when the stars blanketed the sky, crawl into my cozy sleeping bag (laying on top of two pads--one inflatable and one cushy—on my elevated cot!).

For three nights, I slept comfortably and warm in my great tent, enjoyed roaring campfires, woke up to stunning sunrises, and took peaceful walks on the quite Lake Huron shore (except Saturday night when the Annual Richard Crane Memorial Truck Show held their famous Parade of Lights across the Mackinac Bridge. They made a huge ruckus, even several miles away!).

When I returned home to Virginia, still feeling flummoxed by guy lines and, especially why they’re called that, I did some research. I discovered that “guy line” originates from the French word “guie,” meaning “guide,” which was later adopted by the Dutch as “gei,” now known as “guy.” Clearly, I needed something to guide me. I’m glad they were there!

I’d reclaimed tent camping as a viable travel option and, at $29 a night for a site with electricity, an inexpensive way to explore this beautiful continent. Maybe, one day, I’ll even see Northern Lights outside my tent instead of just a firefly!

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But I’m going to start today with reflections from my second day on the road through Pennsylvania and Ohio—the hardest emotional day of the trip. In some ways, this day provided a transition from a world overrun with negative news to the natural beauty I hoped to encounter. These stops were especially timely as we honored the 24^th anniversary of 9/11 last week at the same time as we witnessed the presence of armed National Guard troops in our cities, political assassinations, and attacks on free speech.

America Attacked - Shanksville, PA

The sign says that to hear the wind chimes the wind must be blowing at 15 to 20 mph. On this calm September day, only a flock of Goldfinches interrupted the solemness of the space. The 93 foot tall wind chimes, respectfully named The Tower of Voices, were silent, much like the voices of the 40 heroic people who died on September 11, 2001, when their plane crashed into this Pennsylvania field (listen to the chimes here).

As the sun peeks over the surrounding trees, I scan an area awash with wildlife. A family of wild turkeys with a brood of at least fifteen baby chicks scrounges for treats on the side of the road. A herd of eight whitetail deer grazes peacefully in the once assaulted field. A flock of Canada geese squawk overhead, circle the field, and land in a nearby marsh.

I’m not used to being up and out at sunrise. It seemed like today was one of the days when I needed to be. The people on Flight 93 had risen much earlier—long before the sun peeked over the horizon—to board their 8:00 a.m. flight in Newark on their way to San Francisco. When they did, they, of course, had no clue that this would be their last sunrise.

At 10:03:11, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field near a reclaimed coal strip mine. Local residents of Shanksville said that the sound of the ill-fated plane was deafening as it roared much too close to their homes. I wonder what the deer, turkeys, Canada geese, and all the other creatures that call these fields and woodlands home heard that day. How many of them also died in the crash? As far as I know, no one ever countered them among the dead.

Upon leaving the Tower of Voices, I park at the Memorial Plaza and Crash Site. There I walk alongside the field that had been assaulted by hijackers. The site of the crash is marked with a large rock, a 17.5-ton sandstone boulder. This boulder was placed in 2011 at the boundary of the impact site as a memorial to the passengers and crew who fought back against the hijackers.

Paul Murdoch Architects and Nelson Byrd Woltz, Landscape Architect, who designed the memorial, said they knew visitors would want to know the exact place of impact. They were right. I wanted to know. There was something bizarrely settling in knowing, in seeing, the exact spot where the massive plane collided with the earth.

A surviving grove of Hemlock trees stands strong along the edge of the crash site. It serves as a reminder that like these trees bound together by a shared root system, the passengers of Flight 93 are united by their shared destiny.

A wall of names adjacent to the field honors the intrepid forty. Between the wall and the rock is a Ceremonial Gate, which only family members and park officials are permitted to cross to enter the impact site. The gate is constructed from hewn hemlock beams with forty cut angles, one for each passenger and crew member who died.

The walk from the Memorial Plaza to the Flight 93 National Memorial Visitors Center resembles the sacred ground of a battlefield. This is by intention. The designers wanted visitors to remember the gravity of what happened here. The approach to the Visitors Center takes visitors on the direct path of the flight as it descended into the field.

Of all the displays telling the story of the flight and its aftermath most moving to me are the audio recordings of voice mail messages left by two passengers and a flight attendant to their families. The first passenger tried to comfort those who were listening by minimizing her fear “A little something’s happening on my flight,” she said, her voice shaky and weak. She told them she loved them, but she didn’t want anyone listening, expect perhaps the people who knew her well, to know how serious the situation actually was. They soon found out.

Another woman starts out calm while reporting there were hijackers on the plane but then bursts into tears. She recovers enough to share, in a matter of fact way, the combination to the safe in her bedroom closet, where she keeps her important papers.

The third recording, this one from a flight attendant, clearly states, in a voice much like she might instruct passengers to prepare for landing, that the plane had been hijacked,. She said she is trying to remain calm but also says her goodbyes because things don’t look good.

I can’t even begin to imagine receiving a call like that—the desperate helplessness that would follow it. Did the families already know what had happened when they listened to the messages? Or was this their first clue? I imagine their anguish either way.

Despite the conspiracy theories surrounding them, the 9/11 attacks will always be a watershed moment for the people of the United States. For a day, a week, even as long as a month before the retaliatory attacks on Afghanistan, we came together as one people, united in our identity as Americans.

As I drive away, tears well up inside me. Would we ever again feel as interconnected as we did after being attacked? Why does it take a horrific event such as this to come together? If something like this happened today, would we be as united? The answers elude me as I ponder what it means to be an American and continue my journey.

A Different America – The Lincoln Highway and Mr. Rogers

After leaving the Flight 93 Memorial, I meander along US 30, know as the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway in the United States, designed in 1913 specifically for automobiles to drive from New York City to San Francisco. I stop at the Lincoln Highway Experience, a visitors center in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and, with unbelievable willpower, resist the piece of homemade apple or cherry pie included with my admission fee.

While there, I examine photographs of quirky roadside attractions, like the Coffee Pot restaurant, shaped like a giant coffee pot, Haines Shoe House in York, a five-story building shaped like a giant boot, and Mister Ed’s Elephant Museum & Candy Emporium in Orrtanna, featuring a life-sized elephant statue named Miss Ellie and over 12,000 elephant figurines.

I see images of then Lieutenant Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in 1919, made the arduous 3,000-mile journey as part of a military expedition, The First Transcontinental Motor Convoy. The challenges he encountered on this journey—muddy, rutted roads, broken bridges, frequent mechanical breakdowns, and slow progress that sometimes required soldiers to push or tow vehicles by hand— served as inspiration for his support of an interstate highway system and the passage of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956.

As I drive this iconic road, I imagine a different America, a different world, than the one that made 9/11 possible. My imagination, or should I say my longing, for a different America peaks a few miles down the road from the Lincoln Highway Experience when I stop at the Fred Rogers Institute at St. Vincent College. Yes, that Fred Rogers! Apparently, he was born in Latrobe and referred to it as his “first neighborhood.” I was a little too old for Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, which started in February 1968. I knew, however, that he stood for peace, so I stop to pay my respects.

In touring the exhibits about his life, I fumble with the video screen that ran video clips from iconic Mr. Rogers shows. Without intentionally selecting it, I watch Mr. Rogers in a prime-time show addressing parents after the Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. assassination. In it, he expresses alarm over the unfiltered violence children were exposed to through the media, stating,

I’ve been terribly concerned about the graphic display of violence which the mass media has been showing recently. And I plead for your support of your young children. There is just so much that a very young child can take without it being overwhelming.

Who, I wondered, could say those things today and be taken seriously? And, at the same time, I longed to hear his voice speaking to all of us about today’s news.

America Attacks – Kent State University

My final stop of the day took me to Kent, Ohio. I’ve long intended to visit Kent State University but whenever I passed nearby, I decided I was in too much of a hurry to stop. Today, I want to rectify that.

Kent State is the site of the May 4th (1970) massacre when the Ohio National Guard opened fired on peaceful protestors. Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller joined three hundred others on Kent State’s campus protesting the expansion of the Vietnam war’s Cambodian campaign. Two other victims, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder, were observing the protest between classes.

Twenty-eight National Guard soldiers fired 67 rounds over 13 seconds at unarmed students who stood no closer than 60 and as much as 400 yards away from them. In addition to the four who died, nine other students were wounded that day—one of these permanently paralyzed. These young people stood up for peace and were gunned down, not in Vietnam, but here on a college campus in the United States.

As I park my car and look around, I try to remember news reports of the day to place the National Guard troops and the students they were trying to control. I remember a hill, but I can’t remember if the guardsmen shot up the hill or down it. Only after a reading the historical markers, make a stop in the visitors’ center, and have a chance encounter with Dr. Sara Koopman, Assistant Professor in the School of Peace and Conflict Studies, could I envision the scene as it unfolded.

Dr. Koopman describes herself to me as a geographer with a focus on peace. Who knew such a specialty existed? I certainly didn’t. Sitting on a park bench adjacent to the concrete memorial talking with a student, she interrupts her conversation to point out to me that the students’ names are not on the memorial itself, but rather on a plaque in the ground hidden underneath some bushes. This clearly doesn’t please her.

I ask Dr. Koopman how today’s Kent State students are dealing with seeing National Guard troops roaming our cities. She tells me that most students walk by the memorials every day and either don’t know what happened here or don’t give it another thought. She’s working hard to change that, but it’s an uphill climb.

Even after my conversation with Dr. Koopman, who has created an app that marks key sites and includes statements from those who were there that day, it takes me several tries to locate the markers placed at the exact spots where each student fell. That’s because they died in a parking lot and, without close inspection, the concrete markers look like they were placed there for utility access of some sort.

After I know what I’m looking for, I make a point of visiting and photographing each one.

The National Park Service states:

This site is considered nationally significant given its broad effects in causing the largest student strike in United States history, affecting public opinion about the Vietnam War, creating a legal precedent established by the trials subsequent to the shootings, and for the symbolic status the event has attained as a result of a government confronting protesting citizens with unreasonable deadly force.

When I raise my concern with Dr. Koopman about the Administration’s attacks on history and whether they would try to remove Kent State’s designation as a national historic site, she acknowledges that she hadn’t heard anything yet. “We’ll see,” she said, “there’s no telling.”

As the sun slipped lower in the sky, I know I still have a ways to go to my hotel in Cuyahoga Falls, so

I do not take the time to find the newest markers that Dr. Koopman told me were just installed in 2021 to honor the nine “blood brothers” who were wounded that day. They’ll have to wait for another visit.

Heading to my final destination for the night, I express my gratitude to the universe for the freedom I have to travel and for the incredible people who have kept and are keeping these stories alive. I also say a prayer that the forty people who died in Shanksville, those intrepid souls who built the Lincoln Highway, Fred Rogers, and the killed and wounded at Kent State will never be forgotten.

I hope you’ll make a similar pilgrimage one day. It matters that we remember.

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“Kivas are for boys and men only,” he says, “Girls aren’t allowed in kivas.”

A silent scream erupts filling me with rage. I look up at him towering over me and give him my best stink eye. That isn’t fair!

Maybe I even cried out loud—I’m not sure. All I remember is my profound disappointment and bewilderment.

As I looked longingly down at the hole, a small circular opening in the floor, which I now understand is called a Sipapu, a Hopi word for “place of emergence” and represents the entrance to and emergence from the underworld, I couldn’t understand why the fact that I was a girl would limit my access.

I already knew boys and girls were treated differently. I had to wear a shirt while my brother could expose his chest to the world whenever he wanted. I even had to wear a dress sometimes, instead of shorts or pants that allowed me to play freely. But I’d never before been told I something I wanted to do was reserved for boys only.

This visceral memory is more complicated than it felt that day. Women are no longer restricted by the National Park Service in visiting Mesa Verde kivas, but at night, after the park has closed, Pueblo people might still use a kiva for ceremonial purposes. At those times, kivas are once again the purview of men. Women might be invited in to view a particular ceremony but generally are not allowed in this male-centered sacred space. I respect these traditions even if I don’t understand or agree with them. But then, on that summer’s day in 1960, I only knew the hurt of exclusion, and I hated it.

By the time my high school guidance counselor told me my college major didn’t matter because I was just going to find a husband and start a family, I’d experienced too many incidents like this to count. I honestly didn’t know that girls had other career options besides being a teacher, nurse, nun, or human service professional. I never considered becoming a photojournalist, park ranger, or even a writer—all professions I might have pursued—because no one ever showed me examples of women in these roles.

Even at age 70, I continue to be shocked by women, born long before me who found ways to do what they wanted to do. Gerda Taro, regarded as the first woman war photographer, covered the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. Why didn’t I learn about her in history class? Why did I have to wait until Hollywood released the movie, Lee, in 2024 to learn about Lee Miller, a model turned war photographer in World War II?

Except for a few such as Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, and the Bronte Sisters, women writers rarely appeared on syllabi in my high school and college classes. Even if they did, I learned little, if anything, about the authors themselves and what inspired them to write. They weren’t held up to me as models I could emulate.

My wife and I have a daily dinner ritual where we read about one unconventional woman each night. To do that, we use the three-volume card set, Women Who Dare. The series is published by Pomegranate in collaboration with the Library of Congress. These cards focus on women who defied expectations, flouted expectations, and achieved success in areas like literature, activism, world exploration, science, and sports, which were historically considered male-dominated. Many of the women profiled lived in the 19^th or early 20^th century where it took more than gumption to pursue the lives they lived.

More often than not, when one of us holds up a card for the other to guess who it depicts, we fail. Even women whose stories we’ve heard are hard to identify. If we know something about them, we haven’t seen the photo chosen for the card. As we read about their lives, I’m humbled by their courage, inspired by their actions, and angered by their invisibility.

I know the fight is far from over. When Susan Faludi published her treatise, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, in 1991, she presented evidence that demonstrated the existence of a media-driven "backlash" against the feminist advances of the 1970s in the United States. Little did she know then that the backlash we experienced in the 1980s would feel like a ripple on the shore as compared to the tsunami we’re experiencing today.

From attacks on women’s bodily autonomy to Turning Point USA’s women’s summits, which encourage young women to embrace faith, family, and domesticity over career ambitions, societal pressure against feminist progress is rampant.

Project 2025, MAGA’s blueprint (despite the denials) to centralize executive power, represents a profound rollback of reproductive justice, civil rights, and protections that have empowered women for decades. It includes a federal policy overhaul that curtails women’s rights and bodily autonomy by effectively outlawing access to abortion through revived restrictions, dismantling emergency abortion protections, and rolling back FDA-approved reproductive medications. The plan enshrines a strict binary definition of sex under Title IX, erasing gender identity recognition and undermining anti-discrimination safeguards. Additionally, it targets gender-affirming care via sweeping executive orders, while dismantling DEI efforts that have historically supported gender equity.

But still, I have hope!

When Wendy and I visited Alaska earlier this summer, we were overcome by the natural beauty, but even more astonished by the number of women—mostly young women—in leadership roles introducing us to these wonders. Every adventure we went on, from the National Park Service guided hike at Exit Glacier, the bus tour at Denali National Park, Wendy’s sea kayak tour, and The Sea to Tree Tour, a full-day natural history excursion offered by the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies, were led by women. Even the skipper of the small ferry we took across Kachemak Bay to the tidal pools and Peterson Bay Field Station was a woman.

And these women know their stuff! They are environmental scientists, naturalists, boat captains, dog mushers and trainers, public servants, and National Park Service Ranger/Educators. Some, like the woman who led our excursion into Denali National Park, live year-round in Alaska. In fact, she has lived for fifteen years in a small cabin with no running water and limited electricity. And she loves it!

The women we met are not constrained by societal norms to get married (to a man) and settle down and raise children. They might choose to do that, but they’re freed from the expectation to follow this one and only path. Instead, they’re pursuing their passions, just like the women depicted on the Women Who Dare cards, except these modern adventurers have each other as role models and friends. They don’t have to fight in the same way to pursue their dreams. At least, I hope they don’t.

I’d like to think that the work we did in the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 70s to fight for women’s rights and opportunities helped these young trailblazers follow their dreams. I hope that young girls in elementary and high schools today see these women and think, “I want to do that when I grow up!” And, better yet, I hope they have the support and encouragement from powerful women like these to follow their dreams.

Hang in there. I know somedays, with each passing news cycle, it feels like all is lost, but the next time you feel that way, remember the Women Who Dare and today’s women of Alaska. We WILL overcome!

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In hope and love,

Annette

Order your copy of Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery. Available wherever books are sold. For more information, visit wordswomenpress.com.

She smiled back. “Congratulations! Enjoy your trip,” she said as she continued toward the furs, antler art, and Native Alaskan jewelry displayed in the various booths ahead of her.

Despite our brief connection, and even though I’d been telling people that our trip to Alaska was partly designed to rack up my fiftieth state, it was in that moment, standing on the main street in a town fabled to be the inspiration for the TV series, Northern Exposure, connecting with a fellow traveler, that I claimed my accomplishment.

Originally the site of a Tanaina village, Talkeetna was established as a mining town and trading post in 1896. Alaska didn’t become a U.S. state for sixty-four more years—not until 1959, when I was already four years old. By that point, I don’t think that I’d ventured outside of my birth state of Michigan, but within the next year, I would travel from Michigan to Colorado by train through five new states: Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and finally Colorado—all states I’ve visited many times since. By the time I was seven, I’d traveled to at least fifteen states and lived in three of them, putting me well on track to reaching a goal of visiting all fifty states—a goal I would never even consider setting for many years to come.

So how did it happen that I’ve had the opportunity to visit all fifty states, in most cases multiple times, in my seventy years? Here’s the condensed version.

When I was five, my mom married my dad, and we moved to Denver. He had recently taken a job as a traveling salesman for Daisy Air Rifles and had a territory that included Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, and North and South Dakota. We spent summers traveling with him, enjoying the splendor of the Rocky Mountains, visiting ghost towns, attending powwows, and learning about cowboy culture.

When I turned seven, he transferred to the home office, which, about the time we moved to Denver, had relocated from Plymouth, Michigan to Rogers, Arkansas. Mom couldn’t imagine living in the South, in Arkansas of all places, but somehow, we managed to adjust.

While in Arkansas, we traveled with Dad to Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, and Missouri. We also made annual pilgrimages back to Michigan to see family, revisiting Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. I added Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York to the list when we visited an uncle and his family in Upstate New York—their home in Watertown and camp in the Thousand Islands.

Between my sophomore and junior year of high school, I convinced my parents to send me to a Spanish language camp in Bemidji, Minnesota. Dad drove me there, passing through Missouri and Iowa, before entering a new state for me, Minnesota. Hard to imagine in these times, but after the month in Bemidji, I took a Greyhound bus all by myself back to Arkansas. It was my first solo adventure, and I fell in love with the freedom it offered.

As a sign of my teenage independence, I bought a pack of cigarettes from a machine at some deserted bus station along the route and smoked them all the way home. I must have smelled like an ashtray when my mom picked me up at the gas station in Rogers that doubled as a bus station, but she never said anything. She was just happy—and probably relieved—to have her sixteen-year-old daughter home.

That same summer, Dad took us to one of his favorite cities, New Orleans, so I added Louisiana to my growing list. The Mississippi River begins as a trickle flowing out of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota. That summer, I stood at both ends of the mighty river and imagined the route it traveled through ten states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and finally flows in the Gulf in Louisiana.

I continued to develop my comfort level with independent travel in my last two years of high school as I flew alone several times between Detroit, Michigan and Fayetteville, Arkansas, on visits home from the Catholic boarding school I attended in Michigan. In those days, the airline didn’t offer escorts for minors so even with plane changes in St. Louis, I was on my own.

When I won a month-long scholarship to a congressional seminar in Washington, DC, in my senior year of high school, I had no qualms about flying alone to DC and back to Detroit. A week after I returned to school, my entire class boarded a bus for a class trip to DC, so I got to ride through Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, states I’d flown over but never visited on the ground.

After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1975, my brother moved to Pensacola, Florida. I visited him during a college break adding Florida to my list.

My first work conference, the 1977 National Drug Abuse Conference in San Francisco, introduced me to the beauty and wonder of California, a state I’ve visited many times in the years since.

In 1979, I moved to Boston for graduate school and once you’re in New England, it’s easy to explore not only Massachusetts, but Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island. Discovering New England became a passion and a pastime.

When I moved back to Michigan after grad school, I joined the annual migration of Michiganders down I75 to Florida for trips to Disney World. That added Kentucky and Georgia to my list.

On one of those excursions, I learned that my mother had taken ill in Arkansas, and I needed to go to be with her. To reach her from Florida, I drove across two states I’d never visited but have spent a lot of time in since in my work with the Living Legacy Project, Alabama and Mississippi.

In the late 1980s, my brother, who’d moved from Pensacola to San Diego, transferred again, this time to Honolulu. I couldn’t pass up a trip to the beautiful state of Hawaii, so my partner Anne and I visited him on Oahu, took a brief excursion to Maui, and spent a week on Kauai.

All but four of the states that remained (and yes, I’d begun counting by this point), Arizona, Utah, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and North Carolina, were soon checked off by my annual participation in the Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly, which meets in a different city around the country each June, and which I attended for twenty-three of the twenty-four years between 1993 and 2017.

My work as a computer software trainer in the late 1990s and early 2000s took me to New Mexico and Idaho, and gave me the chance to revisit other states like Nevada and Louisiana that I’d visited only once or twice, but wanted to spend more time in.

By the early 2000s, I knew I had only two states left, South Carolina and Alaska. When presented with a job opportunity as a District Executive with the Unitarian Universalist Association in 2006, I was excited that it would require me to travel extensively though the Southeast, especially North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and the ever-elusive South Carolina.

For the next several years, I drove interstates and back roads throughout the Southeast, visited big cities and small towns from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee to the South Carolina Lowcountry, from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia to the Outer Banks of the North Carolina coast, and, in doing so, reclaimed the South as my home.

That left Alaska. I really didn’t think I would ever get there. I’d convinced myself that seeing the forty-eight contiguous states plus Hawaii (and Puerto Rico) was enough. But then an opportunity arose to visit a friend of Wendy’s who works at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. We had given up on going to Hawaii (a place I’d been, but Wendy hasn’t) after two failed attempts (one because of COVID and one for chemo), so Alaska seemed like an appropriate post-retirement adventure.

I dreaded the long flight and feared the hiking terrain might be too much for me to handle. But Wendy’s enthusiasm is contagious, and I allowed myself to get excited too. I’m very glad I did.

I’ll be writing more about Alaska in future posts but suffice it to say, I found Alaska to be breathtakingly beautiful, expansive, wild, and fascinating in myriad ways that delighted me and caught me by surprise.

And now I can safely say that I’ve visited all fifty states, lived in seven of them, and stayed overnight in all of them at least once.

So why does it matter?

I’ve asked myself that numerous times over the years. Many people don’t have the financial resources to travel. Many others have family or other responsibilities that prevent them from traveling. Still others have disabilities or illnesses that impact their freedom to travel. And some people prefer to stay home, never having developed the skills or temperament to travel. So why does it matter that some of us choose to travel?

The first time I can remember considering the question about how important travel was to me was not that many years after we moved to Arkansas. I’m guessing I was in the fifth grade, but it might have been earlier. A friend, recounting her own boring summer, commented on how much I’d traveled with my family. “I’ve never even left the state,” she lamented.

I’m sure I didn’t hide my shock. “You’ve never left the state?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Rogers, the town we lived in, is in Northwest Arkansas, just under eighteen miles south of the Missouri line and a little more than thirty miles east of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

Those distances to the state borders were as engrained in me as the alphabet. They represented something much larger than the random statistics they seemed to describe. How was it possible that someone, even a twelve-year kid, hadn’t ever left the state when the borders were so close? The whole idea struck me as incomprehensible. Little did I know then that my travel experiences were far from the norm.

In my nascent imagination, those adjacent state borders symbolized a gateway to adventure, opportunity, and discovery. In fact, in every journey north, we had to pass through a tiny village named Gateway at the Arkansas/Missouri border. Every time we approached this portal to adventure, questions fueled my anticipation:

• What new thing will we see today?

• What experiences lie beyond the next curve in the road?

• Who will we meet?

• Where will we spend the night?

• What will we eat?

• What surprises are in store?

As a child, I couldn’t have been happier than when I was on the road. Travel powered my creativity and satiated my curiosity. As an older adult, I’m content to explore closer to home, but, at the same time, I rarely hesitate to embrace a road trip.

Each state in this magnificent country of ours (and despite its current political climate, it’s still a magnificent country) offers lessons in culture, history, and natural beauty. From the bayous of Louisiana to the South Carolina Sea Islands, from the Colorado Rockies to the rocky coastline of Maine, from the prairies of Nebraska to the deserts of Nevada, every state offers a PhD in anthropology, environmental science, history, cultural differences, linguistics, geology, economics, political science, and so much more. And it’s all there for the taking.

I believe that if everyone had the opportunity to travel, to meet people from different parts of the country and the world, to understand and appreciate their struggles and contributions, we would live in a much healthier, kinder, more compassionate world.

I’ve been lucky. I know that. But I’ll never stop advocating for people to find ways to travel to new places, step outside of their comfort zones, place themselves in other cultures, and experience the world through other people’s eyes. I can assure you that we will all be better for it.

I’d love to know how many states you’ve been to, and even more importantly, what role travel has played in who you are.

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In hope and love,

Annette

Notes

If you’re interested in tracking your journey and connecting with others who are traveling to all fifty states, you might consider joining the All Fifty States Club.

Order your copy of Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery. Available wherever books are sold. For more information, visit wordswomenpress.com.

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When I told friends and family I was celebrating my sixty-ninth birthday in the Great Dismal Swamp, I got more than a few reactions. Some thought I’d lost it. A few wondered if I was joking. Others expressed sympathy. And still others just shook their heads in disbelief. The name itself, without any knowledge of the place, evokes those responses.

I have no responsibility for the name. For that, you can blame William Byrd II (1674 – 1744). A Virginia planter, enslaver, lawyer, surveyor, and writer, he is considered the founder of Richmond. When he traveled to what was then a million acres of swampland bordering Virginia and North Carolina, he described it as a dismal place. The name stuck. Fortunately, his inhumane treatment of other humans didn’t.

The swamp holds mystery, beauty, and history. It’s alive with turtles, river otters, snakes, beavers, deer, coyotes, and bears. It’s a warehouse of native plants, medicinal herbs, and edible fruit such as blackberries and paw-paws.

And, over the course of two centuries, the swamp was the home to an estimated 50,000 maroons.

According to the Encyclopedia Virginia,

Beginning in the 1730s with the Chesapeake Rebellion, the Dismal Swamp became a place of refuge for Black insurgents as well as for African Americans fleeing slavery. These maroons mingled with Indians who had been driven off their lands… By the 1840s the Great Dismal Swamp had become an almost mythical place of enslaved resistance and rebellion.

Today, archeologists are discovering and documenting evidence of these maroon communities (Deep in the Swamps, Archaeologists Are Finding How Fugitive Slaves Kept Their Freedom | History| Smithsonian Magazine). And the swamp has been designated as an Underground Railroad Network to Freedom site by the National Park Service.

Wendy and I learned all about this and more from our guide, Penny Lazauskas, from Nature’s Calling. Penny is a Certified Environmental Educator, a biologist, and a person of Seminole heritage. She graciously took us on a three-hour private tour of the swamp, where she pointed out turtles laying eggs, otter runs, and a plant that is referred to as “poor man’s soap,” also called Sweet Pepper Bush (Clethra alnifolia L).

But, most importantly, Penny talked about the people of the swamp—the White people, like George Washington, who tried to control and drain the swamp by forcing enslaved people to dig ditches and a canal through it, and Black and Indigenous freedom seekers who would rather carve out an existence in an inhospitable swamp than live their lives at the mercy of people who claimed to own them.

For me, travel is most enjoyable when natural beauty is combined with a history lesson. The Great Dismal Swamp offers that and more. It is a sacred place. A mysterious place where Indigenous people of the Nansemond Tribe hunted and foraged among the cedars and cypress trees that surround the largest natural lake in Virginia, which they call Firebird’s Nest (and others refer to as Lake Drummond after the White man who supposedly “discovered” it). A place where countless Black and Indigenous people found sanctuary from those who wished to enslave them. And a place where, in 1865, the United States Colored Troops marched along those ditches dug by enslaved people to liberate the maroons.

I definitely plan to return. However, I think I’ll wait a few months. Visiting the swamp in summer is not nearly as pleasant as it was on our spring visit. In summer, the humidity combined with oppressive heat makes even breathing difficult. Mosquitos are, of course, pervasive, and worse than that, according to Ranger Chris, biting yellow flies impervious to insect repellent divebomb any mammal that dares to set foot in their territory. That doesn’t sound like fun!

Fall and winter are a much better time to enjoy the beauty of the swamp. In fact, our guide Penny described an image that I can’t get out of my head. Because the winter is typically too mild in that part of Virginia to warrant hibernation, turtles have been seen walking on snow. Now that’s something I’d love to see!

I hope you ignore the guffaws and other reactions from your family and friends and visit the Great Dismal Swamp someday. And, if you can’t make it there, find a sacred place near you that causes you to remember those who went before you. It’s sure to become seared into your memory as this swamp is in mine.

As always, it’s a pleasure wandering with you!

Annette

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Screening

“What’s your business in Canada?” the border agent began.

“I’m visiting a friend in Winnipeg,” I replied.

“How long you staying?” he continued.

“A week,” I said.

He carried on with more of what I considered standard questions. “How many people in your vehicle?” “When’s the last time you visited your friend?” “Why are you visiting her now?” “Are you bringing in any gifts or other merchandise?”

It was his next question—a question I’d never been asked before—that elevated my heart rate and I’m sure my blood pressure followed. “Have you ever been fingerprinted?” he inquired, turning his full attention to me now, looking at me with eyes squinting against the glare of daylight outside his tiny booth.

As he did, I was immediately transported back thirteen years to Phoenix, Arizona. I could feel the Maricopa County Sheriff Deputy release the handcuffs that squeezed my wrists together behind my back. I could feel her rough fingers as she grabbed my right hand. I recalled how helpless I felt as she guided my hand to the desk in front of me, pressing my right thumb onto an ink pad and then rolling it on the fingerprint card with my name on it sitting on the desk. I remembered thinking how smoothly she repeated the process nine more times with each finger while I stood there in her control. I remember feeling a strange sense of relief when she secured the handcuffs again and ordered me to sit down on the bench against the wall behind me.

Should I lie and say “no?” Did he have a database connected to my name that showed my fingerprints or was this a standard question that they randomly asked? I decided I’d better tell the truth.

“Yes,” I answered.

“When was that?”

“2010”

“What for?”

“I was arrested,” I offered, somewhat more meekly than I expected.

He glared at me, “What were you arrested for?”

My brain froze. I didn’t consider how my answer might be received, I just answered. “Civil disobedience,” I said. He scowled and then refocused his attention on his computer screen.

What came out of my mouth wasn’t exactly truthful. I wasn’t arrested for civil disobedience. I was arrested for being part of a group of demonstrators who blocked an intersection. That was the charge: blocking an intersection.

We were protesting Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, which, ironically, given my current situation, required everyone, regardless of citizenship status, to show their papers when asked by police officials.

I spent 26 hours in the infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jail before being arraigned and then released on my own recognizance. A shiver ran down my spine as I remembered the cold concrete block walls of the cell that they crammed fifty protesters into, overwhelming the regular prisoners there for processing.

I wrote about my experiences in my 2013 memoir, Resistance: A Memoir of Civil Disobedience in Maricopa County.  It is not an incident I care to repeat, but you can read about it here.

While I waited for the border agent to resume his questioning or pass me through, I reminded myself that the worst they could do is deny entrance to the country. Right? Could they arrest me for something? I didn’t think so, but… Did my close-cropped hair that hadn’t grown out after losing it to chemo this summer put him on alert? Did I look like an escaped convict? Or maybe a soldier fleeing into Canada after going AWOL? I considered all the possibilities. After a few tense minutes, he spoke again.

“Do you have any weapons, firearms, knives?” “Do you have any mace, pepper spray, tasers, bear spray…” It seemed like the list went on for a long time, so I’m sure he asked about more weapons. I’m just not sure what else could have been on his list. I answered “no.”

He then directed me to roll down my rear window. I did. He nodded and I rolled it back up. Nothing to see there.

Just when I thought he would say, “You’re free to go,” he directed me to pull up into the spot marked B, as he pointed to my left. “Go inside and give them this.” He handed me a white half-sheet form filled with what appeared to me to be indecipherable codes.

“Oh, shit,” I mumbled. I quickly assessed the things in my car. I reassured myself that, if they searched it, they wouldn’t find anything illegal. I could at least breathe easy about that.

I did as he said. My one regret is not taking a picture of the form, so I could have examined it later. Maybe it would have provided a clue to their suspicions. Instead, I gulped, feeling genuine fear for the first time. Were they going to prevent me from entering Canada because I’d been arrested? Because I was an agitator? Because I had a few left-leaning bumper stickers. Because I’m a lesbian? Did they think I was coming to cause trouble. Did they think I was planning to immigrate illegally? Did I drive all this way only to be turned back? What the hell!

The questions swirled in my head as I opened the car door. I swung out of the driver’s seat and planted my feet on the ground in this in-between place—a demilitarized zone of sorts—not the U.S. any longer, but not quite Canada yet. Taking a deep breath, I headed into the building.

Interrogation

I handed the unintelligible form and my passport card to the young man behind the counter. He asked my name and address and maybe a few other things that I don’t remember, before saying, “Sit over there and wait for an immigration officer to talk with you.”

“I’m not immigrating,” I corrected him. “I’m just visiting.”

“Sit over there,” he repeated without responding.

I remember feeling thankful that I didn’t have handcuffs clenching my wrists behind my back as I sat.

I waited for what seemed like eternity, but was probably only a few minutes, before a uniformed woman, her hair pulled back tightly behind her head and no smile on her face, came to the counter. Even though I was the only person in the room, she called my name. I approached.

Again, she asked my name and address while examining my passport card. Then, “What states have you lived in?”

“Let’s see,” I began. “Virginia, North Carolina, Michigan, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Colorado.”

She continued with her questions without responding. “Where were you born?”

“Ann Arbor,” Before I had a chance to say “Michigan,” she asked a different version of the fingerprinting question, “Have you ever been arrested?”

I took a breath and said, “Yes.”

“What for?”

This time, having had more time to think about it, I gave a more accurate accounting, leaving out the civil disobedience part. “For blocking an intersection,” I said. She looked at me, clearly bemused. I’m sure her confusion was the same as mine when I first heard the charge. How does a person block an intersection?

“Did you get a traffic ticket or go to court?” she mumbled without looking up.

“They dropped the charge before I went to court,” I responded. I didn’t tell her the rest. The prosecutors lost the first three cases against the protestors because the court determined that a person can’t really block an intersection, especially after the police had already done so with cars, vans, and other emergency vehicles in preparation for the anticipated protest. They dropped the charges against the remaining defendants, me included. I never had to go to court.

Perhaps deciding I was not a hardened criminal, but still concerned I was up to nefarious things, her focus changed to the friend I was visiting.

“How long have you known your friend?” “How did you meet?” “What’s her name?” “Where does she live?” “What’s her occupation?”  

I expected her to ask whether she’d ever been arrested, or whether she engages in protests, but she didn’t go there.

Eventually, she said, “Go have a seat while I check out some things.”

I did as she said, sitting in the ominously empty building’s hard plastic chairs for the second time. What was she checking? What databases was she now accessing to search for my name?

As I sat there, I reviewed her questions and my answers. “Oh, I forgot to tell her Arkansas,” I shouted out to the young man behind the counter. “I grew up in Arkansas.” How had I forgotten that one?

He didn’t seem to care.

Release

Finally, she re-emerged, handed me my passport card, and said the words I’d been waiting for, “You’re free to go.”

I could feel the breath escape from my body. I closed my eyes for a brief second, and then couldn’t hold myself back. I had to know. “What was this about?” I asked.

She flinched just the tiniest bit. “Just an immigration check,” she replied, clearly surprised by my boldness.

I left it at that. I didn’t expect to get more information from her after all she had extracted from me. I exited the door I came in, re-entered my car, and then just sat there.

When I had collected myself, I looked at my watch. What had seemed like hours was, in reality, only minutes—less than thirty minutes had passed since I calculated my ninety-minute drive to Winnipeg. I started the engine, backed up, and rejoined the highway—this time on the Canadian side of the border.

Reflection

As I drove the remining miles to Winnipeg, I thought about the people who have given up everything to attempt what I had just done--cross a border into another country. I thought about the millions of people (Yes, millions! 2.2 million people were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border in the first nine months of 2023!) from countries near and far who walk for endless miles, deal with unscrupulous coyotes, cross a raging river, and traverse a hostile desert in search of a better life in the U.S.A. All of them, especially those who don’t have my white skin, my gray hair, my level of affluence, my education, my English-language fluency are greeted with suspicion, as I had been. But truth be told, I had little to fear.

If I’d been denied entry, I would have been certain that it was an error. I would have called my friend, who would have called her friends and family, who would have known an immigration attorney, who would have rectified the immigration officer’s clear mistake, and I would have gone on with my travels. Or, if it couldn’t have been resolved quickly, I would have asked my friend to drive ninety minutes to the border and cross into the States, so that we could enjoy our time together on my side, until things got figured out.

My fear in the moment was understandable, but not comparable. Was I surprised that I wasn’t recognized for my status and allowed in without question? Absolutely. I move in a world of privilege, and I expect the world to treat me with a certain deference. I can’t deny that.

That being said, I deeply believe that all people deserve to be treated with the same respect and dignity I receive every day. This experience only served as a humbling reminder of how much work we have to do, that I have to do, for that to be true.

My prayer is that my country finds it in its collective heart to respect the human rights of asylum seekers and refugees, that we set aside our fears and open ourselves to better understanding the genuine fear that people who risk everything to immigrate experience, and that we live our lives guided, not by fear, but by love.

Thank you for reading. I’d love to hear whatever thoughts this piece brought up for you.

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It didn’t work out that way.

The road less traveled

When I originally mapped my trip, I planned to avoid expressways as much as possible. The scenic route from Minneapolis to Winnipeg would be much more interesting. It would, for example, take me through St. Cloud, a Minnesota city formed in 1856 by three groups with dramatically different agendas. The white settlers gathered in three separate communities, known as Upper, Middle and Lower towns.

• The first group, German Catholic immigrants and migrants from the East, came at the behest of a Catholic priest, Father Francis Xavier Pierz, who was there to proselytize the indigenous population of the region.

• The second group, Protestant settlers from northern New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, moved to the area bringing their abolitionist views with them.

• The third group arrived at the beckoning of a Kentucky slaveowner, who brought his slaves with him. Even though slavery was theoretically illegal in Minnesota, by determining that slaves could not file freedom suits and finding the Missouri Compromise, which essentially prohibited the expansion of slavery into Northern states, unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott Decision of 1857 made that moot. So, yes, there were slaves in Minnesota in the 1850s. Something I wasn’t aware of. Were you?

In an early attack on freedom of the press, the slaveowner, General Sylvanus Lowry, and his “Committee of Vigilance” smashed and then threw a printing press run by abolitionist and women’s rights advocate, Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm, into the Mississippi River. I guess “Minnesota Nice” was not yet a thing! It didn’t stop her though. She soon raised money for another press and resumed her fervent attacks against him and against slavery.

I would have enjoyed exploring St. Cloud to learn more about Jane Swisshelm and the town’s early history, see firsthand the ravines that separated the three settlements, and visit the spot where the Sauk converges on the nascent Mississippi River before it travels further south to become the Mighty Miss.

After visiting St. Cloud, I would have progressed through the land of white clay, home to the White Earth Nation, the largest of the six bands of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, and then onto Thief Rivers Falls a name translated from “the Ojibwe phrase Gimood-akiwi ziibi, literally, the ‘Stolen-land river’ or ‘Thieving-land river’, which originated when a band of Dakota Indians occupied a secret encampment along the river, hence "stealing" the land, before being discovered and routed by the neighboring Ojibwe.”

If I had taken this route, I would have crossed the border at the Tolstoi Point of Entry at the Ukrainian Canadian hamlet of Tolstoi on Provincial Trunk Hwy 59. Tolstoi is so desolate that all I could find out about it was that a beloved historic hotel was re-opening, and that its’ population of 25 intrepid souls dramatically declined in recent decades as most young people left for jobs in Winnipeg.

Would my border crossing into Canada have been different in Tolstoi? Surely, it would have been because it would have happened at a different time, in a different place, with different people. Would taking “the one less traveled by” have made all the difference? I’ll never know because that’s not the road I took.

The road I chose

Instead, when the time came, I opted for the more expedient and direct route. Or so I thought. That was before I remembered it was a Friday in October. From previous travel experience, I knew Friday nights in October meant one thing: high school football, and that meant that the hotels would be bursting with traveling teams, cheerleaders, bands, and fans. My heart sank. I could feel my short driving day disintegrating before my eyes.

As soon as I could, I pulled into a rest area to check on hotels. I didn’t relish finding out I had been right. Even the low-end hotels in both Fargo and Grand Forks that had availability were priced at $250 or higher a night. I had no interest in spending that much on an uncomfortable bed surrounded by rowdy football fans. As a result, my plans changed again. I called Charlotte in Winnipeg and asked if she objected to her house guest arriving a day early.

“Come on!” she said, her voice exuding welcome and encouragement.

Relieved, but also chagrined by my lack of forethought, I replied with equal enthusiasm, “Great! I’ll be there in a few hours.”

I hopped back onto I94 and then I29, in what now had turned into a seven-hour trip on the longest stretch of interstate I’d taken so far on this trip—still not a long drive, but long enough to know I would be tired at the end of it.

As I drove north at or above the generous speed limit of 75 mph, I passed acres and acres, mile after mile of farmland stretching to the horizon in both directions. I had enough experience with traveling in the Southwest deserts and the Southern Great Plains of Kansas and Nebraska to not call this country desolate, forlorn, or abandoned. The deserts and prairies are as diverse as other landscapes, in some cases, even more so. It just takes more effort to get to know them.

I didn’t have that kind of time or imagination on this day, so I plodded on laughing at and being inspired by Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Wiser than Me podcast interviews with iconic actor Jane Fonda, novelist Isabel Allende, and author/public speaker/humorist Fran Lebowitz. It was good to have such powerful company in this remote country.

I knew the border was fast approaching, and as I drew closer, I could feel myself becoming anxious. It took me a minute to figure out why. Last summer, on a genealogy research trip, I crossed into Canada through the Windsor Tunnel in Detroit without completing the required pre-entry form on the ArriveCAN app. I was subsequently admonished by the border agent for my omission—an unpleasant experience I preferred not to repeat.

I decided I’d better pull off on an exit to complete the form, which among other things, was to document my COVID-19 vaccination history. I fumbled my way around the app for a few minutes only to discover that it was no longer required for people driving into Canada, only those who arrive in airports, so, if I was reading it right, I was in the clear. After all, I reasoned, Canada would have no reason to deny entry to a 68-year-old, Covid-19 vaccinated, white woman and U.S. citizen, traveling alone in a 2012 Subaru Forester. I obviously posed no threat.

I took advantage of the bathroom stop, refilled my drink, and headed north again with a renewed sense of confidence.

At the border

When I pulled into line at the Pembina–Emerson Border Crossing, I took out my passport and extracted my passport card to hand to the border agent. I looked at Google Maps on my phone. In 90 minutes, I’d be in Winnipeg. I could feel my excitement growing as I looked forward to a full week with great company and without highway driving, hotels, or fast food.

Before long, the light turned green, and it was my turn to approach the booth. As I did, I opened my window, and said, “Good afternoon.” I handed my passport card to a stern man with dark hair and a mustache. He didn’t smile or even look my way as he started his interrogation.

“What’s your business in Canada?” the border agent began.

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Next Episode

Read “Road Trip Episode 5, Part 2: A Lesson in Privilege”

Footnote

Just as I sat down to write this essay about crossing the border from the US to Canada, I saw the news that fears of a terrorist attack shut down four border crossings in the East US/Canada. According to The Messenger, “Kurt P. Villani and Monica Villani were traveling from their home in western New York reportedly to a KISS concert in Toronto, when their 2022 Bentley slammed into a concrete barrier at a high rate of speed, causing a massive explosion at the Rainbow Bridge.” With nothing left of their $2-300,000 vehicle except the engine, the cause will be tough to determine. Maybe it was mechanical, maybe it was medical, but what officials know is that it was not caused by terrorists. Regardless of the cause, the occupants must have been terrorized in the seconds it took for the vehicle to go airborne before crashing and exploding. My prayers go out to their family and friends.

The northern hardwood forests, or Northwoods, wrap the largest freshwater lake in the world in a blanket of American beech, sugar and red maple, yellow birch, hemlock, and white pine trees that tower over its shores.

As I stepped out of my car into a forested patch near the lake’s stunning shoreline west of Marquette last month, the aromas of sweetfern, balsam poplar, and pine combined to remind me that I was home. Nothing smells so fresh, so alive, as the Northwoods.

As a late teen, I moved back to my birth state of Michigan. It was then I fell in love with the Northwoods. Even though I lived a couple hours south of the official start of the ecoregion called the Northwoods, they called to me, and I routinely found myself answering their call. Eventually, I purchased some land in the northwestern lower peninsula of Michigan near Traverse City and a few years later called the Northwoods home.

There, with the help of a local farmer and homesteader named Elmer, I learned to identify the various types of trees that made up the forest. I examined the shapes of pines, spruces, firs, and junipers. I learned their needles and pinecones. I studied the bark of aspens, paper birches, mountain ash, and maples and learned to recognize them from a distance.

I treated the Sierra Club Naturalist’s Guide by Glenda Daniel and Jerry Sullivan, The North Woods of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Southern Ontario as if it were a sacred text. I devoured the information in this 400-page tome about geology, plant life, and animals that thrived in the region.

And just like Meg in Madeline L’Engle’s A Wind in the Door, I learned that naming helps parts of creation learn how to be themselves. It’s a recognition of our interdependency and interrelatedness. Through this deepening understanding, I developed a deep love for the Northwoods and knew they loved me back.

The secrets of the atom are not unlike Pandora's box, and what we must look for is not the destructive power but the vision of interrelatedness that is desperately needed on this fragmented planet. We are indeed part of a universe. We belong to each other; the fall of every sparrow is noted, every tear we shed is collected in the Creator's bottle.

— Madeleine L'Engle, The Rock That is Higher: Story as Truth

The unidentified tapestry

I grew up in the hills, ravines, and forests of the Ozark Highlands in Northwest Arkansas. This was my playground as a kid. If I wasn’t shooting a basketball into the hoop hanging off our second story porch, I was in the ravine behind our house, climbing rocky cliffs, or exploring Lake Atalanta and the bubbling creek that fed into it.

I loved being in the woods, and I spent as much time as I could there climbing, exploring, rock scrambling, and crawdad hunting. The woods and creeks taught me self-reliance and independence.

I was not (am not) a particularly brave explorer. I didn’t often swing on the massive vines that hung from trees at the bottom of the ravine for fear of letting go at the wrong time and crashing to the forest floor below. I liked climbing up the rock cliffs at the base of the ravine but hesitated going down them for the same reason. Although other kids seemed to have no problem using an old log like a balance beam to traverse the creek, my heart would race and I’d freeze up at the mere thought of slipping into a den of water moccasins that frequented that part of the creek.

But despite my fears, I felt freer in the woods than in any other part of my life. I could wear old clothes, get dirty, and not worry about what anybody thought. I could do what I wanted, go where I wanted, and nobody could stop me. The woods represented beauty, mystery, challenge, and autonomy.

I regret now though that I never learned the names of the trees and other plants I romped passed on my way to my next adventure. The only tree I really knew during my childhood was the majestic white oak that stood at the end of our driveway. I would watch the cardinals dart around its branches and be thankful they had such a wonderful home in which to raise their young.

I didn’t know then about the 900 species of Lepidoptera (moths, butterflies, and skippers) that, according to Doug Tallamy, author of The Nature of Oaks, also call the white oak home. I just knew that when I saw that old oak tree, I felt at home.

Other trees were just trees—some tall, some stout, some craggy, some stately—part of the tapestry that made up the forest. Regretfully, it never crossed my mind to learn more about them.

That’s why it mattered so much to me when I finally learned some of the names of the trees that made up the Northwoods. Although I loved playing in the Arkansas woods, I never felt the indescribable connection to them that I feel when I’m in the Northwoods.

The gift the comes from knowing

As I drove through northern Minnesota and Wisconsin and then into the Upper Peninsula on my recent journey, I started grieving the dead and dying trees I saw. Miles of yellowing needles and bare trunks convinced me that something was killing the conifers in my beloved Northwoods.

I stopped to take illustrative photos and then when I returned to the car, my heart ached with sadness. I felt helpless—like losing a friend to terminal cancer.

When I reached my hotel that night in Marquette, I began researching what could be causing so much destruction. I had convinced myself that the global climate crisis was to blame. Although I saw references to infestations of southern pine beetles heading north due to climate change, I didn’t find anything definitive. “Why isn’t this being written about?” I shouted aloud in my empty hotel room, cursing the internet in frustration.

On the phone that night I said to my wife, Wendy, “I’m devastated by the damage I saw. Large swaths of my forests are dying.”

I went on, “At first, I thought the yellow-leafed trees were just showing their fall colors, but then when I looked closer, I saw they were evergreens. Something is killing them!” I moaned.

Wendy did her best to comfort me, but she knew there was little either of us could do.

When I returned home, I did more research so I could write about this horrible disease that was killing my dear friends. That’s when I discovered my error.

What I had encountered was not mass extinction but instead the annual ritual of the tree that, Rick Meader, a Michigan landscape architect, refers to as the “conifer that dares to be different.”

Tamarack trees, also called Eastern Larch (Larix laricina) lose their needles in the fall when deciduous trees lose their leaves. Tamaracks turn brilliant gold before their short, soft needles cascade to the earth below. They are diversity personified!

Had I taken the time to know Tamarack trees, had I been able to name them—to distinguish them from other conifers and understand their needs—I would have known that what I was seeing was not extermination by some virulent assailant but, instead, the normal cycle of life.

I’m thrilled to know that these massive trees will survive the harsh winter, regrow needles in the spring, and stand proudly with other conifers throughout the summer until it’s time to lose their needles once again next fall.

Whether our family members are other humans or part of the larger interconnected network of nature, we can’t know everything about each other. But we must be open to learning. We have to take the time to fully embrace each other by understanding the habits and characteristics of the other — rejoicing when they prosper, celebrating their changes, and mourning when they get sick or die.

I’m embarrassed by my assumptions (I’m sure there’s another essay in that), but at the same time, delighted that I took enough time to learn that I had misinterpreted what I saw.

Naming what you see

It’s clear that I have a lot more to learn about the Northwoods, and since I now hail from Virginia, the opportunities are fleeting. That’s why I do what I can to learn about the trees and plants that are native to the Piedmont region of Virginia, the ones that make up the forests along the James River and that grow in my own tiny piece of earth.

But nothing will ever replace the feeling I get when I breath in the Lake Superior shore and the flora and fauna that’s fed by it. It will always be home.

Flashes of a tall teenage boy with straight brown hair and a sly smile appeared in an empty field. My junior prom date and my first, and one of my only, boyfriends.

I met Kevin through a family friend in Arkansas. When the company my dad worked for, Daisy Air Rifles, moved from Plymouth, Michigan to Rogers, Arkansas, in the late 1950s, a lot of Michiganders moved with it, leaving siblings, cousins, grandparents, and others behind in Southeast Michigan’s farm country.

Kevin’s uncle was Daisy’s plant manager--one of the hundreds of Northern immigrants who moved to the South during those years. His wife, Kevin’s Aunt Kay, became friends with my mom in Arkansas. When Kay heard I was planning to return to Michigan to attend a Catholic girls boarding school in Adrian, less than twenty miles from where Kevin and his family lived in the small farming community of Deerfield, the matchmaking began.

I don’t remember the first time I met Kevin. I have a vague memory that his mother brought him to the Academy one Friday afternoon when students had permission to wander into town. It’s possible that we went to Big Boy and had whatever one had at Big Boy in those days. A Patty Melt was my favorite, so I probably had that.

I remember that I liked him. He was funny, gentle, and kind. We laughed and goofed around like two teenagers because that’s what we were. When his mother dropped me back at school, I can’t imagine that we kissed. He might have pecked me on the cheek as I got out of the car, but that would have been the extent of it.

Because St. Joe’s was a girls school, every day was Saddie Hawkins Day. If you wanted a date to go with you to a school dance, girls had to do the asking. When it came time for the junior prom, I knew I wanted to ask Kevin. Although I could feel my heart race and my palms sweat as I dialed his number on the pay phone at the end of hall in my dorm, I felt confident he’d say yes. I was relieved to discover I was right.

I didn’t wear a long prom dress—at least I don’t think so. I don’t remember if any of the girls did. Although I can’t find it for the life of me, I know I have a photo of Kevin and me from that night. I’m pretty sure I’m wearing a dress that falls well above my knees, and Kevin has on a dapper brown suit. We look like a proper couple—the only formal photo I ever had taken of me with a boy.

What I remember most about that night is kissing. We started kissing early in the evening. Perched on a cast iron garden bench my friends and I borrowed from a nearby yard as part of the prom décor, Kevin and I kissed long and hard. I’m embarrassed when I remember it now—an unseemly PDA (public display of affection) in today’s world. Certainly, it was then.

But that night, it seemed magical to me. I’d never kissed anyone before. Kevin taught me how much I liked it. He liked it too, so we both imagined that kissing would became a central part of our relationship. Little did we know then that the universe had other plans.

In my senior year, just a few months after the junior prom, I got a call—I don’t remember from whom—that Kevin was in the hospital. The psychiatric wing. Kevin had attempted suicide.

I got permission from the nun who was in charge of our dorm to visit him. I stood by his bed and held his hand. I could tell that whatever troubled him gripped him deeply. It made me sad to see him like this. I didn’t push him to talk, so he didn’t. And we certainly didn’t kiss.

A few months after that, I fell in love with a woman. Kevin and I still talked now and then after this, but we rarely saw each other, and we never talked about the hospital. I also never told him about my new love. I felt guilty that I couldn’t be his girlfriend anymore, and hoped that wasn’t causing him pain, even though I had no indication that he wanted to be my boyfriend.

A couple years later, he called me out of the blue and invited me to join him at a gay bar in Ann Arbor. How did he know? The better question is how did I not know? Like me, Kevin was gay!

Is this what had precipitated his suicide attempt in high school? He never said, but I’m fairly sure it was—something not easily accepted in his conservative Catholic family.

When I arrived at the bar, he ran over to greet me—his joy palpable and energy infectious. “Let’s dance!” he shouted above the rowdy disco din. He grabbed my hand and skipped away as if leading me down the yellow-brick road.

It didn’t matter that we wouldn’t be kissing that night. We had both learned about who we were in the intervening years, and we were happy we could just be friends. I loved seeing him filled with joy. He had found himself, and so had I.

In so many ways, finding out he was gay relieved my conscience. I could be his friend and not worry that he wanted more. We could be gay together! I looked forward to other opportunities to go clubbing with him at the various Detroit area gay bars.

That is until I heard that Kevin had died. His mother told her sister, who told my mom, who told me. I don’t know if suicide finally got him or, if, given it was the 1980s, AIDS was the culprit. I just know that his spirit evaporated from the earth, and all that was left was a fallow field where joy and passion had once lived.

A half century later, as the turnoff to Deerfield faded in my rear-view mirror, I felt his lips on mine. I was an awkward sixteen-year-old again who just discovered one of the greatest pleasures of life. Then the image of us kissing faded, as a cold, sterile hospital room enveloped me. I took his trembling hand into mine. But before I had a chance to feel sad, Kevin’s infectious smile appeared in front of me as he swayed to the rhythm of his new life surrounded by others who accepted and loved him.

Three moments that tell the story a life—a life harvested long before it was ready.

They say you always remember your first kiss. I remember mine. And I’ll always remember Kevin’s gentle spirit as we discovered who we were each meant to be. I will also always wish he was still alive to celebrate our discoveries together instead of a ghost haunting a desolate Michigan corn field.

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At Feast, I enjoyed Manitoba’s official fish, pickerel. Although I learned in researching pickerel that there’s debate about whether what I ate is actually pickerel. Some contend the fish Manitobans call pickerel is really walleye, an entirely different fish, while others say they’re the same thing. But whatever I ate, it was fabulous, lightly dusted, pan seared, with wild rice & basmati rice w/ caramelized vegetables, grilled carrot spears, spring vegetables and fresh bannock. YUM!

Winnipeg’s Diversity Gardens

The Leaf, Winnipeg’s answer to frigid winters, described as an indoor horticultural attraction, is comprised of four major zones, a tropical biome, a Mediterranean biome, a display house for horticultural displays, and a butterfly garden.

I can only imagine how wonderful it will be to visit the tropics in the middle of Winnipeg’s long winter!

The great butterfly escape

Sadly, although it’s only been open a short time, the butterflies have escaped! The volunteer on duty pointed to where the screening comes together at the top of the structure and said the tropical butterflies found their way out. Now, I can visualize one of them doing that, but all of them? Did they gather to plan their escape, was it a follow-the-leader situation, or did each butterfly independently discover that one weak link in this massive enclosure?

And why just the tropical butterflies? Are domestic butterflies content to stay wherever they find themselves, whereas tropical butterflies’ internal homing devices call them to fly south at whatever the cost? Inquiring minds, especially mine, want to know! Sadly, I suspect I never will, but I’ll be playing with various scenarios for a long time to come. I sincerely hope that the escaped butterflies are happily back in the tropics!

Globally inspired modern prairie cuisine

At the Leaf, we ate at Gather Craft Kitchen and Bar, which bills itself as globally inspired modern prairie cuisine. Who could pass up that? There, Charlotte and I shared the grilled kale salad with pickled apple, candied walnut, shallot, edamame, watermelon radish, with apple balsamic vinaigrette and the coconut korma curry with sweet pepper chutney, charred cauliflower, sweet potato, jasmine rice, toasted cashew, yogurt, and chili threads. And, no I had never heard of chili threads before, but when I looked them up, I found that they even have a Wikipedia page, so I guess it’s just me!

Whatever they are, the meal was wonderful, and that’s coming from someone who doesn’t write much about food. In fact, this is probably the first time I’ve ever written about my meals while I’ve been traveling, but these two meals, in addition to the great company and warm hospitality I received, were highlights of my visit to this bustling city on the prairies.

Next week, in honor of Hallow’s Eve and All Saints Day, I’ll share a reflection on ghosts I’ve encountered during my travels.

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In Western Canada, you might have visited my wife’s favorite city, Vancouver, a city I’ve never had the good fortune to see. For the more adventurous, a trek to the mountain towns of Banff and Jasper might have taken you through Canada’s third largest city of Calgary with its famous Calgary Stampede. My partner Anne and I celebrated Anne’s 40^th birthday with a trip to the Stampede. I will say that, without a doubt, it was the most incredible vacation we ever took.

It was amazing not just because of the famous rodeo, which I know some of you have deep ethical concerns about, but for the stunning balloon festival, the massive aboriginal pow-wow featuring competitive dancing, drumming, singing, and other indigenous performances, the nightly fireworks, the battle of the bands in all the local drinking establishments, and the old-time chuck wagon breakfasts, to name a few of the diversions the Stampede offers.

We had a blast in Calgary, but when we were done with crowds, we ventured up the scenic Alberta Highway 93 through the Canadian Rockies to the rustic mountain town of Jasper. On the way, we saw elk, bear, glaciers, mountain streams, waterfalls, and vistas beyond compare. This drive offered the solitude we craved after a raucous week in Calgary.

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Now on to Winnipeg

In between the rugged Rockies and the vibrant cities of Eastern Canada lay the prairies. The largest of the prairie towns, Winnipeg, at the longitudinal center of North America, serves as a lively center of commerce, education, and culture.

Why did I visit Winnipeg, you might be asking? One of my dearest friends, Charlotte (and one of my Accidental Mentors) grew up there and then after years of working in the States, retired home. Although she’s visited Wendy and me in Richmond on several occasions, we haven’t been to Winnipeg in almost a decade. It felt like time. And it served as the perfect ultimate destination for my post chemo road trip.

Winnipeg welcomed me in grand style

I decided to take this trip in October so I could see fall colors and miss bad weather. But Winnipeg is nothing if not a winter wonderland, and it did not disappoint! We had two inches of snow on Wednesday night and at least four more before I left on Friday morning.

Not surprisingly, Winnipeg has a cold continental climate with a short, very warm summer and a long, cold winter. The average annual temperature in Winnipeg is 3.5°C (38° F). Brr! On one of my earlier visits there, I felt the joy of its winter temperatures. I don’t remember if the -25^o we experienced was Celsius or Fahrenheit, but does it really matter? IT WAS COLD!

Winnipeg’s ancient heart

The heart of Winnipeg is The Forks, an historic site at the intersection of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. At this place, Nakoda (Assiniboins), Cree and Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) and Dakota people gathering for over 6,000 years trade, connect, and hunt. Later European fur traders, railroad workers, and immigrants gathered here as they prepared for deeper incursions into the Canadian wilderness.  

And today, commerce has returned as a central focus of The Forks, one that I gladly participated in. Although I rarely have a need for winter boots in Richmond, I couldn’t resist these beautiful mukluks!

Winnipeg the Bear

One of my discoveries while in Winnipeg this time was that one of my favorite fictional character, Winnie the Pooh, was named after Winnipeg. Harry Colebourn, a Canadian soldier and veterinarian, brought a cub to the London Zoo. He named the cub, "Winnipeg Bear" after the town he grew up in. Christopher Robin, the son of A. A. Milne, visited the bear frequently and named his teddy bear after Winnipeg Bear. Milne combined it with the name of a friend's pet swan, called "Pooh," to create Winnie-the-Pooh. I didn’t get to see the Colebourn and Winnipeg statue, so that’ll give me something to look forward to on my next visit!

Canadian Museum of Human Rights

While in Winnipeg, Charlotte and I visited the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, a stunningly beautiful structure housing a remarkable museum focused on human rights. It covers everything from the obliteration of Jewish rights in the Holocaust to the progression of LGBTQ rights today. The museum has a special focus on aboriginal and Innuit rights throughout Canada, particularly in naming the atrocities that took place at Indian residential schools and in bringing attention to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada. Both sobering subjects that I knew a little something about, but the museum deepened my understanding and helped me better appreciate the pain both issues have caused.

Canada’s Rosa Parks, before Rosa Parks!

I’m most excited that the museum introduced me to Viola Desmond, the inspiration for Canada’s $10 bill. Often called the Canadian Rosa Parks, Desmond took an anti-segregation stand in a Nova Scotia theater in 1946 by sitting in the whites-only section (nine years before Rosa refused to give up her seat on a bus) Ms. Desmond was arrested and fined, and just like Ms. Parks, helped inspire the country’s Civil Rights Movement. Learning about Ms. Desmond reminded me how mono-cultural I am.

Despite years of personal study of the American Civil Rights Movement, and a deep connection to another Viola, Viola Liuzzo, I had never heard of Viola Desmond. Charlotte gifted me with a $10 bill, which I’ll keep to remind me that there’s always more to learn.

In Part 2 of “A Visit to the Prairies,” I’ll share more with you about the great city of Winnipeg, this time focusing on its food and flora. And you won’t want to miss “the great butterfly escape!”

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Accidental Mentors

Now that I’ve finished publishing the Accidental Mentors series, you can visit any of the posts you missed or revisit any of the posts you want to reread here:

Accidental Mentors: Table of Contents

ANNETTE MARQUIS

And although I finished writing about my Accidental Mentors, I’m looking forward to your submissions about the women who shaped your life. Here are the submission guidelines. Please submit soon, but no later than December 15, 2023. Thanks!

Accidental Mentors Submission Guidelines

After a summer at home focused on toxifying and then detoxifying my body from chemotherapy, this adventure is a gift to myself (and from my wife). I’m traveling to explore, think, write, remember, and witness life as it bubbles in the lakes, rivers, streams I pass along the way. I intend to visit a half-dozen friends, and in between, spend time alone—time I’m already relishing.

I’ve structured my trip so that, with one or two exceptions, I never have to drive more than five hours in a day. On most driving days (14 of the 22 total days), I’m traveling four hours or less. Because I work part-time and have the luxury to work from anywhere, I’m working in the mornings, driving in the afternoons, and visiting or writing in the evenings. So far, that schedule has worked well (despite the fact that I have already missed my self-imposed Thursday deadline for this newsletter!).

I look forward to the drives because I know they won’t be too long, and I get to see new things (or old things I haven’t seen in quite a while). I don’t feel pressured to keep driving when I would like to stop to enjoy a scenic vista, an apple orchard, or an old country store. And, when I reach my destination, I’m not too tired to take a walk or explore the area. In my opinion, it’s the ideal way to travel.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be sharing reflections from the road with you.

Today: a reflection on fens

Except when I lived in Boston and regularly escaped to Fenway Park to catch a Red Sox game, I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “fen” in a sentence. When my friends Mary and Margie moved from Richmond to Lake in the Hills, Illinois, they began posting pictures of the 400-plus acre fen that is essentially their front yard. I saw their beautiful photos of wildflowers and other flora, but I hate to admit, I still had no concept of what a fen really was. So, when I made arrangements to visit them, I looked it up.

According to Wikipedia,

a fen is a type of peat-accumulating wetland fed by mineral-rich ground or surface water. It is one of the main types of wetlands along with marshes, swamps, and bogs. Bogs and fens, both peat-forming ecosystems, are also known as mires.

The article goes on to say,

Fens can be found around the world, but the vast majority are located at the mid to high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. In the United States, fens are most common in the Midwest and Northeast, but can be found across the country.

Although I live in the mid-Atlantic now, I’ve lived in the Midwest and Northeast the majority of my life. Why have a never encountered references to fens before now? People have talked with me in everyday conservation about marshes, swamps, even bogs, but never fens, and especially not mires.

I love it when a word, especially one derived from nature, takes on deeper meaning or when I come to understand a word more fully. Maybe it’s just me and you’re saying, “what is she talking about?” I talk about fens and mires all the time.” If that’s the case, thanks for indulging me.

Isn’t mire a great word? If I lived on a fen like Mary and Margie, I’d be calling it “the mire.” Of course, I’m familiar with and have used the word mire, especially, as a verb: “The country is mired in conspiracy theories.” I might have even used it as a noun referring to “the muck and the mire,” or “getting stuck in the mire.”

The Oxford Dictionary defines mire as:

a situation or state of difficulty, distress, or embarrassment from which it is hard to extricate oneself.

That’s a definition I am familiar with, and one I’ve found myself in, but I never thought of it as a place where I could or would want to talk a walk.

In its article about peatland, Wikipedia defines a fen as being:

…located on a slope, flat, or in a depression and gets most of its water from the surrounding mineral soil or from groundwater (minerotrophic). Thus, while a bog is always acidic and nutrient-poor, a fen may be slightly acidic, neutral, or alkaline, and either nutrient-poor or nutrient-rich. All mires are initially fens when the peat starts to form and may turn into bogs once the height of the peat layer reaches above the surrounding land.

So, according to this explanation, mires are liminal states between fens and bogs. Maybe Mary and Margie’s fen is not yet a mire, but it appears aspirational for a fen to become one. I like that the next time I’m mired in some situation, I can think of it as only transitionary, or even aspirational. Of course, I’ll have to be careful to not get bogged down after I extricate myself from being mired.

I hope you enjoy these photos from an Illinois mire, I mean fen.

What’s next in my travels?

In upcoming posts, I’ll share, not necessarily in this order, my almost-didn’t-make-it-across Canadian border crossing story, a reflection on fall colors, and in time for Hallow’s Eve, a contemplation on ghosts. Thanks for journeying with me.

Accidental Mentors and newsletter updates

Now that I’ve finished publishing the Accidental Mentors series, you can visit any of the posts you missed or revisit any of the posts you want to reread here:

And although I finished writing about my Accidental Mentors, I’m looking forward to your submissions about the women who shaped your life. Here are the submission guidelines. Please submit soon, but no later than December 15, 2023. Thanks!

One clarification. For security reasons, I’m requiring you to be a paid member in order to submit. However, if you want, you can subscribe for just a month ($5) and then cancel your paid subscription. And if the fee is preventing you from submitting, email me at submissions@accidentalmentors.com and I’m happy to waive the subscription fee.

What’s Next?

I’m transitioning my newsletters to a focus on my wanderings (“Annette’s Wanderings”), whether they be physical travel, such as in today’s post, or wanderings of a spiritual or metaphysical nature. I hope you’ll stick with me as I make this transition. In the meantime, my website and communications are going to be a little funky.

Please bear with me while I’m stuck in the mire of redesign!

Thanks so much!

Annette