Leaving East of the Sun

Our last couple of months have been spent with family in New York and New Jersey. The cool summer temperatures dropped lower and lower, the leaves started turning, and the mornings began to feel bitter and sharp. Until that time we worked and explored what we could of the North Fork, Fire Island, Manhattan, and New Jersey... It was really good and important for Daniel and I to spend some extended time with both of our eastern Families. We both have spent so much time away from them, and feel the loss. To be able to take some time and just have some good conversations, share some good food, and see each other for the real, living, beautiful, flawed, loving, family-strangers that we are. That meant a lot to both of us, toward each of our families and across, because it meant that we were really beginning to know each other in a way that distance has made difficult. We leave with a much greater understanding for who we each are, because of a clearer view of who we come from. We leave with love in our hearts, and new tools for our next journey. We leave grateful that these people are in our lives.

But, work was scarce, the grapes on the vines are unripe and wet, and this winter looks like its going to be cold...or so everyone says. We are setting our sights on The SW, searching for the elusive summer... We are not designed for cold and so we must follow the warmth, towards the West at a Southern angle. Weather has been a little unpredictable these days, but we try to stay in the shadow of the Sun (although we seem to just tail it, and it has felt like a year of Spring and Fall).
On our way out of the NE corridor, we stopped in DC. At the Capitol building, amid white marble and gleaming roman pillars, a protest/demonstration was taking place to protest the lack of attention and resources being given to addressing real answers to the problems of climate change. truely Democracy in action. I was proud for a moment of our system... although it was also a statement of how inadequate our efforts can be without a clear message behind them, because even though the demonstration was eye catching and visually interesting, their reason behind it was very unclear and vague. When you are standing in front of the Capital building, with a group of people attentive...you should probably have something to say (at least something that makes sense). It left us feeling both proud and disappointed. I guess Washington DC in general had that feel.

We were so relieved to step out of the concrete swirls, the towering shining walls of windows, the lights on everywhere, people crammed into every little pocket, and art (beautiful as it can be) always seeming to reflect the surreal scream of a silenced person.




We climbed the hills heading West and made our way to the top of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. We drove almost four hundred miles down the crest of the hills, skimming along the Shenandoah valley and the Appalachian mountain range. A beautiful time of year to do it! Although I believe they call folks like us leafers. But I don't mind being a tourist for this kind of art, it was unlike anything this NW native has really seen before! I don't even think my pictures actually do it justice, it had this otherwordly feel to it that was new and magical.

Now we settle and catch our bearings for a couple weeks, tinker with the bus, scope out any work, and enjoy Western North Carolina, which is definitely on our list of best places in the whole wide world.