Women Flagging the End of Wars

 

The bluster of men at the beginning of wars is like a cocking of language—their words oiled and weaponized against their doubting selves, against their enemies, and against rhetoric advocating peaceful solutions. The ammunition is boxed and peddled with convincingly glorious slogans: “God is on our side,” or “Whatever may be our fate, the cause for which we fight is just and righteous and must prevail.” These exact quotes and similar sentiments were voiced by both Union and Confederate soldiers at the start of the American Civil War. 

Ten of my ancestors fought in that war—five for the North and five for the South. I find it absurd to think that if any of those men had swapped their home regions some hundred years before the war, Northerners to the South or Southerners to the North, the side each man fought for would probably have shifted. Men convince men to fight. Peruse any military history, and the faces in command are men’s. Their prerogatives and responsibilities have led civilizations into and through countless wars across generations and around the world. Some wars were justified, and some were not. Women were a footnote, but this is changing.

In 1865, the Confederate Army’s white flag of surrender was a hastily found dishcloth purloined from a woman’s kitchen. It was a signal, as if a flagging of the beginning of women’s role in ending wars. After the Civil War, newly available educational opportunities elevated women into the public sphere. As predicted in the Bahá'í writings, they will use their influence to end wars: 

“So it will come to pass that when women participate fully and equally in the affairs of the world, when they enter confidently and capably the great arena of law and politics, war will cease; for women will be the obstacle and hindrance to it.” — ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

The diversity and creativity we already see among women who have won the Nobel Peace Prize suggest an incredible tapestry of women-led approaches to dislodging war as a means of solving problems. Wangari Maathai, an African professor, founded the Green Belt Movement, in which women planted trees to prevent deforestation and economic instability. This effort helped make a democratic Kenyan government a reality. Leymah Gbowee developed methods to help traumatized child soldiers from the Liberian Civil War and brought Christian and Muslim women together to work for the end of that conflict. She befriended another woman, Kiki Katese, who founded Ingoma Nshya (New Drum), which brought together women from opposing sides of the Rwandan genocide to bond and rebuild their lives through drumming or by running ice cream shops! In America, Jane Addams was elected a delegate to the first Peace Convention at The Hague and, in the same year (1915), became the founder-president of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She encouraged President Wilson to advocate for establishing the League of Nations. The following description of her intellectual skills exemplifies one woman’s capacity, grounded in her education.

“In an era when the mental capability of women was still questioned, Addams’s breadth of knowledge on a variety of subjects was formidable. The journalist Ida Tarbell considered her “one of the best-read women that I have ever known.” But unlike most experts, Addams remained open minded to other viewpoints. “Her mind had more ‘floor space’ in it than any other I have known,” recalled the feminist author Charlotte Perkins Gilman. “She could set a subject down, unprejudiced, and walk all around it, allowing fairly for every one’s point of view.” — Neil Lanctor, Lit Hub, 11/1/2021

Women have the potential to make world peace a reality. Their innate reluctance to violence, abhorrence of sending their sons to battle, and “that they are more philanthropic and responsive toward the needy and suffering” (Bahá’í Writings) all bode well for their role in bringing about world peace. Maybe not in this century, but in one to come. Flag it as possible.

Trepidations and Strangers

 “Aren’t you afraid to travel alone?” This uneasy question brings to mind images of kidnapping and murder by strangers—whom I would, of course, have to somehow identify among the thousands of people I might encounter during my cross-country journey. When asked this common question, I usually fumble through a brief explanation involving statistical odds and spiritual practices, but it never feels sufficient. As I sat down to craft a more thoughtful response, I gained a deeper understanding of the question’s nuances and the importance of personal pursuits.

First off, the concern has some validity. I am a petite female, and I will be in unfamiliar places. If I face a threatening situation, I have no backup except my dog Chester. While he might be good in a crisis, he has been known to bark at an abandoned dishwasher, upturned buckets in places they did not appear the day before, and dog sculptures. In a novel, he would be pegged as an unreliable narrator, his intuition and perceptions a bit faulty. I might be left to rely on my own defensive skills.

Statistically, what are the chances that I will be harmed? In today’s age of easily accessible and sometimes artificially created news, our perception of how often violence occurs gets skewed. Vivid stories or images of crimes seem so real and immediate that we imagine that if it happened to them, it could happen to us. This kind of thinking ignores the vast size of our country and the fact that violent crimes are, in most places, rare. Aside from robberies, these crimes are usually committed by someone the victim knows. In fact, you might be safer traveling among strangers than staying at home. 

The word “stranger” comes from the Latin word extraneus, meaning “foreign” or “not belonging to the family.” As a member of the Bahá’í Faith, I am encouraged to see all of humanity as my “family,” as souls of a single race. When I became a Bahá’i in my thirties, I started working to shed prejudices and misconceptions—those initial reactions based on race, clothing, poverty, or body language. It changed how I connect with people. Furthermore, the Faith asks me to show loving kindness to everyone who crosses my path. This “everyone” includes the strangers I will inevitably meet when I travel alone. 

During this past trip, I realized there were several times when I might have mistakenly feared someone if I hadn't become a Bahá’í. I would have missed many engaging exchanges. Here is an example. I was camping in late October at a deserted Wyoming campground, situated between a railroad, a river, and a highway. I ate dinner at a picnic table under a canopy of gorgeous yellow cottonwood trees and then took Chester for a walk the length of the grounds. When I was nearly as far from my car as I could get, an older-model sedan pulled into the campground and strangely stopped right beside me. Again, there was no one else around. An older man, slightly stooped, got out, barely looked at me, moved to the back door of his car, opened it, and reached inside. This is where, earlier in my life, I might have hurried away, scared of this man. Instead, he straightened up and backed away as he pulled out a fishing pole, turned, and enthusiastically began telling me about his wonderful day of fishing and birding. After winding down our conversation, he circled the car before heading down the path to the river on the opposite side—his original destination. His passion for the area’s lakes and birding opportunities inspired me to consider returning someday. I felt fortunate to have met him and grateful for having learned to be open to his company.

Traveling can involve unsettling events. They're not threatening, but sad or unexpected. Being alone makes it harder to process their impact. In Thunder Bay, Canada, I had just parked in a hotel parking lot when, from the corner of my eye, I saw a youth knock hard into my side passenger mirror and fall away from my sight. I got out and checked to see if he was okay. The young man, who was obviously Native American, lay on the pavement shaking, eyes rolling back in his sockets, drugged. He didn’t respond to my touch or words. I went into the hotel and got someone from their security staff. She called 911. Later in the evening, on a walk to a park on the edge of Lake Superior, I passed other youth who also appeared to be on drugs. Having to leave the young man alone while I went to get help made me wish I had had a second person with me. It would also have been comforting to have someone with me to deal with the sorrow of seeing the tragedy of drug use fostered on the Native population.

Does anything scare me or give me trepidations about traveling alone? I had to think about this one. I usually sleep in my Prius, doors locked, but sometimes the windows are open and netted to keep out bugs. Usually, I stay at campgrounds with many other campers, but not always. However, the night I stayed at a city park campground for just ten bucks in Broken Arrow, Nebraska, reminded me of what I may fear the most. I slept restlessly that night, folding and unfolding in my sleeping bag around Chester, whose hot little dog body usually keeps me warm and makes me sleep well. But all night we were woken repeatedly by the rumble, clatter, and whistle of monstrously long coal trains passing along the edge of the park. A sleepless night and the potential for falling asleep on the road the next day; this is what I fear. 

Me at Watkin's Glen—Photo Taken by a Lovely Japanese Family, "Strangers"

The Trip Stats—Chester’s and Mine

I admire how numbers convey time and distance or embody an experience. On the fall trip across the continent and back in 2024, my dog, Chester, took over 1,000,000 steps. He counted none of them. I did. Not that I followed him with a clicker counter, but factoring in that he has four legs to my two, I doubled my 557,586 cellphone-recorded steps to arrive at his number. Although I sometimes walked without him, he made up for the step discrepancy since his stride is shorter. Our step counts converted to around 279 miles, but despite similar mileage, we experienced the trip very differently.  

On September 13, 2025, I walked 13,999 steps. Chester walked an estimated 27,998. The date and step count converge at Acadia National Park and the tourist town of Bar Harbor, Maine. Behind the numbers are these memories: we hiked around Cadillac Mountain’s pinnacle, the easternmost point of sunrise in the United States. 

We passed near one porcupine. I saw it. Chester didn’t. I took photos. Chester didn’t. Chester tabulated dog news on bushes or rocks. I didn’t. Bar Harbor meant shopping for me: a cap with a moose embroidered on it, a puzzle to do at home, and a maple-flavored milkshake for lunch. For Chester, it meant navigating a thicket of legs and being disappointed that so few of them belonged to dogs. He was frightened by a store’s black ramp and embarrassed to be carried over it twice while shopgirls laughed. For dinner, he ate the same dog food as the day before. Late that evening, we hiked toward a coastal trail in the park. Oncoming hikers kept encouraging us. “Not much farther to the water.” On his nimble little legs, Chester especially loved running on the return, bounding over rocks and tree roots, the trail becoming almost too dim to see in the dark. Me nervous. Him not.

Chester smelled his way across the land. I didn’t. 

As we entered towns, I would slow down. Chester would press his nose against the window, his way of asking me to roll it down so he could identify the unique scents of wherever we were, sniffing for traces of dogs and figuring out whether he recognized the place. I fear he was often disappointed.

He is a dog who appreciates the comfort of the familiar. He was truly animated only when we visited places with old friends: Art or Adele, Tom, and their dog Opel. 

At the end of the journey, as the car’s trip odometer rolled past 10,000 miles and we wound our way out of the Palouse hills into the Walla Walla valley on a road I rarely travel, he became so excited. By some inexplicable combination of smells, he recognized home. 

I wish we could have a conversation about what was memorable for him on the trip. His full name is Chester Muggins, PhD. I am often asked what his degree is in. I answer, “Food science, of course.” All dogs major in food science. Maybe his recollections are the trip’s culinary highlights. This reminds me that years ago, when my husband and I thought about going out for pizza, we would laughingly suggest a particular restaurant that served smoked salmon, cream cheese, and dill-and-caper pizza. The only problem was that it was in Nelson, Canada, about a six-and-a-half-hour drive away. Chester and I had our favorite foods on this trip. Maybe if he could talk, this is what we would discuss. If we were to return for a second or third helping of something, these would be the stats:    

Our favorite chips: Mileage from home:1,422 miles; Driving Time: 23 hours, 45 minutes

Ye Olde Chip truck in Kenora, Ontario, Canada. The menu offers four cup sizes: small, medium, large, and X-large. Malt vinegar is available on request. Cash only. Must stand in a long line. 

Chester has sampled these French fries twice now, eating any that have fallen in his path and, once, a stolen chip from a cup I was holding. Such thievery is most unusual for him, but even he knows these chips are different from all other fries. 

My favorite chocolate: Mileage from home: 2,327 miles; Driving Time: 37 hours; Walking Time: 36 days (this seems optimistic, but Google Maps is always accurate).

Large double chocolate flourless cookies from the Homestead Artisan Bakery and Cafe, Barrie, Ontario, Canada. I ate one and returned within minutes to buy another. The clerk chuckled at my return. The second cookie lasted three days. I regretted not buying a bag-full.

Chester’s favorite chocolate: Mileage from home: 2,614 miles; Driving Time: 39 hours, Tolls: $67.20; Trotting Time: 38 days 

One-half of a milk-chocolate Hershey bar with almonds purchased at a food mart in Hershey, Pennsylvania. I confess that I bought this candy bar in remembrance of my father. It was his favorite kind of chocolate. I think he ate lots of them during WWII. I had hoped to visit the Hershey Museum and purchase a candy bar there, but I decided not to after realizing how difficult it was to reach its parking lot and that dogs weren’t allowed. 

Chester never takes advantage of food left in the car. But something about that half of a Hershey candy bar he found in the carry bag on the passenger-side floorboards while I later that day walked the grounds of Fallingwater was irresistible. Maybe he was just trying to honor my dad. Half of the candy bar costs 91 cents. The emergency vet bill to pump his stomach was $125.00. He has very expensive tastes.  

Very few dogs have eaten and smelled their way across 15 states in the United States and 7 provinces in Canada. As a final statistic, maybe Chester is a 1-percenter among dogs, a premier smeller of smells, a heroic walker, a milk-chocolate connoisseur, and a coveter of maple ice cream.    

What Dwellings Linger

 

Big Tancook Island, Nova Scotia, Canada

I arrived home from my fall, cross-continent trip with my mind delightfully out of balance. I’d wake in the morning to a rolling tide of visions. All day, I’d be rocked by their waves, as if I were still on a ferry bound for Tancook Island in the Atlantic Ocean. Over two and a half months, from late summer into fall of 2025, I traveled across the North American continent and back. I camped in my Prius with Chester, my dog, or stayed in various accommodations and with friends. While I wandered, I set myself the task of staying present and remembering what felt significant or pleasing. 

Upon my return, the slosh subsided as I caught up on neglected fall chores and resumed my obligations. I woke less often, already smiling. Worried I would lose memories and insights, I gathered my trip calendars, traced my route on a paper map of the United States, and jotted notes in a small notebook. From these, I distilled four topics: Mover of Rocks, What Dwellings Linger, Trip Stats—Chester's and Mine, and Trepidations.

***

What Dwellings Linger

My Childhood Home

I grew up in a cement-block house in a nondescript middle-class neighborhood. The living room, dining room, and hallway were painted a dark brown or wallpapered with lattice-and-lily patterns. I loved those delicious chocolate walls and elegant lilies. As a child, I admired the slanting corner fireplace, the linen-drawer nook in the hallway, and the back half-bath’s flooring, where, from the toilet, one could entertain oneself by finding fantastical creatures in the linoleum’s tiny blotches. In the book Topophilia, Yi-Fu Tuan proposes that there is “an affective bond between people and places.” My childhood house was shorthand for my most intimate and favored topography. But my roving eye didn’t stop there. I examined my friends’ homes, some with similar construction and others more exclusive, brick-fronted, with their Tiki bars and pool tables in novel daylight basements. I walked to junior high through an Italian-American neighborhood of 1920s and ‘30s brick houses and on into a landscape of older wooden homes. I judged rooflines, facades, and paint choices (ick, to that odd shade of green on a house on Pine Street). Without a vocabulary, I noticed eyebrow dormers and Doric porch columns. I freelanced in architecture and minored in racial and cultural differences in housing stock. It never occurred to me that most children didn’t work in my fields of expertise, or, even now, that most adults don’t walk blocks with the singular intention of noticing houses. 

I play a game like Clue, where players are given hints to figure out who committed the murder, where, and with what weapon. My version uses clues to guess what might have been altered in a house, what makes its design attractive, and how its interior is laid out. I spot when a Victorian has had its downstairs windows replaced with a single plate-glass window and now appears to be screaming beneath its eye-like second-story windows. I appreciate modern houses painted in dark gray, with a pop of orange on the front door for warmth, and I am often accurate about details: whether a home has a central hallway, where the bedrooms are located, and whether the kitchen sink has a view. Like the Google Maps little person you can place on any road to see a street view of the surrounding houses, I figuratively put myself into houses, into rooms. Years of reading architectural magazines and historical plan books inform my guesses and preferences. On the westward portion of this trip, I stopped at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater for a second time. It is my favorite house ever. 

Fallingwater, Pennsylvania

But my affinity for a wide range of architectural details and my interest in how people live led me to find delight in far less extravagant structures, like this former live-above-the-store building in St. Paul, Minnesota, with its jutting window seat. What a lovely place to view the tree-lined neighborhood.  

During my travels across the continent and back, some houses and neighborhoods pleased me—even as I passed them at sixty miles per hour. Others I looped back to examine more closely, and some I stopped to photograph. It is not a coincidence to me that the verb "to linger" could be replaced with "to dwell." I passed millions of houses. I struggled to pick the ones I wanted to remember most.  

Stonington Cottage

Some houses, like the replica above of a stonemason's cottage in Stonington, Maine, or the Second Empire House at Schodack Landing in the Hudson Valley, and the tiny house on wheels in Montpelier, Vermont—all of which I stayed in—were enhanced by their hosts’ welcome. Each filled their spaces with their own beloved sense of topographic connections, sharing their love through their passion for detail and design. 

"Keep Out"

On a dog walk with Chester in Moose Jaw, Canada, I spotted the first house whose style I truly loved. It was a long and low Arts and Crafts bungalow. Unfortunately, the home’s stone-pillared porch was marred by a “Keep Out” sign, giving the house a foreboding, almost paranoid feel. The sign's intent felt offensive, making me wonder whether a welcome sign might have been a better way to protect the home.  

I crossed into the United States at Niagara Falls and followed the Erie Canal east through New York. As I moved eastward, the houses increasingly reflected the historical trends of earlier centuries. I especially liked the company-built houses, often constructed as multi-family dwellings. Their simple design, with porches and/or second-story balconies aligned along the block, was inviting. It was clear that many of the houses were home to new generations, and their occupants were more racially diverse than earlier residents. 

In South Portland and Belfast, Maine, I walked with friends to farmers’ markets, beaches, and bakeries. Houses were set so close to the road that even children could effortlessly call out “Hello” as though we were not strangers. It would be easy to grow fond of these neighborhoods.    

A Cape Cod

It wasn’t until Chester, a town on the Nova Scotian coast, that two houses held my wholehearted affection. The first was a dusky-blue Cape Cod built in the 1830s. The color seemed a blend of maritime blue and fog. In its narrow, cross-gabled entryway, high under the eaves, was a  Gothic-inspired window. It evoked church architecture and lent the house a sacred grace, a small peak of delight. The enclosed entry foyer spoke of practicality in a land where winter lingers long and hard. The house edged the roadway, with its left side perched on a knoll, as if it had backed in, sidled sideways, and sat to rest. An enclosed undercarriage supported its other half. In this lower level, a slanting light caressed a worn wooden desktop. I moved a little closer. I am always wary of being confronted for my trespassing gaze, but would the occupants of this Cape Cod be satisfied with an explanation that I wished to enter their home and write at that desk? Would they invite me in and offer me a cup of tea and a pen? Just dreaming. 

The Woodbox

The second house I loved was called “The Woodbox.” For years, I have tried to pick a name for my cabin. The earliest summer cabins in my community all had names like “Lucy Dell” and “Heap O’ Liven.” I liked the name “The Woodbox” and wryly wondered if I could borrow it. The house itself was lovely. Its stepped-back, stacked configuration, painted a light, airy gray, lifted its smallest room skyward, three stories up, offering a view of the sea and the town through its multi-paned windows. I could live by the sea in that little room, writing with my head in the clouds. Maybe I picked these two houses for their potential as workspaces.

There were other houses I hoped not to forget amid the slush of travel remembrances.

Paul Urann Home

On a busy two-lane highway in Maine, I doubled back and stopped at a Greek Revival house museum, The Paul Urann House, in the midst of an unfinished renovation. Approaching a carpenter working in the garage, I asked if I could wander inside. The home’s wide-cut floorboards, peeling glimpses of early wall coverings, and piles of donated furniture excited me, as did a tiny, bare room with one window on the upper floor. What had that little room been used for? Sewing? Birthing? Nursing? It felt like a room for a woman, a tiny sphere of contentment. I leaned briefly through the doorjamb, mindful not to overstay my self-guided tour. Linger a moment; remember this, I said to myself. 

Back Doorknob of Robert Frost's Stone House

At Robert Frost’s Stone House in Vermont, I felt the poet’s presence in light-filled rooms with their plain New England-style furniture. The detail I obsessed over was the back porch’s Bakelite doorknob, a burnished butterscotch. I assumed Frost’s hand had touched this knob as he returned from a walk on the night he wrote the poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” The knob could have been a poem had Frost fashioned it. Surely, he loved its beauty. I took a quick photo (unfortunately slightly blurry) to ward off the risk of forgetting it.

Daniel Rose's Original Home

In Reading, Pennsylvania, a few blocks from where my fifth-great-grandfather, Daniel Rose (1749-1827), a clockmaker, musician, and state legislator, had his shop and home (now an oyster bar serving the best fish and chips), I came across rows of rowhouses. Here was a neighborhood where I felt comfortable. I liked the idea of having lots of neighbors, lots of eyes on the street to keep everyone safe. I was even more delighted to find one middle-of-the-block rowhouse with a gorgeous mural painted across its front and doorway. According to a sign, the building was occupied by the Puerto Rican Civic Society. There was something joyous about the name and the building’s facade. I later learned that the Society is a fascinating blend of a nightclub and a humanitarian organization. Puerto Rican immigrants have become a significant and growing part of Reading’s population. I think the neighborhood's Latin rhythm would be fun.   

For want of a pail or two of paint, white clapboards across the Midwest in little towns here and there looked like markers of community disaster. I didn’t see any homeless people, but there were enough poorly kept houses that I'd guess everyone had a place to live. The towns were struggling. 

My game entertains me, but it also makes me aware of the iniquities in our world. It makes me more empathetic toward others who live in substandard or poorly maintained homes. Not that a poor or small house will necessarily predict unhappy inhabitants, or a rich or large one either, but there must be some measure of contentment for the inhabitants when their housing includes elements that delight and comfort them.  

 Here is a house that illustrates this:  

A Simple House in Peru, Indiana

It stood in town on a highway through Peru, Indiana. I later found several houses like this one in the area. A builder must have chosen this style as his forte. This one had dark-gray paint peeling from its brick walls. Someone had recently tried to paint it a pleasant cream but had gotten no further than a few swipes on the second story. Last year’s winterizing sheets of plastic hung rumpled against the panes. On one side, the original porch entry had been enclosed with a shed structure. The addition was not the most artfully done, but I am sure it made the house more functional. In the living room, there were two tall, very narrow front windows, each topped with curved headers and transoms. At the peak was another slim window. A child could have drawn the house; it was beautiful in its simplicity and proportions. Two more things made it endearing. Someone had pressed colorful, stained-glass-like paper in the transoms and hung a welcome sign on the door—so much more gracious than a "Keep Out" sign. 

 

Although I didn’t highlight any new homes, when I stopped in Regina, Saskatchewan, for takeout at the Roots Kitchen and Bar in Harbour Landing Village, I found it surrounded by an entirely newly built neighborhood with a wide variety of housing options, all connected to parks and walkways. Above the restaurant was housing for seniors, and on the ground floor was a childcare center. Harbor Landing has 780 acres of a planned community. We need more housing, and this is a wonderful model. I could live anywhere here. Any abode. I could always paint mine chocolate-brown with lily-and-lattice wallpaper.

Thank you for lingering with me.

Mover of Rocks

 

I move rocks. I read a short story once about a geologist who presents a paper to an assemblage of peers. He proposes a novel theory: the only reason humans are on earth is to move rocks. I could be Exhibit A.

By the time I returned home from my 2025 journey, there was a stack of rocks lodged between the cook box and the back passenger seat. Every coat—raincoat, featherdown, midweight, and lightweight—had a stone or more in each pocket. It was as if I had been selected as a cross-continent Uber driver, hired to be a transporter of pebbles and paperweights, each chosen to represent rock formations from across the continent. I can reason that if I transport rocks, I am human.

And as such, I am wont to be romantic, thoughtful, curious, and sometimes now, as I am older, pathetically forgetful. It is winter now, and I wear my heaviest coat. I’ll go to retrieve gloves, a doggy bag, a hat, or a cellphone, or nestle my hand in the warmth of the coat pocket. I’ll bump that night-black, Nova Scotian, sea-worn chunk of basalt. A rock in a pocket is a mnemonic device. For a moment, I am no longer wherever I am. 

Instead, I will be squatting on a hard-scrabble beach with an incoming tide, pebbles swishing subtly on its leading edge. The smell of the ocean is fresh and pleasing. It is the evening of my seventy-sixth birthday. I am alone except for Chester, who eyes me as he gingerly wanders among the black stones, avoiding the water that confuses him and causes him anxiety. He is no water dog. I search for the rocks that moments before I set aside as mine. But I can’t find them among the many look-alikes. I begin again. Chester stops to smell a rock I pick up. Maybe it smells of a fish carcass or a Nova Scotia dog. He wanders off. I finally chose one small rock and a larger one. Calling Chester, I take a photo of us to commemorate the occasion. Leaving, we clamber back up the path to the road, where I then notice a “No Dogs on the Beach” sign. I smile; here I am at seventy-six, breaking the law again.

I move rocks for an odd lot of reasons. To push the hill away from my cabin’s wall. To make the yard’s wooden archway appear to have a more substantial footing. To remember my husband, Gary, by keeping a bowl of the million- and billion-year-old rocks he collected on a field trip shortly before he passed. To make a pleasing mantel display. To remind me to pray.  

Honestly, I wasn’t thinking of moving rocks on the first day I left home. When I was waylaid at the news that Mila, a four-year-old, a child whom I had babysat when she was one, had just been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and was at a Spokane hospital, I missed my border crossing, stopping to see the family. Fortuitously, a hill near the roadside turnout where I then camped that first night yielded a jumble of pastel-colored rocks. I pocketed a mica-flecked, girly-pink granite specimen, a prayer stone fit for a child. Throughout the journey, it nudged me into remembering to say a  Bahá'í healing prayer for Mila.

Genetically, maybe I am predisposed to move rocks. Afterall, my cousin Captain Cornelius Dunham hauled ballast hither and yon across the seas in his tall ships. In Maine, I visited his gravestone, a substantial boulder marked with a metal plaque stating “1748-1835 Capt. Cornelius Dunham who was Father of Isaac Dunham, The First Keeper of Pemaquid Light.” The stone was located in a small cemetery on a hill overlooking the ocean near that very lighthouse. A chance encounter with a neighbor led me to another grave nearby, that of a nameless shepherd. His mound was covered with a layer of smooth stones. No marker. The woman noted that someone had bothered to collect the rounded stones from the base of the cliff rather than using the rough rocks the shepherd had used for the foundation of his long-abandoned hut close by. Grief moves rocks. 

Unless it can’t. 

Last summer, I went looking for the grave of my Swedish-born great-grandfather, Charles Bord Peterson (1855-1883). According to the Find a Grave website, he appears to have no gravestone or burial site listed. I didn’t know if he might be buried in the oldest private cemetery in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, or in a pauper’s grave in the same city. Researching in an old, beautifully bound record book at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, I found his name in looping script, the first on a page recording plots purchased by an Andrew Johnson, whose name I recognized as my great-grandmother’s brother. 

A groundskeeper took me to the burial location, where there was not one sunken and unmarked grave, but a heartbreaking stretch of many. My Swedish immigrant ancestors were mostly laborers (shovelers of dirt and rock), bricklayers, and miners, the cornerstone of a welcomed nineteenth-century workforce and rock-movers all. On their death, they were too poor to mark their passing in this new world. During this trip, I commissioned the moving and engraving of two stones—one for Charles and another for Andrew’s family, including his first wife, their infant son, a child, his second wife, a niece, and himself.  

It is no accident that I ordered gravestones. I love a good cemetery, stone, and inscription. Rocks tolerate us chipping away to make our final mark. My favorite inscription was in Hope Cemetery in Barre, Vermont. The memorial was a large dog lying on a granite arch, inscribed: “My dog taught me a valuable lesson—shed a lot.” In some parts of the world, the only rocks around are memorial markers. In Roseville, Illinois, an old cemetery butted up against a row of grain silos. The silos appear to squeeze in close, dominating the scene and erasing the usual sense of the stones' glory. They seem to say, “Your greater mark was to farm this land. We stand to testify to this fact.” 

Roseville, Illinois

The rocks I gathered and stashed behind my car seat came from Washington, Maine, Vermont, Nova Scotia, and, lastly, a heavy one from Wyoming. Like a logbook, their origins marked where I dallied and where I hurried; they explained why I crossed the Canadian prairies in a two-day rush and, on the return journey, my state-a-day passage through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and into Iowa. I loved those lands for their sun-clock vistas, the multitude of backroad travel options (chosen to ease Chester’s fear of eighteen-wheelers), and the charm of farmhouses set neighborly distances apart. What kept me moving was the dust plumes trailing behind the tractors—nothing to collect but vials of dirt. 

At their cabin in Maine, Andi and Parke (long-ago founding parents of my childcare center in Walla Walla) and John (a Bozeman transplant to Vermont) were friends who became hauling advisors. My luck in having them as friends meant I hiked to extraordinarily lovely collection sites—Pigeon Hill (a striped wishing rock and a slice of mica), Winter Harbor (more wishing rocks), Putney Ridge and the Appalachian segment of the Vermont Long Trail (granite and marble), and John’s driveway (Vermont white granite). 

Pidgeon Hill, Maine

John, in particular, understood my task. I don’t know what to call someone who piles rocks on side tables, on the floor where they take off their shoes, or on their deck. The two of us are a small contingent of collectors, distinct from those who acquire a pet rock or a single painted rock. We are lovers of a bounty of rocks for their beauty, their touch, and their capacity to hold thoughts or memories.  

John's Collection from Kansas, Montana, and Tanzania

***

Traveling is an adventure dense with potential. Moving rocks and then reflecting on why I do it is only one aspect that gave this journey depth. A trip can be more than a shorthand list of places one has visited.

Now, I ask you, “What rock might you move next?” You are human, after all, yes? 

Affected by Ice

 

This is my first selfie for the year of 2026. I think it indicates that this will either be The Year of the Brain Freeze or The Year of the Mouth! I am hoping for the latter. 

The past few months I have not been writing on the blog, silenced by the task of mulling over my fall’s continent-wide travels. I am often asked if I worry about traveling and camping alone. In the coming weeks, I am hoping to post a more thoughtful answer than the one I often give to that question. I also want to describe how wandering the world with an open heart and wide intentions lifts mere sightseeing to another dimension.

In the meantime—within a hundred yards of my doorstep, I am grateful to find the natural world carrying on with its diverse cycles of water-nourishing missions. One waterfall and one stream’s work. Enjoy!

"We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life moulds the environment and is itself also deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions."

                —Written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, To an individual (Bahá'í) believer, 17 February 1933

Finding the Snag that Will Capture a Viewer's Eye

 

Font names—cloister black, baby italic, and undertaker—names found on an old printer’s cabinet in the Deer Isle-Stonington Museum on Deer Isle, Maine, had indicated to the typesetters how a particular kind of story or advertisement could be set with a font to create the right atmosphere. (“Undertaker.” A font stalking a grim finality.) By the time the typesetters laid rows of words with inky hands, the story had been gathered and written; the ad worded and illustrated. Their job was a simple one, almost like the placing of a period at the end of a sentence. And yet, it was the snag that could catch a reader’s eyes. 

When I take photos, I work the opposite way. I look for the snag in images, the detail/s that will make a viewer think they might know the storyline, even when there is no one in the image. I look for what is incongruit, silly, evocative of a feeling, a character, a story.

Dock End, Stonington, Maine

Did you imagine yourself gripping those ladder ends and with a mite of trepidation while descending unsteadily to a boat bobbing far below or did you find yourself waiting, thinking someone or something was going to throw a leg over the last rung and come toward you? Were you confused a moment by the water being the sky? I took the photograph of this dock and bay a dozen different ways, but the main snag ended out being the viewpoint, the intimacy of being at arm’s length to the ladder. The wooden beam across the edge of the dock is just visible, a tripping hazard. The ladder handles are gray cold metal, unpleasant to the touch. The water seemingly sky-wide boundless, could swallow you. All snags.  

Here is another photo. End time at the dog park?  Dog gone. Leash remains. Last supper, bowls empty. The high view of this scenario from the Grand Bridge in St. Paul, Minnesota, places the viewer at an omnipresent vantage point. The snag is the lofty viewpoint.

I loved that someone had a great sense of humor, putting a “Pull first with Dry Hands” sign on a paper towel dispenser. But this is serious. In order to dry your hands with one of those paper towels, you HAVE TO DRY YOUR HANDS or the paper tears as you try to pull it out. So, sheepishly you dry your hands as told—on your pants, on your shirt, on your jacket—before pulling with dry hands. The snag in this photo for you, the viewer, is that you don’t see anyone, so you go through your reactions to the sign alone like in a typical gas station bathroom. The clerk who wrote the sign isn’t there, you don’t see me. You get to experience this thought process all on your own. The mirror adds to the image with its no-no signs; in this restroom you are expected to follow the rules. I could have taken a photo of just the paper towel dispenser, but the mirror and the sink add to the feeling of reality. Do “Pull first with Dry Hands.”

Church in a Small Town in Nebraska

Wandering back roads, I saw many abandoned churches or ones reinvented as historical societies, antique stores, or an occasional house. This one stumped me at first. No church spire. A side door that upstages the boarded-over original main entrance with its funny bleacher-like steps. Had it been a school or the home of a fraternal organization? As I took the photo, I tried to capture the bulkiness of the building, its former grandiose facade. When I edited the photo, I pulled the building closer so the reader could more clearly see the two bikes leaning against the wall, the blank T.V. and the mattress on the lawn. The last iteration of this church was as a home of an evicted tenant. Many transformed churches have fallen from their mission of tending to the poor; this one has fallen a couple of bleacher steps further.