I find I have a real synergy with the road. Whether as driver or passenger, I find ideas flow as I cruise down a county road or highway. Often driving goes hand in hand with music. In fact, I have soundtracks for many of the places I have been. The other day, I heard Tiny Dancer by Elton John pipe up on the radio. It instantly took be back to a 2003 month-long road trip my husband and I had taken. We had packed up our Suburban with rock climbing and camping gear. We took an inflatable mattress so we could sleep out of the back of the vehicle. We showered in isolated places out of the view of others. At the time, we lived in the Phoenix Metro area. We drove to Colorado, South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, and California—mostly to rock climb in places like City of Rocks, Lover’s Leap, SylvanLake, and Yosemite (where we didn’t rock climb, but instead hiked the 14-mile trail to and from Half Dome). Before getting into the meat of our trip—and in the days where CDs were more prevalent than iPods—we stopped and purchased Elton John’s Greatest Hits, listening to it for a good chunk of the trip. For me, it has become the soundtrack for that journey. I find myself creating soundtracks for my manuscripts and characters, as well. Music is so inextricably linked to writing, characters, and pop culture in so many ways. In fact, Tiny Dancer—in addition to reminding me of our 2003 road trip—always reminds me of this:
Do you have soundtracks for your life, your travels, or your manuscripts?
In 2006 we had a dream. It was simple enough: Sell our house and fund a yearlong trip around the country to visit the national parks. Reality supplanted the dream in April of 2006, as a turn of the ignition key ended an over decade-long stay in Phoenix and opened up the unknown. Traveling with our two-year-old son, Justin, we looked ahead to our clockwise journey around the U.S. as our old lives faded in the mirror.
But five days into the trip, something happened. Something I was certain would not happen: I found out I was pregnant. With no jobs, no home, and no maternity coverage, I convinced my husband we should continue our road trip anyway. During our time on the road, we survived battles with the elements, with animals, and with each other. We agonized over prenatal care and how to find it. We sustained rejection. We hiked. We climbed. We potty-trained Justin. And we endured marital disunity. Yet none of us killed the others. We still lived the dream.
In December of that year, we stopped in Florida to have the baby. Nothing had prepared us for the nightmare to follow. In early labor and already in trouble, the doctors sliced me open in an emergency C-section that pitted doctor against baby in a tug-of-war for freedom. Zane, despite being born full-term and exactly on his due date, weighed only 3 pounds, 14 ounces. He wasn’t doing well. The nurse held him up briefly for us to see, then hurried away with a team of specialists to intensive care.
Fighting for his life and with an array of physical defects, his first few days were frightening. On the fifth day of his new life, we found out the devastating news that would alter our lives forever. Zane was born with Trisomy 18, the chromosomal condition that kills most babies in the first week. The doctor told us he would die. We watched as Zane tenuously clung to life, plugged in to oxygen and monitors. We signed a Do Not Resuscitate order, visited the hospital chaplain, and held Zane as much as we could. We waited for him to die.
The odds were against Zane living for more than a week, but since he didn’t know any better, he just kept on living. After 17 days in intensive care, he no longer needed to be there. He was breathing on his own, he was no longer hooked to alarms and monitors; and even though he had to eat through a feeding tube, he was slowly gaining weight, so we took him back on the road with us, planning to end the trip if he didn’t do well or failed to survive.
This is the story of my travel memoir, Our Life on the Road, which is still looking for the right publishing home. We also have a website at www.ourlifeontheroad.com.
In 2006, we sold our house, quit our jobs, bought an RV, and went on the road for 14 months to visit all the national parks in the lower 48. Here they are by listing (with some pictures from our trip mixed in for some fun). My travel memoir, Our Life on the Road, is about this trip. I only missed out on one of the parks--Dry Tortugas--because I was eight months pregnant, and the captain did not think it was a good idea for me to take the choppy ride out to the park.
A—Acadia (Maine); Arches (Utah)
B—Badlands (South Dakota); Big Bend (Texas); Biscayne Bay (Florida); Black Canyon of the Gunnison (Colorado); Bryce Canyon (Utah)
C—Canyonlands (Utah); Capitol Reef (Utah); Carlsbad Caverns (New Mexico); Channel Islands (California); Congaree (South Carolina); Crater Lake (Oregon); Cuyahogo (Ohio)
D—Death Valley (California); Dry Tortugas (Florida)
E—Everglades (Florida)
F—(no Fs)
G—Glacier (Montana); Grand Canyon (Arizona); Grand Teton (Wyoming); Great Basin (Nevada); Great Sand Dunes (Colorado); Great Smoky Mountains (North Carolina/Tennessee); Guadalupe Mountains (Texas)
H—Hot Springs (Arkansas)
I—Isle Royale (Michigan)
J—Joshua Tree (California)
K—Kings Canyon (California)
L—Lassen Volcanic (California)
M—Mammoth Cave (Kentucky); Mesa Verde (Colorado); Mount Rainier (Washington);
