Taking the scenic route

Hi folks,

As we reach the end of 2022 and start to pick at the clear protective sticker covering 2023 (or that’s what I’m doing, I can never resist peeling that thing off), I just want to thank you for being part of the WanderFinder community. Whether you’ve been here all year or just joined yesterday, it’s a honor to have you by my metaphorical side as I found some bees in a cemetary, met a sherbert-colored moth, watched a young Portugese-American waterman spend time with dolphins for the first time, hiked with furries, mourned my kitty cat, Malka, and basically tried to be present for a whole mess of adventures.

If you know someone who would like to join me in the future, please share this post.

If you are not a subscriber but would like to become one — welcome!

And without further ado, here’s what a wrote yesterday on the plane out to California and then couldn’t post because the plane’s Wifi went down.

Happy New Year’s, y’all.

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Now I’m on the flight to Los Angeles and as soon as I get there, I’m going straight to pick up tamales.

I don’t know how I got obsessed with the idea of bringing tamales from Los Angeles out to my friends in Joshua Tree. Once I had the obsession and began to honor it — as most obsessions, I believe, should be honored — delving deep into my research, I found that the places that sell the best tamales tend to close early. These are mom-and-pop stands, tiny restaurants, food trucks. The idea that I could take some leisurely flight to Los Angeles and stroll into a tamales place at 5 or 6 pm for a tray of the city’s finest was as preposterous as believing that I could procure Paris’ best baguette at midnight.

Like all obsessions, this one would require a small sacrifice from me.

I changed my flight (fortunately relatively easy to do, as I was using points), and reached out to a tamales truck that closed at 1 pm.

I’d be arriving at 11:15 am, I said, and I’ll come right to you after I pick up my rental car, but I’m not sure exactly when I’ll get there. Is that OK?

That’s fine, they texted back. We live two doors down from the truck. If you’re a little late, just text us and we’ll send you our address.

There’s something about this interaction that tickles me. I keep thinking about it.

Arguably, the story doesn’t even fit here. This is a food story, not a wildlife or a nature story.

But there’s something about it, about how all the best stories, all the best obsessions turn out to be people stories. About how I know I’ve found the right food truck when my obsession matches their obsession. When their generosity opens me up to new generosities and curiosities of my own. All of this, I have found by experiencing nature in the company of other people.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend and I went walking around a lake. 

It wasn’t a very promising looking lake, though it had a fancy-sounding name. Lake Artesemia. It sounds intentional but Artesemia turned out to be the last name of the woman who donated the land.

I met Jennifer there for a walk — she sees the lake regularly on her commute on the DC metro, and when you’re at the lake, you’re accompanied by the steady beat of trains running to and from the city. The birds have grown used to the noise and are much more likely to startle due to a conversation between walkers than the metro’s regular heartbeat.

Along with the noise from the metro, there was also some noise from the light industrial area at the very gate of the park. Indeed, one of the signs in the park proudly announced that a great advantage of the park was its ability to absorb runoff pollution — a little oil and so on — so that all of that muck didn’t get into the groundwater.

The park is known as a hotspot for birds and the keen birders who love them.

Jennifer & I stopped a moment to examine the trucks and other work vehicles. Jennifer said that when he was younger, her father would often end up driving the family through such areas, and they always called it “taking the scenic route.”

Now Jennifer’s parents were aging, as all parents do. We talked about it while watching some black-and-white diving ducks plunge through silvery mirrors of themselves. They stayed under a surprisingly long time, then bobbing up like corks. It was impossible to tell where they might emerge.

Around the same time that I took this walk, I also chatted with a WanderFinder subscriber, entomologist, and fellow writer who is starting his own Substack. He pointed out that I often have company on my adventures. I guess I’ve been thinking about that — he’s right, of course. I like seeing nature through other people’s eyes. I like the interactions — even and perhaps especially the messy interactions — people have with nature. I love taking the scenic route.

Another writer who I’m really loving right now and who absolutely is taking the scenic route is Christopher Brown and his Field Notes. I love that he writes about robots and homeless encampments, about the forgotten marginal spaces in and around our settled spaces.

Up the creek (with robots, eagles & rogue males)

Tomorrow morning, I and my friends out here in California are taking a walk in Joshua Tree National Park with a botanist graduate student. She’s going to make us tea from the plants as we walk. She keeps writing to remind us to each to bring a mug.

So far, the pictures I have seen of Joshua Tree National Park show a bunch of cactus. There’s a lot of spikes. It’s very brown/yellow, sometimes that washed out green of a milky cactus, and it’s rocky. It’s beautiful but I have no idea where this tea is coming from.

There’s nothing for it: I show up with my obsession, she shows up with hers. Who knows what will bob up like a cork? I flower, she flowers. I am the tea of course. All of us — you readers, friends, nature lovers, scenic route lovers — we are all the tea.

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Tom Pluck, who met me at Conowingo Dam for the Bald Eagle and Crab Fry Extravaganza about a month ago, has posted his own version of the event — and then went down to Louisiana and saw *more bald eagles* on a swamp tour. I think once the eagles recognize you from Conowingo, they just start following you around, hoping for crab fries.

Let the Eagles Soar

Holiday Road