Down on the Bayou

March 23, 2016 — Pat Bertram

I hadn’t camped for a couple of weeks — a combination of visits with friends and bad weather — so I looked forward to my first foray back to tent living. The campground was full or rather, almost full. I lucked out and got the last space at Davis Campground on the Gulf Islands National Seashore in Mississippi. I had no idea tourism had picked up, but apparently this week hordes of people are on the move — spring break, Easter break, the last foray of the snowbirds, and the spectacular weather.

Since I could only get a space for the one night, I was glad of the new tent I had purchased. The big tent is too much trouble to set up and tear down for one night, and I feel vulnerable in my backpacking tent among the RV behemoths, so I needed another tent for one night stands. The new tent worked perfectly, though since the campground was surrounded by wetlands, and the land itself was saturated, I did experience a lot of condensation. And I was cold. (The temperature got down to 40 degrees, maybe even lower.)

The trails in the park were short, mere walks instead of hikes, but they suited me since I hadn’t done much walking recently. I could feel myself smiling as I wandered — I seem to be much happier with my feet planted solidly on the ground. And the stunning views, of course, contributed to that feeling of well being. Best of all, I saw an alligator on the shore of the bayou! I had seen an alligator just a couple of days previously, but the poor thing had been designated a town mascot and was being held captive in a large cage. The free alligator didn’t act any different than the penned one. Both just lay there looking prehistoric, barely even twitching as people stared at them.

And I realized something. Even though so many places look alike, it is the moment that makes the difference. Watching a particular alligator in a particular marsh separates that marsh from all the rest. Or seeing a particular leaf on a tree separates it from all the rest.

Adding to my own peculiar moment, when I got back to my campsite after dark, the men in the sites on either side of me — strangers to each other — came to look at my car. They each had a flashlight and scrutinized every inch of the body and engine. Like boys in a toy store.

And maybe that’s all any of us are — children in a toy store, grabbing whatever experiences we can.

***

(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”

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Daunted

March 21, 2016 — Pat Bertram

I’m about to head out on the next leg of my journey, and I’m feeling a bit daunted. Up to now, I have had at least a smattering of knowledge about the states I have visited, and I have known people along the way, which has made a huge difference. During the next few weeks, I will be in states that I know only by legend. I will have lunch with two or three people in Florida, and maybe stay a couple of nights with a friend there, but otherwise the coming states loom friendless. Heavily trafficked. Populated by billions of insects. And expensive.

Florida particularly seems daunting because if I merely cut across the state, which is a great distance by itself, I would miss much. And yet, the thought of traveling the length of the state twice (down and back) is overwhelming. Do I want to see the keys? Do I want to see the Everglades? Do I want to attempt a visit to Dry Tortuga National Park, a tiny island closer to Cuba than the United States?

If I were honest, I’d have to say, “not particularly.” There really is no place I’d like to visit more than any other. The truth is, everything is beginning to run together with very few regional differences. Of course the rainy states are greener than the dry states, but those seem more changes in spectrum than anything — the same but different. And people are the same everywhere — mostly kind with an occasional jerk for leavening. There are more southern accents in the south, but there are southern accents everywhere in this mobile world of ours. And many businesses are identical. (I went to a movie theater in Tucson that was identical to the one I had been in a few days and a few hundred miles before. Even the posters on the wall were the same. I had to stop to catch my bearings because for a second, I didn’t know where I was.)

Despite my momentary lack of enthusiasm for this quest (though quest for what, I still don’t know), I am drawn ever onward. There are things to see, people to meet, national parks to visit. And blogs to write.

Daunted or not, I’ll see you on down the road.

***

(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)

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My Louisiana friend and I stopped to play on this adult jungle gym. So much fun! The azaleas are from her back yard.

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Spinning My Wheels

March 19, 2016 — Pat Bertram

This is an odd sort of journey I am on. In some ways it’s better than I imagined because of the people I have met and and those I have re-met, but the original focus of the journey has been lost somewhere in the thousands of miles I have traveled.

I expected this trip to be sort of a sampler hike across the United States — driving a bit, camping, hiking, then taking off down the road for a couple of hours until I found another great place to camp and hike. I envisioned a spiritual journey, a deeper connection with the world and myself, but what I am getting is perhaps more precious — a deeper connection with people. It turns out that instead of occasionally visiting folks between bouts of camping, I have occasional bouts of camping between visiting folks. Not a bad trade-off.

Still, there are many times when I wonder if I am just spinning my wheels, traveling to no purpose. Yesterday was such a day. Although east Texas is vastly different from west Texas with shades of green rather than tones of taupe, the scene blurred after several hours, especially when, except for a few urban breaks, the view remained the same through northern Louisiana and Mississippi. And most especially when it rained, turning everything a misty gray.

I never expected to have days of driving such vast distances, never expected to drive in the rain, but what else was there to do? I couldn’t camp where I had planned in the piney woods of Texas, couldn’t even drive the roads I wanted because of flooding, so I took the high road. (There was still flooding, but the water had receded from the roadbed.) Every time I stopped to get a motel to wait out the rain, the rain stopped. So I continued, and so did the rain. Lots of rain.

I’d forgotten that not all places experience the long twilights of the west, so it came as a surprise that as soon as the sun set, it grew dark. And the rain got worse. And lightning and thunder came. And I got lost. I had gotten off the highway because a motel was supposed to be at that exit, but the motel turned out to be a mile down a narrow road, so I got back on the highway. Or so I thought. I ended up . . . I don’t know where.

Dark. Rain. Traffic. Yikes. Luckily, I found a place to turn around and somehow ended back on the interstate.

I did finally find a place for the night — an isolated motel with no gas station, store, or restaurant nearby. Only cows. The rain continued most of the night, and is still misting.

During that interminable drive, I let thoughts drift into and out of my mind, though as the miles and hours passed, the wheel-spinning thoughts came more frequently. And stayed. I wished I could go back to my father’s house. Wished even more I could go home to Jeff. Wished I knew what I was doing.

But my car wheels kept going around and around, taking me . . . somewhere.

Despite the rain and what could have been self-defeating thoughts, I did end up accomplishing something — I am now a scant 100 miles away from meeting a dear friend.

And so the wheel turns . . .

***

(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)

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Living Artistry

March 18, 2016 — Pat Bertram

Who would have thought there was so much to do in and around Weatherford, Texas? Butterfly gardens. Exotic animal sanctuaries. House tours. And gardens.

The last field trip my friend took me on was to the Chandor Gardens, a series of formal gardens created by Douglas Chandor, a renowned English portrait painter. “Living artwork” turned out to be his true calling. From 1936 until his death in 1953, he worked on the gardens, each a secluded gem of statues, waterfalls, fountains, trees, shrubs, rocks, and flowers, with surprises around every corner. (My favorite of the following photos is the tree with a tiny door at the base.)

After his wife’s death in 1970, the gardens grew wild for twenty years, but finally someone bought the place and brought the gardens back to life.

The gardens were a beautiful end to my stay in Texas. In a few hours I will be in Louisiana, hoping the rains don’t wash me away.

***

(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)

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Where the Deer and the Antelope (and Giraffes!) Roam

March 17, 2016 — Pat Bertram

I once visited an exotic animal santuary that seemed less of a sanctuary and more of a prison. All the big cats were in cages, and when I expressed my disappointment that they weren’t running free, the people looked at me as if I were a child and said, “but that wouldn’t be safe, would it?”

So it was with trepidation that I accepted an invitation to visit Fossil Rim, an exotic animal sanctuary here in Texas, but my hostess assured me the animals ran free, that we would be encaged in her vehicle. It sounded fair to me, and so it turned out to be. The animals (some nearing extinction in the outside world) are allowed to run free in huge pastures where they can live a near-normal life. The smallest enclosures were for the cheetahs, who were part of a breeding program to bring the species back from the brink of extinction.

More than thirty species, over 1,000 animals, live on the property. Most will live out their lives in the sanctuary (or so I presume), because they are accustomed to being fed by the workers and by the visitors. (Each vehicle is provided with a small bag of food pellets to feed the animals.) Since it was a hugely visited day (smack dab in the middle of spring break for children), many of the animals were sated to boredom, but others came up to the car looking for a handout.

We saw several species of deer and antelope, giraffes, rhinos, cheetahs, wildebeast and all sorts of more common creatures such as bison and ostriches.

All these photos were taken by me or my friend. Such an unexpected experience!

***

(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)

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Butterflies in the Garden

March 15, 2016 — Pat Bertram

There are no butterflies in my garden because I don’t have a garden, don’t even have a place to put a garden, and even if I did have a garden, I doubt I would see many butterflies because they are disappearing from our every day lives.

Luckily, some folks are trying to repopulate (repupanate?) the butterfly world. The Fort Worth Botanical Gardens presented a program called “Butterflies in the Garden; The Mayan Experience,” an exhibit of exotic butterflies in their conservatory. Live butterflies.(I despise collections of pinned butterflies. Such an ignoble end to any creature.)

We picked the wrong day to go — student day during spring break.— Yikes. Talk about packed! But still, it was a fantastic experience seeing so many butterflies living — relatively — free.

The prize of the exhibit was the Blue Morpho butterfly, seen on my hat with wings closed and on a leaf with wings open.

I hadn’t planned to play tourist this trip (though by definition, I am a tourist), but my gracious hostess is not only wining and dining me, but making sure my days are filled with delights. And such a delight was the day at the botanical gardens, playing with butterflies in the conservatory.

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(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)

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The Historic Homes of Weatherford, Texas

March 12, 2016 — Pat Bertram

When the rain let up enough for us to have a small adventure, my Texas friend and I decided to find out why there were so many historic and architecturally significant houses in Weatherford, Texas, so we visited the chamber of commerce, which is housed in a historic building of its own — the erstwhile train station.

The woman we talked to was pleasant enough though a bit condescending. “All towns have such houses,” she informed me when I asked why Weatherford had so many historic houses. “We just didn’t tear ours down.”

I have lived in several old towns and visited others. Yes, some small places such as Colorado mining towns had a plethora of historic homes, but other towns seemed to have skipped that phase. Perhaps the folk in those towns were still homesteading during the late nineteenth century or the early part of the twentieth when so many of those large houses were built. Or perhaps the town or county was simply too poor to make merchants and local bankers rich.

So no, not all towns had such houses. I didn’t want to argue with the woman, and anyway, “not tearing the houses down” didn’t explain why so many had been built in the first place. In cattle and horse country, rich ranchers build their homes on their property, not in town.

Finally, the woman gave us a pamphlet for an historic driving tour that described some of the houses and their early residents. And the mystery was solved. Apparently Parker county was so wealthy (cattle, horses, agriculture, oil, manufacturing) that bankers, merchants, lawyers, politicians, even an artist or two grew prosperous. And they built lovely houses for themselves, often tearing down the truly historic homes of homesteaders in the process.

And so it goes.

***

(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)

***
The cream-colored Italianate house with the red door and gray roof is where Mary Martin and later her son Larry Hagman grew up. The other houses belonged to grocers, druggists, bankers, and lawyers.

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Weathering the Weather in Weatherford

March 10, 2016 — Pat Bertram

Before I left Austin, I had lunch with a fellow author who agreed to be photographed next to my car. (I am sure you are getting tired of seeing the poor old vehicle, but it’s become a symbol of this trip.) Despite his glowing accounts of all the beautiful places to see in Texas, I ignored his advice and took a side road through the town of Bertram instead . . . just because. Then I continued to Stephenville, where I got a motel room that looked like a leftover from the nineteen fifties. (I seem to have more of an affinity for the old single story motels than I do the modern ones.) I’d planned to check out the dinosaur footprints in Dinosaur Valley State Park, but rain and heavy fog kept me on the main road.

I arrived at Weatherford, Texas in the early afternoon. I met my friend, a delightful woman and a gracious (and generous) hostess. Her place is in the city, but seems more like a country retreat. Deer frequent her wooded areas, and cardinals stop to snack at her feeders. (I’d never seen a cardinal before. Such a lovely bird!) We talked for a while to get acquainted (we’d met online because of my grief book and blogs), and then took a drive around town.

For a town this size, there seems to be an inordinate number of historic homes, though my research has yet to tell me why so many wealthy folk congregated here. Similar houses in Denver had often been built by newly rich miners and robber barons, but why in Weatherford? Another oddity is that there is an echo in the back of my head, as if I once knew something about the town, but I can’t think of any book I could have read that took place here.

I will be here a few more days, visiting my friend and waiting out the rainstorms, so maybe I will solve this little mystery. If not, the town will probably slip into the recesses of memory where all the other things I have seen but not recorded reside. (Much of a journey like this is ephemeral. Scenes pass out of sight quickly, even when one drives at a relatively sedate 55 mph, so they don’t have a chance to filter down to long-term memory.)

I hope you are managing to weather your weather as comfortably as I am weathering the weather in Weatherford.

***

(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)

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Painted Fields of Texas

March 7, 2016 — Pat Bertram

I am in Austin, Texas, visiting a dear friend I hadn’t yet met. We’ve been online friends for almost six years, but this is the first time we met in person. As with all my online-now-offline friends, there wasn’t even a blip of hesitation when we met — we just seamlessly continued our friendship, though with an added filip of joy.

I will be meeting someone else I know for lunch, a fellow author from Indigo Sea Press, Norm Brown, whose book Carpet Ride was inspired by a road trip he once took. I sure hope I don’t find any dead bodies during this great adventure of mine!

Then I will head north to meet another online-soon-to-be-offline friend. I’m looking forward to getting back on the road, though I will be taking it easy. Rain storms are expected, but I am not planning on driving in the rain. (Though things have a way of working out differently than I had planned.) It seems as if Texas has been working hard to paint its fields for me, as if to make up for the drabness of my first Texas days, and I will be interested to see what it rolls out before me today.

I did get to see a bit of Austin, but I find that cities, especially young, hip cities, do not speak to me. I thought I wanted to visit San Antonio’s Riverwalk, but now that I am so close, it holds no appeal. I’m more interested in wild landscapes and intamed waterways. Most waterways, anyway. I do have to admit to a bit of trepidation about woman-eating mosquitoes as I near the swampy portion of my trip, but I am holding fast to my belief in the magic of this journey, which gives me some comfort. That belief sure kept me calm during a hugely windy night on Padre Island, when my tent kept being blown down on top of me! Luckily, each time the tent righted itself. The only damage was some rust on a couple of poles. (Rust? In only four days? Yikes.)

Before I leave Austin, I want to send a virtual wave to dance friend Jan Blondet’s relatives. ~~~ (Can’t find a symbol for waving, so that will have to do.)

Also a virtual wave and a “come on, let’s go” gesture to all of you who are following my adventure.

Let’s find out what’s in store for us!

***

(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)

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Ready to Move on Down the Road

March 5, 2016 — Pat Bertram

After four days of hiking on the hard sandy beaches of the Padre Islands, listening to the waves come crashing in, watching long streams of brown pelicans fly maneuvers over the gulf, feeling the weather change from misty and windy to clear, sunny, and windy, I am ready to move on down the road.

Ready for whatever comes next.

Today marks four weeks on the road (though I haven’t actually spent much time on the road. Ten days were spent visiting friends, and several days were strictly camping with no traveling at all).

I have enjoyed all phases of my journey so far, though some of Texas’s back roads got a bit tedious. Mostly I just coasted along at fifty-five miles an hour and let the road warriors fight for supremacy among themselves.

Surprisingly, I haven’t been as alone as I expected. At most campgrounds I ended up talking to people, some for quite a while, even exchanged blog information or telephone numbers with a couple of people. Since so many of us at this particular campground are leaving today, we had a farewell bonfire on the beach last night. I felt sad to leave my newest friend, though we are so simpatico, I am sure she and I will meet up again someday. But the journey beckons, and I have a new new/old friend to meet in Austin. (The visit in Austin is with a sister in grief who has been my support during the past six years. This will be the first time we meet in person, a meeting that is long overdue. I’ll also be meeting another Indigo Press author — Norm Brown, who wrote Carpet Ride.)

It is funny that people are both the best and the worst of this journey. There are great folks who are eager to learn about others and share the journey. And there are those who have no care for anyone but themselves. They run generators and use bright lights all night despite strict rules against such usage, and they think leash laws don’t apply to their nasty little beasts. Luckily, these folk are in the minority, and I haven’t let them ruin the wonder of my adventure.

And what an adventure I am having!

Even better, there is more to come. I’ll check in when I can. And when I can’t get in touch? Know that adventure is coming my way.

***

(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)

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