A weekend at Anu and Cormac’s River House is worthy of a recap all its own, and here is the collection of posts that brought me back to Virginia in a most beautiful and emotionally profound manner. It’s reassuring to realize that at age 50, our adventures are only beginning. With an eye toward my own retirement in the dim but discernible distance, travel becomes a long-loved goal again – and while I’m in no way saying I have another tour in me, I’m in no way saying I absolutely do not.
Here’s how our wonderful weekend in Virginia unfolded:
These three have been friends for over thirty years, and they’ve been there for me, and each other, at every step of life along that journey. Spending any amount of time together is good for the soul, and in our 50th year on earth, I think we appreciate this a little more. As it usually does, Sunday morning came much too soon, the way time with your favorite people always passes too quickly.
We bid our farewells with long hugs and short goodbyes, as nothing else needed to be said. As we trundled out of the long gravel driveway that led to and from Anu and Cormac’s River House, Suzie and I settled into the lifelong camaraderie that would allow what would turn into the next eleven hours of driving to pass with relative enjoyment. In a field close to our right, another brush with natural wonder was in store for us on our way out, as a pair of bald eagles sat on the ground. The one nearest the road, and the closest I’ve ever come to one of these majestic creatures outside of captivity, was the embodiment of regal magnificence. You never realize how gigantic and immense these raptors are until you get close to them, and then you feel dwarfed and humbled by the experience. Wonder and might and grace… and maybe this world will be all right and maybe it won’t.
Such ruminations were fair fodder when you have a traveling companion like Suzie – and it still holds true that she’s one of the very few people who could withstand an eleven-hour car trip with me. And vice versa. As the day faded, too early as this time of the year insists, we found ourselves pulling over for a quick dinner of a Popeye’s Fried Chicken Sandwich. Suzie had suggested a stop at H-Mart, and I was eager to see what whether all the fuss over it was merited – and happily it was – a warmly lit stock-up moment of opportunity gave us renewed sustenance for a second wind at the almost-end of a long ride.
At least, I thought it was the near-end, but we still had about three more hours to go. Suzie gamely found us a Starbucks for a fast cafe culture moment – and my very first PM of the holiday season (that’s Peppermint Mocha to all you sick fucks who think PM stands for something much worse). We took the coffee on the road (decaf, of course) and on the final leg of our journey home listened to the entire ‘Like A Prayer’ album which had helped me through that tricky high school autumn when Suzie was away at Denmark and I was about to hold my own at our family’s holiday gatherings without her for the first time. The songs rekindled memories of when I would write to Suzie and record tapes of silliness and loneliness and just about every messy-ness other than happiness.
“You were the only person I could talk to at the time,” I told her, immediately returning to those lonely nights I whispered secrets and nonsense into a tape recorder before adding Madonna’s ‘Promise To Try’ to the mix. As our drive entered its eleventh hour, a sweeter and more fitting finale to a weekend of friendship could not have been conjured or crafted by the greatest of storytellers.
Behind us the moon danced with the pine and oak trees, flirting with the river as it wound its way back to the sea. Even with the fire and the moon, the darkness here was gorgeously deep, but friendship held its own illumination, carrying its own torches as the night did its damnedest to envelop us in its beautiful blackness.
It will never not amaze me that the world tells us all to go to sleep when we should, and then turns off its light without question or complaint.
While the sun waits for no man, and the moon seems even more fickle, the odds of catching a shooting star are astronomically stacked against our favor. Still, the weekend in Virginia had already proven itself more naturally wondrous than any other in recent of distant memory. The loveliness of ladybugs in the main house, the pair of bald eagles that Suzie and I watched from the dock earlier in the day, and the perfectly sunny and warm atmosphere of an incongruously marvelous November day halfway down the Eastern seaboard had all indicated that something magical was afoot.
Following dinner and a firepit circle of s’mores for dessert, the moon called to us from behind the trees, and Cormac and I headed down to the dock to more closely view its splendor. It hung there brightly, a few days beyond its full Beaver Moon exhibition (said earnestly and without snickers) surrounded by a firmament of stars. The evening was fomenting the atmosphere for somber and serious conversation. We began innocuously enough, with some silly superficial talk and comical references before a shooting star or some other-worldly object entered the atmosphere and streaked boldly and brightly across an immense swath of sky. Perhaps stunned by this sharing of such a sublime glimpse, talk turned more serious as we spoke of Cormac’s Dad.
We listened to the moon and the stars, and in between the comfortable stretches of silence the occasional splash and gurgle of a fish breaking the surface of the water reminded us that we weren’t alone. Suzie joined us after a while, her footsteps crackling through the fallen leaves the only indication of her presence until she spoke.
Three friends sat in the dark shooting the shit beneath the moon. A century and a half of life between us, plus whatever living the fish had beneath their scaly belts, we could speak honestly and openly, in the way only a moonlit night might invite.
Fresh-from-the-sea oysters are not often on our menu in landlocked upstate New York, so when Cormac offered to pick some up for veritable pennies, I enthusiastically supported the notion – especially when Suzie was offering up her shucking expertise (honed by restaurant work in Seattle, where she reportedly shucked oysters by the hundreds). As with so many of Suzie’s boasts, this one seemed tenuous at best, as I waited dozens of minutes between slurping these precious oysters. Cormac proved a much better shucker, and as the pile of half-shells grew higher, our stomachs grew fuller, and the sun began its daily descent behind the river, which marked my solitary sojourn to the dock while Suzie and Cormac finished their shucking business.
Being raised by the daytime soap operas of NBC (‘Days of Our Lives’, ‘Another World’ and ‘Santa Barbara’) and the nighttime soaps of CBS (‘Dallas’, ‘Falcon Crest‘, and ‘Knots Landing’) I’ve rather dramatically viewed my life – and the cast of characters parading through it – as its own dramatic television series. Sometimes it’s a situation comedy, sometimes a serious drama, and sometimes a hellaciously-campy variety show – and always with an eye for an ensemble.
Most people think of me as striving to be the unequivocal star of any given moment, but the somewhat sad truth – sad for its refusal to be believed – is that I’m at my best and most comfortable when I’m part of a bigger story, and just one member of a singular group sensation. Casual observers still won’t believe that, but friends that have known me for decades will begrudgingly agree if they really think about it.
To that end, a quick glimpse into our current cast of characters for this trip to Virginia makes this one of my favorite posts in a long while. Getting together with any combination of this crew is a joy, and a happy reassurance of what really matters in this wayward world.
Our tribe has expanded exponentially over the years, as the children of my friends grow into young adults, and I’m finally able to relate and engage with them as the teenage girl I remain at heart. This was the first time I got to spend some quality time with Ruby and Luca – part of Kristen and George’s merry crew – as well as my first decent chunk of one-on-one time with Anu and Cormac’s youngest daughter Sona – and in the words of Amy Poehler’s ‘Mean Girls’ Mom, “You girls keep me young – oh I love you so much.”
If you want the rest of the story, you’ll have to pry it out of the Connors’ dog Milo – and in my limited experience, dog lips sink no ships. More to come…
Initially appearing in a cloak of darkness on the previous night, the river didn’t reveal itself to us until the next morning, when I hastened out of my private outside door and captured a few photos before joining the rest of the house. I’d been told we were all ‘sleeping in’ that morning, but as is the case with all my friends who are parents, that meant everyone except me was awake by 8 AM as I dragged my groggy ass up from the beautiful depths of a peaceful slumber. (Water of any kind – ocean, lake, sea, river – inspires sleep as much as it reinvigorates appetite. It makes all aspects of living a little keener.)
There, in the light of morning, the river wound its beauty and wonder through the edge of Anu and Cormac’s backyard. The water was one thing – the light was quite another. It would change, evolve, shift, and transform myriad times during the day – meriting multiple walks around the property and many moments of contemplation. We managed to catch it on an ideal day too – sunny and warm, with just the slightest breeze that occasionally caused a few oak leaves to drift dreamily down to us on earth.
Oaks festooned in rusty brown and gold still held onto their fall wardrobe, but had deposited a bumpy layer of acorns on the ground a while ago. Here and there a tiny oak tree rose from the lawn – out of hundreds of acorns, only one or two would sprout into trees. Who knows how such a forest ever came to be from such odds? And how strange that we don’t routinely marvel in its mature existence?
This idyllic morning was made all the more magical by a serendipitous arrival of a loveliness of ladybugs. Yes, as Ruby researched it, a group of ladybugs is indeed called a ‘loveliness‘ – and while Anu and Cormac and Sona may not have been thrilled to have such a swarm descend on their home, it was only for a day, and one of those once-in-a-lifetime events of nature that makes you feel lucky to have witnessed it. Ladybugs in the home is a sign of luck.
While they worked on coaxing them back out and preventing more from getting in, I did my daily meditation and took an indulgent nap – taking full luxurious advantage of not being the host for the first time in forever.
When last our tribe gathered during the summer days of summer, Anu made us make a plan for a fall visit to her River House in Virginia. That felt far away in every sense, though the best destinations often require a certain amount of work to reach. In the case of Anu’s River House, the work was a nine-hour car drive South with Suzie at the wheel – and the only work I had to do was keep her awake and stocked with sub-par Chex mix and beef jerky (as I was not about to drive an unfamiliar car on the New Jersey turnpike, for everyone’s safety).
We stopped for a lunch of French sandwiches I’d made for the trip (fancy European butter and thinly-sliced cornichons included) at the Connie Chung Rest Stop – because if such a thing as a Connie Chung Rest Stop exists, you fucking stop at it and eat a sandwich. I was not fully aware of Connie’s cultural sway in this country, nor of her place in the New Jersey rest stop landscape, but there she was plastered larger than life in a grand poster right above the rest rooms. Go Connie.
The sandwiches had a tad too much butter on them for my liking, but Suzie gamely had one, and the it was back on the road. The final stretch included that brutal Chesapeake Bay Bridge, wherein one practically kisses the roiling water below and to your side – I remember going over it as a child, and how little my Mom enjoyed it. Anu felt the same, as she indicated in a check-in text as we shared our current location.
By the time we reached the River House, it was deeply dark, but the company was good, the food delicious, and the bed a respite of immediate sleep and rest. A day of travel usually grants instant slumber, and this was happily the case. The river slept along with us, waiting to surprise me with its grandeur the next morning…
Technically Provincetown is at the tip of a peninsula, but in many respects it feels like an island; happily isolated and apart from the rest, it is a place of magic and wonder, the kind of space that only exists in that one special location. On my first trip there with Suzie, just about thirty years ago, this song was one of her selections, and my late introduction to the Blondie classic in no way diminished my instant love and adoration for it. (Suzie knows a good song.)
It ties in splendidly to our summer island theme, conjuring images of anemones and mollusks hanging on for dear life as the tide comes in and threatens their hold. It also brings to mind the resilience of anyone who loves another person who may not love them back. That’s a ripe little topic for summer, but I’ve written enough stories on that to fill a book. This one is about something more hopeful, like the feeling of possibility that rode on the salty sea air which greeted us as we wound our way along Route 6 and entered the sandy environs of Provincetown on a rainy summer afternoon…
Wait, I already wrote about this long ago, so rather than reassemble the whole thing, let me do some searching and copying and pasting and call this post finished:
The Paradise of Provincetown
There is a paradisiacal place on this earth where the sun both rises and sets over the ocean, where sexuality is irrelevant, and where a pizza party begins at 1AM every morning. It’s a place where one can lay on the beach, bask in the sun, drink in the sights (and the cocktails), and dance the day away on the beachfront. The sky is more blue than anywhere else, the light enchants artists and lovers of beauty, and the atmosphere is one of easy acceptance, warmth, and love. The place is Provincetown ~ that magical point at the very tip of Cape Cod ~ where the ocean surrounds, protects, buffers and belts the sandy shores of a world unlike any other.
My first trip to Provincetown was at the end of the summer of 1995. Dragging our August feet a few weeks before college began again, Suzie and I took an impromptu drive along the curved arm of the Cape Cod peninsula, winding our way into town in the middle of a gray drizzle. The whole trip was hazy that way ~ clouds overhead, but still bright, windy but emanating warmth ~ it lives in my memory dimly yet implacably. I don’t remember much about that first trip ~ a photo of one perfect sunflower is framed somewhere, taken behind our guesthouse looking over the bay. Suzie and I mostly did what we do best ~ a lot of nothing. We read books on the beach, browsed lazily through the boutiques, and feasted on lobster salad and fried clams. At night I strolled alone down Commercial Street, passing a long line of leering men ~ terrifying and exciting all at once ~ a thrilling, unsettling glimpse into my own future. I thought I was such hot shit in my linen pants and tight black T?shirt, holding off insecurity with aloofness, putting myself above everyone so as to be hurt or rejected by no one.
We departed Provincetown unscathed and untouched. The next five years do not prove so fortuitous, and when I return to the Cape in July of 2000, I am battle?weary and worn from a few serious relationships and subsequent break?ups, and a dizzying series of one?night?stands.
~~~
My friend Kristen and I board the ferry at Boston harbor. The wind is strong, the sun is stronger – it is the perfect July day. The jaunt to Provincetown is a rocky one, quick to be sure (at 90 minutes), but bumpy – people are getting sick right and left.
Thank God for the foresight to have taken Dramamine. We arrive at our guesthouse and unpack. It is a slow, peaceful, relaxing entry, with the good spirits of Kristen buoying me and the tranquil pull of the ocean guiding our journey. That night we head out to the Gifford house, where there is a group sing?along to ‘Delta Dawn’.
It’s so easy to get laid in Provincetown. Sex is in the air, on the beach, in the dunes, at the bars ~ it’s everywhere. But it no longer interests me. Of course, once that is the case one instantly becomes a hot commodity. In the past I would have jumped into bed with the first suitor who glanced my way, but things are different now. I’d rather play double solitaire with Kristen and have a real conversation with someone at the bar instead of going home with some beautiful but anonymous stranger.
Still, beauty casts an intoxicating spell, and a few days later I succumb to a gorgeous guy whose name is Chris. He will be my only one?night?stand for the whole week. Back in my room, there is moonlight streaming in through the window. The light is gray, our bodies just dim outlines in the hushed night. As we undress, he compliments me on my underwear. I laugh a little and kiss him.
When it’s over I ask him his last name. I don’t remember it now, but back then it was important. It is the perfect Provincetown one?night?stand ~ sweetly poignant, ferociously sexy, and a little bit sad. I see him on the street the next day. He gives me a smile and a handshake and that is the end of it. A slightly apathetic ache is all that remains. I don’t really care, but still, it might have been nice…
Suzie arrives a day or so later – we head out at night and a super?hot, and super? cool, lesbian drags us along as she crashes a friend’s party. Provincetown casts a seductive spell on most of her visitors ~ a spell of summer, of sand, of ocean and perfect sky. She embraces all outcasts and for a few days everyone lives this enchanting utopian vision. You find yourself swept away, doing things you never thought you would do.
In spite of this harmony, it is still possible to feel alone. Walking out along the pier with the moon hovering over the ocean, I stand in the night wind. Surrounded by the cries of seagulls, remembering the love of my life, I mourn. And then it is done. I return to the shore, to the lights, to the music and the drinking and the dancing. I do not know then that in a few weeks I will meet Andy. But for that moment, I am alone, and it’s okay.
~~~
By the end of the week the bartenders simply set a Tanqueray and tonic in front of me without waiting for my order. I have become a small part of P?town’s transient family, and it feels good to belong. At the daily Boatslip tea dance I find the nerve to introduce myself to the Most Beautiful Man in the World, also known as David, who, I later discover, works for Gucci. He invites us to their new store opening in Boston the next week. I shake his hand and we say good?bye.
On our last morning in Provincetown, I arise early and walk down Commercial Street alone. I have a quick breakfast at a diner and buy a box of saltwater taffy for my parents. It’s early ~ there aren’t many people out yet. And even though I am alone, I find comfort in the overwhelming sense of acceptance I feel around me ~ not worrying about being ridiculed, or yelled at or taunted, or beaten or killed. It is a healthy feeling.
The town is like that ~ a place of refuge for some, a place of enchantment for others, and a temporary home for all. There’s no place like Provincetown.
Eventually the sky brightened – glimpses of blue and peeks of sun emerged – though storms and rain were encroaching and surrounding us at all times, occasionally rearing some rainy moments. One time we were at the beach, just skirting the entrance, when the skies turned dark so we had to hurry back to the inn – there’s a photo below of that, but before we got there we did manage to find some lilacs in full bloom – their scent evocative of childhood and happiness and springs that came before.
Not only were the traditional lilac lilacs in bloom, but the more rare white lilac was putting on a show – an elegant and slightly softer-scented version of its ubiquitous cousin.
They held their heads up in the face of incoming stormy patches, when the sky started spitting rain and the wind picked up in slightly menacing fashion. It was just enough drama to keep things interesting – and as long as it wasn’t a steady downpour for hours at a time, we managed to be in and out and variously about to make the most of this precious part of Maine.
Breaks of sun made for pockets of bloom time for some of the understory flowers and shrubs, who lit up the cloudy sections with their pastel prettiness.
By Sunday, our last full day in town, the stormy patches had passed and the Marginal Way was sunny.
Having made our way to Perkins Cove, we picked up a few gifts for Mom, including a fabulous scarf from Kiki’s (where I once found a glorious blue boa that will one day fill a blog post as promised).
The walk back was as beautiful as the way there, only it felt like it went by faster, as is usually the case with pleasant experiences.
The whole long Memorial Day weekend went by that way… the way life should be.
Our last morning dawned in sunny and fine fashion – the way every single departure day from Ogunquit has always gone – I’ve a mind to schedule an extra day in the future just to play with fate. As we checked out with Anthony at the Scotch Hill Inn, we booked our fall visit – a little bit of hope to ease the end of summer when it comes.
Our Thursday entry into town was – surprise! – a rain-soaked endeavor, reminding us of the first few years we started coming to the Beautiful Place By the Sea, where every trip was accompanied by steady rain. This marks our 25th year of visiting Maine together, and it’s always a treat. This was the very first trip that Andy and I took as a couple. It felt right 25 years ago, and it still feels right today.
While the drive through Massachusetts was a rainy one, once we arrived in Ogunquit the sky was only spitting a bit. Heavier rain would return for our dinner at Walker’s later that night, but for the first few minutes there was a little reprieve. We made a quick walk across the street for a lunch snack, while a wind, decidedly too cool for a spring visit, danced around us. The sky threatened rain again, so we hurried back to the Inn.
We settled into our favorite room at the Scotch Hill Inn, which is a sanctuary of comfort at every time of the year and in every sort of weather condition. Coupled with the amazing breakfasts by inn-keeper Anthony, we could be happy simply staying in, and for the rainy periods that’s largely what we did – it was heaven.
While the rain allowed for guilt-free lounging, it also afforded blooms and water-accented leaves of beauty for passers-by who happened upon them.
The town was largely in full bloom – apple blossoms and iris and azaleas were all putting on a splendid show, even through the rainy weather.
I found my way to a favored woodland walk, where wake robins were in their charming bloom – usually by the time we arrive their show has already taken place. The weather worked in our favor this time, as they were at the pinnacle of their floral magnificence.
What we gained from the trilium, we lost in the form of very few Rosa rugosa blooms, though we managed to captured this lone white version. It had to carry all the charm of the spring in a single blossom, and it did.
We don’t take many vacations, so it takes a while to get into a vacation groove. While I pretend to be hard-wired for lounging and ease, the truth is I’m a hard-working Virgo who rarely just relaxes. That takes a while to calibrate, and I remember a former co-worker many years ago telling me that she needed two weeks for a proper vacation – because the first week was simply learning how to decompress – and I totally get it.
It’s a little easier to more quickly find vacation bearings in Maine, where the living and eating is so good. As Friday dawned, the sky looked a little lighter…
The blooms of the Hawthorne tree always remind me of our old home, where an enormous specimen grew right outside my bedroom window, raising its thorny branches and blooming in sweet, creamy style every spring. Mom remembered how much Dad was annoyed at the tree – those blooms soon dropped their petals to the ground – and the ground was the bulk of our driveway. Petals don’t sweep up as easily as one thinks. Afterward, the berries would fall, even messier than the blooms, to greet the fall and make a further muck of things. I didn’t mind – that tree was a signal of the shift of seasons, and I welcomed all of them. On this morning walk by Central Park, we spotted a Hawthorne in bloom, and springs from my childhood came lovingly back to mind.
‘The Picture of Dorian Gray‘ by Oscar Wilde is a novel that informed my youth, and devastated me every time I opened its worn and earmarked pages. Such an exquisite rendering of the gorgeous folly of humanity and vanity and art spoke directly to the person I was becoming, and Wilde’s words stayed with me, haunting the nights and peppering the days with wit and wonder. When I heard about Kip Williams and his take on the novel in a revolutionary play starring Sarah Snook, I proposed seeing if we could get same-day half-off tickets at from the TKTS booth at Lincoln Center. Mom was game as she had enjoyed the novel too, and after a bit of a line, we procured the perfect seats to viewing this life-altering show.
We were both amazed at what we saw on the stage of the Music Box Theatre – a once-in-a-lifetime performance that must be seen to be believed. Worlds within worlds within worlds – the way New York stacks itself inside of itself, closing and opening all at once, revealing and obscuring and ever-enthralling.
We chose a simple, convenient, and classic establishment for a quick dinner – Sardi’s – as it was almost time for our final show.
That seems a fitting point to start the closing of this lovely weekend, as evening descended over the unhushed city – and the magic of ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ began – is that a tragic ending? Not at all.
The moon floated over the Empire State Building, and you know what they say when you get caught between the moon and New York City…
Last year’s return to Broadway was a bittersweet one, as it marked the first time Mom and I would be spending our Mother’s Day weekend in New York since we lost Dad. This year was a little lighter, a little sweeter, and a whole lot brighter, as far as the spectacular roster of shows we would see.
We began in slightly misty fashion, and though that Friday threatened to be consumed by rain, we escaped most of it, as the heaviest part fell while we enjoyed dinner. In between, we managed a quick jaunt through Bryant Park and did a brief bit of shopping along Fifth Avenue.
A Greek dinner at Kellari proved a delight, and I jinxed us by mentioning that I hoped Audra McDonald would be at that night’s performance of ‘Gypsy’ for which we had front row tickets. We got in the longest line right before showtime, before overhearing someone state that this was the cancellation line. Jinx confirmed, Audra was out, and it was too late to come up with another plan, so we filed into our seats – the first time that I’ve been in the front row of any show and not had anyone on either side of us. In fact, the bulk of the front section was woefully empty.
No matter, the show must go on, and the rest of the company was enthralling, including understudy Tryphena Wade, who absolutely nailed the iconic role of Rose in a way that all too often gets overshadowed by whatever fabulous baggage a more well-known leading lady can often carry. A toast to the understudies then – they keep the theatrical fires burning.
“When you get into a hotel room, you lock the door, and you know there is a secrecy, there is a luxury, there is fantasy. There is comfort. There is reassurance.” ~ Diane von Furstenberg
Happiness for me is a trying out a hotel for the first time. From that first entrance to the lobby and check-in, to the first elevator ride to your floor, and that first moment you open the door to your room and everything is freshly-made-up and immaculately-prepared, the whole experience has always thrilled me. Part of it is that most of my hotel jaunts have been in service of something wonderful – vacations or weddings or birthday trips – and the correlation of happy excitement to a hotel room has been gloriously cemented from years of practice.
Our upcoming attendance at a friend’s wedding provides the perfect opportunity to try out The Doyle Hotel and, based on the website, and it looks to be a grand stay. It marks our first time in Charlottesville, and our first brush with the Blue Suede Hospitality Group. Discovering a new destination, and a new home-away-from-home, is one of life’s consistently-wonderful opportunities. We need that now more than ever.
We saved one of our favorite jaunts in Ogunquit for our last full day. Walking the Marginal Way was the first thing we did on our very first trip here all those years ago, and it was an introduction that made the most marvelous impression on me. It never loses its majesty, and it’s never quite the same journey twice. That seems impossible for those of us who have been walking it for almost a quarter of a century, but it’s absolutely true. The ocean, the sand, the shore, the wind, the air – they are in constant undulation and motion, never appearing in exactly the same way from moment to moment. There’s magic in that, as in the way the first beach roses of the season unfurl and spark their fiery focal points of visual interest.
Along with the aforementioned changeability of the scene, the bluets seen below (Houstonia caerulea) have switched their position as well – this year they staked out a daring perch amid the rocks closest to the sea. Usually they hide further inland, within some protected nook shaded by juniper boughs and bittersweet vines. This year they were right there in plain sight – exposed for all to see – and they looked all the more jubilant for their exposure.
Returning to the house, we continued a relatively new tradition – because finding new traditions twenty-four years into visiting this Beautiful Place By the Sea is one of the best reasons to keep coming back here. Afternoons when the weather is fine, and it’s too glorious to nap it all away, Andy and I would take a cup of tea or coffee onto the front porch and watch as the beachgoers returned to their lodgings, while others walked back into town. Life walked by in all its stunning variety, as ours stilled for a moment of sacred, shared togetherness.
I ran into the front yard to grab a picture of Andy, who promptly made a funny face.
Thus our last full day of this trip came to an amusing close.
