The First Five Days

Day One: Bug Hill Farm to Oneida Pines, Blosvale, NY

I got a very late start, pulling out of Ashfield close to 5pm, and chose to take the interstate instead of risking a shorter and more mountainous road.  I made sure my first stop was a pull through site--no backing up!  Oneida Pines, at the east end of Lake Oneida, was lovely.  

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Day Two:  Oneida Pines to The Cedars, Hamilton, Ontario

I had hoped to get to Oneida in time to have dinner with Minnie Bruce Pratt on my first night out, but it was very late by the time I got there, and instead we met for lunch at a Denny's in Syracuse.  When I decided to go to graduate school in 1991, I called Minnie Bruce, whose work I knew and loved, and told her I'd only apply to Union Institute if she agreed to be my core faculty person.  It was the beginning of a warm friendship and she was exactly the right person for me to work with. I hadn't seen her in quite a few years, and it was special to sit with her for that hour.  She bestowed upon me a beautiful Mexican ceramic menorah.  

I had really hoped to stop at the Seneca Art and Culture Center at  Ganondagan, south of Rochester.  I wanted to go to pay my respects to Jigonsaseh, Mother of Nations, who helped to broker the peace that led to the formation of the Five Nations Confederacy..  I learned about her years ago, when I picked up a pamphlet at a retreat center in Colorado, and I wrote about her in my book Remedios.  Alas, it was closed that day.   

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Rainbow flag at The Cedars.

It was in the town of Tonawanda, nearly at the Canadian border, that traffic quite suddenly slowed from 50 mph to zero and I watched the back of a small car come inexorably closer.  I hit the brakes and downshifted, and gave thanks for the extra braking power of my Automated Safety Hitch, and the crunch, when it came, was relatively light.  Cosmetic dents and mild whiplash.  But what with waiting for the police and for the EMTs to check us out, it was dark as I crossed the border into Ontario, and nearly 10pm when I pulled into an open field at The Cedars, an LGBTQ campground that is practically a small town, with 250 seasonal residents and room for 1000 campers.  I slept under a canopy of stars and woke at dawn to a gorgeous morning sky. 

I was welcomed by a lovely man named  Dennis, who took me on a golf cart tour of the whole site and told me to lave my trash bags by the road and he'd take care of them for me.  The Cedars has pristine cedar lined bathrooms--the cleanest public bathrooms I've ever seen.  

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Day Three: Hamilton to Detroit

This was the longest, hardest day.  I expected to be in Detroit by 2pm to meet with a group of healer activists, but the accident in Tonawanda had dislodged many stowed objects and I had a big mess to tidy up, and was in considerable pain from whiplash, soI did't get on the road until 10:30, and as I drove across a fairly uninteresting Ontario landscape, watched the arrival time estimate on my GPS creep later and later.  Lesson: traveling in an RV is MUCH slower than in a car.  There are much more frequent fuel stops ( 8 miles per gallon!) and some of them involve a lot of acrobatic maneuvering to get the truck near the pump without damaging the RV roof.  And stuff always happens.  My truck suddenly informed me it needed exhaust fluid, of which I had never heard, and chasing that down took a while.  

Then I got to the border into the US.  I had not yet programmed my Garmin GPS, specially designed for RVs, and my cell phone kept insisting on sending me to the tunnel instead of the bridge. when I surrendered and went, I set off alarms because of the height of my Vehicle, and had to turn around in a tight spot (which meant backing up a lot) under the annoyed gaze of the customs agent. Then she pointed me to the bridge, where I sat motionless in traffic for a long time.  And when the road divided--cars one way, trucks and buses the other, I decided I'd better follow the big rigs, which was wrong. I ended up in the customs line for commercial vehicles.   The customs agent asked me a bunch of questions and then made me open up the Vehicle so she could search it. She was worried about my house plants, but I assured her they were from the US and had not been consorting with Canadian plants.  and THEN I had to navigate Detroit and avoid the many low railroad bridges.   By this time I was many hours late, and had to cancel my planned dinner in Ann Arbor, at the last minute, not having had cell access in Canada.  
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Lesson: Allow a LOT more time than Google maps says it will take. Google maps doesn't know s**t.  

But finally I pulled up in front of the home of my hosts, Angela and Greg, and we decided that the side yard they thought I could park in wasn't going to be easy to get out of, so I pulled up onto the wide strip of ground  between sidewalk and fence, under large leafy trees, and took a deep breath.   And after I rested, a couple of the people who had planned to meet me earlier, Reshounn Foster and Marcia Lee came by and that's when things really took off.  We'd just met, but we ended up talking about ancestors and healing and our big passions, with me reading aloud from Remedios, until 1 am!  

Adrienne and me.

Day Four: Detroit to Chicago

And then in the morning, the fabulous Adrienne Maree Brown came to breakfast and we talked about all kinds of knowing and creating, and had a great time.  Our first meeting.   But once again, I had mess to deal with and a lot of pain, and was unable to meet a dear friend who had to get back to work before I could reach our rendezvous.   I had called the McCormick Place convention center where I had planned to spend the night and discovered there was no room for me. But my new friend Marcia, who had dropped by to give me some things to take to Standing Rock, and the gift of a BuBee thermos (more on that later) said she had connections with a friary in Chicago and her monk friends would likely let me stay in their school parking lot.  And they did!  Though they were astonished at the actual size of my house, having imagined a little camper van.  

Day Five: Chicago

Much needed rest, much needed chiropractic care and much needed time with old friends. 

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​An unexpected delight was the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art, a block from the suburban office of the chiropractor.  This little gem of a museum had me gasping and exclaiming  "wow!" for the entire time we were there.  It's rock heaven.   The collection includes a breathtaking array of intricately carved precious and semiprecious stones of all kinds.  There are utterly charming dioramas of natural scenes with gemstone wildlife, including a family of birds with the such minute detail that you could see the feathers on their heads;  case upon case of exquisitely intricate Chinese jade carvings and ivory nesting balls, snuff bottles, belt buckles, and an astonishing set of bowls.  One  of them, the size of a small salad bowl, had been carved from a large cluster of amethysts, and the polished cross sections of crystal points created a breathtaking starburst design in the bowl. There was also a display of Roman mosaics that were so detailed and flawless I thought they were paintings, massive chunks of petrified wood, and a basement exhibit on gemstones.  Plus a display of "meals" made of carved stone.  This place is well worth going out of your way for if you're in Chicago.  

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Next: Best Meals and best and worst signs.