artifacts found during walks

sunlight

nature

(even weeds, like this goatsbeard that's about to populate!)

a forgotten dream with tabs from '97

traces of a girl

and 'uh-oh, it wasn't me!'

"I love you"

where color can be found…

In old alley ways

 
 
and words on doors.

Sun and shadows…

Time etches its story without words

but it cannot etch the sky.

There will always be a place for you here.

And if you peer into doorways that are hidden from every day

remembering what was larger than life, yesterday

the color of a former world

whose beautiful eyes can no longer see,

you will find me.

I'll be playing with color, dancing in shadows

trying to count all the things we've moved

and the distance we rode

together or alone…

And I'll be thinking of you while I walk my line through time.

After 39 states, hundreds of interesting characters and thousands of cities and towns, I’d like to tell you we rode off happily into the sunset… which wouldn’t be too far from the truth.

I made it back to Washington at the end of December in time to surprise my mom on Christmas morning.

I have since moved to a small city in an area of the country that I love.

I’ll occasionally share snippets of life in my now mostly fixed world. Please visit my archives to get the full story behind this blog.

They say the media is the message. For Leonard Knight, 78, it holds the message, too. His media — a hand-built straw and adobe hill in the California desert — is painted like a giant birthday cake with Bible versus, hearts, flowers and other symbols.

It's at the entrance to Slab City, a self-governed, off-the-grid community of people living in tents and vehicles.

Knight, who lives in a gutted Chevrolet truck year round, has been here since 1984.

In his former life, about 50 years ago, he was "running from the church."
"One day I said, 'Jesus I'm a sinner, please come into my heart.' I kept repeating it. 'Jesus, I'm a sinner.' And I became Paul instead of Saul," he says.

A giant advertisement of God's love for sinners it may be, but the paint-covered hill has drawn ire from various groups who insisted it was toxic and should be bulldozed.

Salvation Mountain volunteer and Slab City resident A.J. Pixler, 23, (below, right) told me Knight used money he received as an inheritance from his mother to pay for a counter study showing the mountain was not leeching harmful levels of chemicals.

His art project seems to be safe, now. In 2002, Congress declared it a national treasure.

It's also received widespread exposure in the 2007 movie "Into the Wild" and through an appearance just months ago on GoogleEarth, which more than tripled the number of visitors Knight says he sees each day.

James Rantesescher, 16, (pictured on the left) of Indio, Calif. has known Knight for most of his young life and was watching over the place while Knight had lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Niland, the nearest town.

"The United States needs this message right now," Rantesescher told me. "Because right now we just live in a civilization that is steeped in fear. And love is the opposite of fear. God is love. It's a simple, yet powerful message. "

In 2006, Ken Wozniak moved from Chicago to Chapparal, New Mexico, a small town near the state's arid southern border.

Friends at the time thought he was crazy.

A retired U.S. Army veteran and the bearer of three purple hearts, Wozniak builds custom motorcycles and works as a security guard to pass the time. He lives for a fraction of the price he did in Chicago on 7 1/2 acres with his wife, nine dogs and assortment of other pets.

He wasn't too sad to leave behind the cold weather and traffic.

"It's a totally different lifestyle. You come from the hustle and bustle to laid-back and easy customs," he says. I would never go back."

Texans definitely have a swagger. Even if you spoke to no one and only observed the signs, you'd still get a sense of their confidence.

In addition to this colorful warning at a rest area, scores of no-litter signs proclaim, "Don't mess with Texas."

I even saw a sign on a desert highway in the panhandle that said simply: "MAINTAIN YOUR VEHICLE."

Don't think a Texan is gonna come bail out your behind!

With less than a thousand year-round residents and an economy based largely on tourism, Bandera is the self-proclaimed "cowboy capitol of the world."

Bandera resident Jon Curry, a musician, has a way with words to go along with his style.

"In most tourist towns, there is a sense that it's orchestrated or contrived," he tells me in a born-and-raised Texan drawl. "But here there is a palpable genuineness seldom found elsewhere."

About his outfit: "It's really just a pair of blue jeans and boots."

Though on closer inspection, we counted six layers, which qualifies as deliberate dressing, in my book.

Like this couple making their way across the Guadeloupe River, near Center Point

Spicier

As evidenced by Doug Northern's fair food

Older

Like the Alamo, which reminds visitors "never to surrender nor retreat"

Weirder

In the way purposely nonconforming Austin juxtaposes its artsy stores and restaurants with a glistening modern skyline

Wider

As the changing winter sky above endless miles of ranch land

Magical

The way only a trip to downtown San Antonio at Christmastime could be