The Untold Stories of a Life of Traveling

 As I write this, I am no longer on the windswept barren landscape of central Nevada, but far away, thousands of miles in fact, listening as the surf pounds the base of the cliff below below the condo we have rented for a couple nights from AirBnB. Nearby the palm trees are clacking in the stiff, warm breeze. It is sunny and lush.

Yesterday afternoon, after a six hour non-stop flight from Phoenix, we landed at Lihue airport here on the island of Kauai. Ginger had wanted to make a trip to Hawaii. We hadn't taken this kind of luxury just-for-the-heck-of-it vacation in years. Of the four main islands in Hawaii, this is the one that neither of us had visited before, so it was a natural choice. I probably would not have come here unless Ginger had pushed for it, but now that I am here, I am very glad of it.

Funny how memory works. As we left the airport yesterday, my mind was carried back to many years ago,  to a recollection that was jarred loose in my mind. In college in the 1980s I knew a girl who went to Kauai, on a trip that was paid by her grandparents as a gift. What I remembered was how she said she had wound up making the trip all by herself. Her boyfriend at the time went off on some other adventure and abandoned her. Other than thinking her boyfriend was clueless, what struck me was her sadness in recollecting the trip because she had been by herself in such a beautiful place. 

At the time, I thought it odd, because when I was younger, and even up until perhaps a decade ago, traveling by myself seemed natural. When I was very young, back in the 1980s I preferred it partly because I met so many people that way. I was open to the world.

But in my old age, the idea of traveling by myself seems very sad. What is the point of going places by oneself? I realized several years ago that a great deal of my enjoyment in traveling alone had been that I got to return home and tell people about my travels--especially my late grandmother (who delighted in hearing my adventures), and my late mother and father, who would sit for hours on end as I narrated what I had seen. I never knew how much that mattered, to do that, until they were all gone and there was no one to tell what I had seen. At that point, the world became a lonely place to me, and every spot on the world, no matter how beautiful, seemed like every other spot. 

To be here by myself, as that girl I once knew had been, would seem like an island prison. But I am not alone, and that makes all the difference.

In Honor of the Lucky Ones

The next day (Tuesday) we had the second memorial for Dick, this one being his military funeral, out at the Northern Nevada Veteran's Cemetery near the town of Fernley, east of Reno.

I knew Dick had bought his plot out there. The last time I saw him he had told the story of making his daughter take him out there to check it out. 

I drove there by myself in my rental car on Tuesday morning, arriving in Fernley almost two hours early. I wanted to make sure to get out there and have some time to unwind before the funeral started. I turned out to be a good decision.

Fernley is about forty five minutes on the Interstate east of Reno. In the old days of my college-era travels, this is part of the Interstate where you realize you are heading out into the vast barrenness of central Nevada, where the population centers are small and far from each other.  Driving there always brings back primal memories from those days. 

Fernley is now about as far east as the greater Reno orbit now extends. One feels one is at the edge of the earth. As I came off the Interstate, I recognized the Wal-Mart where seven years before, Ginger and I had parked in our rented truck, waiting for Okki and the others to arrive from the East, before cutting up the backroad to Burning Man. All of that seemed so far in the past.

My early arrival gave me a chance to park the car out where the road turns to dirt, becoming public land where I could stretch by legs. It was sunny but windy. I realized I had left my sunglasses in Arizona. I would probably be the only person there without sunglasses, I thought.

Out where I parked, on the north side of the interchange, past the truck stops, I could see about half a dozen other vehicles further along the road, a few them being RVs, and one being a sedan car with the windows all taped over.  A couple women walked with their dog. I had stumbled into one of the outposts of the Nomadland world of America. It was not the first time. 

After stretching my legs in the sun and the wind I drove along the paved road and found the veteran's cemetery, which was a little outpost of grassy-lawn civilization in the scrubland, sheltered by trees as a palisade windbreak.  

In a way it looked terribly lonely, all by itself in the barrenness. But in a few minutes, after parking my car along the back part of the looping road, behind the memorial wall, I would change my mind. My early arrival gave me time to walk along the memorial wall, and see the names, vital dates, and service details of the men whose remains were interred there. 

I didn't think it would affect me so much. I'd seen many war cemeteries. But knowing that they were about to put my great-uncle's remains in this place changed my perspective. I could see why he wanted to be here, amidst all these other men, with whom he shared the bond of being a veteran. He'd earned his way into here.

"These were the lucky ones," I thought to myself. All the dates here indicated men who had served in World War II or Korea, and who had survived, and been able to come home and have families, like Dick.

The cemetery is not big. It did't take long to walk up and down the wall, and feel the weight of the lives that were lived, and which were commemorated there. Soon I meandered down to the entrance and saw the people I had recognized from the day before, my extended family--Dick's family, as well as some of Dick's former employees at his court reporting firm, a couple women who loved him for the friendship he had given them over the years, and for whom I was a stand-in for Dick, offering my arm to both of them, one on each side, as we walked over to the ceremony.

They gave him the customary salute by salute. I felt such love towards the guys that were out there doing that for Dick, dressed up in their uniforms. What a privilege to get to do that.

Then we put his ashes in a box in the ground where there was a temporary marker where the stone would go in the lawn. I had thought things would be over then, and I was sad to see it all ending. But to my delight, Dick's son in law, the new patriarch, said we would all be meeting for a meal in Reno, at their favorite Mexican restaurant.

I was delighted to eke out some more fellowship. As I drove back to Reno, joyful at the thought of spending more time with these people I came to love so quickly, I could see the Sierra, snow-capped through the gorge of the Truckee River. I wondered what they looked like to Dick way back in 1957, when came out here by himself, and founded a life and a family. For a moment I forgot all about my own failures in life, to live a life anything close to that, and felt the beauty of it all.

Following Dick to Virginia City

 Dick's memorial in Reno was spread out over two days. On Monday we had the church service, a funeral mass at Our Lady of the Snows, which was his parish church in Dick's neighborhood, one of the nicer older districts of Reno.

Dick had sung in the choir for years there, and knew Father Chuck, who celebrated the funeral mass, for many decades, going back to when Dick's kids and later grandkids went to the adjoining Catholic School.

It was a beautiful mass. Afterwards we gathered again for a reception at the Western Interpretative Center of Barnes Ranch on the south side of Reno, where Dick's son in law, the remaining patriarch of the clan, had rented the center and had it catered. It was a splendid event, and I got to spent much time getting to know my second cousins--Dick's grand-kids. They are "youngsters" as I called them, in their twenties. I told them stories about our great-grandfather--Dick's father.

One of Dick's grandson's had spoken at the memorial about his wonderful memories going up to Virginia City with Dick. They were warm, fun memories, and so after the reception, with the light still good, I drove up over the summit into the mountains to that old mining tone, now a tourist destination, where the wind comes out the dry, cold interior basin of Nevada. I found myself exploring the museum in the basement of St. Mary's of the Mountains, which was the first Catholic Church in Nevada, I think, and was the center of Nevada Catholicism for many decades. 

The interior of the church itself was very nice as well. I bought a candle for Dick at the gift shop and lit it on the way out.

Two Trips to Nevada

This past month has been very active, exhausting. In late October I flew up to Las Vegas by myself and spent three nights at the Ahern Hotel on Sahara as part of the Patriot Doubledown conference. It was a MAGA conference that had been scheduled at one of Caesars convention centers, but was kicked out because the media got wind and made a stink about something said by one of the organizers. The Ahern Hotel is owned by Frank Ahern, a rental equipment entrepreneur in Nevada who is a friend of Donald Trump, and who stepped up last year during the campaign to host one of Trump's campaign rallies when the mayor and governor tried to shut him out of the state. The Ahern Hotel was recently the Lucky Dragon, a Chinese casino-hotel. The conference was in what used to be the casino hall. There were still chairs with the dragon and Chinese writing on the back.

The speakers were interesting, but I was there really to see Patrick Gunnels of Reading Epic Threads, whom I have followed for over a year, and have come a regular contributing member of his writers. There were six of us in all from the RET community. It was a great joy to meet them all. We sat like the cool kids in the back of the casino hall, much of the time, forming our own clique of cool kids. There was plenty of time for breakout sessions in the cabana by the pool, and also in the hotel bar. I got to meet some awesome folks.

In the wake of it all, it was decided by Patrick and others to have our conference, to be called "Threadfest," and tentatively to held in Nashville in late April. Of course I am looking forward to going.

After the weekend was over, I flew directly up to Salt Lake City, as Ginger was up there for part of her work, staying in the usual hotel in downtown. When that was over, we flew back to Phoenix and life seemed to resume its normal pace briefly, but then we got sick by some unspecified illness which knocked us both out for a couple weeks.  It made work, even from home, challenging.

Then last Sunday, recovered, I flew up to Reno to attend the memorial of Great-Uncle Dick, who passed away last month at age 95. It was a very emotional event. Flying up, I was heartbroken, not only to lose him, and him being the last member of that generation who knew people and lived certain events, but also because I thought it would be the last time I'd be going to Reno in the warmth of fellowshipperhaps, that after this it would be an empty town for me.

Instead I found so much love from Dick's family, and got to see his children for the first time since they were teenagers and came to Iowa, and also his grandchildren, who are my second cousins, and whom I regaled with stories about our great-grandfather George, Dick's father, who was a very interesting man. They all treated like family, which was the most touching thing in the world. Reno is a still a place where I have family. In fact, in some ways, it has wound up as one of the centers of gravity of people who know me and have some love for me. The joy of that is a huge consolation for losing Dick.