Here’s a photo from the Bumbershoot music festival in Seattle that makes me laugh. I took many pictures of Tyler Tornfelt playing his upright bass for Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside, but I choose this one because I liked his position while playing.
This song, “I Swear,” is a great introduction to their sound. I would say the style is rockabilly, but her voice is so piercing and interesting to me.
Here a link to all my Bumbershoot 2011 photos.
Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center lies southwest of the Ballard neighborhood where we stayed in Seattle. Located on the western edge of Discovery Park, it overlooks Puget Sound. Years ago, Indian activists wrested the site from a parcel of land the city was redeveloping.
I got there by crossing the Ballard Locks and moseying through the neighborhood. It was a long walk, but worth it. On the way to the center, I stopped at this sign, feeling torn. “Land’s End” always sounds so enticing. 
But I chose the detour instead. When I was done exploring the center, I entered the forest remnant nearby and had a green, peaceful hike back to the road. I love finding havens in cities that make you forget the city exists.
This pond was lush with reeds and ferns. The latter were a treat, since I have seldom visited places abounding in ferns.
In September, it was still coated with green algae that made it resemble pavement.
Alas, all good illusions must end, as mine did when I found this extremely un-primeval landmark. 
She has gray hair and sleeps in the doorway. She fits her back into it, concave, her face out for safety.
Sitting on her bedding at 8:30 in the morning, she packs her small troupe of possessions for the day.
Where does she go until the evening? Why does she choose this street busy with restaurants?
The second morning I pass by she talks to a friend. Today the storefront windows lined with brown paper. A new business will move in.
When I was in San Francisco last month, my cousin invited us to eat at Mandalay, one of two Burmese restaurants within a few blocks of each other in San Francisco. I knew nothing about Burmese food, but I was expecting something like Thai food. Burmese food, however, strikes me as less heavy on the chiles than Thai food and more about balance among the ingredients.
Mandalay is a small restaurant and seems to be popular, but we didn’t have to wait long for a table. The three of us squeezed around a table meant for two along one side of the restaurant.
Todd and I started with some frou-frou drinks: in his case, coconut juice sipped from a peeled coconut, and in my case, a refreshing nonalcoholic drink flavored with ginger and cilantro.
There were several dishes with tea leaves on the menu, including the Tea Leaf Salad. The three of us eventually settled on the Ginger Salad, which is similar. The pickled ginger is in the middle, surrounded by peanuts and jalapeños, soy nuts (the menu listed lentils), sesame seeds, fried garlic, and tomatoes. The server brought it to the table this way and mixed it for us. This dish doesn’t really match the American vision of a salad, but the ginger and peppers added a bit of garden freshness to the crunchiness of the other ingredients.
At my cousin’s recommendation, we ordered the Mandalay Special Noodle with chicken, which you see here after it had been mixed (my apologies for the blurry BlackBerry photo). The chicken is hiding in the middle under the fried narrow noodles, surrounded by wide noodles, cilantro, onion, and yellow peas powder (at the bottom). 
It was delicious, but I tried not to hog it all for myself. Our final dish was the Smoked Tea Duck. 
I wanted to try at least one dish with tea leaves, since that seemed to be an important aspect of Burmese cuisine, and the duck was wonderfully tender and lightly smoked. But I have to admit I didn’t notice a distinct flavor of tea leaves. It was a little awkward to divide this entree among three people, but we managed.
Two days after moving into the basement of another friend’s house, I unpacked some of the items in our camping box. I wanted the blue polyester napkins I’d had since graduate school and a couple of glass storage containers. When I opened one of the containers so that I could wash it, out fell a ball of twine, neatly secured with rubber bands.
What an adventure I had planned to go on in 12 Cities, 1 Year. I wanted to have everything with me, everything we could possibly need. No matter that bringing along all this stuff contradicted the spirit of the digital nomad lifestyle. I was going to protect myself with balls of twine (I think there are two in there) and dried sweet onions and a glove for getting things out of the oven. No telling when I might have to pick up something hot.
Yet I always knew I would forget something essential on this trip. And I realized what it was on November 21, three days before Thanksgiving.
That evening I learned I had cancer. I was standing on a sidewalk in San Francisco outside Ramen Dojo, talking to my gynecologist about the results of a biopsy. “It’s not good news,” she said. And it wasn’t. In a way I pitied her. It can’t be fun to spend your evenings calling patients about breast cancer.
And if I could think about her, then I didn’t have to think about myself.
I went back inside the crowded restaurant and told my husband we would talk about it later. Then we ate our garlic ramen, wonderfully rich but a little too spicy. I couldn’t finish mine, but the diagnosis didn’t stop me. I was able to eat mochi for dessert, after all.
We turned down the sidewalk toward our car. I wanted to speak. I breathed carefully. I wanted to tell him, but we walked a block before the words came out of my mouth. “I have cancer,” I said. I often find it difficult to say what I have to say, but this time the words seemed to be pulling up so much fear with them.
That evening I remembered what I forgot to bring on our 12 Cities, 1 Year trip: my health. I was so accustomed to my health, so used to having it with me, that I didn’t think to bring any extra.
Doing things makes me feel better. So I went back to our hotel room in San Francisco, and wrote out an email to my friends and family. I’m not that fond of talking on the phone. I’m much more comfortable with email. And the kind, loving responses started rolling in: sorrow, comfort, recommendations for doctors, offers to help.
The first time I talked about my diagnosis to someone besides Todd, in person, I felt so cold and tight inside. I thought I might start shivering, right there at the Thanksgiving table, over chocolate cake and pumpkin pie. I worried that I might be giving the cancer more power by admitting to it, as if it were some kind of cellular Lord Voldemort.
Every time I talk about the cancer, or listen to a surgeon tell me which body parts I’ll lose, it both relieves and exhausts me. Having a clinical discussion about cancer is easier than crying about it, but both let that cold fear rise a little closer to the surface.
The other night, I watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in which Professor Lupin compliments Harry on being more afraid of the Dementors than of Voldemort. It shows, Lupin said, that Harry was afraid of being afraid. Lupin thought that wise.
I hate being afraid. Thinking about this cancer is like looking over the edge of a pit. There’s a staircase twirling down into it, one of those black metal dealies that you can see through, all the way to the bottom. I dislike heights, and I know that I’ll be terrified walking all the way down that staircase, and all the way back up.
But I also hate waiting. If I stop looking and step down, at least I’ll be doing something.
I’m sitting in my sister’s house in Kansas City on a Friday night, listening to the train in the distance (last night I heard a great horned owl hooting in the backyard). In a way, I’m enjoying a respite from my travels: visiting family and friends, working, and hanging out without feeling the need to do much. In another sense, though, I’m still on 12 Cities, 1 Year, staying in yet another place where I don’t live. In a few days I’ll be back in Denver, and then we’ll fly back to the West Coast and start the slow trek down toward San Diego.
Today I had lunch with a high school friend whom I haven’t seen in 30 years. She’s fighting the good fight as a civil rights attorney for the Department of Education. I’m impressed by what she’s accomplished, but I’m also glad I’m not supervising 10 people. I’m glad I work for myself. As I told her, I never really liked having a job.
One of the great gifts this year keeps giving me is introspection. With each new city, each new exploration, I get to find out more about myself and what I really want. Some days it seems I’m still living the old life, still exploring and blogging about it, still copyediting. Other days, life seems completely different than it did six months ago.
In Portland, I decided I had to visit a French restaurant. This craving had started in Vancouver, but I had been putting it off because French restaurants are almost always expensive, and we had been spending far too much money on food.
My last weekend in Portland, I could resist no longer. After I listened to Ursula K. Le Guin read her long poem “The Conference” at Wordstock 2011, I crossed the Steel Bridge and walked from NW Portland to downtown. I went into one French restaurant, only to be told they were serving brunch and nothing but that day. I kept going.
I found Occupy Portland and watched their decisionmaking process for a while, but when the group split and went off in two different directions, I headed for Brasserie Montmartre.
I wasn’t the only one to show less-than-perfect dedication. 
It was 2 pm on a Sunday, and Brasserie Montmartre was having happy hour. I had a Croque Madame and a green salad and left a generous tip, all for about $12. Although I was a woman dining alone (WDA), the service was excellent.
After I ordered the sandwich, the waiter warned me I wouldn’t be able to eat it with my hands. You can see why.
The innards? Pork belly and Gruyère on brioche. Outside, a fried egg and Mornay sauce on top. All soft and warm and creamy, and the bread was toasted and, I think, brushed with butter. Because there’s not enough dairy in this sandwich.
Lately I’ve been photographing a lot with my BlackBerry. It doesn’t have a very good camera, but it’s a lot lighter than my Canon DSLR. I carry it with me everywhere, so it’s the camera of choice for spur-of-the-moment photography.
One of the themes of the 12 Cities, 1 Year tour is conquering fear: of not being settled, of living in all these different places, of not having a steady job. And, for me, minimizing my fear of heights. I don’t have any ambitions to conquer it; I’d rather go to the bottom of the ocean than the top of a mountain. But I do want to wrestle with the fear a little.
In Portland, Todd and I lived in the SE neighborhood, and if I wanted to get to the credit union, I had to cross the railroad. There were two bridges I could take; the one pictured below was definitely in need of renovation. It leaned to one side, and some of the boards were rotting. It wasn’t in any danger of falling down, but I wouldn’t want to jump up and down on it. 
As I crossed it, I was breathing hard, saying out loud, “You can do this.” Luckily for me, a train didn’t pass by underneath while I was crossing.
On the North Steel Bridge near Portland’s Rose Quarter, it was a different story. A much sturdier bridge than the one shown above, the Steel Bridge has lanes for walking and biking, driving cars and riding buses, and riding the light rail. From the Rose Quarter side, it looked intimidating to me. But once I got out over the water, I felt rather protected by all the concrete. Walking across didn’t bother me too much, at least not until I reached the middle section, made of metal. For some reason that unnerved me.
The railroad ran underneath on its way to who-knows-where.
North Steel Bridge had a different vibration depending on what was crossing it at any given time. But the view from it was spectacular, even on a cloudy day. That day I was thinking my fear of heights masks a desire to leap off the bridge and see how long it will take to hit the water and how it will feel. I always feel safer walking above water than walking above land. I guess my brain figures water is softer, but of course that depends on how far above it I am!
The Broadway Bridge crosses the Willamette River to the north, and on the other side of the river from the Rose Quarter is this marina, serving some riverside development in NW Portland. 
I tried to get a picture of every kind of transport crossing the Steel Bridge, but I was most interested in the light rail. Here two trains, going in opposite directions, pass each other. The pedestrian/cyclist lane is wider than it looks here, but nevertheless I kept checking behind me to see that no cyclists were trying to get by.
And here, at the NW end of the bridge, I saw the tail end of the Portland Marathon.
I don’t honestly know how much of an effect these experiments have on my fear of heights. It has definitely worsened with age, but I find that when I do confront it in some small way, I can “Keep Calm and Carry On” through the fear. Sometimes it isn’t so bad, sort of like a fizzing in my stomach, and sometimes I feel quite lightheaded.
In any case, I dislike being afraid, so I will go on challenging myself in these small ways. Don’t expect me to start climbing mountains or building high-rises, though.
I took the picture below in Pioneer Place in Portland on a rainy Saturday night before the AIDS walk. Looks pretty standard, right? Just a landmark, a tourist attraction, etc. The red carpet on the bottom right was set up for the AIDS walk.
What’s important is what I left out of the picture: the young man who came bounding into my camera frame, begging me to take a picture of him and “send it to my Mom.” I don’t know whether he was serious about that, but he did his best to charm me into photographing him. I wouldn’t relent, though. By God, I was going to take a photo of a landmark, and no random resident of Portland was going to get in the shot! Finally, he gave up and walked away.
Later I wished I had humored him. I regretted being so rigid. After all, didn’t I set out on the 12 Cities, 1 Year trip to meet new people and learn new ways of doing things?
I have to remind myself, sometimes, that it’s okay to change direction in mid-course. To plan things one way and have them turn out entirely different. Sometimes I am far too committed to consistency. But, then, what else would you expect of a copyeditor?
I’ve posted a lot of pictures from the 12 Cities tour on Flickr. Go check them out. I’d love to have your comments.
We ate a lot of good food in Seattle and didn’t even scratch the surface of Ballard in a month, let alone the entire city. Most restaurants we visited only once, and many of them didn’t seem to warrant a full review after so little experience, but there were memorable meals along the way.
There must have been 10 coffee shops within easy walking distance of our apartment in Ballard. This vegan doughnut came from Café Mox, which is attached to a game store.
The Counter, located in Ballard Blocks, is definitely worth visiting. The build-your-own burger Todd ordered was fabulous. You could order a burger patty on a salad, so I tried that with a veggie burger topped with pineapple, but the idea was more interesting than the reality.
Hi-Life was located along NW Market Street and was always packed. We intended to go there some Sunday for the fried chicken but ended up at brunch with this obscenely thick French toast.
I had oysters several times in Seattle. Here: Penn Cove. The server at Emmet Watson's Oyster Bar in Pike Place Market (not where I got this one) explained that August and September may not be the best months to eat oysters because they're spawning and they may taste funny. After I left Seattle, I read about several people getting sick from Washington oysters. I was lucky.
Salted cod with ajilimojili sauce from La Isla, the Puerto Rican restaurant in Ballard. Lovely fried fish.
Todd had the pernil, a pork dish. This restaurant had tasty sauces; I believe the red sauce is mojito sauce. It also had a waiter who wasn't comfortable looking at me, for some reason, even though I was paying.
Portage Bay, a large cafe near Ballard Locks, offered a toppings bar with French toast and such. Here it is.
The great thing about Portage Bay's toppings bar was that you could order just the toppings for $6, so I did.
I began with berries and I’ve ended with berries. There are berry brambles fruiting in Portland right now, but they’re not ripe yet. I think it’s so cool to be able to pluck berries as I’m walking along. I’ve never before lived in a city where that was possible.
I got a good haircut in Missoula the week before I left, but by the time I got to Portland six weeks later, my hairline in back was pretty shaggy. Yesterday I was walking to our rental from K & F Coffeehouse and noticed Gilly’s Salon on Clinton. I’d also noticed Sei Bella salon while looking at Ladd’s Rose Garden Circles and Squares, which is an X-shaped set of streets a few blocks from our apartment. I checked out both on Yelp and decided on Gilly’s.
When I walked in, I saw a woman reading a magazine and told her I’d like to make an appointment. She said she could cut my hair right then and introduced herself as Gilly (with a hard G). I told her that my hair has been falling out for 15 years and my husband thinks I should just buzz it again but I’m still fond of running my fingers through my hair (all 3 to 4 inches of it). She thought I still had enough hair for a style, especially in the back, so after some negotiation about how to style the back, she got to work with a razor.
It was the longest I’ve been in a stylist’s chair for a haircut alone, probably more than an hour. She was meticulous about shaping the hairline over my ears and the layers in back. All the while, we chatted about southern Oregon and the differences between Portland and Seattle and our similar reactions to shaving our heads. She said she wished she had bought a house in the SE part of Portland before it got so hip and expensive.
Toward the end, I was feeling sleepy and thinking, “Are we there yet?” But when she showed me the neckline, I was very happy with it. My hair feels so short now but still has volume on top.
Gilly’s uses Organic Color Systems to color its clients’ hair. So if you’re sensitive to the chemicals in traditional hair dye or you are looking for less toxic hair products, this is the salon for you.
To eat at Señor Moose Cafe is to experience the despair of never being able to try everything on the menu. Even the selection of salsas was eclectic. The peanut sauce (top) had the most heat, whereas the tamarind in the lower right was mild. 
The second time I ate there, for dinner, I wanted to try Filete enchocolatado (steak sauteed with bitter chocolate, wine, and onion) and about 10 other things. I settled on Enchiladas de la plaza because I’d never been to a Mexican restaurant that advertised a sauce with cream and egg.
Señor Moose originally opened as a breakfast place, but then the owner, Kathleen Andersen, realized nobody in Seattle was serving the comida tipica from Mexico’s central plateau (Michoacan, Nayarit, Jalisco, and Mexico City) that she had been craving. So the staff started adding breakfast specials that Andersen had learned to make while eating at fondas (mom-and-pop restaurants) and making food with friends in Mexico. Then the cafe added a full dinner menu.
That kind of variety doesn’t come cheap. It costs a lot more than the $10 you might drop on a meal and a drink at El Taco de Mexico in Denver.
The name of Todd’s entree alone was worth it: Puerco en nuestro mas reciente mole. 
Among other things, the sauce was made with 4 chiles, almonds, sesame seeds, chocolate, and sweet spices. The pork cooks in the sauce for a long time, resulting in a darker, hotter flavor than the relatively mild sauce on my enchiladas filled with potatoes, corn, and carrots. Todd’s entree was flashy; mine was squishy but still good. 
When you walk into the restaurant, there’s a counter on the left and a dining room on the right that ends in a bar with the sign: “No Minors. No Firearms.” The room with the counter seemed blazingly hot both times we were there, so we sat in the other room and got served by the same no-nonsense waitress who reminded me of my friend Catherine. During our stay in Seattle from August 17 to September 17, there was an art exhibit in that room featuring a painting on a ironing board. It’s a funky little place.
The morning of our first visit, I ordered huevos ahogados, expecting tomato soup with a few poblanos and some cheese and 2 poached eggs. It wasn’t my usual breakfast fare, but that was, of course, the attraction.
What I got was a smoky tomato broth absolutely loaded with chilies. 
I ate the eggs and drank as much of the broth with chilies as I could; the broth itself was lovely—salty and spicy—but the chilies defeated me. Todd ordered machacas con papas. I remember the beef being crispy; he doesn’t. In any case, it was a hearty meal.
Writing this review from Portland has made me want to drive back to Seattle to have just one more dish. If you’re in Seattle, go up to Ballard and try Señor Moose. It’s open for breakfast and lunch until 3 and then from 5 to 9 or 10 for dinner. 
On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I wanted to be around people. So I took Todd to one of the few Seattle events commemorating 9/11 that was happening at night. We drove down 99 and over the Seattle bridge to Alki Beach in West Seattle.
First we stopped at the Loghouse Museum, a small museum about the arrival of the white settlers in 1851 run by the West Seattle Historical Society. Although the settlers soon moved up the coast to what is now downtown Seattle, Alki Beach was the place they first landed. It is called the “birthplace of Seattle.”
Alki is a word in Chinook Indian jargon that means “by and by.” I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as Chinook Indian jargon, which I believe was a language created to facilitate trade. The Chinook Indians recently achieved recognition by the federal government.
The Duwamish tribe, of which Chief Seattle was a member (he was also Suquamish), does not have federal status. They were recognized by the Clinton administration, but that decision was overturned by the Bush administration, probably in the early 2001 frenzy to overturn anything from the Clinton era. The Duwamish have, however, found the money to build a longhouse, which is located east of the West Seattle Golf Course on Marginal Way.
After we went through the museum, we walked down to Alki Beach and ate dinner. Then we joined the crowd around the replica of the Statue of Liberty on Alki Beach, where people brought flowers and offerings in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. People put flowers and stones and writings around the base of the statue. The West Seattle Historical Society showed up with items salvaged from the original memorial, as well as candles, and people began lighting the candles and arranging them in front of the memorial. The mood was quiet but not really somber. Occasionally someone broke out in song.
There were lots of people taking pictures and video. Just down the beach, children played in the cold surf. As we walked back to our car, we noticed the moon was full.
I put my pictures of the Alki Beach 9/11 memorial on Flickr.
When Todd and I planned our 12 Cities, 1 Year trip, we anticipated that moving from one city to another every month might get a little tedious. Now we’re two months into our trip, about to head to Portland, and I haven’t gotten sick of it yet. My heart lifts when I think of going to Portland. A new place! It’s still my thrill.
I was doing the dishes tonight, though, and realized that repacking all our kitchen gear will definitely not be a thrill. Our situation has improved since June: we’ve gotten better at packing quickly and leaving enough room to see out the back window of the Prius. But we still have a lot of crap we have to fit into a small space. Todd has mentioned sending the camping gear to his parents, and I can see why, though it’s possible we might want to camp in California or Arizona. So I’m torn.
All this is part of a process of pulling up stakes, going somewhere, and resettling. But we settle somewhere only long enough to become acquainted with the place. We’re not spending enough time anywhere to get sick of it. And even though I don’t like the fact that our current bed sits right on the floor—no frame—I can’t get worked up enough about it to care. It will be history in less than two weeks.
I’m surprised that I’m not more bothered by the variability of our living quarters. After 15 years of living in one house, I expected to mourn all the comforts I gave up. But so far, I’m not. Maybe it was good that our first rental was a house; maybe that was less shocking than moving straight to an apartment after not renting for so many years.
I hope it never bothers us very much. I hope we become more flexible and tolerant this year, not less.
I wouldn’t say I’m a connoisseur of fish, and I’m certainly not a fisherwoman. I leave that to my father-in-law. But I do enjoy eating sushi and various types of grilled or sauteed fish. Salmon, especially, I love raw or smoked, but I have never had very good grilled salmon. It has always been a little too stiff and tasteless, no matter where I’ve eaten it.
Then I went to Ray’s Boathouse, located on Puget Sound on the top side of Salmon Bay. That is, in Ballard, the Seattle neighborhood Todd and I are staying in until mid-September. I saw it on a map one day, and when my birthday came around, I knew I wanted to go there for dinner.
I chose the Boathouse rather than the Cafe, although the Cafe is cheaper and offers outdoor seating (and blankets if necessary). The former was much pricier, but I wasn’t looking to economize. I don’t usually order a bottle of wine for just the two of us, but since the Boathouse had won lots of Wine Spectator awards, I decided to try one of the gruner veltliners on the menu (a dry blend with riesling), and Todd chose a drink made with cachaça (I can’t find it on the website, so I can’t tell you its name. I don’t think it was a capirinha). 
Each of us had a salad before the meal. Mine was the Boistfort Valley Farm salad, with locally grown peas, pecorino, mint, and an onion vinaigrette.
Mostly, I remember that the cheese was nice. Todd ordered the Boathouse Salad, with butter lettuce, Point Reyes Farmstead blue cheese, almonds, and a raspberry theme vinaigrette. His salad is very colorful.
Todd finished his drink and started helping me with the wine. Then our entrees arrived. Both our entrees were smoked with mesquite; his salmon on a bed of couscous was so tender it made me like grilled salmon again. 
I had sablefish, which I’ve never eaten before. It tasted lightly smoked and was lusciously fatty, like pork belly. They warned me there might be a few bones in the middle. The reasonable portion of risotto was crisp around the edges, and the apricot coulis was nice but hardly necessary. 
I took this picture with my BlackBerry, and the shallow puddle of coulis looks quite huge and solid here.
We decided against dessert, having already filled up on wine and fish and the sunset over Puget Sound. 
After our interview with Kate Sheridan at UM Flat (way back on July 25, the day before we went to Glacier National Park), she left to have lunch with a friend, and we headed over to #1 Gyros, also on 5th Avenue, but on the west side of Higgins Avenue in Missoula. (This is the second restaurant I’ve seen in Missoula that has “Watch Your Step” way down on the ground there. It’s a little passive-aggressive, I think.)
The restaurant was pretty empty when we arrived at 12:45, but people did trickle in after us. It was a good thing because I took a while to make up my mind about my order.
Our landlady had recommended that we order the Greek fries.
Made with oregano, salt, and lemon juice, they were the best thing we ate. Winner in the most startling category: the thick, uber-garlicky hummus. Don’t eat it if you have to interact with people before you can brush your teeth. Or if you prefer hummus that tastes of lemon—I couldn’t taste anything but the garlic. I have to admit, though, I enjoyed the purity of the experience.
I must have been craving gooey food that day because I ordered the special fries (with feta, cayenne, and tzatziki). If you want spicy fries, you should ask them to add extra cayenne. They were a little too loaded for my taste, but the tzatziki did add a nice lemon-yogurt flavor. Both of us preferred the Greek fries. 
And, finally, there was the gyro. I thought it was appropriate that it seems to be drooling. 
I realized as I was writing this that I don’t really expect much from gyros. Perhaps I’ve had too many generic sandwiches from Falafel King in Boulder. This one was good, but the gyro I remember is the one I had in Vancouver. The dollop of tzakziki on it was very thick, and the gyro-maker slit a whole pita so far down that he could fill it and then wrap the contents to make a falafel that looked like a burrito.
And do I remember the name of the restaurant? No, but if you go west on Robson Street in Vancouver to the Blue Horizon Hotel and look across Robson, you will see a Mediterranean restaurant. And maybe the man who wraps falafels will be there.
I’m a sucker for stories with magical gateways, portals, paths that lead to Fairyland. And in real life, I am constantly seeing gateways in the most ordinary places: an arch in a hedge, a dim path through trees, even a street.
I went out one night to photograph such a magical place and found myself captivated by fauna instead. The fauna, however, were captivated by flora.
Guess how many fawns there are in this picture.
This shot was taken from about a block away. I kept approaching when the doe looked away. They moved away as I came closer.
All of a sudden, someone was yelling at me. I turned sharply to see an old man on a bike, admonishing me to “photograph the sunset!” I looked behind me. There was a little color in the sky, but nothing special. I shrugged and added him to my list of people who annoy me when I’m looking through a camera or binoculars.
He rode down the street a little and then stopped, saying, “Oh. Deer.”
I guess this picture explains why people go to such lengths to deer-proof their yards.
They walked around the side of the house to the backyard.
All the attention was making them nervous, yet I was hungry for more photographs. I don’t have the lenses for wildlife photography, so I made the most of this opportunity.
The fawns began to get antsy, racing around. 
I remembered that this new camera had video capabilities. While I was fumbling with it, the fawns wore themselves out and slowed down a bit, but the flags were still flying. 
After a few more minutes and 1 very boring, shaky video, I realized we were approaching Higgins, a busy street in Missoula that goes by the university district. Then it occurred to me that the deer probably wanted to eat more succulent plants from the Garden City’s yards, not cross a thoroughfare. So I turned around and went home, having been delighted by a bit of ordinary magic.
Paul’s Pancake Parlor doesn’t brag about itself. Why should it? Todd and I have been there twice and it’s been packed both times. But it does tell it like it is: “All our batters are homemade.”
And what a selection of batters there is: chocolate chip, chocolate chip caramel, buckwheat, five kinds of rolled pancakes (on the crepes side of pancakes), and many more. Not to mention waffles, regular egg breakfasts, burgers, and sandwiches. And two kinds of desserts: pie, and pie à la mode.
I always feel happy about a place that declares, “Breakfast served all day.” As I’ve said before, staying open from dawn until dusk seems to be a Missoula tradition.
Or that talks about great-grandmother’s sourdough starter.
On my first trip, I had the rolled Swedish pancakes with lingonberry butter. No syrup required.
I declined to have them stuffed with cream cheese. As it was, I ate only two, and these “pancakes” are thinner than the regular ones so that they can be rolled.
On our second visit, I ordered an egg breakfast, and it was OK. The eggs and the hash browns both seemed a little undercooked. The bacon was purple and greasy, and I had 4 pieces, so I gave one to Todd. Turns out his “Western” omelet was a little different: it was filled with bacon. The onions and peppers and ham and cheese were on the wrapping, made of eggs. 
Let’s just say he didn’t lack for bacon that day. His order also included a stack of pancakes and a half-plate of fruit that the waitress was kind enough to re-plate for him. It looked neater before we started eating it.
I loved our waitress. She was beset by many tables but stayed calm. I flagged her down to get a cup of coffee, and then after I’d had two sips and she wanted to refill it, I said no. Her response: “Oh, sure, waving me down for coffee and now you don’t want any.” I didn’t say no after that.
The other thing I loved about Paul’s was the art on the walls, especially the sign for the mixer on the right below: 
“Why beat it by hand?” has become the motto of our age. Why do anything by hand when you can get a computer chip to do it for you?
If you go to Paul’s, take friends and order several different kinds of pancakes. Reviews on Urbanspoon suggested the burgers were also good.
That’s the trouble, you see. Here I am starting the 12 Cities, 1 Year tour, and I don’t have the faintest idea how to do it. How do I distill the essence of a city and then write it for you?
Part of the problem is my reluctance to intrude. I’m a bit of a lurker at heart.
But to know a city, you have to meet at least a few of its people. I could, of course, just walk around, take pictures of neighborhoods and farmers markets and powwows and downtown buildings, and that would give you, my readers, a sense of the place. But it feels cowardly to me.
I could describe it for you, but it would be better if locals described it for you.
One local we met suggested we try to get an audience with the mayor. I’ve been thinking about sending an email but still haven’t done it. Honestly, I’d be impressed is a mayor would take the time to meet with us.
I can see that I will need to get out of my comfort zone a little.
As we walked up to the library in Burlington, Colorado, this morning, we saw this mysterious sign: 
No cake pans in the book drop … OK. At first we thought it was one of those ridiculous warnings now common on products: “Don’t submerge this electrical device in water!” “Don’t stab yourself with this knife!”
We went inside, printed what we needed, and went to look for the bathrooms. And then we found this unusual little alcove. 
While I was there, a mother came in with her two children, a boy and a younger girl, and they picked out pans.
I love discovering little secrets like these.
I hope the next year is full of them. Burlington was our first stop in our 12 Cities, 1 Year project (though the first official stop is actually Missoula).
I have a lot on my mind these days.
Todd and I are getting ready to sell this house and travel the western half of the United States for a year.
It’s not good timing. My father is in assisted living, and my siblings and I have to deal with all that sets in motion. Of course, in this situation, it’s hard to know what would be good timing. I’ve wanted to travel like this for years.
I will continue to copyedit while traveling, and I hope to be able to sell my photographs on the road, though I’m not sure how that’s possible without a permit, and how will I get a permit in each city when I’m there for only a month? Todd is trying to convince Polycom to let him work remotely and planning his next movie, to be shot on the road.
There’s some risk involved. It’s possible, though unlikely, that we could burn through all the profits from the sale of the house and not be able to afford to buy a new one. It’s also possible we’ll keep traveling after this year.
That’s what I like about this situation: I don’t know what’s going to happen.
We have a route planned, which you can see on our 12 Cities, 1 Year website. We have some general ideas of what we want to do in certain cities. That’s about it. We welcome suggestions about things to do in each city.
Right now, though, our focus is on selling the house. We were planning to take it to market next week, but I decided I needed another week to work on the yard. After that, we have to get rid of most of our stuff, which I think will be a bigger chore than selling the house.
When I moved to Boulder in 1987, my sister and I brought a carload of stuff. After my arrival, I bought a bed and a cardboard dresser. I enjoyed not having so much stuff, and I think I will enjoy going back to that state.