Author Archives: sophiasongs

For two minutes today, the weariness of our country’s chaos, settled deep in our bones, got a respite. The separateness which we create out of our fears was loosened just a bit. With our differences in place, millions of us together turned our gaze towards the meeting of sun and moon. A rare opportunity toContinue reading “Two minutes of wonder; reflections on the eclipse”

Most of Dad’s ashes from his death two years ago went into the pre-bought cemetery plot in the city. What I kept are being scattered this Father’s Day, as I travel along the Big Hole River Valley in Montana.  His birthplace state; a place he loved for its Big Sky and open spaces.  A placeContinue reading “Flow free, Dad.”

I stand on the rock jetty with the mighty Columbia River on my left side and the Pacific Ocean on the right. This is where they meet.  Where their separateness joins. The meeting of the waves is fierce as the surge of the river encounters the power of the ocean. There is a life metaphorContinue reading “A Jetty Runs Through It. Water, Life & Transformation.”

It was like the Cantina tavern scene from Star Wars, only on a public ocean beach. It wasn’t pretty. We were headed to San Luis Obispo, California, when Bill saw the sign for Pismo State Beach. “Let’s stop there,” he said.  We had made sandwiches for a picnic lunch along the way. Pismo is theContinue reading “Party at Pismo Beach”

They sit on a desert path bordering the Rio Grande River in Big Bend National Park in Texas: The “No Wall” cans for collecting money and the handmade wire roadrunners and scorpions.  Mexico is visible across the river. I put my $6 in a can and take a roadrunner.  I wonder who will retrieve the dollar billsContinue reading “The Roadrunner, the River and the Border”

A previous post, It’s Worth the Drive, was about the unexpected discoveries of food on the journey. Arguably, not everything is about food… We left Seattle on February 25th. We had a pretty substantial itinerary ready for us before we left.  So, not every stop we made was unexpected. Nevertheless, each stop held something special orContinue reading “It’s Worth the Drive: Part Two”

Snow doesn’t always cover up; it reveals what cannot be seen in ordinary weather. Taught to see snow as beauty covering the mundane, I now see its deeper purpose: illuminating what I previously could not see which is not as mundane as I thought. This is both a literal and metaphorical lesson. On the groundContinue reading “Seeming to conceal, it reveals. Life lessons from snow while on the road.”