After 10 years of motor home life, I expect days at a standstill. In confinement. The slow roll toward mythical warmth or family interrupted, usually because of weather, mechanical failure, fatigue, or occasionally just to enjoy where we are.

At home, looking ahead to such times, I envisioned a becalmed self. Someone ready to cherish the long hours that become days, waiting for the snow to stop falling or energy to return. Someone oblivious to the repetitious dreary markers of those days—3 meals and cleanup, ignored resolutions to exercise in the cold, bedtime. Someone who no longer yearned for motion, for the antique mall miraculously in walking distance or the beckoning restaurant, local and un-chained. I saw a resolute self finally writing, or playing with images and ideas on the pretext of designing cards. Someone with love-work to do who sat finally doing it, absorbed, well-prepared, gratefully at peace.

I expected that beginning and continuing would be a struggle. Words are elusive, ideas corralled and nurtured for years, fragile; setting up and then breaking down the computer an obstacle. And always the question: is it possible to bring something to life, if only for me? Still, there is desire—the flame flickering and in tow as I'm loosed from home.

Weeks before we left, the pleasures I found in friendships and work were a beautiful home for me. Planning, packing and leaving were intense labor. This first week on the road I've been lethargic in heart, mind and body as we moved from a Pittsfield Walmart parking lot to a Pennsylvania truck stop, to a Virginia Walmart, to an RV park, to Ripplin Water RV park near Dollywood in Tennessee. I have created emergency ads at rest stops, sent some emails, made a few phone calls.

In Fort Payne, Alabama these last 3 days, halted by crunchy layered snow and sleet, we've joined the national sorrow and searching inspired by events radiating from Tucson.

I've called out to that self I saw at home, urging her forward, and at the same time, entreated her to relax and enjoy a rest. I'll not challenge her overmuch at this point by issuing that eternal imperious order—just be in the moment.

Yesterday, I began to fumble toward something by starting this, my first blog entry this year, this trip. Regardless of what I do or don't do, there is the unfolding.