I’ve always loved the Little Free Library practice, where people build cute waterproof wood boxes with a couple of shelves filled with books that neighbors can take from and/or add to. In our neighborhood there are many.
But one neighbor chose a different option, stocking a cute little box with art, not books. It brightened our morning rainy stroll.
Happy first Saturday in 2025. May you be inspired to “borrow, make and share art.”
Some things that caught my eye on a rainy January walk on a trail that skirts the Coast Fork Willamette River at the Mount Pisgah Arboretum: Catkins on an unknown kind of tree. I know alders have them. Also hazelnuts. It’s hard to recognize trees without their leaves. Then, shrubby snowberry in front of a pine tree of some kind. I’ve heard that birds (thrushes, grosbeaks) eat the berries, but I’ve never seen this myself. Also, the bright red leaves of a snaking berry vine.
I love the things that stand out on a dreary day. Outings fuel the imagination, which is a fine thing for reality to do. This old quonset hut, which I’ve passed many times, suggested itself on this walk as a setting in a story I’m mulling. The quonset hut itself made me think about things a character might do there, which then prompted an interaction among characters, which then tugged on the plot. Maybe all that will be something. Maybe it won’t. But it sends a great exciting creative tingle up the spine.
Travel guru, guide and inspiration Rick Steves gave a great interview recently to the New York Times. He’s promoting his new book (out in February), On the Hippie Trail. Steves revisits — using journals he kept at the time — a 1970’s trip he took that inspired his life-long love affair with travel and with helping others explore Europe.
The urge to wander may well be baked into all of us, the leaving for unknown places as wonderful as the coming home. And having a guide like Rick Steves to offer suggestions, heck, even to plan and build out the trip can be a real boon.
But there’s a unique joy that comes from creating a personal itinerary based on what excites me. The pictures here come from a trip to Europe, three weeks of travel that began in London where we stayed on a canal boat on Regent’s Canal. We spent five days on that little boat, home base as we explored the city. We learned about the canal boats as a lodging option because of Airbnb.
Our travels took us through France and into Switzerland. A couple of pictures from the France portion of the trip: kayaking down the Ardeche River and taking a boat tour along Calanques National Park east of Marseille.
How did I know about the Ardeche and this French national park gem on the stunning Mediterranan? Reading and previous trips. Just, you know, paying attention to things I find interesting.
Eclectic German filmmaker Werner Herzog made an amazing film that premiered in 2010 about Chauvet Cave that includes stunning scenes of the natural stone arch over the Ardeche River, which is near where cavers discovered the 30,000-year-old art that Herzog’s film so beautifully displays. That part of the film just stuck in my head. I wanted a closer look, not at the cave because it’s closed to visitors to protect the art. (There is a replica of the magnificent Chauvet Cave, which is kind of stunning and surprising and I’m glad I saw, but still, somehow, diminished in my mind for not being actually 30,000 years old.)
Other places I’ve visited in Europe prompted my interest because they were places described in novels I really loved.
I highly recommend becoming your own Rick Steves, exploring other places based on your own curiosity, what you read, what you learn from friends, what pulls at your inner wanderer. It’s January of a brand new year. I know I’m going to build out the itinerary for another trip. I don’t know where yet, but I have a few ideas. I’ll write about my process in case anyone else needs a little inspiration in becoming their own tour guide.
Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now 