We traveled up the Natchez Parkway, an amazing stretch of 440 miles, not freeway, but undeveloped land on either side of this winding road that follows the original Natchez Trace that hunters, traders, explorers, and finally settlers followed from the Tennessee Valley down to the Mississippi. Spring is the best time for this journey, as we saw flowering dogwood, the famed Southern redbud, and the palest green of new leaves.

We're most likely going to be out of the range of internet for the next several days as we visit Tennessee cousins, so we took advantage of our new webcam and Skype to catch up with friends all over the country. Whew! It's so good to actually SEE these dear friends after so long.

Some of you know that for April, National Poet's Month, I'm trying to write a poem a day. If you'd like to read the poems, go to Beth and Writing or click the link to Beth's poems on the right. Otherwise, all goes well. Allen enjoyed the final four in men and women's basketball, and I'm plugging along with the writing.

Every so once in a while, I meeet someone online or here in the world who's traveling much as we are, nomadic, and I'm thinking there is one skill to develop and that is the ability to live with a great deal of ambiguity about the future. Even with a very structured life, we can't know the future, but we can know our innermost dreams.

As we travel around the country, so many people do say they wish they could simply let go and travel as we are doing. Some say they couldn't give up their homes, their friends, their "things," their routines, their way of life, so carefully constructed after years of effort. This may sound morbid, but what is death but such a giving up? If living in the same way year after year is your heart's dream, so be it. I hope to return to the west coast as, yes, I want to be close to family and friends, but the world beckons.