Sisters 2025

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As I savor the feel

Of the radiating warmth

From the the flow of 

Electricity that I often

Take for granted

 

I think of the 

Women of Palestine

As they arise in the cold to

labor each day

As a rock in the river 

Of genocide that sweeps away 

Their children 

Lovers, husbands, sons, nephews

Sisters

Ribbonning through their hunger and thirst,

With jagged fishooks of generational trauma 

Are the currents of unstoppable fear-

The Male blood-red lust for control

And anger at a world that 

Will never give that…

 

Then the women of Sudan

Who bear the blackened waves of the

Men’s impotency turned 

To pain-giving thrusts of hatred 

Toward an earth who 

They feel

Never gave them 

A path forward, 

Churning and churning toward

Death and their 

Existential fear of it

through the violent 

Terror and torture of the 

sisters mothers aunties

Who birthed them, who held them

Who raised them

 

And the women of Afghanistan

Painfully close to the sound of freedom, 

Now hearing the demanding roars from men

To silence feminine voices that

Carry the power of the Goddess

That long abandoned the men

after the multitude of 

Rapes and attacks, 

That inconceivable lack of compassion leaves 

Bereft the women in blue enclosures

even as they 

Carry within them, the males of the next generation

Of oppression, fear and loss.

 

This perpetual mysterious self hatred of men,

Projected ever outward 

Despite the only love beyond love

They have experienced being in

The arms of the women who tunneled their

Pathway to the planet—

They seem to always turn in fury

On the women trying to survive

The refusal of the masculine

To reflect on its cyclic shadow

Of pain and agony

 

I feel paralyzed and unable to  

Attempt any sort of understanding

Of how we have become so unbalanced 

And my body so denied of its agency 

As to leave the sisters of our 

Collective body 

Dying of the perennial testosterone-fused cancer

fear

Encrusting every cell of creativity

Peace and joy

That could be

That can be

A beautiful human destiny

My sisters I pray for us

My brothers, I tentatively wait for your wisdom

To grow

In time for our survival.

Leggy poem

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I want a poem with legs

To walk around this great big world,

Striding over and into 

Many places, cultures and times

And Into the hearthstone of my 

Beloved fellow travelers

 

I want a poem that can pour a cuppa

And gently warm pairs of cold hands

Offering comforts for 

the anxious movements and twitches

That accompany being a human

And aware

 

I want a poem with eyes to see

And witness the wrongs of the planet’s people

Or take in the illuminated awe-infused moments

With the tongue and lips

To tell the thousands of stories

Our faces have turned from burning in shame

Or the thousands of other tales of surviving

And thriving

To reflect the beauty within the pain

And the treasure within the tempest

 

I want a poem with ears to hear

The ancient songs 

and whispered secrets of lovers 

The glory-triumphant proclamations

Or the desperate screams of the forsaken

Vibrating with the waves of 

Wonder 

And the anguished cries of heartbreak

 

I want a poem with long reaching arms

To wrap around the little things

The tender things 

That pulse with in each of us, 

To hold us up against a mighty

chest of strength

Like our Papas taking us to bed,

When we pretend to sleep, nestled against

The familiar smells and calming wisdom

Of our elders,

 

I want a poem that offers the breast 

Of the madonna,

Providing sustenance, healing and soothing

In heavenly manna freely flowing to all

And each as needed

Stopping the forever hunger for at least

These precious gulping moments

 

I want a poem with a rapid beating heart

And gasping lungs,

With the sweat of life long labors

And the vast relief of rest at long last

Alive with the exquisite perceptions

That beat with the love that longs to

Join in its harmonious rhythms

To the silver threads we weave and unravel

 

This poem I want is the desire to destroy

Our pathetic attempts at aggrandizement of 

The tiny fears and failings

The lost in loneliness meanderings through

The dark woods and vast night skies of 

Our need to be small and large at the same time

At the same time, to keep ignited the flame of hope

And wonder alight and alive

With trust.

 

 I want a poem to heal us, to see the wholeness 

Of us, 

To acknowledge our deep need

With each other

Even as we oft work to distance ourselves from that

I want a poem that builds the bridge 

Between us.

Looking Back.

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We are a visual people. Images have dominated our communication from early cave
paintings to the digital age. Our thoughts, emotions, and stories are best captured in
photos. An image can provide description when words fail; it can also lead to better
reactions, emotions, and thoughts.
Travel has always been best expressed in Photographs. The visual experience of travel.
It starts with a passport photo, then a view from a plane, train, bus, or automobile
window, and finally the destination. Each a visual experience. Travel and photography
have always been intertwined. We have such a brief amount of time on this earth that
I can’t think of a better use of that time than to travel, to photograph the world, to
experience life in different places. For me, there’s not many things I find more important
than that.
I take photographs, lots of photographs. The places I’ve traveled captured a memory
bank that can be revisited. The captured moments remind me of the experiences I’ve
been lucky enough to enjoy. Pictures saved are not just for tourists. They are stories. They
are shared. If someone tells me a photo inspired them to travel or brought back
forgotten memories of their own travels, I’m encouraged and inspired myself.
In my travels I’ve walked to get where I want to go. I walk as much as possible. A simple
exercise, no car, no train, no bus. Authenticity is key, walking the footsteps of previous
travelers.
My camera and belongings on my back. Everything carried as I hit the open road. The
freedom walking provides forces me to slow down and appreciate the surroundings. It’s
the journey, not the destination.

Looking back.

So, What Happened to The Overland Trail?

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“The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than ever.” -Ken Kesey.

The Overland trek was not for the faint hearted. After 3,000 years of human infection, smallpox was finally declared eradicated in 1979. Until then, it was the world’s most feared disease. In the 20th century alone, it’s estimated to have claimed 300 million lives. The thirty percent fatality rate was part of the story. The other involved the potential loss of eyesight and the painful development of pus-filled lesions followed by pitted scars.

In 1975, the prevailing recommendation for international traveler’s departing Australia was to be vaccinated against smallpox, cholera, and typhoid. That was a painful but necessary experience.

Obtaining visas for the various countries we were traveling through was always a hassle. It wasn’t about showing up at the border of most countries and gaining entry and e-Visas were decades away. Lining up as many visas ahead of time took months of planning, especially for extended periods of travel.

Visas were gold, your permission to enter the country that could take weeks to obtain.

We’d have to take our passports to an embassy, consulate, or diplomatic mission, or sometimes even mail them in and wait for them to be returned. We also had to be sure they would not expire by the time we reached the country’s border. Problem was in trying to estimate our arrival dates. Our passport pages filled quickly with visa entries and exit stamps. Extension pages had to be added to our passports to accommodate all our visa stamps. The stamps were important but also created problems because where we’d been sometimes conflicted politically with where we were headed.

A visa or stamp of a previously visited country occasionally raised flags for border officials. We had heard stories and were warned by travelers who had been refused entry to certain countries based on the stamps in their passport. We learned to request not to have our passport pages stamped with the entry visa for Israel. A separate single page was issued, stamped, and slipped into our passports. An Israeli arrival stamp would pose a serious problem if we wanted to travel to any Arab country after visiting Israel. We were hoping to get to Jordan and maybe Egypt after Israel, but after hearing stories of backpackers being refused entry into those countries because immigration officials suspected they had visited Israel and were immediately refused entry and made to leave. Jordan and Egypt would have to wait.

Social media didn’t exist! And that was a blessing. We were never haunted by the need to constantly be plugged in to friends and the home we’d intentionally left behind. There were no ‘Instagram images beckoning us to follow the hordes to sites of mass tourism, or a digital universe to stifle our capacity for independent discovery. Destinations weren’t shared with influencers or ordinary travelers who packed the latest fashionable wardrobe for capturing self-promoting photographs beside iconic landmarks. Selfie sticks didn’t exist, so we didn’t have to witness people taking unnecessary risks for extreme selfies or ‘the perfect shot’ to garner as many likes as possible. Overland travel wasn’t regarded as a competition or a checklist in the ’70s, social media wasn’t a platform that existed to promote it. And hunting down Wi-Fi to access it was another hassle several decades into the future. 

I’m pleased our generation didn’t have to think about the unchecked power of social media, and whether or not we had to succumb to the pressure of using it to influence or profile our travels. All we have besides the memories are a few fading photo prints. And that’s enough.

We also escaped one of the greatest cons of the century, and as a result, didn’t have to encounter an endless supply of discarded plastic water bottles along the way. If we found bottled water, which was rare, we saved and reused the bottle over and over. Mostly we quenched our thirst by drinking lots of coke and beer. When necessary we dropped a few iodine pills into our saved water bottle or canteen to purify the funky local water, but the taste was so horrid we reverted to beer or Coca-Cola. Ice was also forbidden. There were times when we were assured the water was safe to drink only to suffer terribly for it. Dysentery and vomiting was not fun and the combo together was pure hell. You just learned to live with a constant queazy stomach. Tetracycline was the cure-all and taken for all sorts of infections picked up on the road.

All the magic and adventure of the Overland Trail changed by 1979, when both Iran and Afghanistan became off-limits, the former due to domestic revolution and the latter to the Russian invasion. The ouster of Iran’s shah was marked with the burning of American flags, Levi’s and Rock&Roll were replaced with the traditional Chador and speeches by Ayatollah Khomeini. Westerners, particularly Americans, were no longer welcome. Meanwhile Afghanistan had come under siege from the Soviet Union. This magnificent country became a vicious battleground, and the paltry American hash and hostel revenue was replaced by significant U.S. military aid to the anti-Soviet mujahideen. The world was changing everywhere.

Today, the iconic markers along the Overland Hippy Trail have mostly vanished. The backpacker-friendly hostels of Kabul, Tehran and Kathmandu are no more. Cheap bus line travel had dried up with the closing of borders and political unrest. The Pudding Shop is still open in Istanbul but a far cry from its glory days of the 70’s. A few faded photos on the walls are the only memories left of that time. Afghanistan’s Chicken Street and Sigi’s, major stopping points for us backpacking travelers were both destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. The haunts and dives of old “Freak Street” in Kathmandu were ruined by the 2015 earthquake. The continuing troubles in Myanmar and the Middle East make them seem like nothing more than faded memories of a past life.

In 100 years like in 2124 we will all be buried, or our ashes will be scattered like our relatives and friends. So much of what we spent our adult life buying, collecting and saving will be scrap. Our homes, cars and memories gone.

After we die, we will hopefully be remembered for a few more years, then we are just a photo saved, and a few years later our history, photos and stories will disappear into oblivion. We won’t even be memories. If we just pause to analyze this notion, maybe we would see how wasteful the dream to acquire it all was. I’d like to think our approach to living, our ideas of life would be different, and we would be different people.

Always having more, no time for what’s really valuable in this life. I’d change all this to live and enjoy the walks I’ve never taken, the places I didn’t visit, the people I never got to meet, the smiles and hugs I didn’t give, kisses for our children and our loved ones, the stupid jokes we didn’t have time for. Those would surely be the most beautiful moments we’d remember. Yet so many of us waste our days with greed, selfishness, jealousy and intolerance. Thinking that was the answer.

Waiting, freezing before the Turkish Iranian border.

Pagan, Burma. Land of a thousand temples.

Hashish anyone?


Young Afghan friends.