I don’t have a firm date on this photo because I took it with a disposable camera, but I did develop the film on June 10, so I very well could have taken this one on this day 13 years ago. I probably have a journal floating around somewhere that would tell me for sure. Regardless, I love the picture so much and now seems like a good time to share it. Kaia and I had just come back from our attempt to walk across the country and we made a deal with Lu Harding, who ran Mount Eagle at the time. Someone had donated an unkempt RV to them a year before. No one had gone in it, but they new it was infested with mice. Lu said Kaia and I could stay in it and write for as long as we liked as long as we cleaned out the RV. I think we spent almost two weeks living in that RV.
I remember making the conscious decision to not live by the clock. I stayed up late reading--among other books, I remember reading Susanna Kaysen’s “The Camera My Mother Gave Me”--and writing about the trip, then falling asleep. I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking about writing and so I would open my laptop and start writing again at 3am. During the day, we took long walks through the woods. Kaia chased deer and raccoons and opossums. I’d sit at a picnic table beside the RV with my laptop or book, and Kaia would roam the area, gathering up turtles. She was fascinated by them. She’d pile them up in one place to keep an eye on them. When she fell asleep, they’d try to make a run for it, and when Kaia opened her eyes, she would be confused about how they had moved.
Those two weeks in the woods with Kaia were two of the best weeks of my life.
Clinton, Arkansas. 5.30(ish).2005.