The Rhythm of the Road

Finding beauty and heart across the U.S

I pull into Boulder, Colorado, and the quote above comes to me, from a book I bought when I moved from NYC to Chicago years back called The Quotable New York.

They must be kidding, I think. Parking is easy, the streets are clean, people seem bubbly and smiley in a way I do not at all trust. There are furniture stores that carry oversized items I laugh imagining fitting into Brooklyn apartments.

And yet I have driven here, more than 2,000 miles, through lots of places that people live, across Ohio and Indiana, into Illinois, on through Kentucky, Missouri, and across Kansas to Colorado. I am on my way to do sound baths outside Boulder, and in Steamboat Springs. I have stopped, purposefully, to dip into lakes and reservoirs, to behold the natural beauty across this great country, to meet the people in its small-town diners and “middle-of-nowhere” gas stations, its roadside motels and a few bars.

It’s like I’m on the campaign trail, except it’s a one-woman viewing tour, a see-it-with-my-own-eyes situation. I am bound and determined to find commonality rather than divisions, to see sameness rather than what we might do differently.

And I have found it. In Fredericktown, Missouri, in the Depot Cafe, an upscale coffee shop, I come across two young women, the barristas, who have just made the drive I’m about to do to Colorado. They have moved from there, and went back recently for a wedding.

“What brought you here, to Missouri?” I asked, and the young woman smiled widely.

“The Lord!” she said. “We came here to farm, to grow our own food, ‘cause Colorado was too expensive, especially the water.”

I am not religious and so I might have found it strange and off-putting that this woman was led by the Lord, except hadn’t I been led myself by spiritual signs to take this roadtrip? Wasn’t I always talking about the synchronicities and strange ways in which I felt compelled to do what I did? What was the difference really?

There were many situations like that, like in Oakley, Kansas, where I’d traveled a long stretch of open road to make it before sundown, where I’d booked in to a room at the Annie Oakley Motel and walked down empty Center Ave. to grab some dinner at Buffalo Bill’s. When I walked in to the darkened spot, an out-of-towner, a woman alone, it seemed a little daunting to sit down at the bar with the array of men already positioned there. I’d brought a book just in case, and I eyeballed a little booth where I might sit, and read. But I braved it, and was happy I did.

Surveying the menu, opining to the bartender/owner that I could never decide, a gentleman in a trucker’s cap shouted out from down the bar that maybe I should get the crab legs, then laughed at his own joke.

He went on to talk about other experiences of ordering foods inappropriate for the locale, and I joined in. He wasn’t from there, it turns out, just passing through on a job driving the pilot car for oversized loads from where he lived in Texas, close to his home state of Oklahoma. He’d been chatting with some locals, and they all gathered closer to discuss our various and varied experiences. My friend had been a highway patrolman, and it turned out that another of the men, a Mennonite gentleman who’d come from where he’d been sitting behind me to join the conversation, had lived in Oklahoma, and wanted to share experiences as a trucker on the highway, his run-ins with various patrolmen.

We talked stereotypes, of them, and me, the Mennonite gentleman suggesting he had “no interest in going North of Oakley, Kansas, certainly not to New York!” and I laughed. We offered up opinions of even some of the tougher topics, keeping it friendly, and I even talked a bit about my work offering sound baths, suggesting it would be fun to do it for them there in the bar:)

It was getting late and I wanted to hit the road early to get into Colorado. I was doing a sound bath the next night outside Boulder for a woman I’d met on the Cliff Walk in Newport, R.I. after Jazzfest. She was a trauma therapist who lived in Louisville, a neighborhood that had burned down in December 2021 in the Marshall Fire, and she wanted to invite a few neighbors, just back in to their newly rebuilt homes.

I walked the few dark blocks back to the Annie Oakley, feeling a bit on edge, as I do sometimes when I try to trust the Universe and wonder if I’m being dangerously naive. (“This is why Annie carried a gun,” my husband joked.) My pilot car driver friend from the bar was emerging from his truck as I walked up, staying there himself. It smelled bad from the manure of the nearby farms (a couple was disagreeing whether it was pigs or cows, but I had no idea) and it was a grossly hot night, and he asked in his heavy Southern drawl if he could get a sound bath. A born but lapsed Baptist, he told me he was a meditator and interested in all kinds of spiritual healing modalities. How could I say no?

With the door open to the smell and the heat (air off so he could hear the instruments), I laid out my yoga mat on the floor of my motel room, and offered him an eye mask and some lavender, and proceeded with my sound meditation.

He was relaxed afterward and we chatted a bit and drank some beers before saying goodnight. I wished that I’d recorded the evening somehow, so surprising was its outcome, which was the reason I’d come. One never knows what people are like when you open up, and they do. We are all of us interested in connections, and healing, finding some common rhythm.

In the early morning dusk, the road is intermittently clouded over and clear. I-70 is nearly empty of cars, and there is nothing as far as the eye can see, except sky.

I am surprised by Boulder, by its bustling restaurants and stores, as I have been in unpopulated locales for a few days. I feel almost more Other with the urban folk, so engaged was I with the idea of people who live so very differently than I do, in understanding them, enjoying the openness of the land, the far fewer choices of places to grab coffee. And I can more readily compare and contrast between Brooklyn and Boulder…

I am welcomed by my host to let myself in to her house anytime, and after hitting the local reservoir for a dip, I head to Louisville. I think about how it’s a neighborhood under construction as I drive in, then remember the reason why, and shudder. Many lots are empty, others feature new homes, finished or partially complete.

Melissa and her husband Mark are lovely when they arrive with their kids back from the water park, and make dinner while I set up. We only just met a few minutes in Newport, when I complimented her shirt. A few women join us, and discuss how awesome it feels to be back in the neighborhood, how healing it is to come together, how appreciative they are. It is a silver lining to a very dark cloud that beset them for a time, this love that they feel for their community, for one another.

One woman tells a story of a lawn ornament turtle that survived the fire, only to fall over and have its head broken. They laughingly put a dragon head on it and feature it prominently in the yard now. Humor about what has occurred is hard won, and yet they laugh now, having made it through, survived. It feels good to offer them some healing sound, to lead them through a relaxing practice that gives them a little time away from racing thoughts, from remembering.

I drive the next day through Rocky Mountain National Park. It was my son Oscar, not the Lord, who summoned me there, with gushing messages and conversations about how it was one of the most beautiful places he’s ever been — and we’ve been to a lot of beautiful places, together, on our road trips. He’d warned me, as did many signs, that weather patterns are erratic, and I went through no fewer than three sudden storms, including one featuring the hail Oscar had told me about. Luckily, I was on high alert, and headed back to my car at the slightest sign of thunder, so managed to stay dry.

I noticed in particular throughout the park the places where fires—intentionally set and otherwise—had destroyed the trees and brush. There are powerful forces at play, and it is nothing short of totally humbling.

I made it to Steamboat, to my friend Danielle Skov’s bookstore, that she owns with her husband Mike, both of whom are college friends. It was so fun to be there with them, and to set up for a sound bath in their beautiful space for the Sturgeon Moon. This Super Blue Moon was said to offer up strength, perseverence and spirituality, and to ask people to connect with a humanitarian cause that awakens their soul. The energy in the room, in the air, was palpable, and it was a beautiful night.

I high-tailed it home in far fewer days than I’d come, stopping to camp by a lake in Chapman, Nebraska and to dip into Lake Michigan at Indiana Dunes National Park, reveling in the last days of weather warm enough to do so.

I listened to a lot of country music on this trip, even before my new friend Jason from the Annie Oakley helped me along with a playlist he listens to while driving the roads regularly for work.

I felt somewhat trepidatious returning home, so happy had I been on these small empty roads. It was nice for a time to take these paths, to find a new rhythm, to be in sync with those who live differently, to find ourselves at the same place at the same time, and to revel in it, as is always possible.

I will return again soon to putting together a calendar of events, music and other cultural happenings around NYC and beyond. The fall is always awash in activity as people return from vacation, kids back to school, the city in full swing. Let me know if you are performing and would like to be listed!!

Hope you had a beautiful August!

In peace and harmony,

Steph