Quaking Aspen
SALICACEAE, The Willow family

Greyhound bus, listening to the Decemberists, sketching silver tree trunks with their dark markings, two seconds per tree. The feeling of traveling, of heart opening, intensifies when the mode requires some surrender. Being whisked along, high up, a different view of this road I’ve seen so many times. My attention is freed from the road and I bow to the fields and bogs. When I called Amtrak they informed me the train I was inquiring about had not been running for 20 years. I raged against the dissolution of mass transit. Later when I told mom this she said, “That time you sat on Lynn’s head? We took that trip with all you girls because the train was going to stop running.” Obviously I had been oblivious to that detail. So now I am on the bus, praying for the charge on my small electronics be prolonged. I’m let out at a pie shop/bus stop in a small town, and my mom is waiting for me there.

It was Èireann who suggested I take the bus. This morning we saw the Bloom! Botanical Art Through the Ages exhibit at the Bell Museum of Natural History. Minneapolis was softly rainy and sweetly cool, its sublime late summer self.

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