At large in the world

My youngest is traveling solo in Costa Rica until mid week, so of course my whole consciousness is there with her, willing her safely from one place to the next, praying constantly for her well being, entreating guardian angels to surround her, and visualizing her laughing and joyful in auras of beautiful light. She just up and decided she wanted a break from the regularly scheduled programming, to reconnect with herself in a tropical place, so off she went, and now I will not take a full breath till she is back home, as much as I admire her agency and sense of the world being hers to experience as she chooses. I trust she will have a wonderful time.

How did my own mother stand it, I belatedly wonder , my traveling solo all over this country and to different parts of the world in my twenties, as a reporter for Life magazine, scouting people and places for stories, before returning with a photographer, often for weeks at a time, to develop fully realized photo essays. I had no fear for myself, but now I'm remembering some of the isolated places I ventured. Some of them opened their arms to me, like Greasewood Canyon, Colorado, and the North Woods of Minnesota, where I reported on hermits; and The Falkand Islands at the foot of South America, when I traveled to find a fleet of perfectly preserved sailing ships wrecked centuries before in their passage around Cape Horn. Other places had a distinctly unfriendly air—Cheyenne, Wyoming, where I visited an archeological dig, even felt a bit unsafe; so many gun racks in pickup trucks emblazoned with confederate flags. But how did my mother endure me being in all those unvetted regions on my own? I confess I was oblivious back then to her possible concerns. Like most twenty somethings, I felt close to invulnerable.

Here's a photo of me in my twenties in the Minnesota North Woods lake area. I've posted it before. I was there with photographer Brian Lanker for a story on a local legend known as Knife Lake Dorothy, who had lived alone on one the Boundary Waters Wilderness islands for fifty years. Then in her seventies, she was the very definition of a powerful and self-directed woman. 

I saw a factoid last night—America has only not been at war for sixteen of its two hundred and fifty years of independence. 

In times such as these, my beloved girl is at large in the world. Never wonder why I pray.