the stillness
When I told people I was driving across the country with my friend (Chaya, greatest travel partner of all time. G-d bless this girl’s soul.) they asked a lot about how much driving that is, how many miles we would be moving, how many hours we would each have to drive. No one asked about the blissful moments of perfect stillness. I couldn’t have predicted the utter now-ness, the pure halt, even if they had. Yes, we did travel many miles, but we were fully experiencing where we were - and who we were in those moments. We were just somewhere in the middle of nowhere drinking it all in. We listened to SO MUCH music, played podcasts (The Hilarious World of Depression and Serial - both highly recommended), filmed the passing scenery, and talked and talked and talked. Each stop left us with something (usually an iron on patch :D, but all jokes aside I really did feel myself becoming more person with every new city, like rings were being added to my core the way they do to old trees). There was nowhere else for us to be - and our only responsibility was to care for ourselves, each other, and our noble steed, Archie (who I must admit ended up requiring more care than I would have cared for ← see what I did there).

The usually wild river of my life became a clear lake, and I was able to stop and see myself in the cool water. A big factor of that was being off of social media. If you know me, you know that I am big on instagram and could be called an over-sharer by some. I know this. It’s because of this that I wanted to disconnect from that kind of thing over the course of the trip. It was probably one of the best decisions I’ve made. I wasn’t furiously trying to capture the moments so that I could post or show them to someone else. I was really living in the beauty of that moment - and the photographing of it felt like a true art from, not some attempt at social validation. I got the opportunity to confirm what I have always known to be true about myself: that I love visual imagery for its’ own sake and not for any outside approval.

The best part? I got to do this on film. I took a Canon AE-1 and a paper bag full of film I got as a Chanukah present from my mother across the country with me. I kept the rolls in my pocket until we got to Albuquerque where I dropped them in a night drop with a handwritten note and got the developed prints back the next day.  I did not even open the envelope until I was home with Chaya, so that we could look at them together. We opened the envelopes just before lighting candles and spending Shabbos in a cozy AirBNB in New Mexico. We feasted on a meal shopped from a local co-op market and cooked on our trusty burner, Ash (named for his ability to severely blacken frying pans). We read the six books we picked up at a use book store for only $12 for the bunch (Vonnegut and Wilde amongst them) and played a long game of Scrabble (I lost) before getting back on the road.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?), the aforementioned camera ended up being lost somewhere in Austin. Resulting in an impromptu trip to an antique mall in New Orleans, where I met a kind old man with many years of photography experience. He was a delight. The antique mall did not have my camera, but it did hold the vibrant experience of getting out there. The old man helped me find a Pentax ZX-M with two lenses, a carrying case, and plenty of extra film available on Craiglist in Mississippi for only $50, a total steal. I then got an email from a hostel in Austin. They found my camera and he’s in the post on his way back to mama!


Here are some of those photos:

The gorgeous model is Chaya Muchnik, I love her very much.


These first bunch are taken in Petrified Forest National Park, a very underrated destination: 









Pretty sure this guy is Sedona, on Fay Canyon Trail

This is a random lookout we stopped at where it SNOWED

This is Meteor Crater (another unplanned stop)

and we're back to Petrified Forest, specifically Crystal Forest

Chaya has much more impressive photos of this -
for reasons unbeknownst to my amateur self, the colors just didn't come out for me. 

This right here is my favorite photo of the entire trip and possibly my life

Oh, look! It's Archie! 



And these last two here are Sedona, again. 

and that's the time the planet stopped spinning. 





Thanks for making it this far, 

Catch ya in the next one 💜

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