Nomadic Thanksgivings

I marvel a bit at my Thanksgivings since I went rootless in 2010. 

In 2010, amazingly, I was in Playa del Carmen, Quintano Roo, Mexico. At a jazz festival! A brother and our mother had come down to spend time with me. One of the highlights: 

"...terrific music, a gorgeous orange moon that hung from a cloud, a starry sky, fresh breezes, warm sand..."

Eugenia Leon band, Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico. November 2010.

In 2011, on a layover en route from Caucasus Georgia to Missouri, I was at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul. An excerpt: 

"Istanbul's Ataturk Airport ... reminds me of one of the original Star Wars movies where our heroes go into a bar that's filled with beings from all over the universe, with huge variances in how they look and behave.

"A better descriptor is that the Ataturk Airport is just a modern-day version of a stop on the ancient Silk Road, where Europe, the Asias, and Africa intersected at a daily bazaar of color, language, clothing, food, drink, and custom."

 

Layover at Ataturk Airport, Istanbul, Turkey. November 2011.

 

Note: Ten years later, I still use that backpack. It is my portable office when I'm on the road.

In 2013, I had landed only recently in Lafayette, Louisiana. An excerpt: 

I’m in a new place, now in Louisiana. Still building my nest, so there’s that as-yet unsettled feeling, but in the main, as I walk down one of my new streets, I have to stop sometimes and look around and wonder at the pleasure of it. Not just being here in Louisiana, but the experience of New Mexico, of Caucasus Georgia, of Ethiopia, of Playa.

There is wonder, too, at the deep benefits of technology that allow family and friends to connect on important days of the year, despite the physical miles that are between them.

 A simple day today.

At home, ate some roast chicken, sweet potatoes, and pumpernickel toast. Drank pumpkin spice coffee. Listened to some trance-inducing, bone-reverberating music from Tinarawen.

 

In 2016, I did one of my favorite things - go to a big parade! In El Paso here, here, and here. It was a big parade. 

 

El Paso Thanksgiving Parade 2016

 

I spent 2017 Thanksgiving in Missouri with my mother, two siblings, and a niece along the Ozark Scenic Riverways. Echo Bluffs State Park was our base. An excerpt: 

There is a herd of wild horses at Echo Bluffs. The horses wander through the campsites at will. They poop there, too. Under normal circumstances, this might be an annoyance, but it's wild horse poop, so it has some panache.

Wild horse, Echo Bluffs State Park, Missouri. November 2017.

Thanksgiving 2018 found me in Mexico City, where I spent a month at a guesthouse that welcomed tourists like me, academics doing research in Mexico, and at times, like when I was there, refugees. While Trump spewed his pus-filled rhetoric about the members of the caravans coming up from Central America, I broke bread with some of those nefarious "criminals" from Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. An excerpt: 

A young woman from Honduras, [a refugee] from one of the caravans, will give birth in about two weeks. Where? She does not know. She and her husband have a cheeky, chortling one year-old who loves to kick a ball in our community room. Can you even imagine what would prompt a young couple with a small child and another due, to leave everything they know behind, to walk into an uncertain future?

On Thanksgiving, a group of us from the guesthouse - tourists like me, guesthouse volunteers and staff, and refugees - attended a theatrical performance. That was pleasant, yet not as memorable as the chicken soup that the Salvadorean men shared with me one day at lunch.

 

Salvadorean chicken soup for lunch, Mexico City. November 2018.

In 2019, with the COVID an alarm not yet sounded, I was on the road to Texas from Tucson. Missions: Become a Texan + test out ChezP as a "caRVee," as I'd be overnighting at an interstate rest area for the first time. An excerpt about the Thanksgiving Day leg of the trip: 

I left Tucson early Thanksgiving morning, amidst dire weather warnings swirling about the nation. I'd kept my thumb on the forecasts for my route, and for the most part, it looked cloudy, yet dryish.

Although my drive began dry as I left Tucson, much of the first day was a tense slog through light and middlin' rain.

No matter. Such things are like painful labor and delivery - a bitch during the process, but the moment one arrives at one's destination, all is forgotten in the delight of a journey safely made.

Texas-I-10 EB Pecos West Rest Area near Ft Stockton. Thanksgiving 2019.

Last year, in 2020, I packed a car-picnic lunch and went for a hike at Tannehill Ironworks Historical Park, in which is the southernmost terminus of the Appalachian Trail, as pronounced by a road-hugging sign. An excerpt:

Alabama does not like shoulders: I walked carefully to the sign after I parked my car in the lot beyond the fee booth. I walked carefully because Alabama disdains shoulders, and maybe pedestrians, too: If we wanted y'all to walk on the road, we'd'a built y'all some shoulders!

Appalachian Trail Terminus, Tannehill Historical State Park, Alabama. Thanksgiving 2020.