Feral Field Notes: Starting In the Shade of a Joshua Tree
A wonderful and weird beginning to my 100 day writing pilgrimage that features burnt knees, “boogers in my teeth,” and the poem responsible for both.
This post is part of my Feral Field Notes series where I’m documenting my writing pilgrimage across the US. Start here for context. And if you’re also hungry to feel more awake in your life, join me this fall for your own 100 day journey in The Inner Pilgrimage.
Pilgrim Passport
This section will include a summary of what I jot down each day in my “pilgrim passport,” a borrowed concept from the Camino de Santiago where you get stamps daily from hostels, cafes, and other places to “prove” that you’re a pilgrim.
(I have big feelings and thoughts about things like this—proof, evidence, credentialing—like, what makes someone officially a pilgrim? A writer? Anything? Who gets to decide? More on this another time though, I think.)
For now—I just loved the idea of creating my own “passport” for this trip, wondering what it might look like to capture “proof” of a writer’s journey in this way. I decided to start with the following categories and let it take shape from there.
Start
My car / Black Rock Campground in Joshua Tree National Park, Yucca Valley, CA
End
A couch / Redlands, CA
Distance Traveled
63ish miles, plus what the spontaneous detour added
Writing
Morning Pages
Three pages of notes / poetry?
1 page of a maybe actual poem
Reading
Long Quiet Highway by Natalie Goldberg
“Becoming awake is not easy. One must be persistent under all circumstances, and it is not always exciting. It is hard. It is a long quiet highway. (…) We all must go on down that highway. Our life is the path of learning, to wake up before we die.”
Listening
Northwest Passage by Unleash the Archers
Feral Field Notes
(Today’s a long one and hopefully they’ll be actual field notes from now on.)
On the first morning of this 100 day journey—a self-made writing pilgrimage across the US—I burnt my knees.
Just my knees.
I don’t really understand how it happened. I must have been sitting under that Joshua Tree just so with my legs bent a certain way and my thighs protected by my lap-desk (yes I brought a lap-desk to the desert).
The culprit, really, was time. I began in the shade of a Joshua Tree, but like everything else in life, it didn’t last long. As time passed, so did the sun—right over me, apparently, but I was no longer really in that chair. I was in a flow state, churning out some morning pages and poetry to kick-start my trip, and even a solar singe couldn’t yank me out of it.
So now I have sunburnt knees and my first Feral Field Note to report.
As I shared in my last post, I’ll be writing these notes over the next hundred days as I make a giant, wonky oval shape around the US in my car. I plan to write, read, and “follow in the footsteps” of the writers who came before me, whose work and lives were so often the compass that guided me when I was otherwise lost.
I’ll be focusing mainly on Natalie Goldberg, the writing teacher who’s had the biggest impact on me and a major inspiration for this trip. Though I’ll be re-reading all of her books along the way (beginning with her memoir Long, Quiet Highway—fitting for this trip, I thought), I’ve also got dozens of other books sloshing around the floor of my car right now, including works by Mary Oliver to Jack London along with Elizabeth Gilbert, Rick Rubin, Suleika Jaouad, and Ursula Le Guin (but did I remember to pack a knife? Sure didn’t.)
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As far as how my first day went—if I’m being honest, I wasn’t even sure it was going to be the first “official” day when it began. When I opened the back of my car this morning and slid off my sleeping pad into the morning sunshine, I had a feeling about it, but I wouldn’t know until a few hours later.
Part of the journey is trying not to plan out everything in advance and to allow the path to appear as I go. And like I wrote about the other day in this note, where I talked about the role of uncertainty in both my life and on this trip, I wanted to try and let something more inward guide me on a day-to-day basis. Think of it like an exercise of strengthening the mind/body connection, our ability to rely more on our intuition and not just act unconsciously on autopilot all the time, fueled by fear, limiting beliefs, false stories, others’ values, and more.
So unlike my Camino in 2023 where I mostly followed the suggested “stages” for each day and probably several thousand yellow arrows telling me exactly where to go over those 500 miles—on this trip, I’m embarking on a self-made journey, one where I’m more figuratively following in the footsteps of those who came before me but choosing my physical destination more so on a day to day basis. So I’m not sure how it’ll go, but that’s also the point.
That said, one thing I did plan for certain before leaving was rest. It’d been an intense few weeks on top of an intense few months, and I wasn’t fully ready to leave when my departure date arrived.
So, I decided to head to my favorite park for a couple of nights with a friend to use as a kind of “staging” time to get ready—a launch pad, if you will. To just be. To sit on (and maybe climb) some rocks, look at my favorite, weird little trees, and to put in some quality time with the night sky.
We spent a couple of days doing just this, and it helped clear my head so much. It was fun to explore the park and the area, but more than anything, it was great to just get out of my head and be in the world, climb boulders, watch a storm in the distance in the middle of nowhere, and listen to great music with the windows down (and distant thunder as a bonus)—and all in the good company of my friend.
But this morning, my friend had to leave, and so did I, really. I’d already delayed my trip a bit from when I’d originally thought I’d go. And as my friend was packing up their things at the campground, I could tell that I was already starting to struggle with the idea of being alone all of a sudden, stuck with myself and my mind and without knowing where I’d end up that night (erm… spoiler alert: it would be this friend’s couch).
Here’s how I knew this needed to “count” as day 1 though: as I noticed all this arising—how fear was starting to encroach and wanting to take over my experience—I leaned on some of my meditation practices to silently name what was happening and sense what was going on in my body so as to not get attached to it, which would only strengthen whatever was arising.
Instead, while my friend was wrapping up, I decided to set up my camp table with what I knew would be a soft place to “land” once they left: a blank page of my new notebook and the first book I’d be reading on this trip (Long Quiet Highway by Natalie Goldberg).
And a snack.
As soon as I’d done this, I already felt a little better. I was able to relax some because I wasn’t trying to push how I was feeling away or tell myself some story about why I shouldn’t be feeling what I was feeling like I would have in the past. I felt a tinge of gratitude for one of my meditation teachers, Tara Brach, who taught me in her book Radical Acceptance about how we so easily get caught up in this kind of “trance,” as she puts it. That auto-pilot way of being that tends to create, unconsciously, additional layers of suffering on top of whatever pain we might already be experiencing because we’re resisting that pain. She has a little “equation” in the book for this:
Pain x Resistance = Suffering
OK, I sense I’m totally slipping into teacher mode myself (because I’ve actually taught that book before and completed a 2 year mindfulness meditation teacher training that Tara co-created), so let’s get back to being feral. And a field note! Rawr.
After my friend’s car disappeared into the distance, I took a seat in my chair in the shade of a Joshua Tree. I felt tangled up with emotion again, worrying about when I’d see all the people I cared about next and what I’d miss and where I’d end up… but then I saw my new notebook opened to a blank page and moved it onto my lap-desk. I grabbed my pen, moved it to the first blue line, and immediately felt stuck. I just didn’t want to face how sad and confused I felt at everything in that moment. I’d already felt so sad and confused for so long.
But I looked up at the horizon and was struck by how much it’d already changed in the past hour. It reminded me of the nature of impermanence, how everything—whether good or bad or otherwise—changes. How nothing lasts forever, including the way we feel. The sky reminded me that whatever was on the other side of the pen wouldn’t last forever, and that I was capable of being with it.
It reminds me of one of the rules of writing practice that Natalie Goldberg teaches in Writing Down the Bones:
“Go for the jugular. If something scary comes up, go for it. That’s where the energy is. Otherwise, you’ll spend all your time writing around whatever makes you nervous. It will probably be abstract, bland writing because you’re avoiding the truth. Hemingway said, “Write hard and clear about what hurts.” Don’t avoid it. It has all the energy.”
Though I’d personally add some disclaimers for “going for the jugular” when it comes to writing about trauma (like having a support system and literary wellness plan in place), I did think of Natalie’s advice in the moment, and I trusted it. Because I’ve done it so many times before, but I’m human, and I forget, and I need lots of reminders.
So I took another look at the horizon—another of my great teachers—and finally put pen to paper. And didn’t stop, except maybe to cry a bit and look at the sky some more for support, until I reached the end of page three (and even then, mainly because of a wicked hand cramp).
By the end, I thought—wow. So much beauty here. So much sadness, too. Writing and crying had made me feel lighter, more spacious, and like I wasn’t squeezing my experience so tightly anymore. I felt like I could breathe easily again and like I wasn’t going to cling to any of it.
That’s when I noticed the sun on my knees (which weren’t hurting yet, but I was surprised when I saw I was no longer in the shade). I got up to stretch and move to a shady spot, but I surprised myself again when I thought of a song I wanted to listen to and just popped in headphones (in an otherwise totally empty campground).
I ended up sitting on the picnic table and just listening to music—something I’ve been trying to get into again recently after years of unkindly treating it as background noise—and I couldn’t believe how amazing I felt. So much lighter, freer, and open. A few songs later, and I felt incredible, hopeful, and ready to pack up and get on the road.
I kept the music going as I headed west, thinking of the cover of Long Quiet Highway and how I was now facing my own. I felt so alive and free and grateful—and while there were some other companions present, including fear, uncertainty, and sadness—they weren’t in the driver’s seat and in control of my experience anymore.
As I blasted Northwest Passage (the version by Unleash the Archers my friend had shared with me), I felt that sensation of possibility again. Like this might actually happen. Might even work, whatever that meant.
And then I knew exactly what I needed to do next:
Get a haircut.
Look, I don’t know what you’re expecting from these field notes, but I just knew I needed a haircut, and one that I’d wanted for a long time. But I hate going to the salon so much that it’s not uncommon for me to spend a year or two as my own hair stylist, gathering my braids up and lopping off an inch and calling it a day. But for whatever reason, I felt so excited about it and sure of this choice (despite three days of not showering and smelling like it). So, using my car’s voice command feature, I called the nearest salon, knowing how unlikely it was that this would work out, but ten minutes later, I was sitting in a salon chair in a town I’d never been to and letting a woman with blue hair shave off some of my own.
An hour later, I walked out with the haircut I’d been dreaming about for ages but felt too afraid to get and I couldn’t be happier. It was one of those moments, like when you put on a new outfit or pair of glasses or whatever it might be and think, this feels like me.
Happy with my hair but not my stink, I texted a friend to ask if I could do a drive-by shower on my way through town, and they kindly allowed it. It was also great to have a chance to debrief with them about everything going on before I hopped over to another friend’s house who I promised I’d say goodbye to.
Then I thought, you know what, it’s open mic night at The Vault (a local bar), and I wrote some poems this morning, and it just feels like the perfect way to start off this writing pilgrimage—with doing something that absolutely makes me want to puke and shrivel into a dumb sober raisin but is also very aligned with the idea of following in the footsteps of the writers who came before me who probably also navigated similar feelings of dread and yearning and compared themselves to stupid fruit.
I bounced back to the other friend’s house because they’re very tolerant and nice and let me take up a couch so I could review through what I wrote that morning and pick something to edit and maybe read that night. What I thought might be potential poetry though turned out to be hot garbage that I couldn’t shape or transform into something that felt even remotely read-able, and with half an hour until I needed to leave, I closed my notebook and laptop in frustration and thought that was that. I tried, but I wouldn’t go, I wouldn’t read, and this probably doesn’t really count now as my first “official” day, and aren’t I just a giant baby who can’t do anything.
I felt so disappointed (and dramatic). I really wanted to read something, but I hadn’t worked on anything long enough, and that morning’s writing really wasn’t meant to be anything—poem or otherwise—except for a place to land when I was free-falling. And though it’d served its purpose, and I was so glad for it, I was also hoping I could also work with it in time for tonight, but it just hadn’t worked out. And I didn’t want to read something just for the sake of it. I wanted it to feel right. Alive. Not forced.
After sitting there for a few minutes, and no longer staring at three pages of inky chicken scratches or a blinking cursor trying to un-scratch it, I thought of how Natalie talks about “composting” in one of her books (I think it’s Thunder and Lightning). It’s this idea that you just keep shoveling the shit—you keep writing—turning it over and over again, because it creates quality “compost” from which things can grow. And one day, maybe when you’re not even thinking about the writing being good anymore, you suddenly see a single green shoot poking through the soil—a fresh idea, a clear sentence, a beautiful paragraph.
None of which could have ever come to fruition had you not kept shoveling the shit.
I let go of everything that’d come before—the hours of writing and now editing, and I wondered what might happen, what I might want to say if I didn’t try and force anything anymore. What’s really here, right now? I asked myself, wondering if I’d shoveled enough for anything to break through.
I sat quietly for a while, kinda meditating but not really, and I felt a new idea pop up, the tiniest tip of a green something. And instead of returning to my laptop or journal, I opened a different, smaller notebook with “Poems?” written on its brown cover and started anew, without anything else fighting for my attention.
What came next was exactly one small page of something that felt alive and real to me. A little green sprout was in the pile of shit after all, and I was so glad, because I really, really wanted to participate in open mic night.
Now, I’m not saying it was good, but I did my best over the next half hour to revise it a few times and make it slightly less frumpy and awkward, and thought it was still mostly frumpy and awkward by the time I read it an hour or so later, it was very much alive and frumpy and awkward.
Have I mentioned yet, by the way, that I’m absolutely not a poet, probably couldn’t even define what the word means, and feel a completely new version of imposter syndrome now that I seem to have poems to write this past year?
Thankfully, I’ve already gone though (and might always be going through) some version of this when it comes to being a writer in general, so I’m trying to apply what I’ve learned from that to this situation, but ya’ll, it’s still hard, but I’m trying to do hard things, ahhhhhhh.
Here’s what I think prevented me from leaving in the middle of the event (where I was second to last to read out of 12 or so): I sat by a friend just before it began, and because I was nervous and must have had an itchy nose, and because I’m weird, I said, “Hey, do I have any boogers in my nose?” and sorta tilted it up to show her. And because she’s also weird and an actual poet, she took my question very seriously and looked and said, “No,” and when I asked if I had anything in my teeth and did the creepy smile we do when asking someone that, she once again looked very closely and then nodded and told me, “Yeah, you’ve got boogers in your teeth.”
The laugh that ensued is probably the only thing that sustained me over the next hour until it was my turn—I kept comparing myself to everyone, kept feeling like I shouldn’t be there because I hadn’t worked on my poem long enough or couldn’t perform it like everyone else seemed to be able to perform theirs… but after my friend got up and read her poems and then came back, I felt like, wow, I want to get that good one day. And I knew the only way that was likely to happen was if I got up there and read a bad poem with boogers in my teeth. So I did.
And to my surprise—so much so that I almost stopped reading when it happened—I was halfway through my tiny little green sprout of a poem when I heard a few people nearby do the snappy-snap thing when at a poetry reading that means they liked something. I think. And there was something about those little snaps that bolstered me in a way that felt so warm. I finished reading my poem and sat down and felt like melting and my friend smiled at me and said she liked my poem and I had that feeling again that goes something like, this feels like me, a maybe booger poet with a side braid and undercut and weird, kind friends who make me laugh and help me do hard things.
Afterwards, I hung around to chat with a few friends, which included topics ranging from rocket fuel to movies from the 80s and why we write poems. But as midnight came and went, I said I had to go (to where, I wasn’t sure), and the friend I’d camped with the past two nights (who didn’t know I’d be there that night, surprise!) peeled off with me.
They asked where I was headed, and when I answered with a shrug, they kindly offered their couch up again, and that’s what I ended up doing. They even let me bring the dangling star lights from my car into their living room even though I may have been slightly critical of their harsh lighting situation, which isn’t nice to say to someone letting you crash at their place (even if it’s true).
We strung up them in honor of the spontaneous sleepover and talked until we got the sleepies (OK it was just me). And then, I fell asleep to the warm glow of the stars above me and the song of crickets, with a cool breeze coming through the window to soothe my burning knees.
To going back to the stars,
Katie
Upcoming & Recurring
My next course, The Inner Pilgrimage: A 100 Day Journey, begins in September. I’d love to “walk” alongside you there.
My next Monthly Writers Chat for paid subscribers will be sometime in the fourth week of this month. Stay tuned for updates, and remember to connect with others in the Whatsapp Group and Writing Studio in the meantime.
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Find everything else here.
Katie! I’m so glad you read your poem out loud! I was very invested in this outcome as I read this. I travel full time and sometimes sheepishly wonder if I’m on some kind of pilgrimage, and your wondering about the same thing made me think of course we’re both pilgrims and isn’t all of this a pilgrimage? May we all find what we seek. I look forward to reading more.