Flagstaff

High Country Motor Lodge was a jewel: retro American roadside style softened by something almost Nordic. I ordered a beer and a sandwich and sat in the garden, taking in the mountain air after the long drive.

That night, Lowell Observatory offered Saturn through a telescope, a sky full of explanations, and a kinetic light installation by physicist and artist Paul Friedlander. Colored light moved across a vibrating string, forming waves that seemed suspended in space. It gave me a visual way to think about light as both wave and particle.

The next morning, I followed a four-mile running route through Northern Arizona University. Within the first mile, I tripped on an uneven sidewalk, caught myself, rolled, checked the blood on my knee, and kept going.

Near mile three, another problem became urgent: I needed a bathroom. A music student I had passed earlier kindly let me into her dorm. After a frantic search through unavailable rooms, I found one and continued the run toward downtown.

At a coffee shop, I ordered my usual cortado and two homemade peanut-butter, oat, and seed balls. Then I heard a woman singing nearby and began talking with her. She was a musician and teacher with white hair and a deep connection to Navajo culture.

We moved to a small courtyard behind the café and talked about music and the parts of ourselves that do not always fit into daily life. Then she began to sing. Nobody else was there. For a few minutes, it felt as though the song existed only in that courtyard.

I walked back to the lodge, showered, packed, and stayed for one last salad and cortado. Then I drove through the pines toward the place the whole trip had been building toward.