writing practice ~ my summer of maps

my yearbook photo at 15 years old. 

15 years old (that a Twiggy haircut by the way), with my high school boyfriend.

(I showed you some of my writing practice here and here and here. I completed Judy Reeves' Wild Women writing class. Here is another of my writings that came from the class.)

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My Summer of Maps 

by Jane LaFazio

I always knew I would travel and see the world. When I began reading, in earnest, in high school, I read Jack Kerouac, John Steinbeck, Hemingway  and Fitzgerald. As a teenager, I traveled from my home in California to Montana for a summer to work at Yellowstone National Park and papered my dorm room with maps. I memorized the map of the United States and tried to name each state along with its location. M.A.G.- Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia. What was the state between Nevada and Colorado? Yes, it was Utah. I wanted to travel and take road trips and see and experience as much as I possibly could.

At the end of that summer in Yellowstone, I drove cross county with my newly met friends and was excited to check off my list each state we visited. When our journey ended, I took a bus to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was going to get a job and live near my Yellowstone roommate, Becky, a student at University of Pittsburgh. Except, on the bus, I met a charming, very tall guy named “Paris.” He and I spent a day and night in Chicago and made impromptu plans to travel to Boston and live together. I changed my mind around Cleveland and my trunk of clothes went on to Boston with him and without me. So, I was in Pittsburgh  looking for a job, with only the clothes on my back, renting an attic room, with the bathroom downstairs and down the hall. After 2 weeks living that way, my uncle paid for my flight to New York City, to visit him and see the city for the first time….And then, I was back home, living at my mom’s by the end of September.

I bought more maps, for my bedroom at home, and started dreaming of my next adventure.

Me  at age 19 or so

1975 with Ralph (you know, from my Ralph's Letters quilt)

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I still love to travel, though a bit more upscale now, and I still love maps for the adventure they represent. How about you? Are you a traveler too?