Scott's First Published Article

My brother, Scott, has more poignant and flattering memories of my mom. After extensive international travel, Scott traveled from coast to coast in the Summer of 2007 to finally see more of his own country. This article about our mom and his love of travel, is his first published piece and was published, appropriately, on Mother's Day in the Travel section of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the paper my mom wrote for.

http://www.philly.com/philly/travel/44475382.html

Posted on Sun, May. 10, 2009


Personal Journey: Gift of love is passed between mom, son

By Scott Partenheimer
For The Inquirer

My mother passed on to me a love for travel, which festered and lingered and has taken on the form of what some define as obsession. When she passed away, I was confronted with unparalleled grief, and a small sum of cash she left me. I knew this money would not while away in the bank, but instead would be spent on the one thing she would approve of: travel.

Enter the Great American Road Trip. 10,000 miles. Coast to coast, border to border. All solo, executed in my '99 Ford Explorer Sport, affectionately dubbed Black Betty. The goal of the trip was to leave my life for a while - the ongoing grief and the daily rigors of student-teaching in New Jersey - while honoring my mom. Nowhere was this goal so sharply realized as at the Grand Canyon.

I'd been sleeping in Black Betty through Arkansas and parts of New Mexico, to stretch the money as far as possible. I was hoping to spend a night on the canyon floor, but camping permits had been booked months earlier by the crushing number of visitors the park receives every summer. Against the advice of the National Park Service, I decided to hike to the bottom and back in one day.

The temperature at the Colorado River that June day was a staggering 112 degrees. I spent a few hours in a stream, then began my ascent at 4 p.m. to avoid the worst of the heat. I began to worry when I got dizzy and nauseated, but those sensations subsided as I realized I had one of the biggest tourist attractions in the world almost to myself. In the five hours it took to reach the rim, I saw eight people.

The most striking thing about standing alone in an ancient canyon is not the view, however, but the wind. One moment of pure silence is replaced by winds sweeping through the canyon thousands of feet away, reminding me of the well-known bereavement poem by Mary Frye:

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

A mile from the canyon's rim, I stopped to rest. I eased myself onto a rock and watched as the sun submitted itself to the horizon, retrieving its golden hues from the canyon walls. A slight wind kicked up on the edge of the ridge, and I sat with my head in my hands, trying to fathom how anything could feel so beautiful.

____________________________________________________________________________________
Scott Partenheimer lives in Haddonfield.