• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Eileen Delehanty Pearkes

Writer, Speaker, Researcher

  • Home
  • About
  • Books
  • Upper Columbia River
    • Sinixt Advocacy through the years
    • Updating the Columbia River Treaty
    • Notebooks
    • Maps
  • Other Work
    • Articles
    • A 6,000 Mile Search for Beauty
  • Contact
  • Blog

La Tortue and my hero Neil

January 5, 2016 by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes Leave a Comment

Neil is my mechanic for the vehicle that will power my trip to the redwood forests beginning next week.   The 1996 Rialta 21 ft. camper van needed a little work, including a multi-function switch.  Too bad Neil can’t install one in my writer’s brain:  it’s a challenge to remember all the small packing details as I get ready to spend 2-3 months on the road: laptop, chocolate, books, chocolate, rain gear, chocolate….

I love a mechanic who uses yellow legal pad paper to scribble estimates.  I always use the same for my first drafts, notes, planning, musing and conversation with myself as I organize ideas into words.  The paper connects me to my dear Uncle Jim, who once handed me a stack of yellow legal pads when we teamed up on a family history project, A Short History of the Delehantys.  He passed away several years ago, but the technique lives on.

At the moment, I am reading a wonderful book to support my launch: Rising Strong: the reckoning, the rumble, the revolution, by Brené Brown.  Brown believes that anyone who falls can get back up and be stronger for the journey.   I guess that goes for ’96 Rialta vans, too, thanks to Neil.  My van is a little slow and a little wide, but she’s grounded, firing well and holding steady, which is why I have named her La Tortue – the turtle!

Rialta estimate

Filed Under: Home page Tagged With: Brene Brown, Rialta

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Footer

About Eileen

Eileen Delehanty Pearkes explores landscape, history and the human imagination in writing, maps and visual notebooks.

Recent Posts

  • Journey Home
  • Salmon River Dreams
  • Emergence Takes Time
  • Lighting a Flame
  • The Sense of an Ending

Subscribe to new posts

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Copyright © 2023 · Author Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in