Lost and found, cats and memories (Drive Day 157: December 3rd, 2003)
Photo by David Bruce
We have to drive through the Desert of Sechura to follow the same route my parents drove in my first roadtrip down the Pan-American highway 30 years ago. And I remember this bleak stretch of highway like I drove it yesterday. It’s where we pulled over to make sandwiches for lunch and somehow let the cat escape. We didn’t discover we had left Pantera behind for hours and yet somehow convinced my father to turn around and go back. The cat was waiting in the same spot – it was so miraculous, on so many levels, that he took a picture of the spot.
Fast forward 30 years and we find ourselves staring at the exact same spot. The peaks and dunes align in perfect symmetry to my father’s photo. We take the same picture, and know at that instant these two images will become the cover of the book I will write about this journey.
Photo by Gary Geboy
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
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