Ingrid ZH | Fangruo’s Cereal — Writing, Food, Travel & Coaching

My main task every day is to find little pockets of time to play.

Last week I went on a work trip to Los Angeles, California. It was a Monday–Friday trade show called Expo West. This was my second year attending, and it felt like a lot had changed. The biggest difference is that I’m no longer afraid to ask questions that might sound a little silly, and I’m less nervous about striking up conversations with strangers. Overall, I think these are all good changes.

Trade shows and interacting with people are things I enjoy. But what I looked forward to even more was leaving the convention center afterward and going to a national park. I want to visit every national park in the United States. Joshua Tree National Park is about three and a half hours from Los Angeles. My flight out of L.A. was at eleven pm on Sunday night, so I had plenty of time to wander.

I’ve wanted to leave the East Coast for a long time. I want to move west, somewhere with mountains. As I drove toward Joshua Tree, I saw many snow-covered mountains. You don’t see those much when you live on the East Coast. At the beginning of last year I drove to Quebec, and on the way back I saw the mountains of Vermont. January snow lay across their ridges like a sleeping beast. That felt different from the snowy mountains in the West. Western mountains seem to wave to you from far away. They look friendlier somehow.

Seeing snowy mountains always brings people comfort.

I kept driving east and saw a road sign that read: “Desert City.” It felt like stepping into a dream—leaving the noise of Los Angeles behind and driving into the desert.

What is the meaning of a trip like this? I’ve asked myself that question many times. I’ve tried to translate the experience into something with “practical” meaning. For example, when I look at a map without borders, I can roughly imagine how the highways run. I remember where the beautiful mountains and rivers are, and from that I can naturally guess where dense networks of population might be.

I once drove through a place called Moreno Valley. I remembered that name as a distributor center for UNFI (a CPG product distributor). Travel life and work life may seem separate, but sometimes I notice small connections between them and start playing a little game of matching the dots. Later I drove through a place called Yucca Valley, and it reminded me of another place called Yucca where there was a greenhouse vegetable farm. Two or three years ago I was preparing for an audit at work. The audit required collecting quality-inspection certificates from all our suppliers. I was making an Excel sheet listing every supplier, and I remember that one supplier had two vegetable farms—one of them located in Yucca.

On workdays, I allow myself small moments of wandering. I’ll open the map and look up where Yucca actually is.

At the entrance to Joshua Tree the line of cars was completely backed up. When it was finally my turn, the ranger at the gate chatted with me leisurely. He said the long line today was because someone had climbed to the top of a rock formation in the park and fallen. The person was okay. It was around 4:30 in the afternoon. The ranger repeatedly advised me not to drive to the main viewpoints for sunset. He said I might get stuck in traffic, unable to move forward or backward, or end up standing in the cold wind shivering. He said there were plenty of beautiful places in the park—no need to go to the famous viewpoints.

So I touched the trees, touched the rocks, and found a giant boulder to sit on. I imagined how this enormous stone had arrived here. Then I fished my phone out of my pocket and wrote a poem to my lover.

It began to get cold. I returned to my car and waited for sunset. That night I was staying in a town called Twentynine Palms. The name reminded me of Arrakis from Dune, where twenty trees stand in front of the ruler’s palace as a symbol of hope.

I couldn’t decide whether to drive back to Twentynine Palms to find dinner, stay here and wait for darkness to see the stars, or go straight to the Airbnb tent I had booked for the night. I felt anxious, flustered, unsure. When traveling, the fragile parts of the heart have nowhere to hide.

I have traveled before with that same heaviness. Every option seemed equally good—and therefore equally bad. I tend to believe outcomes are strongly tied to personal choices or intentions. I sat in the car with my eyes closed, searching for a quiet place within. By then the sky had turned a smoky purple. More visitors were driving back from the viewpoints. My car was parked by the roadside. With my eyes closed, I could hear cars rushing past me.

When the mind longs for calm, it sometimes tightens instead. Breathing changes. That tightness melts into a feeling of self-blame.

But once I became aware of it, the passing cars sounded like beautiful pearls. One by one, I began threading them together.

Eventually I felt very hungry. I drove back to Twentynine Palms, bought a sandwich from Subway, and returned to my tent. It was early March; the nighttime temperature was around forty degrees Fahrenheit. The Airbnb was a tent set up in someone’s backyard. I slowly drove onto the sandy ground behind the house. It was already fully dark. The stars were bright.

The bathroom was a huge metal barrel with a dry compost toilet inside. The Airbnb was called “Love Nest.” Inside the tent was a comfortable mattress covered with fake rose petals. I carefully gathered the petals and placed them by the bedside.

Originally I had come to California to see a friend who was about to leave the United States. I told her I would be camping that night and that it might be cold. She gave me a blanket.

In the chilly early spring of California, I slept on a patch of sand next to the highway.

The stars were very far away. I thought: from where I stand, they all look two-dimensional. Only when I reach out to touch them do they fall into the three-dimensional world where I exist. I wrapped myself tightly in the blanket my friend gave me. I felt like a cold little asteroid. Cars passing nearby were like spacecraft traveling through the universe of my mind.

When morning came, I too would drive my spaceship away from this place.

With that thought, I fell asleep, completely content.