My Blue Boat Home

Rebecca Dutton
Home After a Stroke

May 26, 2014

I love to travel.  I have driven through 47 of the 50 states and lived in eight of them (Iowa, Illinois, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey).  Yet a recent trip to Sante Fe, New Mexico showed me a dry climate can suck every drop of water out of my body.  On the first day I saw wrinkles on my face that I had never seen before.  Two days later I developed a dry cough.  Two days and nights of dry coughing produced a thick fluid in my lungs and made my back muscles spasm.  Standing up and walking was misery.  Even though I drank several glasses of water a day I was so dehydrated that a layer of skin came away every time I ran a finger across my lips.

I associate the pattern of dry cough - wet cough - back spasm with winter when sub-freezing temperatures make the air too cold to hold much water.  I did not know thin desert air (elevation 7,200 feet) that has 5 to 10% humidity can make me wish I were dead.

New Mexico is land of amazing panoramic views.  My photo does not do justice to the colors and grand scale.  To survive this beauty I had to buy a vaporizer to put warm moist air in my bedroom and take medicine for a cough and back pain.

Thank God I live on a planet that has tons of water.  However, now I know I need to check the humidity as well as temperature before I travel.  I took a deep breathe when I got back home and saw the Atlantic Ocean.

Except from a hymn called:

My Blue Boat Home

I've been sailing all my life now 

Never harbor or port have I known 

The wide universe is the ocean I travel 

And the earth is my blue boat home.

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My Blue Boat Home

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Home After a Stroke