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Emily Hess's avatar

I'm glad you wrote this. ❤️ I enjoy your husband's writing, but you've definitely got a voice all your own and I'm glad you've shared your perspective.

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Keturah Hickman's avatar

Thank you!! I really appreciate this :)

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Haley Baumeister's avatar

co-sign

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JudyS's avatar

Accepting hospitality may be harder than being hospitable. Is it awkward staying at strangers’ homes? I like how you bring knitting to occupy yourself while the men talk. You are being supportive and interested and still doing something you want to do. And last, providing meals while you are camping!! How hard that must have been and yet I bet it was delicious! Eating outside enhances all food.

Thank you for the fine article which I enjoyed reading.

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Keturah Hickman's avatar

you're right! but it's so important to know how to receive in order to understand how to better give. It is hard, because I have to intuit and discern difference expectations and boundaries and then relay them to my husband (who is not very intuitive, but that's forgivable because everyone likes him so much!). And yes .. the meals we do cook when we camp are always very simple: meat, rice, salt, maybe a veggie. It's nice because it's cooked over a fire!

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Kaitlin Wilder's avatar

Love the bit about true hospitality being an open heart. I often think I don't have the correct means to host people. But I think the anxiety comes out of vanity, which is a sure road to a closed off heart.

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Chief Arod's avatar

This was a great read and I really appreciated your perspective of your guys’ travels. I’m interested in your thoughts about the places in Michigan that was decrepit. I’m originally from around Detroit and now living in rural Michigan so I would love to hear your thoughts about it all.

Both you and Andy’s writing has encouraged me to lean into spending more time in places that are on the periphery of the bigger towns - it really seems that there is still some culture in the non homogenized places that aren’t blasted with strip malls. I found what you said about Montana to be pretty interesting as well, I wonder if how dead it is there is because of so many people have been priced out and much of the mountain towns there are now playgrounds for the wealthy?

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Sarah  Merkel's avatar

I too, am interested in your perspective. Your writing voice has a clarity and poetry of its own! Well done!

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Abigail W. Miller's avatar

I loved reading this, Keturah! We so enjoyed being on the receiving end of your hospitality.

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Maria D's avatar

Gorgeous, Keturah. Thank you for sharing <3

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Christiana Johnston's avatar

I really enjoyed reading this! I like your voice and insights! Also, beautiful church in the photos towards the end!

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Erin Zieschke's avatar

Such a beautiful telling! I love how you described your sense of hospitality with the families you met and cooked 'stone soup' for!

It's beautiful how hospitality ebbs and flows through different seasons of life. I love hosting and having a beautiful, welcoming home with good food or tea on the stove creating delicious smells, but I feel like I really had to learn how to accept hospitality, even in my own home, when my babies were born and friends came over and dropped off food and did my dishes and I just sat there rocking my newborn. Even as kids got a little older, at pot lucks, instead of being first to jump up to do the dishes, I'd be the one wrangling a toddler and another person would come and take my dish and wash it.

We've also bike toured and accepted a lot of hospitality staying in folks homes and now we love hosting bike tourists!

Also so glad you're finding culture here in California! Let me know if you hit up Sacramento! We live walking distance to both a TLM and byzantine mass; have some great recommendations to share for sweet little spots to bike or walk or visit (and have a small guest bedroom!)

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Keturah Hickman's avatar

Yes, accepting it is a little harder for me, too, but it is just as important! Ohh I wish I'd known that ... we were in Sacramento and had wanted to stay with someone who went to the TLM. Maybe we'll get better and letting people know where we WILL be instead of where we WERE!

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Jan 9
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Keturah Hickman's avatar

Thank you! I don't feel travel writing comes as naturally to me as my husband, but I feel encouraged to try and share my travel thoughts at least a little more than I have!

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