…in Fairfield, Iowa.

When we spoke with the young man who drove our rental truck two thousand miles from Big Sur to here, we asked him what his experience was driving large vehicles long distance. He told us his stories of expeditions to Burning Man.

Suitably impressed, we told him about Fairfield, the Maharishi Transcendental Meditation community, the Golden Domes of Pure Knowledge, the many ethnic restaurants, the farmer’s market, and the 16-mile loop trail that circles the town of about 10,000 souls.

“It’s like Burning Man,” we said, “but for old folks!” Which got a laugh, and is somewhat true. There is a thriving bunch of active retired folks here, but Fairfield also has lots of young families with little kids, university students, artists, farmers, professional people, a real small town demographic.  

“The sky is our ocean,” said a new friend. When we drive out of town, down the nearly empty highways, we see this sky-ocean, sometimes baby blue, sometimes steel gray, always changing. A huge palette in the sky, clouds painted in broad strokes by the ever-present winds.

Now, in May, the land is truly beautiful, with endless, patient crop fields not yet planted, abundant forests, gardens and hedgerows, and the expansive Skunk River, where I half-expect Huckleberry Finn to float by on a raft.

Still, sadness lingers, ebbs away and crashes back. Driving up to Iowa City, I asked my husband, “Where’s the edge? Where’s the edge?” There’s no jumping off place, no escape. “There is no edge, sweetie,” he said, “we’re in the middle.”

The middle. Swaddled in miles and miles of Mother Earth. When we would look at Google earth before our move, we’d see the golds and greens of the continent up to the Pacific Northwest, the ochre and sepia of the western deserts and mountains, then the emerald tones of the Heartland. I told myself we were moving from the ragged coast to the soft, enfolding center of the continent.

On the coast Mother Earth dares us to maintain our balance, and keeps us on our tippy toes. Here, she holds us close, she seems more peaceful. She lulls us with endless storybook clouds, and the kind of landscape that must have inspired that childhood Rorschach – drawings of a house, a yard, a tree, the sun. Again and again, in village after village nestled between farms.

Iowa is dramatic land, too. It’s dramatic in its stillness, its endless vast flatness (and rolling hills), its timeless quality. And of course, snow, which is still a novelty for me. Then, there’s tornadoes. Wooooo boy. Our sweet realtors told us that Fairfield isn’t really part of “tornado alley,” which has occasioned a guffaw or two from folks we’ve met. Another part of the adventure.

Did tea-kettle topped grain silos inspire the Tin Man’s hat in the Wizard of Oz? A sensational amount of corn is grown here: approximately 13 million acres of it, yielding 128 billion pounds of “field corn” (used mostly for animal feed and ethanol production) each year. Iowa grows more maíz than Mexico. The rich seas of soil in this hardworking land bring an agrarian sensibility to the culture. You can see this from the front porch to the farmer’s market, from the county fairs to the monster silos beside the highways.

Perhaps because of the cold winters, social relating is a highly developed art form. I’ve found there are many storytellers here, with lots of quick, dry wit. Standing in line with my new pitchfork at the farm store, the older gent behind me said, “She’s either got some digging to do, or her husband’s in trouble!”

I loved learning from my neighbor that the delicate silver maple leaf pods that flutter to the ground like spinning butterflies, are known as “maple squirters.” When they’re green, kids squeeze them, and, as you guessed, the seeds pop out.

Another passionate pastime is birdwatching. On a cold morning right before Easter I trudged through the melting snow with several women of all ages and some adorable girl scouts, looking for newly arriving birds. It felt like an Easter egg hunt, as we searched for and spotted the beauties. We saw all kinds, from red-wing blackbirds, eastern phoebes and tufted titmice to dashing scarlet cardinals and the elusive white-breasted nuthatch.  Even a wood-duck emerged from its box in the lagoon.

When I asked the group leader, a much-loved retired teacher, what kind of bird she would be, she replied immediately, “A sparrow, for its subtle beauty.”

And I’d like to thank Bob Dylan, for (another) gem of wisdom. He’s chosen Tulsa, Oklahoma, as the home of his just-opened Bob Dylan Center in the Tulsa arts district. When asked, why Tulsa? he replied that, while the coasts have a certain energy, he prefers, “the casual hum of the Heartland.”  Thanks Bob. I’m starting to like that hum too.

Two summers ago, I wanted to be a “knowledge worker” like my friends in Silicon Valley, who reported for duty from the comfort of their homes even before the pandemic.

A friend suggested a site used by gig workers all over the world. 

As I tossed my bid into the ring, I thought, no one else is gonna want this job, so I’ve got a chance at it. Shortly afterwards, a gentleman from India hired me to write marketing copy for GetUrns. And so, I found myself, at 3am on hot summer nights, writing hundreds of words about cremation urns, at 8 cents apiece, for a woman-owned business in Texas.

After some preliminary research, I learned about the “Death Positive” movement. Awareness of death, your own and, perhaps worse, of those you love, makes life sweeter. It makes you more grateful for the blessing of each breath.

Coming from a long line of schoolteachers and librarians, I searched for magic words crafted to relieve suffering. Quotes from CS Lewis and Oscar Wilde to Emily Dickinson and Marilyn Monroe; from the English Book of Common Prayer, to Japanese mystic poetry and Cherokee proverbs.

Words that could soften loss, or offer crumbs of comfort when the great mystery of Death arrives. That final visitor that spirits away our beloved family members, friends, pets, and yes, one day, each of us.

Most beautiful quote: Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali poet and winner of the 1913 Nobel prize in literature.

“Death is not extinguishing the light, it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”

Most practical: Memento mori (remember you will die) as Socrates and the Stoics who came after him said. To quote the most famous of them, Marcus Aurelius, “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

So, I was ready. From cremation jewelry to biodegradable scattering urns, to large and small amphoras similar to what you’d find in an archeological dig. Small keepsake urns with “just a pinch” of remains, tealight urns, abstract urns with space for glowing candles inside. From Italian fiore inlaid urns, to colorful paper cannisters, from ceramic and wood to aluminum and stainless steel and marble, urns were in. Urns were much of my writing life that summer..

Life being what it is, as I began exploring the marketing angle of death, my father, at 93, began his final decline. He was fortunate at the end to enter a state of grace and fearlessness, even humor. When I sang him a hymn, I commented I should keep my day job, and he smiled.

He let go at 5pm on a Friday, quitting time, with my cousin holding his hand. I saw him as a young man, jumping off a moving train, and heading towards the sunset, or maybe, just across town and into the nearest pool hall.

I was writing about walnut, cherry and oak urns the day before he died. “a time-honored wooden urn is a classic piece of funerary art. Trees sustain the planet; they shelter us in life, comfort us in death. They symbolize resurrection, sleeping in winter, to return restored in spring.”

Suddenly, I was a customer. The man from India was kind, though no one offered me a discount, and in simple Midwest style, I slipped my Dad’s cremains into the Mississippi River one fine morning last October.

The work went on.

I reached some new level of dark humor when I began to recommend buying your own urn early, like a burial plot. “Why not choose your own elegant marble urn today? In addition to relieving your family of this task, meditating on your own urn can be liberating!”

Full disclosure: I have a ceramic pot, painted with pink bamboo fronds, and tiny golden birds in flight. Right now, it holds ragged prayer flags and my last dog’s collar. Someday, it will hold what is left of my body. At least until someone can take my body, transformed by 1800 degree heat into bits of bone and powder, to the Pacific Ocean.

This later stage of life, when the monster is about to emerge from under the bed, is a good time for contemplation. As we age and ripen into fuller consciousness, memories come back, streaming into the cracks that let light into our minds.

Why do I remember this now? I wonder.

For all of us, some moments are preserved in amber.

I remember…When I was in my 20’s, I was in love with a nice boy, handsome and funny. One warm summer evening we went with his parents to see a comedy show at the Hungry Eye in San Francisco. 

At intermission as we walked down Columbus Avenue, a very disoriented lady of the evening wobbled past us in a torn tutu, and not much more.  She was talking to herself. 

Embarrassed, I said something about her to my friend’s dad. “Ah,” he responded gently, “Everyone is innocent.”

That is when I looked down and saw the row of numbers tattooed on his left forearm.

I knew that, as a little boy, my boyfriend’s father had been at Auschwitz. And yet, it was in this particular moment that I saw that tattoo.

I’ve puzzled over that story for years.

Now, I see it as an inspiring brush with profound compassion.

The Stoics also said, Memento vivere, remember to live. In order to live well, we need to transmute Life’s suffering; of injustice, of grief and loss, of aging, dying and death. Within our brief lifespans, we can find the shimmering golden light of peace, and even, sometimes, joy.

Many, many words have been written about this process.

What works best for me is what American environmentalist Rachel Carson wrote:

“If I had influence with the good fairy who…presides… over…children, I would ask that she grant to each child a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life…”

And, for those of us who want the ULTIMATE wisdom, there is Theodore Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, who gave us these words to live by:

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”

The bunny reads the story https://anchor.fm/linda-sonrisa-jones/episodes/Partington-Bunny-remembers-Easter-eu5rg3

Each Spring, for the past two decades, we’ve hosted a flamboyant neighborhood festival, the Eggstravaganza Easter Egg Hunt, on the Lone Palm property we caretake in Big Sur.

It began on a rainy weekend in 1999, at the bridal shower I hosted for my dear friend Margaret. Margaret could bake pies, sew wedding dresses, paint landscapes, knit elaborate sweaters, and be glamorous, too. I can still see her in her floppy straw hat, wearing the sweater she’d knitted herself. She swings her Easter basket back and forth, her banjo-big blue eyes smiling, the coast stretching out behind her to the south, the silver gray ocean reaching out to the horizon. She sealed her nuptials later that April under the wedding tree, after riding a snow-white Arabian horse, adorned with red ribbons and pink roses, across the meadow.

That bridal egg hunt got me thinking. It’s much easier to connect with neighbors in springtime than to host a Christmas party when big storms cause power outages and impassable roads. The eccentric, sturdy folks who live on this mountain sometimes disagree – over water use, access roads, fence placement, outdoor lights, short-term rentals, controlled burns and more. But a truce is declared for those who attend the Eggstravaganza on Easter Sunday.

We are Switzerland, as one neighbor said, as we watch toddlers, young children and teens search for chocolate bunnies across fields of wildflowers and freshly-mown lawns. Each year I hope to create an experience that lives in communal memory until the following Spring. Over the years, as we watch the children grow and play, there’s a sense of continuity along with wonder. Sometimes, we can return to the garden.


The story of The Selfish Giant, written by Oscar Wilde for his two young boys, inspired the Eggstravaganza, too. A very selfish Giant returns from a year long visit with this friend, the Ogre. Outraged, the Giant throws the village children out of his garden, where they have been playing every day after school. When Winter comes, Winter decides to stay, and invites Snow, Frost and the North Wind to join the party. For years the Giant wonders why the flower and fruit trees don’t bloom, why Spring never comes back.

One day he sees that his fence has fallen down in one corner of his orchard and the children have returned. They sit happily in the branches of the trees, they skip and play along the paths. Spring has returned, the birds are singing, and all the fruit trees and flowers have burst into bloom. The Giant’s heart melts and he decides to share his garden from then on, knocking down the fence and welcoming all the children. “I’ve been a very selfish giant,” he laments. In this way, the Giant is fulfilled. His soul grows wiser and kinder as the children become his friends and enjoy his garden for many years.

Bringing happiness to others makes us joyful, and as our hearts open the world is more beautiful. In this way we create a life that flows with love.

We can trace the origin of Easter to the Saxon goddess Ostara. She transformed a bird into a hare, and it thanked her by laying a batch of colored eggs. Seriously, that is the story! The celebration is also related to Ishtar, the ancient Sumerian goddess of love, who came back to life from the dead, a seasonal theme. Special celebrations for Ishtar took place around the spring equinox. Eggs are also a ancient symbol of procreation and abundance.

What do bunnies do? What humans used to do in a pagan festival a little later in the Spring. At Beltane in ancient Celtic lands, villagers built great bonfires, herded cattle into higher pastures, drank copious mead, danced, and, like the proverbial bunnies, swapped sex partners. A child born from the Beltane celebration was a good omen for the community.

“What’s Easter about?” asked my friend Lisa years ago. She’d been raised Jehovah’s Witness and was curious about all the holidays. “It’s about Beltane, babe,” I replied and explained the ritual to her. “Oh!” she sighed beneath her Easter bonnet as we trudged through the meadow, hiding eggs. “Let’s do that!”

Spring is when Lone Palm’s lawns, elegant old trees and landscaping really shine. There’s golden poppy, raspberry vetch, yellow lavender and purple lupin on the hillside above the house. Daisies, daffodils and birds of paradise burst forth, wisteria and jasmine festoon the garden. It’s a perfect time for colored eggs, Easter bonnets and champagne flutes filled with jelly beans.

On Easter Sunday we frolic on the lawns, swing in the hammocks, mingle at the picnic table or on the yoga deck. Whales spout in the ocean below, curious condors swing by above. One year, we even had face painting. Kids and adults sprawled on the blankets on the grass as playful artists decorated their foreheads, noses and cheeks with multi-colored tendrils, arrows, dots and feathery shapes. We became a tribe of Easter aboriginals.


It’s always a potluck, thank goodness. The dining room table fills and empties, then fills and empties again throughout the day. One year I counted six plates of deviled eggs on the table at once. There’s a variety of salads, often from greens straight from neighbors’ gardens, multiple kale dishes, pasta and lasagna, wheels of brie, baskets of crackers and homemade bread, slices of roast beef and ham, spicy tamales, Bundt cakes, elaborate pastries, fresh watermelon and mango, and more.

Guests are asked to bring “nice bubbles.” In other words, no Barefoot Bubbly! If someone brings something cheap, eyebrows go up and sniffs are audible. We may be hillbillies, but we know our sparkling wines. One year we filled a small claw-foot with bottles of Champagne, the colorful labels on the bottles making the tub as pretty as a basket of Easter Eggs.

There is a home-grown innovation to the ritual: a champagne glass hunt. Those over 21, in order to have a glass of bubbles on Easter Sunday, must first go and find their goblet in the grass. Sometimes, this makes grown-ups grumpy. “What do I do to get some Champagne, again?” said an exasperated Dad who the following year simply brought his own glass.

A decade or so ago it was an all-weekend bash, beginning on Friday night as guest arrived to help with preparations. Stalwart Moms, notably Margaret and then Peggy, have made so much of the magic happen! Handmade glitter eggs and vintage tchotchkes from the Oakland Museum’s White Elephant sale, candies galore. We’d dye the eggs the old-fashioned way all day Saturday and get up super early on Easter Sunday morning to stage the hunt, before the littler kids woke up or arrived. We’d start drinking the good Champagne early in the day, with poetic toasts, or course.

As in any ongoing human activity, things sometimes got complicated. One year the “Bad Easter Bunny” appeared and handed out airplane-sized liquor bottles and bright colored condoms, which the kids blew up into balloons. Surprisingly, not everyone thought that was funny. “What’s the difference between a condom and a balloon?” went the story afterwards. “About 10 years,” was the response.


Each year I place a small, wooden baby blue stop sign, the corner gnawed off years ago by my puppy, at the main entrance to the maze. It says, “Easter Bunny Stop Here.”

At high noon, I stand on a chair, make a brief speech and ring a gong to kick off the hunt. Big kids, 10 and up, enter the elaborate narrow maze cut into the tall grass of Lone Palm’s large meadow. Children 5-9 follow another, slightly easier path. Wee ones under five have their own “children’s garden,” a tiny spot filled with sparkly treasures and sweets, amid scarlet geraniums, bunny-soft Mexican sage, and fragrant sweet peas.

An additional bunny visit is often required for the little ones whose parents bring them late to the party. “You are the Easter Bunny!” said my neighbor in mock awe. A Vietnam Vet who reminds me of the Marlboro Man, he’d spied me, basket in hand and wearing bunny ears, re-seeding the children’s garden with treats.

Today, it’s more Prosecco than Veuve, and the partying is gentler. The dozens of kids seem younger, the parents, too. I feel such joy when I connect with neighbors and when I discover new friends of all ages. Some little people become great fans of the Big Sur-style Easter Bunny, and bring a passion to filling their baskets each year.

As the hostess, my Easter costume is key. After years of playing around with everything from a pink corduroy pantsuit plus a top hat to the gaudiest floral table cloth mini-dress I could find at Goodwill, I think I’ve found the best one yet: a skirt, camisole and jacket in a lustrous pale green fabric, with iridescent pink and yellow threads sparkling throughout. A white felt hat with a veil, simple flat sandals, and off I go, Egg Hunt Mistress of Ceremonies.

In the office the teenage boys I’d met as infants were playing card games. They looked up at me as I emerged from the bathroom in my finery, so on impulse I asked them, “What do you think?” To my pleasant surprise, their budding gallantry shone forth.

“You look lovely,” said Theo, now studying at Vassar. “You look like Easter!” said Blake, who plays the Chinese board game Go with my husband, and cooks breakfast for us all.

One of the sweetest photographs from a decade ago shows five little girls, all in their Easter dresses, jumping up and down on the outdoor bed, hair flying, laughing. The cobalt ocean is their backdrop, a sky blue sheet with clouds scattered across it covers the bed. One little gal, Stella, is in mid-air, as Mom Heather stands by, holding hands with Mason, encouraging him to jump towards the sky too.

Two years ago, one of the first young ladies to come to the party was one of those children. Now 14, Emilou’s golden tresses spilled over her jean jacket and her smile was the smile of an old soul. I popped a wide straw hat, crowned with orange paper flowers, onto her head, and snapped another photo.

Years ago, there was Ryan, with his wispy, curly hair that hadn’t been cut since his birth, his eyes a soft chocolate brown. People thought he was a little girl, until he started climbing the tallest tree in the yard, a 50′ Norfolk pine. I can still see him, wearing the world’s smallest red plaid fleece shirt, holding the itty-bitty black bunny I’d adopted up close under his chin.

Then there was Isabella, destined to be a teenage rodeo queen. You might remember her if you hold onto copies of Smithsonian magazine: in 1999 she made the cover. She stands barefoot on the back of her honey-colored horse, on a hilltop above the sea. She looks directly at the camera, her eyes serious, her face wistful. “Big Sur, Life on the Edge,” the headline reads. In my mind’s eye Isabella holds up a royal purple egg, a diamond pattern in white crayon peeking through the paint. Her long brown hair frames her face as she smiles a Mona Lisa smile, freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks.

Towards the end of the Eggstravaganza late one April Sunday, I met a mermaid just before sunset. I gave her some big fluffy towels and a glass of Champagne, and she took a long soak in my claw-foot tub, which she filled with sprigs of lavender and strands of passionflowers.

Her handsome, red-headed boyfriend sat and chatted with us on the nearby deck, a sheepish smile on his face as he glanced over at his girl in the bath. Lukie, all grown up, gamine and beautiful. Her close-cropped thick black hair and aquiline features, her deep amused laugh and her sweet youthful self covered in bath bubbles and flowers. The perfect finish to a day of celebrating Spring.

After almost two years of learning, freaking out, and finally knuckling down in the Covid crunch, Romancing the Sur, Reflections on Life in Big Sur, is now available via Audible Books, narrated by yours truly!

A special thank you to Magnus Torén of the Henry Miller Library, whose inspiration and support were invaluable.

With love and gratitude,

Linda