Field Work for the Agorophobic

I read once that the reason so many nature writers were men was that nature writing demanded solitary excursions into the field and women weren't comfortable with that. The world outside was too hazardous for women to venture out unchaperoned. I challenged that assumption when I was younger, often going out on my own, nothing but a notebook, watercolors, pen and a camera to keep me company. I was one of the brave, like Dorothea Lange, like Georgia O'Keefe. I cherished the images of these women sitting atop their old cars, out in the middle of nowhere, doing art. As a younger woman, I traveled to other countries alone, wandered empty desert roads alone, lurked about looking for places that moved me, that had not only natural beauty, but the beauty desolate abandonment creates and that I have always found alluring. Unnoticed beauty, the kind that hard living and loss can give to a human face or a landscape.

But then. But then, what? Perhaps I lost my reasons for wandering. Home for me used to lack permanence, lack warmth, so I traveled. But over the years my wanderlust has been supplanted by a contented kind of nesting. I got married, bought a house, had kids, got pets, planted a garden. Staying put had both purpose and reward. And the world outside in the mean time became more terrifying. My family genes carry in them code for restlessness and reclusivity. I always thought I had only the itchy feet gene. To my surprise I am slowly retracting, like a hermit crab into her shell, using my home to shield my soft and vulnerable parts.

Here's the challenge. How do I do the field work that I have always loved without leaving my house and garden? I have developed a skill set and passions well-suited for back-roads and empty deserts, but I can't just pack up a knapsack and head out the door anymore. Who will clean the cat box, wake the children, cook dinner? I like taking care of my family. Abandoning them is not an option. And for the past year I have been seasick for reasons doctors haven't yet ferreted out. I grew up by the ocean, was a SCUBA instructor, have been sailing plenty of times, and only twice got seasick (once on a ferry from Santorini after a week of living on bullion (my big fat Greek diet) and then having Greek men blow tobacco smoke in my face for ten hours while the boat pitched in immense swells; and then on the Great Barrier Reef in rocky seas, after watching the Captain barf over the gunwale). Now I live in the desert, hundreds of miles from salt air or surf, and I am constantly seasick-- nauseous, off-balance, dizzy. And my ears ring like a squeaky fan. It's all triggered my recluse gene. So what to do?

So far I've begun macro studies of plants and critters in my garden and other nearby places. And I've started this blog. Problem solved?