Heidi at 57
For the past week, November’s calendar has been filled with a spectacular series of events. The 2025 World Series battle between the L.A. Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays was an epic nail biter. The reigning champion Dodgers didn’t outlast the Blue Jays until the 11th inning of game 7, just hours before clocks fell back at 2 a.m. on November 2, bringing Daylight Savings Time to an end.
Then the biggest, brightest, fullest and closest supermoon of 2025 lit up the night sky. November’s full moon is often referred to as the “beaver moon”—a name traditionally used by various indigenous peoples of North America to signify the time of the year when beavers are most active preparing their winter dams and lodges before rivers have frozen over. But today, I want to write about another cause for celebration—our daughter Heidi’s birthday and the light she has brought to our world since her November arrival 57 years ago.
I first met Heidi in 1977 when she and her brother Hayden were in elementary school and Kit was teaching at UCLA. That October, Heidi and I carved our first pumpkin together (along with one of her fingers). Brave, strong and independent early on, she didn’t shed a tear as I applied a colorful Band-Aid to her wound. Being an avid skateboarder, she already had a few scars on her knees and elbows by the time she came into my life.
That fall, Heidi, Hayden, Kit and I had our first outing together in NUVUES—her Dad’s VW Westphalia pop top van. In search of apple farms and pumpkin stands, we headed for the mountains east of downtown Los Angeles. The four of us camped in chilly mountain air, and the next morning, Kit fixed pancakes on his Coleman stove. That weekend road trip was the first of our van adventures across the decade that followed.
The summer of 1978, the four of us packed up NUVUES and set out on a 6,000-mile van trip from L.A. to Amherst, MA and back—a journey that introduced me to Kit’s extraordinary Salter family. One episode in particular stands out from that grand adventure. It happened the morning we crossed the Colorado River at the California/Arizona border on the final day of our trip. When Kit spotted a highway exit at the edge of the Colorado River, he parked the van so we could cool off before the long drive to L.A.
Good swimmers, the kids were in their bathing suits before Kit and I had time to test the water’s flow. Having swum in rivers and streams where we’d camped the prior six weeks, they waded fearlessly into the water and were soon caught in a fast current. Sensing the danger at hand, Kit swam out to Hayden while I grabbed Heidi and together we all made it back to the shore. Wringing wet but alive and triumphant, we captured the epic moment on Kit’s camera and left our mark on a nearby post: NUVUES ’78 KCHH.
After returning to L.A., we moved into a cozy 1928 cottage up Beverly Glen Canyon near UCLA. After living together in tight quarters for six weeks in a camper van, its compact size was a perfect fit for the four of us, my cats Muffie and Tiggy, and their dog Jessie. “The Cottage” was our home for the next decade of our life together.
On a trip to NYC with Heidi and her wife Sugie in 2019, we walked from our Bed and Breakfast to the High Line in the old Meat Packing District. It was cold so we dressed in warm jackets, flannel shirts, and neck scarves. Along the way, we popped into a bookstore where I spotted a picture book titled Van Life: Your Home on the Road. When I came to a picture of a school bus yellow camper van like NUVUES, it was instantly 1978 all over again—the summer of our first cross country road trip together a few months before Heidi’s tenth birthday.
So many episodes and travels are now part of the memories we’ve shared since our van life and decade at the Cottage in L.A. These days, Heidi teaches at Diablo Valley Community College in the Bay Area and spends the rest of the week in Nevada City with Sugie and their three dogs. The home Kit and I moved into in 2021 is located twenty minutes away on the other side of the Nevada City’s historic downtown. Over the course of moves with Kit across the decades from L.A to D.C. to Missouri and back to CA, it has been a joy to be Heidi’s “Other Mother” and friend.
As Kit used to say, there is no bad landscape. Heidi now wears a geography tee shirt Kit wore on during a six-week institute he directed at UCLA the summer we met. Heidi, Hayden, Kit and I have been on the road together now for fifty years, and we know how to survive unanticipated challenges and detours along the way. Happy birthday Heidi. I love you to this November’s super moon and back.