I have a story for you. It's about a road trip that changed a woman's life. She was an artist from New York City, the painter and dancer named Marta Beckett. I'll let one of her good friends take it from here.

My name is Fred Convoy, C-O-N as a neighbor, B as in basketball O-Y. And I met Marta around 2001. Marta had been on the road

with her husband, Bob Williams. She had been performing in New York for the first 44 years of her life.

She was in three Broadway musicals. She was in several one-woman shows. And so she set out

with her husband on the road in a van pulling a camper. In the camper, she had her easel to paint

because she was a prolific visual artist,

as well as a ballerina that performed,

and she also made her own costume.

So for about nine years, she was criss-crossing the country,

primarily in the Midwest.

And then, when she got out to California in 1967 on Easter, they had a flat tire while they

were camping in Death Valley.

And they dragged their rig up to this garage, a standard station, which was the only

thing operating in the town at the time.

So while the flat tire was being fixed over here in the garage,

Marta had time to wander around the abandoned town of Death Valley Junction,

and she went over to the social hall, Ckel social hall, and she peeked through this

chink in the door on the west side, and there she saw a shaft of light that fell on a doll's head,

and she saw a kangaroo rat, and there was a stage, and immediately she had this epiphanal moment that said,

this is the place that I was meant to come. As the fortune teller in New York had prophesied many

years ago, you will move to a very rural location, and you will spend the happiest years of your life. She didn't see blank walls.

She saw the possibilities, as she said, empty spaces are places to create. And so she did.

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