Author Amy Tan Finds Solace in Nature Journaling

You’ve noted your struggles with Lyme disease. How are you feeling these days?

I’m doing really great. I do personal training three times a week. I hike a lot. I just finished a three-week trip in Ecuador, where we got up at 4 in the morning and walked all day long. I do very active vacations. For our 50th wedding anniversary, we’re going to Yosemite, where we backpacked when we were very young. We’ve rented two houses with friends, and we’re going to hike and look at the stars at night.

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You’ve been married a long time! Any secrets to a good marriage?

I was lucky in finding a person who, it turned out, was going to be compatible with me for life. And a lot of that has to do, in retrospect, with the values we share ... values of giving and generosity and kindness. If you have common interests, that’s good. But Lou, he doesn’t draw. He’s fine with birds, but it’s not his passion. I think it’s important to allow for one’s independence, so you don’t feel like you’re smothered in a relationship, having to have a shared identity at the sacrifice of your own very personal identity.

How has growing older changed your outlook?

I do find that it does shape my decision-making a lot, because I’m very aware of mortality and time, and I see that time is a percentage of something that I have [left] — not with any grimness, but it just makes me aware. Do I want to spend that percentage of time doing x instead of y? I also think about the amount [of money] that I spend on things, because our money goes to charity at the end of our lives. We don’t have children. So we think about our money in terms of being able to give more at the end of our lives. Somebody once thought for sure that I traveled first class everywhere I go, but no way. Yes, I could afford it. But that’s money that could have gone to charity.

What’s the status of Rock Bottom Remainders, the band you used to play in with Stephen King and other authors for charity?

I don’t know whether we’d ever do that again. I mean, we’re all getting older, so it’s different now, getting on airplanes and getting on stage and jamming all night with people. But it’s been fun. We’re all friends, and it’s great to be around all these people that you’ve known for the last 35 years.

What are you reading now?

I’m reading a fiction book right now called Yellowface, by R.F. Kuang. [And for nonfiction] I’m reading Carl Safina’s Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. It’s about emotions in animals, which really fascinates me. And there’s another book that’s on my nightstand — Eve, by Cat Bohannan, about how women’s bodies have affected human evolution over the last 200 million years.

What else do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

I’m always learning something new. I want to learn French, so I’ve done it in my own self-taught way, reading French newspapers and writing in French and having French friends. Same thing with Spanish. The next thing that I want to do, in terms of learning something new, is to start writing music — not anything complex, just a little theme for myself that I could do variations on, and that would just be something very private, for myself. I look for something that I think I can do without getting too crazy about it — but then often I do go crazy over it. Like with birds; I kind of went over the top with that one.