From 5cd6682a14b78d8875d819c29c69304251642a3a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: lxf Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2024 09:56:45 -0500 Subject: re-org of files to make them smaller for less powerful devices --- jrnl/2003-09-12-farewell-mr-cash.txt | 18 ++ jrnl/2004-10-10-art-essay.txt | 88 ++++++ jrnl/2005-02-24-farewell-mr-hunter-s-thompson.txt | 24 ++ jrnl/2005-03-25-one-nation-under-groove.txt | 153 ++++++++++ jrnl/2005-05-12-new-adventures-hifi-text.txt | 136 +++++++++ jrnl/2005-10-08-new-luddites.txt | 48 ++++ jrnl/2005-10-19-tips-and-resources.txt | 314 +++++++++++++++++++++ jrnl/2005-10-20-twenty-more-minutes-go.txt | 24 ++ jrnl/2005-10-24-living-railway-car.txt | 30 ++ jrnl/2005-10-28-sainte-chapelle.txt | 24 ++ jrnl/2005-11-01-houses-we-live.txt | 36 +++ jrnl/2005-11-06-bury-your-dead.txt | 22 ++ ...11-08-riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.txt | 28 ++ jrnl/2005-11-11-vasco-de-gama-exhumed.txt | 38 +++ jrnl/2005-11-15-backwaters-kerala.txt | 58 ++++ jrnl/2005-11-20-fish-story.txt | 52 ++++ jrnl/2005-11-24-anjuna-market.txt | 24 ++ jrnl/2005-11-27-living-airport-terminals.txt | 36 +++ jrnl/2005-11-28-city-palace.txt | 30 ++ jrnl/2005-11-29-monsoon-palace.txt | 28 ++ jrnl/2005-11-30-around-udaipur.txt | 30 ++ jrnl/2005-12-02-majestic-fort.txt | 34 +++ jrnl/2005-12-05-camel-no-name.txt | 30 ++ jrnl/2005-12-09-taj-express.txt | 34 +++ jrnl/2005-12-10-goodbye-india.txt | 30 ++ jrnl/2005-12-15-durbar-square-kathmandu.txt | 44 +++ jrnl/2005-12-15-pashupatinath.txt | 30 ++ jrnl/2005-12-17-sunset-over-himalayas.txt | 36 +++ jrnl/2005-12-25-merry-christmas-2005.txt | 20 ++ jrnl/2006-01-01-are-you-amplified-rock.txt | 16 ++ jrnl/2006-01-03-brink-clouds.txt | 32 +++ jrnl/2006-01-05-buddha-bounty.txt | 40 +++ jrnl/2006-01-12-you-and-i-are-disappearing.txt | 43 +++ jrnl/2006-01-17-down-river.txt | 34 +++ jrnl/2006-01-17-king-carrot-flowers.txt | 69 +++++ jrnl/2006-01-19-hymn-big-wheel.txt | 38 +++ jrnl/2006-01-21-i-used-fly-peter-pan.txt | 34 +++ jrnl/2006-02-04-lovely-universe.txt | 46 +++ jrnl/2006-02-10-water-slides-and-spirit-guides.txt | 64 +++++ jrnl/2006-02-14-everyday-fourteenth.txt | 34 +++ jrnl/2006-02-18-safe-milk.txt | 30 ++ jrnl/2006-02-24-cant-get-there-here.txt | 59 ++++ jrnl/2006-02-28-little-corner-world.txt | 30 ++ jrnl/2006-03-07-ticket-ride.txt | 38 +++ jrnl/2006-03-14-blood-tracks.txt | 50 ++++ jrnl/2006-03-16-beginning-see-light.txt | 40 +++ jrnl/2006-03-18-wait-til-it-blows.txt | 38 +++ jrnl/2006-03-21-angkor-wat.txt | 48 ++++ jrnl/2006-03-26-midnight-perfect-world.txt | 38 +++ jrnl/2006-03-31-book-right.txt | 40 +++ jrnl/2006-04-11-going-down-south.txt | 54 ++++ jrnl/2006-04-22-beginning-end.txt | 53 ++++ jrnl/2006-05-01-closing-time.txt | 37 +++ jrnl/2006-05-10-london-calling.txt | 74 +++++ jrnl/2006-05-11-refracted-light-and-grace.txt | 54 ++++ jrnl/2006-05-16-blue-milk.txt | 42 +++ jrnl/2006-05-18-feel-good-lost.txt | 48 ++++ jrnl/2006-05-19-ghost.txt | 32 +++ jrnl/2006-05-22-king-carrot-flowers-part-two.txt | 34 +++ jrnl/2006-05-25-inside-and-out.txt | 34 +++ ...006-05-26-four-minutes-thirty-three-seconds.txt | 55 ++++ jrnl/2006-05-27-unreflected.txt | 64 +++++ jrnl/2006-05-28-i-dont-sleep-i-dream.txt | 202 +++++++++++++ jrnl/2006-06-06-cadenza.txt | 72 +++++ jrnl/2006-06-09-homeward.txt | 28 ++ jrnl/2006-12-25-give-it-or-turnit-loose.txt | 26 ++ jrnl/2007-01-11-sun-came-no-conclusions.txt | 52 ++++ jrnl/2007-01-31-catologue-raisonne.txt | 30 ++ jrnl/2007-02-03-everything-all-time.txt | 46 +++ jrnl/2007-03-01-goodbye-mother-and-cove.txt | 23 ++ jrnl/2007-06-15-sailing-through.txt | 43 +++ jrnl/2007-06-17-being-there.txt | 56 ++++ jrnl/2007-07-23-other-ocean.txt | 44 +++ jrnl/2007-11-14-fall.txt | 24 ++ jrnl/2008-01-01-new-years-day.txt | 26 ++ jrnl/2008-03-30-ring-bells.txt | 44 +++ jrnl/2008-04-02-return-sea.txt | 50 ++++ jrnl/2008-04-05-little-island-sun.txt | 48 ++++ ...th-a-view-vagabonds-responsibilty-living-we.txt | 168 +++++++++++ ...-26-returning-again-back-little-corn-island.txt | 52 ++++ jrnl/2008-06-30-you-cant-go-home-again.txt | 68 +++++ jrnl/2008-07-03-tiny-cities-made-ash.txt | 60 ++++ jrnl/2008-07-06-our-days-are-becoming-nights.txt | 18 ++ jrnl/2008-07-27-rope-swings-and-river-floats.txt | 100 +++++++ ...008-10-31-elkmont-and-great-smoky-mountains.txt | 82 ++++++ ...8-12-09-leonardo-da-vinci-and-codex-bunnies.txt | 90 ++++++ jrnl/2009-04-13-strangers-on-a-train.txt | 70 +++++ ...05-03-how-to-get-your-butt-and-travel-world.txt | 214 ++++++++++++++ .../2010-03-13-so-far-i-have-not-found-science.txt | 104 +++++++ jrnl/2010-04-24-death-valley.txt | 66 +++++ jrnl/2010-05-17-los-angeles-im-yours.txt | 102 +++++++ jrnl/2010-07-05-begin-the-begin.txt | 44 +++ jrnl/2010-07-08-dixie-drug-store.txt | 68 +++++ jrnl/2010-07-11-legend-billy-the-kid.txt | 46 +++ ...5-why-national-parks-are-better-state-parks.txt | 30 ++ jrnl/2010-07-16-comanche-national-grasslands.txt | 35 +++ jrnl/2010-07-17-great-sand-dunes-national-park.txt | 46 +++ jrnl/2010-07-22-backpacking-grand-tetons.txt | 50 ++++ jrnl/2010-07-25-endless-crowds-yellowstone.txt | 66 +++++ ...nosaur-national-monument-part-one-echo-park.txt | 74 +++++ ...osaur-national-monument-part-two-down-river.txt | 102 +++++++ jrnl/2011-01-18-charleston-a-z.txt | 76 +++++ jrnl/2011-01-26-world-outside.txt | 24 ++ jrnl/2011-03-28-we-used-wait-it.txt | 46 +++ jrnl/2011-05-29-from-here-we-go-sublime.txt | 24 ++ jrnl/2011-06-04-language-cities.txt | 36 +++ jrnl/2011-06-06-new-pollution.txt | 34 +++ jrnl/2011-06-07-forever-today.txt | 60 ++++ jrnl/2011-06-10-natural-science.txt | 51 ++++ jrnl/2011-06-14-cooking-rome.txt | 48 ++++ jrnl/2011-06-16-motor-city-burning.txt | 36 +++ jrnl/2011-06-19-temple-ceremony-ubud.txt | 41 +++ jrnl/2011-06-23-best-snorkeling-world.txt | 57 ++++ jrnl/2011-10-17-worst-place-on-earth.txt | 56 ++++ jrnl/2012-03-31-street-food-athens-georgia.txt | 62 ++++ jrnl/2012-05-20-things-behind-sun.txt | 34 +++ ...2013-05-22-consider-the-apalachicola-oyster.txt | 48 ++++ jrnl/2013-05-26-all-the-pretty-beaches.txt | 70 +++++ jrnl/2013-05-29-oysterman-wanted.txt | 60 ++++ jrnl/2013-05-30-king-birds.txt | 64 +++++ jrnl/2014-11-01-halloween.txt | 68 +++++ jrnl/2014-11-09-memorial-park.txt | 44 +++ jrnl/2014-11-16-muffins.txt | 34 +++ jrnl/2014-11-22-colors.txt | 36 +++ jrnl/2014-11-27-creamed-corn.txt | 28 ++ jrnl/2014-12-18-bourbon-bacon-bark.txt | 56 ++++ jrnl/2014-12-19-night-before.txt | 32 +++ jrnl/2014-12-19_night-before.txt | 13 + jrnl/2014-12-29-1969-yellowstone-trailer.txt | 38 +++ jrnl/2015-01-02-hoppin-john.txt | 32 +++ jrnl/2015-01-17-sunrise.txt | 24 ++ jrnl/2015-01-22-purcell-wooden-toys.txt | 58 ++++ jrnl/2015-02-16-walking-in-the-woods.txt | 112 ++++++++ jrnl/2015-02-26-ice-storm.txt | 54 ++++ jrnl/2015-02-26_ice-storm.txt | 9 + jrnl/2015-03-15-schoolhouse.txt | 42 +++ jrnl/2015-03-22-pig-roast.txt | 48 ++++ jrnl/2015-04-13-down-the-river.txt | 108 +++++++ ...015-04-18-the-poison-youve-been-dreaming-of.txt | 66 +++++ jrnl/2015-04-19-coming-home.txt | 30 ++ jrnl/2015-05-07-were-here.txt | 52 ++++ jrnl/2015-05-15-tates-hell.txt | 86 ++++++ jrnl/2015-05-18-big-long-week.txt | 88 ++++++ jrnl/2015-05-20-ode-outdoor-shower.txt | 39 +++ jrnl/2015-06-10-big-blue-bus.txt | 57 ++++ jrnl/2015-07-02-elvis-has-left-building.txt | 48 ++++ jrnl/2015-09-22-progress.txt | 66 +++++ jrnl/2015-12-18_tools.txt | 53 ++++ jrnl/2016-01-01_pilgrim-happiness.txt | 16 ++ jrnl/2016-02-08_8-track-gorilla.txt | 69 +++++ jrnl/2016-02-24-up-in-the-air.txt | 73 +++++ jrnl/2016-03-27_another-spring.txt | 44 +++ jrnl/2016-05-15_root-down.txt | 35 +++ jrnl/2016-05-24_back-from-somewhere.txt | 49 ++++ jrnl/2016-06-06_engine.txt | 31 ++ jrnl/2016-07-12_what-are-you-going-to-do.txt | 37 +++ jrnl/2016-08-20_change-of-ideas-the-worst.txt | 41 +++ jrnl/2016-09-15_autumn-bus-update.txt | 42 +++ jrnl/2016-09-19_cloudland-canyon.txt | 39 +++ jrnl/2016-09-22_equinox.txt | 25 ++ jrnl/2016-10-15_useless-stuff.txt | 74 +++++ jrnl/2016-11-16_halloween.txt | 32 +++ ...2016-11-19_nothing-finished-nothing-perfect.txt | 19 ++ jrnl/2016-12-19_waiting-sun.txt | 61 ++++ jrnl/2016-12-21_happy-birthday-sun.txt | 17 ++ jrnl/2017-01-15_wilds-of-winder.txt | 58 ++++ jrnl/2017-03-24_the-mooring-of-starting-out.txt | 31 ++ jrnl/2017-03-30_watson-mill.txt | 39 +++ jrnl/2017-04-01_april-fools.txt | 29 ++ jrnl/2017-04-04_the-edge-of-the-continent.txt | 35 +++ jrnl/2017-04-06_storming.txt | 26 ++ jrnl/2017-04-12_swamped.txt | 93 ++++++ jrnl/2017-04-18_coming-home.txt | 43 +++ jrnl/2017-04-24_gulf-islands-national-seashore.txt | 69 +++++ jrnl/2017-05-08_davis-bayou.txt | 70 +++++ jrnl/2017-05-11_dauphin-island.txt | 17 ++ ...017-05-12_new-orleans-instrumental-number-1.txt | 80 ++++++ ...017-05-15_new-orleans-instrumental-number-2.txt | 63 +++++ jrnl/2017-05-18_palmetto-island-state-park.txt | 33 +++ jrnl/2017-05-19_little-black-train.txt | 49 ++++ jrnl/2017-05-23_keeps-on-arainin.txt | 43 +++ jrnl/2017-05-30_austin-part-one.txt | 47 +++ jrnl/2017-05-31_sprawl-austin-part-two.txt | 11 + jrnl/2017-06-07_dallas.txt | 58 ++++ jrnl/2017-06-12_escaping-texas.txt | 43 +++ jrnl/2017-06-18_the-high-country.txt | 67 +++++ jrnl/2017-06-21_happy-solstice.txt | 18 ++ jrnl/2017-06-28_arc-of-time.txt | 125 ++++++++ jrnl/2017-07-06_junction-creek.txt | 37 +++ jrnl/2017-07-17_mancos-and-mesa-verde.txt | 36 +++ jrnl/2017-07-24_time-and-placement.txt | 42 +++ jrnl/2017-07-30_mancos-days.txt | 30 ++ jrnl/2017-08-01_canyon-ancients.txt | 38 +++ jrnl/2017-08-10_dolores-river.txt | 51 ++++ jrnl/2017-08-24_ridgway-state-park.txt | 41 +++ jrnl/2017-09-06_aspens.txt | 44 +++ jrnl/2017-09-06_breakdown.txt | 42 +++ jrnl/2017-09-08_canyonlands.txt | 36 +++ jrnl/2017-09-16_on-the-road-again.txt | 27 ++ jrnl/2017-09-19_zion.txt | 40 +++ jrnl/2017-09-25_valley-of-fire.txt | 56 ++++ jrnl/2017-09-30_ghost-town.txt | 54 ++++ ...7-10-06_trains-hot-springs-and-broken-buses.txt | 65 +++++ jrnl/2017-10-21_dialed-in.txt | 52 ++++ jrnl/2017-10-26_shadow-lassen.txt | 35 +++ jrnl/2017-10-28_pacific-sense.txt | 29 ++ jrnl/2017-10-29_through.txt | 43 +++ jrnl/2017-11-03_halloween-and-big-trees.txt | 31 ++ jrnl/2017-11-08_the-absense-of-glass-beach.txt | 30 ++ jrnl/2017-12-02_the-city.txt | 47 +++ jrnl/2017-12-10_aquarium-kings.txt | 35 +++ ...-14_terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-week.txt | 24 ++ jrnl/2018-01-05_escaping-california.txt | 31 ++ jrnl/2018-01-10_youre-all-i-need-get-by.txt | 39 +++ jrnl/2018-01-17_ghost-cochise.txt | 41 +++ jrnl/2018-01-24_eastbound-down.txt | 84 ++++++ jrnl/2018-01-31_almost-warm.txt | 51 ++++ jrnl/2018-02-05_hugging-the-coast.txt | 35 +++ jrnl/2018-02-07_on-the-beach.txt | 20 ++ jrnl/2018-02-08_on-avery-island.txt | 22 ++ jrnl/2018-02-12_mardi-gras-deux-facons.txt | 60 ++++ jrnl/2018-02-21_vermilionville-grand-isle.txt | 49 ++++ jrnl/2018-02-28_trapped-inside-song.txt | 69 +++++ jrnl/2018-03-07_island-sun.txt | 33 +++ jrnl/2018-03-14_green-sea-days.txt | 49 ++++ jrnl/2018-03-21_stone-crabs.txt | 46 +++ jrnl/2018-03-24_old-school.txt | 35 +++ jrnl/2018-03-28_forest.txt | 45 +++ jrnl/2018-04-12_st-george.txt | 37 +++ jrnl/2018-04-16_migration.txt | 43 +++ jrnl/2018-04-26_too-much-sunshine.txt | 68 +++++ jrnl/2018-05-18_keep-on-keeping-on.txt | 58 ++++ jrnl/2018-05-30_thunder-road.txt | 48 ++++ jrnl/2018-06-02_alberto-and-land-between-lakes.txt | 81 ++++++ jrnl/2018-06-07_st-louis-city-museum.txt | 83 ++++++ jrnl/2018-06-14_illinois.txt | 51 ++++ jrnl/2018-06-24_wisconsin.txt | 39 +++ jrnl/2018-07-02_trees.txt | 86 ++++++ jrnl/2018-07-07_shipwrecks.txt | 56 ++++ jrnl/2018-07-13_six.txt | 44 +++ jrnl/2018-07-19_lakeside-park.txt | 55 ++++ jrnl/2018-07-23_house-lake.txt | 55 ++++ jrnl/2018-07-30_crystal-lake.txt | 34 +++ ...018-08-02_island-golden-breasted-woodpecker.txt | 66 +++++ jrnl/2018-08-05_northern-sky.txt | 38 +++ jrnl/2018-08-14_superior.txt | 79 ++++++ jrnl/2018-08-18_west-to-wall-drug.txt | 40 +++ jrnl/2018-08-22_range-life.txt | 80 ++++++ jrnl/2018-08-27_grassland.txt | 47 +++ jrnl/2018-09-25_southbound.txt | 49 ++++ jrnl/2018-09-29_big-exit.txt | 42 +++ jrnl/2018-10-06_alborada.txt | 52 ++++ jrnl/2018-10-23_como-se-goza-en-el-barrio.txt | 77 +++++ jrnl/2018-11-03_friday.txt | 62 ++++ jrnl/2018-11-17_lets-go-ride.txt | 51 ++++ jrnl/2018-11-26_food-table-tonight.txt | 61 ++++ jrnl/2018-12-14_mary-wild-moor.txt | 35 +++ jrnl/2018-12-22_four.txt | 36 +++ jrnl/2018-12-28_sparkle-city.txt | 28 ++ jrnl/2019-01-03_these-walls-around-me.txt | 52 ++++ jrnl/2019-01-11_sounds-san-miguel.txt | 35 +++ jrnl/2019-02-04_candlelaria-in-san-miguel.txt | 27 ++ jrnl/2019-03-03_cascarones.txt | 44 +++ jrnl/2019-03-17_around-san-miguel.txt | 44 +++ jrnl/2019-03-27_visa-run.txt | 42 +++ jrnl/2019-04-07_koyaanisqatsi.txt | 41 +++ jrnl/2019-04-22_semama-santa.txt | 34 +++ jrnl/2019-04-30_horses.txt | 24 ++ jrnl/2019-06-03_hasta-luego.txt | 35 +++ jrnl/2019-07-13_seven.txt | 18 ++ jrnl/2019-07-28_summertime-rolls.txt | 41 +++ jrnl/2019-08-25_georgia-road-trip.txt | 55 ++++ jrnl/2019-09-12_hanging-around-town.txt | 56 ++++ jrnl/2019-09-25_old-growth.txt | 86 ++++++ jrnl/2019-10-09_bird-watching.txt | 45 +++ jrnl/2019-10-16_back-to-raysville.txt | 25 ++ jrnl/2019-10-23_elberton-county-fair.txt | 65 +++++ jrnl/2019-11-06_halloween.txt | 38 +++ jrnl/2019-11-13_land.txt | 41 +++ jrnl/2019-12-22_birthday-beach.txt | 55 ++++ jrnl/2019-12-31_holiday-island.txt | 43 +++ jrnl/2020-01-08_walking.txt | 59 ++++ jrnl/2020-01-22_traveling.txt | 56 ++++ jrnl/2020-02-05_learning.txt | 45 +++ jrnl/2020-02-19_snow-day.txt | 42 +++ jrnl/2020-03-04_high-water.txt | 63 +++++ jrnl/2020-03-11_distant-early-warning.txt | 42 +++ ...20-03-18_pre-apocalyptic-driving-adventures.txt | 36 +++ jrnl/2020-04-18_reflections.txt | 83 ++++++ jrnl/2020-06-25_hands-on-the-wheel.txt | 73 +++++ jrnl/2020-07-01_wouldnt-it-be-nice.txt | 68 +++++ jrnl/2020-07-08_windfall.txt | 54 ++++ jrnl/2020-07-15_eight.txt | 63 +++++ jrnl/2020-09-23_summer-teeth.txt | 38 +++ jrnl/2020-10-01_light-is-clear-in-my-eyes.txt | 61 ++++ jrnl/2020-10-28_walking-north-carolina-woods.txt | 57 ++++ jrnl/2020-11-04_halloween.txt | 44 +++ jrnl/2020-11-21_invitation.txt | 51 ++++ jrnl/2020-12-02_learning-to-ride-bike.txt | 33 +++ jrnl/2020-12-20_six.txt | 28 ++ jrnl/2020-12-23_solstice-strange-land.txt | 42 +++ jrnl/2021-01-30_down-by-the-creek.txt | 63 +++++ jrnl/2021-02-18_oak-grove.txt | 46 +++ jrnl/2021-03-24_springsville.txt | 39 +++ jrnl/2021-05-23_may-days.txt | 49 ++++ jrnl/2021-11-25_back-to-the-life.txt | 9 + jrnl/2021-12-19_perfect-from-now-on.txt | 45 +++ jrnl/2021-12-26_edisto-holidays.txt | 60 ++++ jrnl/2021-12-29_southern-summer.txt | 40 +++ jrnl/2022-01-03_on-the-path.txt | 33 +++ jrnl/2022-01-08_hunting-island-storms.txt | 56 ++++ jrnl/2022-01-12_hunting-island-sunshine.txt | 49 ++++ jrnl/2022-01-17_a-tale-of-two-huntingtons.txt | 62 ++++ jrnl/2022-01-23_huntington-beach-birds.txt | 55 ++++ jrnl/2022-03-13_more-adventures-travco-brakes.txt | 68 +++++ ...2022-04-06_all-wright-all-wright-all-wright.txt | 36 +++ jrnl/2022-04-13_cape-hatteras.txt | 46 +++ jrnl/2022-04-30_ferryland.txt | 40 +++ jrnl/2022-05-11_ocracoke-beaches.txt | 39 +++ jrnl/2022-05-18_separation.txt | 43 +++ jrnl/2022-05-30_seining-with-val.txt | 62 ++++ jrnl/2022-06-12_long-way-around.txt | 48 ++++ jrnl/2022-06-19_prairie-notes.txt | 36 +++ jrnl/2022-06-22_illinois-beach.txt | 51 ++++ jrnl/2022-07-01_hello-milwaukee.txt | 81 ++++++ jrnl/2022-07-06_4th-of-July-2022.txt | 38 +++ jrnl/2022-07-10_washburn.txt | 31 ++ jrnl/2022-07-13_ten.txt | 41 +++ jrnl/2022-07-20_around-washburn.txt | 34 +++ jrnl/2022-08-24_august-jottings.txt | 46 +++ jrnl/2022-08-31_grandparents.txt | 35 +++ .../2022-09-06_porcupine-mountains-backpacking.txt | 76 +++++ jrnl/2022-09-14_goodbye-big-waters.txt | 20 ++ jrnl/2022-09-21_ease-down-the-road.txt | 56 ++++ jrnl/2022-09-28_under-the-bears-lodge.txt | 59 ++++ jrnl/2022-10-05_broken-down-in-lamar.txt | 51 ++++ jrnl/2022-10-19_rodeos-and-fur-trading-posts.txt | 64 +++++ jrnl/2022-10-26_going-down-swinging.txt | 40 +++ 338 files changed, 16795 insertions(+) create mode 100644 jrnl/2003-09-12-farewell-mr-cash.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2004-10-10-art-essay.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-02-24-farewell-mr-hunter-s-thompson.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-03-25-one-nation-under-groove.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-05-12-new-adventures-hifi-text.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-10-08-new-luddites.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-10-19-tips-and-resources.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-10-20-twenty-more-minutes-go.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-10-24-living-railway-car.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-10-28-sainte-chapelle.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-11-01-houses-we-live.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-11-06-bury-your-dead.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-11-08-riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-11-11-vasco-de-gama-exhumed.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-11-15-backwaters-kerala.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-11-20-fish-story.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-11-24-anjuna-market.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-11-27-living-airport-terminals.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-11-28-city-palace.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-11-29-monsoon-palace.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-11-30-around-udaipur.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-12-02-majestic-fort.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-12-05-camel-no-name.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-12-09-taj-express.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-12-10-goodbye-india.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-12-15-durbar-square-kathmandu.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-12-15-pashupatinath.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-12-17-sunset-over-himalayas.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2005-12-25-merry-christmas-2005.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-01-01-are-you-amplified-rock.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-01-03-brink-clouds.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-01-05-buddha-bounty.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-01-12-you-and-i-are-disappearing.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-01-17-down-river.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-01-17-king-carrot-flowers.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-01-19-hymn-big-wheel.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-01-21-i-used-fly-peter-pan.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-02-04-lovely-universe.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-02-10-water-slides-and-spirit-guides.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-02-14-everyday-fourteenth.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-02-18-safe-milk.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-02-24-cant-get-there-here.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-02-28-little-corner-world.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-03-07-ticket-ride.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-03-14-blood-tracks.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-03-16-beginning-see-light.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-03-18-wait-til-it-blows.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-03-21-angkor-wat.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-03-26-midnight-perfect-world.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-03-31-book-right.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-04-11-going-down-south.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-04-22-beginning-end.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-05-01-closing-time.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-05-10-london-calling.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-05-11-refracted-light-and-grace.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-05-16-blue-milk.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-05-18-feel-good-lost.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-05-19-ghost.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-05-22-king-carrot-flowers-part-two.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-05-25-inside-and-out.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-05-26-four-minutes-thirty-three-seconds.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-05-27-unreflected.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-05-28-i-dont-sleep-i-dream.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-06-06-cadenza.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-06-09-homeward.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2006-12-25-give-it-or-turnit-loose.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2007-01-11-sun-came-no-conclusions.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2007-01-31-catologue-raisonne.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2007-02-03-everything-all-time.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2007-03-01-goodbye-mother-and-cove.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2007-06-15-sailing-through.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2007-06-17-being-there.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2007-07-23-other-ocean.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2007-11-14-fall.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2008-01-01-new-years-day.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2008-03-30-ring-bells.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2008-04-02-return-sea.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2008-04-05-little-island-sun.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2008-06-07-love-with-a-view-vagabonds-responsibilty-living-we.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2008-06-26-returning-again-back-little-corn-island.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2008-06-30-you-cant-go-home-again.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2008-07-03-tiny-cities-made-ash.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2008-07-06-our-days-are-becoming-nights.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2008-07-27-rope-swings-and-river-floats.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2008-10-31-elkmont-and-great-smoky-mountains.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2008-12-09-leonardo-da-vinci-and-codex-bunnies.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2009-04-13-strangers-on-a-train.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2009-05-03-how-to-get-your-butt-and-travel-world.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2010-03-13-so-far-i-have-not-found-science.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2010-04-24-death-valley.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2010-05-17-los-angeles-im-yours.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2010-07-05-begin-the-begin.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2010-07-08-dixie-drug-store.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2010-07-11-legend-billy-the-kid.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2010-07-15-why-national-parks-are-better-state-parks.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2010-07-16-comanche-national-grasslands.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2010-07-17-great-sand-dunes-national-park.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2010-07-22-backpacking-grand-tetons.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2010-07-25-endless-crowds-yellowstone.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2010-07-28-dinosaur-national-monument-part-one-echo-park.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2010-08-02-dinosaur-national-monument-part-two-down-river.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2011-01-18-charleston-a-z.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2011-01-26-world-outside.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2011-03-28-we-used-wait-it.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2011-05-29-from-here-we-go-sublime.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2011-06-04-language-cities.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2011-06-06-new-pollution.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2011-06-07-forever-today.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2011-06-10-natural-science.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2011-06-14-cooking-rome.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2011-06-16-motor-city-burning.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2011-06-19-temple-ceremony-ubud.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2011-06-23-best-snorkeling-world.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2011-10-17-worst-place-on-earth.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2012-03-31-street-food-athens-georgia.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2012-05-20-things-behind-sun.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2013-05-22-consider-the-apalachicola-oyster.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2013-05-26-all-the-pretty-beaches.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2013-05-29-oysterman-wanted.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2013-05-30-king-birds.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2014-11-01-halloween.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2014-11-09-memorial-park.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2014-11-16-muffins.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2014-11-22-colors.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2014-11-27-creamed-corn.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2014-12-18-bourbon-bacon-bark.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2014-12-19-night-before.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2014-12-19_night-before.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2014-12-29-1969-yellowstone-trailer.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-01-02-hoppin-john.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-01-17-sunrise.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-01-22-purcell-wooden-toys.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-02-16-walking-in-the-woods.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-02-26-ice-storm.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-02-26_ice-storm.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-03-15-schoolhouse.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-03-22-pig-roast.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-04-13-down-the-river.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-04-18-the-poison-youve-been-dreaming-of.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-04-19-coming-home.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-05-07-were-here.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-05-15-tates-hell.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-05-18-big-long-week.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-05-20-ode-outdoor-shower.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-06-10-big-blue-bus.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-07-02-elvis-has-left-building.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-09-22-progress.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2015-12-18_tools.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-01-01_pilgrim-happiness.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-02-08_8-track-gorilla.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-02-24-up-in-the-air.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-03-27_another-spring.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-05-15_root-down.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-05-24_back-from-somewhere.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-06-06_engine.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-07-12_what-are-you-going-to-do.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-08-20_change-of-ideas-the-worst.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-09-15_autumn-bus-update.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-09-19_cloudland-canyon.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-09-22_equinox.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-10-15_useless-stuff.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-11-16_halloween.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-11-19_nothing-finished-nothing-perfect.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-12-19_waiting-sun.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2016-12-21_happy-birthday-sun.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-01-15_wilds-of-winder.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-03-24_the-mooring-of-starting-out.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-03-30_watson-mill.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-04-01_april-fools.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-04-04_the-edge-of-the-continent.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-04-06_storming.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-04-12_swamped.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-04-18_coming-home.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-04-24_gulf-islands-national-seashore.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-05-08_davis-bayou.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-05-11_dauphin-island.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-05-12_new-orleans-instrumental-number-1.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-05-15_new-orleans-instrumental-number-2.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-05-18_palmetto-island-state-park.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-05-19_little-black-train.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-05-23_keeps-on-arainin.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-05-30_austin-part-one.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-05-31_sprawl-austin-part-two.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-06-07_dallas.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-06-12_escaping-texas.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-06-18_the-high-country.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-06-21_happy-solstice.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-06-28_arc-of-time.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-07-06_junction-creek.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-07-17_mancos-and-mesa-verde.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-07-24_time-and-placement.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-07-30_mancos-days.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-08-01_canyon-ancients.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-08-10_dolores-river.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-08-24_ridgway-state-park.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-09-06_aspens.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-09-06_breakdown.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-09-08_canyonlands.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-09-16_on-the-road-again.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-09-19_zion.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-09-25_valley-of-fire.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-09-30_ghost-town.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-10-06_trains-hot-springs-and-broken-buses.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-10-21_dialed-in.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-10-26_shadow-lassen.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-10-28_pacific-sense.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-10-29_through.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-11-03_halloween-and-big-trees.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-11-08_the-absense-of-glass-beach.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-12-02_the-city.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-12-10_aquarium-kings.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2017-12-14_terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-week.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-01-05_escaping-california.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-01-10_youre-all-i-need-get-by.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-01-17_ghost-cochise.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-01-24_eastbound-down.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-01-31_almost-warm.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-02-05_hugging-the-coast.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-02-07_on-the-beach.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-02-08_on-avery-island.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-02-12_mardi-gras-deux-facons.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-02-21_vermilionville-grand-isle.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-02-28_trapped-inside-song.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-03-07_island-sun.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-03-14_green-sea-days.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-03-21_stone-crabs.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-03-24_old-school.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-03-28_forest.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-04-12_st-george.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-04-16_migration.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-04-26_too-much-sunshine.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-05-18_keep-on-keeping-on.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-05-30_thunder-road.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-06-02_alberto-and-land-between-lakes.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-06-07_st-louis-city-museum.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-06-14_illinois.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-06-24_wisconsin.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-07-02_trees.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-07-07_shipwrecks.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-07-13_six.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-07-19_lakeside-park.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-07-23_house-lake.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-07-30_crystal-lake.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-08-02_island-golden-breasted-woodpecker.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-08-05_northern-sky.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-08-14_superior.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-08-18_west-to-wall-drug.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-08-22_range-life.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-08-27_grassland.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-09-25_southbound.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-09-29_big-exit.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-10-06_alborada.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-10-23_como-se-goza-en-el-barrio.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-11-03_friday.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-11-17_lets-go-ride.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-11-26_food-table-tonight.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-12-14_mary-wild-moor.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-12-22_four.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2018-12-28_sparkle-city.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-01-03_these-walls-around-me.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-01-11_sounds-san-miguel.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-02-04_candlelaria-in-san-miguel.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-03-03_cascarones.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-03-17_around-san-miguel.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-03-27_visa-run.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-04-07_koyaanisqatsi.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-04-22_semama-santa.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-04-30_horses.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-06-03_hasta-luego.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-07-13_seven.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-07-28_summertime-rolls.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-08-25_georgia-road-trip.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-09-12_hanging-around-town.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-09-25_old-growth.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-10-09_bird-watching.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-10-16_back-to-raysville.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-10-23_elberton-county-fair.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-11-06_halloween.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-11-13_land.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-12-22_birthday-beach.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2019-12-31_holiday-island.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-01-08_walking.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-01-22_traveling.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-02-05_learning.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-02-19_snow-day.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-03-04_high-water.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-03-11_distant-early-warning.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-03-18_pre-apocalyptic-driving-adventures.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-04-18_reflections.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-06-25_hands-on-the-wheel.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-07-01_wouldnt-it-be-nice.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-07-08_windfall.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-07-15_eight.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-09-23_summer-teeth.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-10-01_light-is-clear-in-my-eyes.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-10-28_walking-north-carolina-woods.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-11-04_halloween.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-11-21_invitation.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-12-02_learning-to-ride-bike.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-12-20_six.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2020-12-23_solstice-strange-land.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2021-01-30_down-by-the-creek.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2021-02-18_oak-grove.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2021-03-24_springsville.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2021-05-23_may-days.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2021-11-25_back-to-the-life.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2021-12-19_perfect-from-now-on.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2021-12-26_edisto-holidays.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2021-12-29_southern-summer.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-01-03_on-the-path.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-01-08_hunting-island-storms.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-01-12_hunting-island-sunshine.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-01-17_a-tale-of-two-huntingtons.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-01-23_huntington-beach-birds.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-03-13_more-adventures-travco-brakes.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-04-06_all-wright-all-wright-all-wright.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-04-13_cape-hatteras.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-04-30_ferryland.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-05-11_ocracoke-beaches.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-05-18_separation.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-05-30_seining-with-val.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-06-12_long-way-around.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-06-19_prairie-notes.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-06-22_illinois-beach.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-07-01_hello-milwaukee.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-07-06_4th-of-July-2022.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-07-10_washburn.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-07-13_ten.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-07-20_around-washburn.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-08-24_august-jottings.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-08-31_grandparents.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-09-06_porcupine-mountains-backpacking.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-09-14_goodbye-big-waters.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-09-21_ease-down-the-road.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-09-28_under-the-bears-lodge.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-10-05_broken-down-in-lamar.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-10-19_rodeos-and-fur-trading-posts.txt create mode 100644 jrnl/2022-10-26_going-down-swinging.txt (limited to 'jrnl') diff --git a/jrnl/2003-09-12-farewell-mr-cash.txt b/jrnl/2003-09-12-farewell-mr-cash.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7122090 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2003-09-12-farewell-mr-cash.txt @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 42.3225087606193,-72.62804030361072 +location: Northampton,Massachusetts,United States +image: 2008/cash.jpg +desc: Farewell mr. cash. Sunday mornings won't be the same without you. +dek: Johnny Cash heads for the western lands. +pub_date: 2003-09-12T22:54:50 +slug: farewell-mr-cash +title: Farewell Mr. Cash +--- + +Farewell mr. cash. Sunday mornings won't be the same without you. + +johnny Cash + +

+ diff --git a/jrnl/2004-10-10-art-essay.txt b/jrnl/2004-10-10-art-essay.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..310c253 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2004-10-10-art-essay.txt @@ -0,0 +1,88 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 42.322477030437234,-72.62834071102037 +location: Northampton,Massachusetts,United States +image: 2008/essay.jpg +desc: A brief essay on why Paul Graham wouldn't know good writing if it slapped him in the face. +dek: I generally ignore internet debates, they never go anywhere, so why bother. But we all have our weak points and when programmer Paul Graham posted what might be the dumbest essay on writing that's ever been written, I just couldn't help myuself. +pub_date: 2004-10-10T18:03:13 +slug: art-essay +title: The Art of the Essay +--- + +

On the meridian of time there is no justice, only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and justice
— H. Miller

+ +Paul Graham is apparently pretty widely read on the web, though I had never heard of him until I saw mention of the piece on Michael Tsai's blog. Since Graham's piece is a touch out of date by internet standards, rather than comment on Tsai or Graham's site I thought I'd write a little rebuttal/extrapolation here. + +Generally speaking I prefer not to engage in the endless circular dialogue of the blog, but occasionally we all run into those writings which either, as in this case, irk us so badly or cheer us so warmly that we can't help but comment on them. The link from Tsai's site gave me hope that perhaps someone had something intelligent to say about what has to be the most common form of writing on the web — the essay — but, alas, several reads later I found Graham's essay ill-informed, poorly written, full of non-sequiturs and, to be blunt, an exercise in navel-gazing drivel. + +After staying up late one night reading a bunch of his essays I had to conclude that Graham is not only a poor writer but that he makes an ass of himself every time he strays from the technological realm. I can't comment on his LISP and SmallTalk articles since I don't know either of those languages, but his "Things You Can't Say" ranks pretty high on my all time worst list. I would go ahead and say it's the worst thing I've ever read, but then I picked over some transcripts of the recent presidential debates and changed my mind. Nevertheless Grahams's writing is bad. + +And yet it has potential. And potential is important. In fact, potential is the reason any of us are writing, but we'll get to that. First I think it's important that we start here at the beginning, with Graham's essay. + +

Mistakes

+ +
Remember the essays you had to write in high school? Topic sentence, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion. The conclusion being, say, that Ahab in Moby Dick was a Christ-like figure. Oy. So I'm going to try to give the other side of the story: what an essay really is, and how you write one. Or at least, how I write one.
+ +Graham's experience with the essay has already diverged from mine. Graham it seems, spent high school doing what was asked of him with no creative potential exercised on his part. That's fine, true to his experience, but not mine. not to say that my high school essays were works worthy of publication, but I do know I didn't crib my ideas out of Cliff's notes. + +So, here at the beginning of Graham's essay we find ourselves given great potential only to have it snatched away again. We get an invitation to explore "what an essay really is, and how you write one." Now that is almost guaranteed to be interesting. But then the mock self-effacing ego intrudes: "Or at least, how I write one." Now why would I care how Paul Graham writes an essay? This is someone with a low opinion of creative arts whose primary interest and field of knowledge is computer programing. I don't care how Paul Graham writes an essay and assuming that I do is huge mistake on the author's part. + +One more little quote and then we'll set Graham and his anti-art leanings aside.
The other big difference between a real essay and the things they make you write in school is that a real essay doesn't take a position and then defend it. That principle, like the idea that we ought to be writing about literature, turns out to be another intellectual hangover of long forgotten origins.
+ +Paul Graham seems to have had a really wretched time in school. he has devoted a whole essay to scrutinizing the artificial social structure of high school. It's actually one of his better pieces on the site, but it makes me curious about Graham's school experience. I feel bad for him, I really do. Personally I hated the bizarrely pointless physics problems—blocks sliding down inclined planes—problems that my otherwise brilliant physics teacher forced us to work out on paper. Writing about literature was an exercise in creative independence after that sort of monotony. Anyway my big question is, who among us isn't aware that the essay is a multifaceted form that far exceeds the limited examples we are exposed to in high school? [For which there is a specific term "argumentative essay" rather than just essay] + +I am, for instance, aware that the realm of physics far exceeds the inclined planes I hated so much even though I have never pursued the subject beyond that childish introduction. Graham's patronizing of his readers' intellectual development is rude and, to me, pretty bizarre. Rest assured you will not be patronized here at luxagraf. 1 + +

What great writing Does

+ +Great writing, whether essay or story or poem or other form, is fundamentally the result of process. It is the confrontation with the unknown recorded and given over. The product itself often creates more questions than it does answers, but it is easy to tell whether or not the author had his/her life invested in the writing of it. The result is not on the petty plain that Graham would have it, whether "you got the right answers," but instead explores the troubling reality that there perhaps are no answers after all but only "the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth." + +My girlfriend likes to say that if the experience of something is truly great it has in some way helped you prepare for death. And neither I nor she mean this as a kind of melodrama, but simply this is the process. If you do not have a heartfelt stake in what you write your writing will never be any good regardless of your intelligence, education or any other number of factors that we often mistakenly attribute to informing the creative process. + +The essay then is a poetry of motion, a poetry of the mind turning over on itself and trying to get at the "the pure potential as potential."2 If we disregard the potential as potential in favor of the already known (another reexamination of high school?!), we confine ourselves to a world where everything that can be known is known. For instance:
In technical matters, you have to get the right answers. If your software miscalculates the path of a space probe, you can't finesse your way out of trouble by saying that your code is patriotic, or avant-garde, or any of the other dodges people use in nontechnical fields.
—from another of Graham's essays
+ +That may be good and well for software, but Graham is assuming that there are right answers in realms beyond software (even in the realm of software I would question that assertion, design choices yes, but right and wrong? equations within software can be wrong, but does that make the software wrong?) + +I for one do not wish to live in a world where there are right and wrong answers at every turn, where everything that can be known is already known. Nor do I want read essays that purport as much. If what Graham is railing against in his essay on essays is the formulaic nature of immature writing then certainly the answer does not lie in the formulaic nature of software. + +In a world where there is no potential to move beyond the known there would be no reason to write. The great essay (and contrary to Graham's assertions there are plenty of amazing essayists in this century, both those writing now, including on the web, and those whose work predates us) is the result of stepping beyond the comfortable, predictable results of the world already known into the pure potential as potential. The result then is the journey back. + +

On some common Misconceptions about writing/art

+ +As cited above and noted in my sidebar I have been reading a collection of essays called Art and Reality. Now generally speaking this is not the sort of book I gravitate toward, but my neighbor is a book dealer and he sold it to me for 25¢. Anyway, I had all but abandoned this article until I read the first essay by entitled **The Elements of "Art"** (which, it's worth noting, was transcribed from Robert Irwin's's keynote address at a 1982 conference entitled **Art and Reality**). + +Now it was no accident that above I said the **experience** of something truly great should help you die. I could summarize Irwin's points on the interactive process of art, but it's better if I simply quote.
So what we have is a structure, a process. And I will identify that as being what is being talked about here: the elements of art, **the elements of the process**. I would like to say that these are really more positions or perspectives, rather than being a hierarchical which assumes there is "a art" and that everything else is somehow subservient to it. I propose that we have instead a process. The first step of the process is the action of inquiry: the idea of looking at that pure potential &mdash the artist as an individual seeking out or re-examining for himself at his moment in time and in relation to the whole body of knowledge up to that moment in time, what we mean by the term art.
+ +Art is indeed a verb rather than a noun. The noun that we are accustomed to throwing about is but a historical artifact that is the result of an art-action, to borrow Irwin's nomenclature. Now that is not to pass any sort of value judgment on those artifacts, but rather to say the essay is not the art; the writing of the essay is the art. the essay I the reader experiences (by reading) is an object, what is important is not the object, but our experience with it. So we end up with a noun, the essay, preceded and followed by verbs, art and experience. + +This emphasis on parts of speech is not a splitting of hairs, a semantic game or a "dodge" employed by one in a non-technical field. It is the fundamental point of what art, in this case writing, is: interaction between individuals mediated by some object. + +It has long amused artists to hear technophiles and, for lack of a better term, suits, expounding on the wonderful interactive nature of the web and how this can revolutionize art (naturally here in its cultural baggage form as a noun) and society when in fact art is and always has been an interactive experience mediated by a static medium. The web remains every bit as static as a painting or an essay. That we describe our experience with it as interactive is a result of the obviousness, not the uniqueness, of its interaction. + +Interactivity on the web requires a gadget (a computer) which is perhaps what clues us in to the fact that our experience is interactive, whereas art in other forms is often not mediated by a gadget so its seems more remote (especially given the gadget fetishism of our times). Perhaps another reason the interactivity of the web is so obvious is because it comes directly into our living room. There is no need to travel to the museum or library, it's all right here at our fingertips. + +But I think it's important to note that the writing of an essay is not fundamentally an act of expression or communication, something that Irwin nicely illustrates by posing the question: "can you think of anything that is not expression?" If everything is expression and communication how then would we differentiate between good essays and bad ones? For that matter, what differentiates essays from email? What we need is some better means of qualitative judgment. + +

why the rote essay is rampant on the web

+ +So after picking on Paul Graham so extensively, let us salvage the gist of what I think he was trying to say. Essays on the web are often not very well written and lack the confrontation with the unknown that marks great writing/art. + +Now many people would herein proceed to argue that this is because we lack filters (i.e. editors, publishers, etc) to catch the bad stuff before it is disseminated to the world. There is of course some merit to this argument. I find myself often linking to Salon because the quality of writing published there far exceeds the other nine Google hits I get. And it might be that Salon's quality of writing is higher because it employs editors, but there is another more optimistic way of looking at writing on the web. + +With the disappearance of the filters that have shadowed writing for the last few centuries we finally have an opportunity for anyone to write about anything they please. Now this can have some serious downsides as we will explore in a a minute, but there is an upside. Universal exposure means that in simple terms of numbers there is a much greater possibility of finding great writing on the web than the new release table at your average bookstore. Even with my limited math I can process the law of averages. If a million people are publishing there is a much greater chance that there will be someone creating something great than when the poll of possibilities was limited to those with access to agents and publishers. + +A friend of mind used to often say that at any given moment the best band in America is probably playing for two people in a garage. The same is very likely true of writing. + +But we have overlooked the fact that we do have filters on the web and it's very likely that if anything they're worse than those we left behind. Google is our filter and Google is but a collection of algorithms. At least with traditional publishers there were those few that staffed their offices with truly passionate human beings who really cared about writing. Can an algorithm care about writing? + +Much to my dismay if you type 'the essay' into google, Paul Graham's drivel comes up as the seventh link. This is precisely why there is no link for it here. + +In a way the web is what our founding father's feared most — a tyranny of the majority. If the more sites point to it, a site gets the highest rank. In that sense it's our own fault that the drivel is prevalent. + +In closing let me leave you with some more thoughts from Irwin
Ideas don't just come into the world **ad hoc**, or they don't just come in a sort of idle or free way. They come first to be weighted and justified in terms of their relevance, in terms of their impact, and in terms of how they might thread themselves into that body of knowledge. The process of weighing is really made up of all those people who are interested in what we mean by the concept of art. I would like to define that as "culture" (rather than how the word has normally been used) — as really a practice, culture playing back on the society as something deeply threaded into the society in the critical sense that this body of knowledge is culture, is civilization. The first action, a critical aspect, of culture is the weighing of any new idea in the light of the body of knowledge and the examining of its relevance and whether or not it's a worthwhile idea, and whether or not we should make any commitment toward the character and potential of the idea. And then the dialogue has to do with how it is threaded into this body of knowledge.
+ +

  1. 1. For those of you electing not to actually read Graham's essay allow me to continue his thoughts in this footnote. It turns out that the "intellectual hangover of long forgotten origins" mentioned in the quote is actually, according to Graham, the study of law. Apparently law was prevalent in medieval seminaries. I can't vouch for that but it sounds right. Medieval religious types did need to have some good rhetorical training to defend the contradictory-to-observation belief systems that they held.↩

    2. + +

  2. 2. **The Elements of "Art"**, Art and Reality. ed. Robin Blaser and Robert Duncan, Talonbooks Vancouver, 1986 ↩

+ diff --git a/jrnl/2005-02-24-farewell-mr-hunter-s-thompson.txt b/jrnl/2005-02-24-farewell-mr-hunter-s-thompson.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8e38b4b --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-02-24-farewell-mr-hunter-s-thompson.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide this past weekend. Like many I am saddened by Thompson's decision to take his own life. I don't for a moment pretend to understand why he did it, but after thinking about it for a few days I have decided that, despite the loss for the rest of us, this was precisely the way Thompson should depart -- shocking, violent and utterly gonzo. + +Thompson is best known for the unapologetic drug use of *Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas*, but that's really selling Thompson very short. It seems to me Thompson was trying to shock a deeply jaded populace. America was at the end of an ideological civil war -- Civil Rights, Vietnam, Hippies, et al. Kerouac was dead. Ginsberg had failed to bring down the Pentagon with flowers. The optimism of the '60s was crashing and burning. + +Into this melee stepped Hunter S Thompson with a eulogy for the dreams of the 1960's, one that mourned, but also tried to lay the empty idealism to rest. The drug use in the novel, to me anyway, is a so-deranged-it's-sane reaction to a world that must certainly have seemed deranged. As they say, if everyone is insane, sanity looks insane. + +Also missing in most writing about the book (on the web anyway) is the novel's subtitle, which is really a more accurate description of the book: *A savage journey to the heart of the America Dream*[^2]. + +> And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.... So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right sort of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. – Fear and Loathing + +What saddens me most of all about Thompson's death is that, like William Burroughs (and probably DeQuincy in his day), he will probably be remember more for the *way* he wrote than *what* he wrote. Yes, perhaps he did ingest quite a few chemicals, and yes, perhaps he did celebrate it (which differs from Burroughs), but Thompson was not just chemicals, nor was he just a journalist. + +*Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas* is, and will remain, a scathing indictment of the corruption and failure of the 1960s version of the American Dream. It's Thompson's chronicling of the metamorphosis from dream to nightmare, not his outlandish drug intake, that makes Fear and Loathing a compelling piece of literature. + +His self-described "gonzo" style of reporting is often characterized as the interjection of the reporter into the story, but Thompson knew as well of the rest of us that every writer interjects herself into the story. His "gonzo" style of writing is not an injection of Hunter S. Thompson into the story, but a removal of the mythical character of his subjects. Thompson killed our false heroes. + +He stripped us all to our barest and yes sometimes basest parts. If the story still required myth then the fictionalized Thompson was there to step up, but never is there a moment in Thompson's political writings where politicians or leaders are any more than fellow fucked up passengers on voyage so grand that overshadows us all. A voyage on in which, as Jeff Magnum has said, *how strange it is to be anything at all*. + +And now Thompson has propelled himself beyond this voyage into another. I bid you farewell Mr. Thompson and naively hope that the work you leave behind can grow to eclipse the shadow you cast in writing it. + +Hunter S Thompson + +[^1]: Note to Rolling Stone, anytime you want to start publishing good fiction again, feel free. +[^2]: Interestingly enough the latest edition of *Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas* omits this subtitle in favor of "And Other American Stories," which is unfortunate. diff --git a/jrnl/2005-03-25-one-nation-under-groove.txt b/jrnl/2005-03-25-one-nation-under-groove.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e013d9c --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-03-25-one-nation-under-groove.txt @@ -0,0 +1,153 @@ +I wrote this in 2005, and in some ways it seems quaint, but in others, it remains a fairly effective critique of those who claim technology is the source of cultural problems. Technology can certainly contribute or exacerbate cultural problems, but there usually a much deeper issue at work, as there is in this case. + +The sky is falling again. The man outside the liquor store seems unconcerned. The sky seems to fall a good bit. Perhaps the man didn't notice. Perhaps the sky has fallen too many times now. Perhaps it's been falling for quite some time and we're just now noticing it. Perhaps its always falling. Perhaps it never has and never will fall. Perhaps we just really like to say the sky is falling. + +This latest chunk of sky hurling down at us is a brilliant little piece of circuitry known as the iPod. Andrew Sullivan, writing for The London Times claims "[society is dead, we have retreated into the iWorld](https://web.archive.org/web/20060113045721/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-1501-1491500-1501,00.html)." A catchy headline no doubt, but it's basis in reality is questionable. + +Echoing this trend is John Naughton's recent article for The Guardian "[a generation lost in its personal space](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2005/jan/23/comment.business)." + +Joining these authors is Christine Rosen who has managed to parlay this topic into two separate articles, [The Age of Egocasting](http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-age-of-egocasting) and [Bad Connections](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/magazine/20WWLN.html?ex=1268974800&en=fca8190266cc6b78&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt). + +The underlying implication of all these articles is that the iPod (and the cellphone and TiVo and the remote control and...) narrow our perspectives and, in case of the first two, make us oblivious to and in public spaces. + +> The proportion of young people who never venture out in public without first putting on headphones is astonishing – John Naughten + +> Even without the white wires you can tell who they are. They walk down the street in their own mp3 cocoon, bumping into others, deaf to small social cues, shutting out anyone not in their bubble. – Andrew Sullivan + +I have owned an iPod since 2001 and I really enjoy my bubble. It's not so much that I disagree with any of the authors cited above, it's that I think the iPod is less a destroyer of worlds (public space in this case) and more a *response* to the destruction of personal spaces, the origin of which lies far deeper and farther away than a pair of white headphones. + +I was in a band a few years back and we were recording what would be our only production, a five song ep. For those that have never been in a recording studio and have this mistaken idea that it's all fun and games... well, it's not. Recording music is pretty boring actually. One evening the drummer and I were smoking cigarettes outside our studio and we got to talking about walkmans and the newfangled mp3 players that were just hitting the market. Nice we agreed, but what would be really cool I said, what I really want, is a way to put my entire collection of music in a device the size of a deck of cards. True story, 1995 or so. Buena Park California, sunset iridescent orange. High clouds lending a bit of purple. Swig of beer. Drag of cigarette. + +The first few iPods were too small, 5 gigs and then 10, if I recall correctly from a billboard in Redondo Beach stuck in traffic and thinking, holy shit, they're gonna do it. And they did. When the 20 gig version arrived it seemed like plenty of space so I bought one. Unfortunately when I got done ripping all my cds it was almost full. Now four years later I have almost 35 gigs worth of mp3s and I'm needing a new iPod (holding out for the 80 gig model, which again seems like plenty...). + +I am far too much an audiophile however to settle for the cult of white ear buds and in fact have never used apple's provided headphones (too much time spent in the recording studio to trust my music to cheap speakers). No I am actually worse in Mr Sullivan's view, I use noise canceling earbuds from Sennheiser. Even if I turn off my iPod I am still deaf to your social cues Mr. Sullivan. + +I will even confess that sometimes, when my iPod runs out of batteries, I leave the headphones in just to have an excuse to ignore social interaction. In fact, I find it really irritating when people fail to respect the message of headphones (don't talk to me) and insist that I remove them so they can ask me for a cigarette (no) or a donation (sorry, one step away from the breadline myself). + +### Space is the Place + +At the same time, as a writer, overheard conversation and snippets of other lives caught accidentally or through purposeful audio voyeurism are very important to me, invaluable even. This is the sort of accidental material that can put you where you ought to be -- where you least expected to be. + +But at the same time I never knew I would feel quite like *that* as the winter afternoon glare crystallized the spires at the top of the Sixth Avenue Library to the sound of Grant Lee Buffalo's lament of New Orleans. I got the same juxtaposition of the familiar and foreign that I might glean from an unexpected snippet of the overheard. + +So maybe, while it doesn't fit the binary choice narrative of our age, just maybe it's possible that both wearing headphones and not wearing headphones have their place. + +I like to be able to choose whether or not to involve myself in the public space. But the elective to remove oneself from the public is troubling for our iPod critics. "Walk through any airport in the United States these days and you will see person after person gliding through the social ether as if on autopilot," writes Sullivan. + +Naughten even has the dystopia mapped out for us: "imagine the future: a crowded urban street, filled not with people interacting with one another, but with atomized individuals cocooned in their personalized sound-bubbles, moving from one retail opportunity to another. The only sounds are the shuffling of feet and the rock muzak blaring from the doorways of specialized leisurewear chains." + +It's funny to read this in 2019 and realize that in fact Naughten was close. I haven't been in a major American city in a few years, but last time I was his description would have fit perfectly. But are the "atomized individuals" the cause or the result? I'd argue they're the latter. + +It seems natural to me that people bombarded with advertising and the crass commercial commodification of public space at every turn would want an isolationist bubble to protect themselves. Naughten's vision, which turns out to be more or less the culture we have in the west in 2019, seems a perfectly logical extension of the culture we have created. + +It's perfectly logical to string together phrase that, in 2005, would have sounded like something out of Infinite Jest: Meet me down at the Blockbuster Pavilion where we can catch the Verizon Wireless Presents show tonight and maybe afterward we can head to the Trojan Condom presents DJ Circuit City spinning at Club Walmart. Come on down, we'll have a grand time ringing in the new Year of the Depend Undergarment. + +What Mr. Naughten seems to ignore is the second to last sentence of his own nightmare, one that has nothing to do with headphones and everything to do with cultural changes that precede the iPod -- *moving from one retail opportunity to another*. + +This is the sum total of our public spaces. They are "retail opportunities". Our "public" space is not public at all, it's branded private space that views the public as little more than advertising targets. How long before we have advertisements beamed up into the night sky? + +Rather than contributing to this sort of corporate co-opting of public spaces, the iPod allows us an escape into private worlds of the imagination. + +Headphones are an attempt to avoid the homogenization of the "rock musak blaring from the doorways of specialized leisurewear chains". + +Is it not the desire to escape the vulgar commercialism of our advertising-polluted culture that drives us to block out it's monotony? To seek something meaningful in one of the most intimately and meaningful realms, music and interject back the danger that once lurked outside the burlesque theaters and dance halls that seem to have closed just after Henry and June sneaked out the back door. + +### The New (Old) Danger + +The problem with the iPod for these authors, and for similar articles about phones in 2019, seems to lie in the shutting off of the public space in favor of the personal. + +As I've already pointed out we the public largely lost our collective spaces to more nefarious forces than the iPod. But, setting aside larger cultural issues like promiscuous advertising, what of the iPod's privatization of public space as these authors claim? + +Neither author gives any kind of reason as to why this is bad. They both get abstract and use the iPod as jumping off point for larger concerns, starting with Mr Sullivan who sees in the iPod the loss of, call it respect for music. + +"Music was once the preserve of the living room or the concert hall," writes Sullivan. "It was sometimes solitary but it was primarily a shared experience, something that brought people together, gave them the comfort of knowing that others too understood the pleasure of a Brahms symphony or that Beatles album." + +I don't know about you, but the music I listen to was never welcome in the living room I grew up in. + +For some reason, my parents failed to relate to or appreciate *License to Ill* or *Nothing's Shocking*. Mr. Sullivan seems to think 'once upon a time' music was confined to the space where we expect it and now, good god, now it's everywhere and no one is sharing or bonding over it. + +I for one would much rather everyone carried around a pair of speakers with their iPod and blasted them at 11 so music became a truly public space, but apparently I am alone in this desire and there are noise ordinances against this sort of thing. (If this notion intrigues you check out some of the Flaming Lips' experiments with hundreds of simultaneous playbacks to form textures of sound). + +Typical of a lazy essayist, Sullivan is really just aping statements made a generation earlier in response to the iPod's predecessor, the Walkman. + +Far more reasoned and persuasive is Christine Rosen's piece in The New Atlantis. As Rosen relates in her essay, "music columnist Norman Lebrecht argued, 'no invention in my lifetime has so changed an art and cheapened it as the Sony Walkman.' By removing music from its context -- in the performance hall or the private home -- and making it portable, the Walkman made music banal. It becomes a utility, undeserving of more attention than drinking water from a tap." + +I suppose that's one way to look at it. But you could go back further. Swap "radio" for "Sony Walkman" and the argument still stands. Want to go further, gramophone works too. Yes, it's true, recorded music has never had a context. It has always existed in the abstract space of our heads more than any temporal location. We are not in the room as it as the music is played, we get only an abstracted representation of the music. + +This is where to whole thing collapses for me -- so what? The notion that music has to have a context in order to understand it is only one way of approaching it. I'm not saying it's a wrong way, I agree music is more powerful in person, but the abstraction, the ability to summon up the music you love whenever you want is indistinguishable from magic, to me anyway. + +The notion that music has a natural space where it belongs is an extremely limiting definition of music. But even accepting that notion for a moment, applying it to recorded music makes no sense. If recorded music is located outside any temporal location, how can it have an appropriate place? + +So ultimately Rosen is arguing that personal space is invading public space, that is, headphones are narrowing our public cultural space, but also, that music (in said headphones) really ought to remain in a private performance space as well. At least I think that's what's she's saying, though it makes no sense. + +I for one don't think music should be consigned to where we feel comfortable and safe with it. Music is not safe. It should not be relegated to the living room or the concert hall, it should be played in the streets at top volume until the sky really does shudder and crumble. But that option has already been taken away by noise ordinances. So we have gone internal, put the speaker directly in our ear. + +If anything changes with headphones it's the attention devoted to the music. Music coming from speakers has a directional vector. It approaches you from some point and is blatantly external to the listener. Put on a decent pair of headphones and the music becomes omnidirectional and you are enveloped in it. Close your eyes and you can swim through it and pick out tiny bits of sound that you would never notice coming from an external speaker. For the listener on headphones the experience is both more intimate and more consuming than music from a living room stereo or even a concert hall stage. + +As for the loss of public culture to personal headphone cocoon, is not the mere recognition of white earbuds itself a form of cultural interaction? Even if it be only a nod and smile, is this not even closer to the truth of life, the mystery unfathomed but acknowledged? I know how you feel the nod says and it is good speaketh the smile. + +### Its All Around You + +Neither Sullivan nor Naughton is content with the iPod as harbinger of doom, the end of social space, the isolationist future of automatons. Yawn. No, it does not stop there, this is the slippery slope down which we all slide into communism and cannibalism and [them russians and them russians](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49305/america-56d22b41f119f) and them earbuds and them earbuds and them them, damnit the sky is falling why don't you see it? + +Rosen at least has a more reasoned argument that might actually be on to something. + +She believes that the personalization of media is leading to a narrowing of experience. That's a legitimate fear that the passing of time has shown to be very legitimate indeed. + +Mr. Naughton in the Guardian article sounds a bit like Wordsworth calling us all back to the countryside. He even goes so far as to stake his critique partly on recently uncovered Edwardian era documentary films. These movies he claims reveal a society where, "men raise their hats to women; people stop to talk; groups congregate at junctions and street corners." The clear implication is that, for Edwardians, being out in public meant being on display and being sociable. It meant paying attention to what was going on around you, and acknowledging the existence of others. + +Beware all calls for a return to past glories. Still, assuming for a moment that people act naturally in front of a camera, and that they weren't in fact congregating to discuss the weirdos at the end of street pointing lenses at everyone, the Edwardians were more self-consciously aware when out in public. Does that make them role models of public behavior? They were also more elitist, racist, and classist as well; should we emulate those behaviors too while we're out for a Sunday stroll? + +In researching this little piece I found several nice rebuttals to Sullivan's piece. The best of which is by a man named Jerry Stratton in an essay entitled [society never ends, it just fades away](http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=92). + +Stratton rightly cuts past the iPod intro of Sullivan's article and addresses what Sullivan really wants to talk about. "His most worthwhile observation was that iPod users sometimes accidentally break out into out-of-tune singing to whatever is on their pod," writes Stratton. "But [Sullivan] seems to think that it's bad, whereas I stand with Joni Mitchell that the more out-of-tune voices, the better. And that's the real point of Andrew's editorial. The proliferation of multiple viewpoints runs the risk of isolating individuals so that they hear only the viewpoints that they want to hear. We as individuals need more out-of-tune voices." + +This is also Rosen's concern in both of her essays, that our means of consuming information (for her the remote control, TiVo, and iPod) are narrowing our exposure to new ideas. By meticulously selecting content that we already know we like we are even less likely to discover the new stuff. Couple this with "smart" search algorithms that pick recommendations based on what we already like and our chances of encountering the shocking, the challenging or the potentially enlightening approach nil according to Rosen. + +Without these sorts of jarring, chance encounters with the unknown we cease to think outside ourselves. This may well be true, but it's always been true. Conservative viewers are more likely to tune into Fox news because it fits their pre-existing worldview. Liberals read the New York Times and watch Woody Allen movies. This is nothing new. It has always taken conscious effort to find viewpoints outside your own reality tunnel of beliefs. + +I fail to see anyway in which the iPod contributes to this trend. In fact it may well go against it if only by virtue of its ubiquity. On college campuses for instance many students swap headphones to see what the other is listening to. The iPod's ease of use and the easy availability of mp3s make exploring new music simple -- hear a band on someone's headphones, go home and fire up a torrent search, grab the album, slap it on your iPod and be enlightened. Illegal? Certainly. Potentially life enriching? Certainly. + +### No Alarms and No Surprises + +When you come down to it, how is the iPod any different from other music devices that use headphones? It's not. It's just the latest harbinger on the chopping block if we mash our metaphors for a moment. + +At the same time, the targeted nature of new modes of consumption do raise some issues for thought. Is algorithmic content, narrowly selected constricting our exposure to the unfamiliar? Maybe, but as illustrated earlier there has always been a tendency to seek the familiar, the safe, the comfortable, the expected. + +But even that doesn't always happen. The gravity of this potential danger, if we may call it that, that comes from targeted advertising depends greatly on the realm in which occurs. If we are talking about the realm of politics then this kind of marsupial burrowing is decidedly bad. If you bought Bill O'Reilly's book (presumably he has one) and the suggested "you might like..." stuff is more of the same, then yes your worldview remains narrow. But in the realm of art where the political statement is often less overt, less likely to be partisan, more likely to be complicated and often not there at all, then the suggestion might be welcome and can lead one far from the sources that suggested it. + +For example let's say you really like Jay-Z and so when the new album comes out you pre-order it on Amazon.com. The "you might like..." screen claims that people who like Jay-Z have also purchased Outkast. So you figure, what the hell I'll pick up this Outkast album. Turns out that those who purchased Outkast also bought both Stevie Wonder and Sun Ra. Hey, why not? You buy them too. If you're a fan of Jay-Z but have never ventured into Sun Ra territory, well, you're about to blow your mind. + +In my own experience, I find that I tend to read books that mention other books. So I read the other books and maybe they mention some other books and on it goes. I don't see a significant difference between that and the Amazon suggestions. Or potentially TiVo's suggestions or any other targeted marketing. In the realm of the arts nothing is so much the same that it cannot lead to something ever more different. + +It seems that to a certain extent the authors in question here are specifically concerned with the potential narrowing of political capital, which is a concern given that democracy depend on the existence of a multitude of voices. Are we losing that? Well that's a larger question and one that does not necessarily relate to remote controls, TiVo or the iPod. + +### You Were Wrong When You Said Everything's Gonna Be All Right + +All three of these articles reveal more about their author's sentimentality for earlier times than anything else. If those kids took the headphones out of their ears, put down the remote, turned off the television and read a couple of books everything would be fine... + +In fact this notion of iPod=evil represents the same simplistic thinking that has landed us where we are in the first place. If easy prescriptions worked to solve our problems we wouldn't have the reactionary mess we have. And I don't mean that in partisan terms. I think we can all agree that America is somewhat of a mess right now. I don't think one political party or the other is as fault. We are all culpable. And we are all looking for solutions. + +I don't believe in the techno-utopist future of completely wired life and peace through blogging, but I also don't believe in the techno-dystopist future where we all end up like the overweight blobs in floating chaise lounges ala Wall-E. + +Reality is much more complex and to avoid it authors like Sullivan resort to cheap, easy sentimentality."What are we missing?" he asks, answer ever at the ready: "That hilarious shard of an overheard conversation that stays with you all day; the child whose chatter on the pavement takes you back to your early memories; birdsong; weather; accents; the laughter of others. + +A lovely piece of sentimentality, it almost makes me want to take out these headphones and listen to the silence of the house. But as Wallace Stevens' said "sentimentality is a failure of feeling.Sentimentality is false feeling, pseudo-feeling and affectation. Sullivan's quote is an embarrassing episode of mindless sentimentality, it fails to account for all kinds of complexity and depth ever-present in our lives. + +Sentimentality is the easy answer: the birds, the laughter, the children.... Real feeling involves complexity, it rejects the simple. To realize that there is more to it than unplugging, more to it than any technology, more to it than a sound bite you can pass off as heartfelt -- that is actually the very essence of the problem: the failure to engage your surroundings as anything other than a simplistic snapshot of what you wanted to see. + +Does Sullivan acknowledge the ugliness? Never. He skips right over it and tells you what you wanted to hear. Sullivan's sentimentality does the very thing he accuses the iPod of doing -- he narrows your reality. + +Never for a second does Sullivan acknowledge that the birds might be endangered, headed for extinction, that the weather might be worsening with global warming, that the laughter of others might well be cynical and cheap or that the children are living below the poverty line, abused etc, etc. This the same sort of narcissistic thinking that gave us romanticism, is it any wonder that these authors look too fondly at the Edwardians? + +Everything looks good from the lazy middle class intellectual point of view. Edit out the things you don't like and you too can narrow your reality to the point of irrelevancy. + +Please do not mistake me for a cynic though. I use this example merely to acknowledge that there are things below the surface that we can happily ignore if we are constructing the world to our own desires rather than recognizing the complexity that is inherent in it. + +### ...And I Feel Fine + +Perhaps the problem with the iPod is so ephemeral it's slipping through our fingers. Perhaps there is no problem with the iPod. No harm in headphones. No danger to run from save the desire to have a new danger to run from, a new evil to fight because the real one is just too big to tackle, a new threat to declare war on because the old one just bores us to death, a new something to rage against because the dying of the light seems inevitable and unvanquishable. Perhaps the new danger, same as the old, is our own failure, our own sentimentality that shows us the world not as it is but as we wish to see it. + +At the same time I encourage everyone, as Robert Anton Wilson put it, to change reality tunnels often. Find viewpoints you don't share, something outside your belief system, something you might even consider crazy. Listen to what these viewpoints are saying and think critically about why you do or don't agree with them. + +There has never (not even yesterday) been a day in the history of humankind when you have had so much information at your finger tips. Take advantage of that and see where it leads you -- hopefully where you least expected. And hey, listen to music while you think. diff --git a/jrnl/2005-05-12-new-adventures-hifi-text.txt b/jrnl/2005-05-12-new-adventures-hifi-text.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a16df6c --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-05-12-new-adventures-hifi-text.txt @@ -0,0 +1,136 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 42.32272216993563,-72.62770885922362 +location: Northampton,Massachusetts,United States +image: 2015/latex.jpg +desc: This project is no longer maintained or necessary thanks to projects like Pandoc which can take Markdown use it to create LaTeX and a dozen other types of files. It's just here as an historical artifact of my own amusement. +dek: This project is no longer maintained or necessary thanks to projects like Pandoc which can take Markdown use it to create LaTeX and a dozen other types of files. It's just here as an historical artifact of my own amusement. +pub_date: 2005-05-12T21:21:44 +slug: new-adventures-hifi-text +title: New Adventures in HiFi Text +--- + +### 2014 Addendum + +**This post is very old, most of the links are dead and none of it is necessary anymore thanks to projects like [Pandoc](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/) which can take Markdown use it to create LaTeX and a dozen other types of files.** + +**When I wrote this in 2006 there was no Pandoc. I guess I was a pioneer in some sense.** + +**But yeah, there are much easier ways to do this now. I leave it up because Daring Fireball linked to it and to this day I get traffic looking for it.** + +**What I stand by 100% is the philosophy and usefulness of plain text. It's all I use to store data -- usually in flat files, as described here, sometimes in databases. Whichever the case, plain text lasts, end of story. I also stand by my pronunciation of LaTeX. I know La Tech is correct, but I'll be damned if I'm going to say it that way.** + +###In praise of plain text + +I sometimes bitch about Microsoft Word in this piece, but let me be clear that I do not hate Windows or Microsoft, nor am I a rabid fan of Apple. In fact prior to the advent of OS X, I was ready to ditch the platform altogether. I could list as many crappy things about Mac OS 7.x-9.x as I can about Windows. Maybe even more. But OS X changed that for me, it's everything I was looking for in an OS and very little I wasn't. But I also don't think Microsoft is inherently evil and Windows is their plan to exploit the vulnerable masses. I mean really, do you think [this guy][2] or anything he might do could be *evil*? Of course not. I happen to much prefer OS X, but that's just personal preference and computing needs. I use Windows all the time at work and I don't hate it, it just lacks a certain *je ne sais quoi*. [2014 update: These days I use Debian Linux because it just works better than any other OS I have use.] + +That said, I have never really liked Microsoft Word on any platform. It does all sorts of things I would prefer that it didn't, such as capitalize URLs while I'm typing or automatically convert email addresses to live links. Probably you can turn these sorts of things on and off in the preferences, but that's not the point. I dislike the way Word approaches me, [assuming that I want every bell and whistle possible][10], including a shifty looking paperclip with Great Gatsbyesque eyes watching my every move. + +Word has too many features and yet fails to implement any of them with much success. Since I don't work in an office environment, I really don't have any need for Word (did I mention it's expensive and crashes with alarming frequency?). I write for a couple of magazines here and there, post things on this site, and slave away at the mediocre American novel, none of which requires me to use MS Word or the .doc format. In short, I don't *need* Word. + +Yet for years I used it anyway. I still have the copy I purchased in college and even upgraded when it became available for OS X. But I used it mainly out of ignorance to the alternatives, rather than usefulness of the software. I can now say I have tried pretty much every office/word processing program that's available for OS X and I only like one of them -- [Mellel][11]. But aside from that one, I've concluded I just don't like word processors (including [Apple's new Pages program][12]). + +These days I do my writing in a text editor, usually BBEdit. Since I've always used BBEdit to write code, it was open and ready to go. Over time I noticed that when I wanted to jot down some random idea I turned to BBEdit rather than opening up Word. It started as a convenience thing and just sort of snowballed from there. Now I'm really attached to writing in plain text. + +In terms of archival storage, plain text is an excellent way to write. If BareBones, the makers of BBEdit, went bankrupt tomorrow I wouldn't miss a beat because just about any program out there can read my files. As a file storage format, plain text is almost totally platform independent (I'm sure someone has got a text editor running on their PS2 by now.), which makes plain text fairly future proof (and if it's not then we have bigger issues to deal with). Plain text is also easy to marked up for web display, a couple of `

` tags, maybe a link here and there and we're on our way. + +###In praise of formatted text + +But there are some drawbacks to writing in plain text -- it sucks for physical documents. No one wants to read printed plain text. Because plain text must be single spaced printing renders some pretty small text with no room to make corrections -- less than ideal for editing purposes. Sure, I could adjust the font size and whatnot from within BBEdit's preferences, but I can't get the double spacing, which is indispensable for editing, but a waste of space when I'm actually writing. + +Of course this may be peculiar to me. It may be hard for some people to write without having the double-spaced screen display. Most people probably look at what they're writing while they write it. I do not. I look at my hands. Not to find the keys, but rather with a sort of abstract fascination. My hands seem to know where to go without me having to think about it, it's kind of amazing and I like to watch it happen. I could well be thinking about something entirely different from what I'm typing and staring down at my hands produces a strange realization -- wow look at those fingers go, I wonder how they know what their doing? I'm thinking about the miraculous way they seem to know what their doing, rather than what they're actually doing. It's highly likely that this is my own freakishness, but it eliminates the need for nicely spaced screen output (and introduces the need for intense editing). + +But wait, let's go back to that earlier part where I said its easy to mark up plain text for the web -- what if it were possible to mark up plain text for print? Now that would be something. + +###The Best of Both Worlds (Maybe) + +In fact there is a markup language for print documents. Unfortunately its pretty clunky. It goes by the name TeX, the terseness of which should make you think -- ah, Unix. But TeX is actually really wonderful. It gives you the ability to write in plain text and use an, albeit esoteric and awkward, syntax to mark it up. TeX can then convert your document into something very classy and beautiful. + +Now prior to the advent of Adobe's ubiquitous PDF format I have no idea what sort of things TeX produced, nor do I care, because PDF exists and TeX can leverage it to render printable, distributable, cross-platform, open standard and, most importantly, really good looking documents. + +But first let's deal with the basics. TeX is convoluted, ugly, impossibly verbose and generally useless to anyone without a computer science degree. Recognizing this, some reasonable folks can along and said, hey, what if we wrote some simple macros to access this impossibly verbose difficult to comprehend language? That would be marvelous. And so some people did and called the result LaTeX because they were nerd/geeks and loved puns and the shift key. Actually I am told that LaTeX is pronounced Lah Tech, and that TeX should not be thought of as tex, but rather the greek letters tau, epsilon and chi. This is all good and well if you want to convince people you're using a markup language rather than checking out fetish websites, but the word is spelled latex and will be pronounced laytex as long as I'm the one saying it. (Note to Bono: Your name is actually pronounced bo know. Sorry, that's just how it is in my world.) + +So, while TeX may do the actual work of formating your plain text document, what you actually use to mark up your documents is called LaTeX. I'm not entirely certain, but I assume that the packages that comprise LaTeX are simple interfaces that take basic input shortcuts and then tell TeX what they mean. Sort of like what Markdown does in converting text to HTML. Hmmm. More on that later. + +###Installation and RTFM suggestions + +So I went through the whole unixy rigamarole of installing packages in usr/bin/ and other weird directories that I try to ignore and got a lovely little Mac OS X-native front end called [TeXShop][3]. Here is a link to the [Detailed instructions for the LaTeX/TeX set up I installed][4]. The process was awkward, but not painful. The instruction comprise only four steps, not as bad as say, um, well, okay, it's not drag-n-drop, but its pretty easy. + +I also went a step further because LaTeX in most of it's incarnations is pretty picky about what fonts it will work with. If this seems idiotic to you, you are not alone. I thought hey, I have all these great fonts, I should be able to use any of them in a LaTeX document, but no, it's not that easy. Without delving too deep into the mysterious world of fonts, it seems that, in order to render text as well as it does, TeX needs special fonts -- particularly fonts that have specific ligatures included in them. Luckily a very nice gentlemen by the name of Jonathan Kew has already solved this problem for those of us using Mac OS X. So I [downloaded and installed XeTeX][13], which is actually a totally different macro processor that runs semi-separately from a standard LaTeX installation (at least I think it is, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. This link offers [more information on XeTeX][5]. + +So then [I read the fucking manual][6] and [the other fucking manual][7] (which should be on your list of best practices when dealing with new software or programming languages). After an hour or so of tinkering with pre-made templates developed by others, and consulting the aforementioned manuals, I was actually able to generate some decent looking documents. + +But the syntax for LaTeX is awkward and verbose (remember -- written to avoid having to know an awkward and verbose syntax known as TeX). Would you rather write this: + +\section{Heading} + +\font\a="Bell MT" at 12pt + +\a some text some text some text some text, for the love of god I will not use latin sample text because damnit I am not roman and do not like fiddling. \href{some link text}{http://www.linkaddress.com} to demonstrate what a link looks like in XeTeX. \verb#here is a line of code# to show what inline code looks like in XeTeX some more text because I still won't stoop, yes I said stoop, to Latin. + +Or this: + +###Heading + +some text some text some text some text, for the love of god I will not use latin sample text because damnit I am not roman and do not like fiddling. [some link text][1] to demonstrate what a link looks like in Markdown. `here is a line of code` to show what inline code looks like in Markdown. And some more text because I still won't stoop, yes I said stoop, to Latin. + +In simple terms of readability, [John Gruber's Markdown][8] (the second sample code) is a stroke of true brilliance. I can honestly say that nothing has changed my writing style as much since my parents bought one of these newfangled computer thingys back in the late 80's. So, with no more inane hyperbole, lets just say I like Markdown. + +LaTeX on the other hand shows it's age like the denture baring ladies of a burlesque revival show. It ain't sexy. And believe me, my sample is the tip of the iceberg in terms of mark up. + +###using Perl and Applescript to generate XeTeX + +Here's where I get vague, beg personal preferences, hint a vast undivulged knowledge of AppleScript (not true, I just use the "start recording" feature in BBEdit) and simply say that, with a limited knowledge of Perl, I was able to rewrite Markdown, combine that with some applescripts to call various Grep patterns (LaTeX must escape certain characters, most notably, `$` and `&`) and create a BBEdit Textfactory which combines the first two elements to generate LaTeX markup from a Markdown syntax plain text document. And no I haven't been reading Proust, I just like long, parenthetically-aside sentences. + +Yes all of the convolution of the preceding sentence allows me to, in one step, convert this document to a latex document and output it as a PDF file. Don't believe me? [Download this article as a PDF produced using LaTeX][9]. In fact it's so easy I'm going to batch process all my entries and make them into nice looking PDFs which will be available at the bottom of the page. + +###Technical Details + +I first proposed this idea of using Markdown to generate LaTeX on the BBEdit mailing list and was informed that it would be counter-productive to the whole purpose and philosophy of LaTeX. While I sort of understand this guidance, I disagree. + +I already have a ton of documents written with Markdown syntax. Markdown is the most minimal syntax I've found for generating html. Why not adapt my existing workflow to generate some basic LaTeX? See I don't want to write LaTeX documents; I want to write text documents with Markdown syntax in them and generate html and PDF from the same initial document. Then I want to revert the initial document back to it's original form and stash it away on my hard drive. + +I simply wanted a one step method of processing a Markdown syntax text file into XeTeX to compliment the one step method I already have for turning the same document into HTML. + +Here's how I do it. I modified Markdown to generate what LaTeX markup I need, i.e. specific definitions for list elements, headings, quotes, code blocks etc. This was actually pretty easy, and keep in mind that I have never gotten beyond a "hello world" script in Perl. Kudos to John Gruber for copious comments and very logical, easy to read code. + +That's all good and well, but then there are some other things I needed to do to get a usable TeX version of my document. For instance certain characters need to be escaped, like the entities mentioned above. Now if I were more knowledgeable about Perl I would have just added these to the Markdown file, but rather than wrestle with Perl I elected to use grep via BBEdit. So I crafted an applescript that first parsed out things like `—` and replaced them with the unicode equivalent which is necessary to get an em-dash in XeTeX (in a normal LaTeX environment you would use `---` to generate an emdash). Other things like quote marks, curly brackets and ampersands are similarly replaced with their XeTeX equivalents (for some it's unicode, others like `{` or `}` must be escaped like so: `\{`). + +Next I created a BBEdit Textfactory to call these scripts in the right order (for instance I need to replace quote marks after running my modified Markdown script since Markdown will use quotes to identify things like url title tags (which my version simply discards). Then I created an applescript that calls the textfactory and then applies a BBEdit glossary item to the resulting (selected) text, which adds all the preamble TeX definitions I use and then passes that whole code block off to XeTeX via TeXShop and outputs the result in Preview. + +Convoluted? Yes. But now that it's done and assigned a shortcut key it takes less than two seconds to generate a pdf of really good looking (double spaced) text. The best part is if I want to change things around, the only file I have to adjust is the BBEdit glossary item that creates the preamble. + +The only downside is that to undo the various manipulations wrought on the original text file I have to hit the undo command five times. At some point I'll sit down and figure out how to do everything using Perl and then it will be a one step undo just like regular Markdown. In the mean time I just wrote a quick applescript that calls undo five times :) + +###Am I insane? + +I don't know. I'm willing to admit to esoteric and when pressed will concede stupid, but damnit I like it. And from initial install to completed workflow we're only talking about six hours, most of which was spent pouring over LaTeX manuals. Okay yes, I'm insane. I went to all this effort just to avoid an animated paperclip. But seriously, that thing is creepy. + +Note of course that my LaTeX needs are limited and fairly simple. I wanted one version of my process to output a pretty simple double spaced document for editing. Then I whipped up another version for actual reading by others (single spaced, nice margins and header etc). I'm a humanities type, I'm not doing complex math equations, inline images, or typesetting an entire book with table of contents and bibliography. Of course even if I were, the only real change I would need to make is to the LaTeX preamble template. Everything else would remain the same, which is pretty future proof. And if BBEdit disappears and Apple goes belly up, well, I still have plain text files to edit on my PS457. + +[1]: http://www.luxagraf.com/archives/flash/software_sucks "Why Software sucks. Sometimes." + +[2]: http://www.snopes.com/photos/people/gates.asp "Bill Gates gets sexy for the teens--yes, that is a mac in the background" + +[3]: http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/texshop.html "TeXShop for Mac OS X" + +[4]: http://www.mecheng.adelaide.edu.au/~will/texstart/ "TeX on Mac OS X: The most simple beginner's guide" + +[5]: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=xetex_texshop "Using XeTeX with TexShop" + +[6]: http://www.math.hkbu.edu.hk/TeX/ "online LaTeX manual" + +[7]: http://www.math.hkbu.edu.hk/TeX/lshort.pdf "Not so Short introduction to LaTeX" + +[8]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ "Markdown" + +[9]: http://www.luxagraf.com/pdf/hifitext.pdf "this article as an XeTeX generated pdf" + +[10]: http://www1.appstate.edu/~clarkne/hatemicro.html "Microsoft Word Suicide Note help" + +[11]: http://www.redlers.com/ "Mellel, great software and a bargin at $39" + +[12]: http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/ "Apple's Pages, part of the new iWork suite" + +[13]: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=xetex&_sc=1 "The XeTeX typesetting system" + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-10-08-new-luddites.txt b/jrnl/2005-10-08-new-luddites.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a734353 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-10-08-new-luddites.txt @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.632147504909575,-117.90106771735248 +location: Newport Beach,California,United States +image: 2008/books.jpg +desc: Writing is participating in something bigger than you. It's a contribution to the body of humanity's knowledge and I think authors ought to respect that. +dek: An older, non-travel piece about Google's plan to scan all the world's books and Luddite-like response from many authors. Let's see, someone wants to make your book easier to find, searchable and indexable and you're opposed to it? You're a fucking idiot. +pub_date: 2005-10-08T18:17:45 +slug: new-luddites +title: The New Luddites +--- + +

[Update: I'm not entirely sure I still agree with this post. This was written some time ago, before Google became, well, Google. I still think the Author's Guild was being ridiculous, but I'm no longer sure Google's motives were benign. I do still agree with this bit though: Writing is participating in something bigger than you. It's a contribution to the body of humanity's knowledge and I think authors ought to respect that.

+ +

This post, along with a few others, is from the time before luxagraf was a travel blog. Back then it was just sort of a place for me to spout off on things I care about, in this case books. Consider yourself warned

+ +It might just be what I happen to read, but the big topic of late on this here internet seems to the Author's Guild lawsuit against Google. For those that haven't heard, the Author's Guild has brought a class action lawsuit against Google to try and stop Google from indexing scanned books. I am a writer and I make about half of my income from writing (the other half comes from programming) so I have a personal interest in the outcome of this lawsuit. That said, I really wish it wasn't happening. I really wish that we weren't so tied to money that it has come to this. Are writers, authors, and members of the guild, to say nothing of the music industry, really this stupid? + +Here's the thing in plain English. Google wants to scan and index hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books, magazines and newspapers. Google understands that many authors might not want this to happen. They have thus provided an opt-out program. They set a deadline for this offer. Several authors protested the existence of the deadline, saying the opt-out should be available at any time. Essentially they're asking Google to expend the effort to index their work and then waste that effort and discard it. That doesn't even begin to make sense to me. If these authors are so concerned with their copyrights they out to be on the ball about and able to meet a deadline. + +The irony is of course that the Authors Guild is suing on behalf of all their members (I.e. an opt out style), which in essence is the very thing they're trying to stop Google from doing. To the best of my knowledge there is no way for a member of the Authors Guild to opt out. At least Google gives you the option. + +But the bigger issue is why do these writers care at all? Isn't being indexed by Google in fact a good thing? Won't that open an avenue for more people to discover their work? Such was my initial reaction, nicely and perhaps most eloquently expounded by Tim O'Reilly in a recent NYTimes op/ed piece: + +>A search engine for books will be revolutionary in its benefits. Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors than copyright infringement, or even outright piracy. While publishers invest in each of their books, they depend on bestsellers to keep afloat. They typically throw their products into the market to see what sticks and cease supporting what doesn't, so an author has had just one chance to reach readers. Until now. + +>Google promises an alternative to the obscurity imposed on most books. It makes that great corpus of less-than-bestsellers accessible to all. By pointing to a huge body of print works online, Google will offer a way to promote books that publishers have thrown away, creating an opportunity for readers to track them down and buy them. + +Now that just plain makes sense. So who objects to this and on what grounds? I've spent two days now digging around on Google (yes the irony is steak knife thick in my house) trying to figure out why these writers are opposed to Google scanning their work. And why the Author's Guild doesn't mind Google indexing the content of their website… + +The argument, as best as I can follow it, seems to be that Google will be profiting and the authors will not directly. But as O'Reilly and others point out, that just isn't true. So what then? Why oppose this. The Author's Guild website (I refuse to link to it) talks a lot about people stealing my work and all the money I will be losing from that. So is Google going to profit off these works? Well that depends how you look at it. In some sense yes they are; they will of course do their usual ads amongst content to generate revenue. But I think the argument can be made that the success of the ads rest more on Google's service than on the individual works being indexed. That is, what will draw people in is the fact that Google is doing this; Google makes the service available. In other words, I think Google's name is a bigger draw than the authors themselves. I think Google could generate a handsome profit just working with public domain works. + +This is the point at which I apparently part ways with a number of authors. I wholeheartedly agree with O'Reilly, and desperately hope that Google wins this suit. I would love to see some of my favorite authors raised out of obscurity, Frank Stanford, Bernadette Mayer; I could point out great overlooked writers all day long. Most of their works are out of print and the publishing rights in the hands of people who either don't want to or can't afford to bring them out in print again. By indexing these works Google can hopefully introduce more people to their words. And that's the point of writing right? Communication? Or is it only about the money these days? Frankly I think writers ought to get down on their hands and knees and thank god that they live in the only century in the history of man where they can feed themselves by writing. And don't even try to say that's because copyright laws protect their work. It's because of the printing press and all the other technologies that have enabled the cheap production of printed books, not a bunch of laws written three centuries ago. + +See, I write for webmonkey, which is owned by wirednews.com, which is owned by Lycos, which I believe is owned by someone else, who may in fact be owned by someone else. It's entirely possible that the chain is infinite. I write in a situation of built-in, absolutely guaranteed obscurity. The tiniest plankton in a vast ocean of money. The toilets seats in Lycos' office probably cost more than I do. Certainly no one at Lycos is sitting around thinking about how they can get my articles out to a wider audience. And that's fine, I don't expect them to, the articles have a limited audience by their very subject matter. It's entirely possible that my Dad is the only one who actually goes out and finds them. Most people that write me tend to start off saying, hey I stumbled across your article the other day, or I was search for __ and ran across your article. In other words most people find me because of Google or other search engines. + +Now this brings us to an interesting thing. Sometimes I forget what I wrote, so I go look for it again. Unfortunately Webmonkey's search powers are, um, well, pathetic. So I often have to Google a title to even find out the url so I can reread it. But when I do these searches interesting things happen. It turns out that a lot of sites reprint webmonkey articles. Some of them are probably within fair use guidelines, some of them are not. At first I was a little disturbed by this discovery. After all these people are earning ad revenue off of my writing. Of course my writing is in fact owned by Lycos, so I really have no claim or very little claim at best. Not enough money to worry about. But what if it were? Major print magazines pay in the neighborhood of a dollar or two per word, sometimes even more. But let's say for instance that my 3000 word article netted me $6000. Not only would my bank account be in much better shape (though the lump in the mattress might be a bit awkward for sleeping), I would in fact be even **less** concerned with other sites reprinting my work without compensating me. Only one site irritates me because it's trying to pass of my code as the authors own, but whatever, it happens. Move on. + +I guess the question we have come down to is how much compensation is enough? And along with that comes larger questions, am I being paid for the writing, that is the act of writing, or am I being paid for the words I write? Do I own the act of writing or the words I've written? I don't know that anyone can own words. The whole notion of ownership seems a non-sequitur and a logical paradox… in the end I don't own the language, so what do I own—the order of the words? It's a labyrinth of circular logic. But I don't see the harm in Google indexing them and making them available to a wider audience. + +In fact I think that Google's plan is wonderful and I wish they would go ahead and skip the authors that are against it and just use my stuff instead. I'd love to land ahead of some people in the old search rankings. I already see the upside of being reprinted. I've gotten several jobs based on the exposure I receive just from webmonkey reprinting them. In fact, averaged out, I would say each article I've written has led to at least one writing or programming gig. Exposure is a good thing. Never a bad thing. + +Opponents of the Google plan claim that Google does not have the right to index the content. Probably these writers are also behind the Aerospace industries recent drive to start charging model airplane manufacturers for using actual diagrams to build scale models. I think both claims are insane. No one is trying to pass off your work as his or her own. Google is of course a company and companies make money, that's what they do, so I'm not so naive as to think that Google's motivations are pure. That said, I don't care what Google's motivations are, I think the idea is wonderful, the exposure helpful to both authors and readers. + +See the thing is, without readers you aren't going to get any money whatsoever. This, as my friend likes to say, equals bad. Writers dream of living off their writing. Money is an unfortunate motivator, but a motivator nonetheless. I started writing for Webmonkey for the money. The idea of getting paid to write was intoxicating. But something funny happened along the way, I found that I got to meet lots of great people, and help them solve little programming problems. To this day I have only had one bit of negative feedback out of the 4000+ people that have contacted me over the years. And though I might sometimes be slow to respond, I do enjoy solving problems for people. And yes to money may still be a motivation, but it's not the only one, I have fun writing and I have fun responding to people. This might sound really lame, but it means a lot to me when people take the time to comment on something I've written, even if that something is a dry technical article on computer programming. + +Writing is participating in something bigger than you. It's a contribution to the body of humanity's knowledge and I think authors ought to respect that. I have friends that are far better writers than I with books on the shelves at Barnes and Noble and they have never seen a dime. The fact that you could even make money writing would come as a shock to some of them. The Authors Guild is not acting on their behalf, it is not acting on my behalf, it's acting on the behalf of selfish, wealthy writers whose words the world would be better off losing anyway. My message to them is simple. Stop writing and become a banker, you're wasting the world's time and effort. My message to Google is, go forth, index all you want, give away pdfs if you want, just don't index the aforementioned writers, they don't deserve to be found, let them drift off into obscurity where they belong. I look forward to seeing their remaindered copies in the dollar bin. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-10-19-tips-and-resources.txt b/jrnl/2005-10-19-tips-and-resources.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..66dd19a --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-10-19-tips-and-resources.txt @@ -0,0 +1,314 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.63209390723631,-117.90123937840589 +location: Newport Beach,California,United States +image: 2008/travelgear.jpg +desc: Some potentially helpful tips and stuff you might need for an extended trip around the world. +dek: An overview of the things you might want to bring on an extended trip, as well as some tips and recommendations on things like visas and vaccinations. The part that was most helpful for me was learning what I didn't need to bring — as it turns out, quite a bit. Nowadays my pack is much smaller and lighter. +pub_date: 2005-10-19T18:14:56 +slug: tips-and-resources +title: Travel Tips and Resources +--- + +[Update 7/23/06 -- I promised when I got back I would update this to fit with what I learned. So here we go… everything added post-trip is in red. I updated a few things again in 2014.] + +When I started planning for this trip I had no idea the volume of research it would entail. Every website of helpful information that I found led to ten more things I knew nothing about. Digging for information on travel insurance would accidentally lead me to investigate world phones which would then point me toward… you know how the internet goes. And goes and goes. The process was something akin to trying to pull one thread out of the world's largest ball of yarn. It was one of those searches that brings to mind the old saying that knowing what you don't know is more important than what you know. + +With that in mind I started compiling links and outlining general topics based on my research. Eventually I decided that I would write it all down. Partly as a resource for you my dear traveler, but also partly so I wouldn't forget anything. + +Naturally I can't cover everything in detail, but I thought I could cover the basics as I've encountered them. A lot of folks have written very helpful pages for would-be round-the-world travelers, but many links on those sites were out of date or pointed to products and services that were no longer available. Hopefully potential travelers will find this page helpful. I'll be updating it as time goes on and things become more or less relevant to me. This is really more of a resource than it is a review, but where appropriate I'll offer my opinions. Just keep in mind that this page is meant as an overview and where possible I have added external links to other resources that go into more detail. + +##Guides, Flights, and General Planning Suggestions + +###Guidebooks + +practical nomadIt wasn't long into my search that I ran across Edward Hasbrouck. Type “round the world trip” into Google and his name will pop up on the first page. Overwhelmed and tired of chasing down links that generated 404 errors, I decided to head to the bookstore and see if his book might be helpful. Hasbrouck's The Practical Nomad proved very helpful and so I bought it (online of course). This book is great for getting started. If you've long had a dim inkling that you might someday want to go around the world, this book will inspire you to get off the couch and start planning. It has tons of practical information for planning your trip, even tips on how to afford it. Hasbrouck will walk you through how to get deals, what to bring, what not to bring, how to travel, what to be concerned about, what you don't need to worry about, where/how to get visas, etc etc etc. Hasbrouck has a website with a few of the chapters available. The Practical Nomad quickly became an indispensable reference. + +Once you have an idea of how you're going to pull this off, the next step is figuring out where you want to go. Once you know where you want to go, it's time to buy guidebooks. Do yourself a favor and head down to the actual bookstore. You can buy it online later if it's cheaper, but look guidebooks over carefully before actually purchasing any. + +When searching for a good guidebook at you local bookseller, first look at each publisher's guide to your hometown or some place you have a local's knowledge of. See how the guide's description of your hometown and suggestions for what to do, what to see, where to stay etc, matches the reality of what you know. Of course a guidebook can't give you a local's knowledge of a place, but seeing how a publisher treats something familiar helps to give you some idea of how they're treating unfamiliar places. This isn't gospel by any means. No guidebook series has the same quality for every location. It may be that they cover your town really well and suck when it comes to Nepal. Or the opposite could be true as well. The quality depends on the authors and there are usually different authors for each location covered. Take my suggestion as a hint, not the final word. Believe me the guidebook section at Borders can be overwhelming, this tip might make it seem more manageable. [Note that it helps if your hometown is a major city, I grew up in and around Los Angeles.] Keep in mind that the turnaround time on a guidebook is roughly two years, so when you buy one the information is already two years out of date. + +For my trip I ended up with a mix of Lonely Planet Guides, Rough Guides, and Let's Go Guides. They all have their strength and weaknesses, but all three are targeting budget travelers like me. They also all have websites (linked above). The sites themselves aren't that great, but each one has a forum section. If you devote the time necessary to wade through them, you can find tons of information from people that have been to your destination recently — in some cases you'll hear from people that are there right now. This is the best source for more up-to-date information than a guidebook can offer (especially for areas effected by the tsunami early this year). + +I'd also like to say that a guidebook is great and it can help you plan, but don't plan too much. The more flexible you are the better your experience is going to be. Also, consider that the travelers you meet on the road are akin to kiosks of information, always listen to what others recommend. At the same time if you don't plan at all you're going to be overwhelmed and lost. Find a happy medium. Get an idea of what guidebooks suggest, check the online forums to see what others think and be open to the whims that strike you on the road. + +I stand by all that, but I'll add a few things. All guidebooks suck at something so don't expect much. If it has good restaurant listings, its maps will suck and so on. Generally speaking I'd say skip the Lonely Planet Guides. Everyone you meet will have one you can glance at or borrow for a night (of course if everyone thinks that way…). The best deal I had with guidebooks was traveling with Matt and Debi. Matt had the Rough Guide to Southeast Asia which covered everything and Debi and I had individual country guides from Lonely Planet. The combination of the two gave us a nice cross referencing ability. Each had things the other didn't and we just combined the info. And I really think that's the best approach. When I leave for Central America in a few months I'll be toting the Rough Guide to Central America and first cute British girl with a Lonely Planet Guide will be my new best friend. Hopefully. + +

Airline Tickets

+ +AirTreks Travel AgentsBefore you buy plane tickets for any trip I strongly suggest you read the airline section of The Practical Nomad. Airplane tickets were always a mystery to me and finding a good deal is something like conjuring spirits with voodoo. Hasbrouck's detailed explanation of the in and outs of how ticket prices work took much of the mystery out of the process. It helped me make sense of the pricing structures and see how to navigate through the terribly confusing waters of the airline industry. + +After reading the aforementioned chapter I shopped around a lot for air tickets. Tons of online and offline research. Calling travel agents, scouring airline websites, wading through price aggregator websites, talking with recent travelers on message boards, you name it, I researched it. I ended up going with AirTreks for my plane tickets. They were extremely helpful in the planning of this trip and offered many suggestions for itineraries. They also put up with me continually postponing my payment. I never felt pressured or that I was being sold on something. If you qualify, STA Travel may be able get you a better deal, but in terms of service and price for non-students I highly recommend AirTreks. + +I stand by this as well. It sucks to get locked into flights way ahead of time, but the more you buy from home the cheaper it will be. I flew from Los Angeles to Paris, on to Dubai, on to Cochin, on to Kathmandu and finally to Bangkok for $1200. Coming home cost me $2000+ and I only stopped twice. Buy ahead. + +That said I also suggest flying less. If I had it to do over again I would go from Delhi to Kathmandu by bus. Not that there's anything wrong with flying, it just isn't as fun. Some the best experiences I had traveling were horrendous road trips. Suffering is bonding. Learn to love it. + +

Vaccinations

+ +Check the CDC's guidelines for the areas you're going to visit and budget quite a bit of time and money for vaccinations. Hepatitis B for instance requires six months between shots to get full immunity. You get your first shot, wait a month and get another. Then six months after the first you get a third. Hep A is similar. None of my vaccinations have made me sick yet, though I do still have a couple to get. Beware that these are not cheap. Generally the cheapest place to get them is through county or city clinics. Check with your insurance to see if they'll cover them, if not, try your local public health service. + +If you need malaria pills be prepared to fork over some serious dough. I need malaria pills for roughly 300 days. That's 300 pills. It's roughly $40 for 12 pills here in the US. You do the math. I bought 60 pills in Tijuana and am planning to pick up the rest in India. India never signed the international drug copyright act so they make generic drugs using the same recipes as American companies, but sell them at prices the third world can afford. India is an exception though, its medicine is very advanced. You may or may not be able to get Malaria pills in the places you are visiting. + +Okay here we've entered total shit land. Get the basics, measles, mumps rubella, hep A and B and screw the rest of it. Unless you can get it for free. Then load up, hey why not. As for malaria pills… I took them for about a month (Malarone) and then just kind of stopped. Malaria just isn't that big of a deal most places. If you're going to get something it's probably going to be Dengue and there's no vaccine for that anyway. Bring about ten Malarone pills. If you do get malaria you can pop like four at a time for two days and supposedly that'll knock it out. And no that isn't a traveller's myth it's actually printed on the literature you get when you pick up your proscription. On the whole I wouldn't worry about it too much, you're much much more likely to hurt yourself in an automobile or motorcycle accident than you are to catch malaria. If you do think you have malaria get your ass to the nearest real hospital around. If you're in Southeast Asia, that means Bangkok, not, for instance, The Australian Medical Clinic in Vientiane. + +

Passports and Visas

+ +Get a US passport now before they put the RDIF chips in them. Head the post office for more details. It takes about two months to get one so plan ahead.. Too Late. Generally speaking most countries require you to have a passport that is good for at least six months beyond the dates of your intended travel. If you already have a passport, check to make sure that it doesn't expire anytime soon. + +Visas are much more complicated. Check the procedures for the country you intend to visit. It's called Google. But be careful, there is generally no need to pay anyone to do this for you. Find the actual embassy's website for each country and get the forms yourself. And don't be an asshole. Remember that the country doesn't have to give you a visa. Make sure you fill out all the proper forms and find out if the visa is a stamped visa (in which case you have to send off your passport with your application) or a separate piece of paper (in which case you can usually just send a copy of you passport). Be a little wary of what you put on your visa forms. Atheists are often viewed with suspicion even more so than a Christian in a Muslim country. I put down that I'm Christian and my occupation is listed as chef, which seemed less controversial than writer. + +Again time and money are issues here. Take care of this as soon as you can. + +Well. Yeah I agree with that. It really depends where you're headed. For India you need one ahead of time. Thailand you just get a stamp at the airport. You can get a visa for just about anywhere in Southeast Asia from any old guesthouse in Bangkok. It does take a few days. And god forbid you try to get anything remotely official during Chinese New Year. + +

Travel Insurance

+ +I don't have medical insurance. For whatever reason this doesn't bother me all that much when I'm in the United States (I'm willing to concede that this makes me an idiot). However, for the purposes of traveling I decided to get some insurance. Among the things you want to look for in the realm of medical coverage are, basic medical coverage, evacuation coverage (flying you home where necessary), emergency reunion (bringing a loved one to where you are) and my personal favorite, accidental death or dismemberment. In addition to medical coverage, the policy I purchased covers things like unexpected interruptions to travel (i.e. someone at home dies or needs you to return) and luggage lost in flight. + +Above and beyond medical coverage you will probably want some standard travel insurance to cover you in the event your luggage is lost or stolen, the airline you're flying on goes out of business or a war breaks out in you destination country. It's even possible to insure high-end electronic equipment. In some cases these sorts of things are bundled with medical coverage in a package deal. For instance the policy I purchased covers everything I've listed so far except for the high-end electronic stuff and the cancellation of air tickets. + +As with any insurance plan the cost is going to reflect how much stuff is covered. I looked at four different companies and all had similar coverage and prices. One thing to keep in mind is that these companies don't cover many things. For instance injury due to terrorism is generally not covered or costs extra. Injury due to what insurance companies call “high risk” activity are generally not covered at all. This high-risk category can contain many things that you and I would not generally consider high risk. Examples include rock climbing, scuba diving, and mountain trekking, none of which would be high risk from my point of view. And that doesn't mean you can't do these things, just don't expect to get covered when the reef shark bites your arm off. + +The other thing to bear in mind is that most of these policies require that you pay for things upfront and then file a claim and they will reimburse you when it's approved. In other words the hospital in the country that is treating you is probably going to want payment. There isn't going to be the whole list your insurer and we'll bill them process you may be accustomed to in the United States. + +I have two recommendations. First off the company I ended up buying insurance from is IMGlobal. You can download a sample policy from the website. I almost went with world nomads insurance and they seemed like a good choice, but they are an Australian company and though they say they have US offices I could never find a phone number for them. + +Yeah the insurance thing sucks. It costs a bunch of money, but don't be an idiot get some. + +

Travel Equipment - what I'm bringing

+ +

Osprey Transporter 60

+ +Osprey Transporter 60 Despite the fact that I've done a good bit of traveling, I've never had a decent travel bag. I alternated between a full size backpacking pack and a beat up old duffle bag I got for free when worked at The North Face. The backpack is great, but covered in straps and buckles, which are at the mercy of baggage handlers. The duffle bag is also nice, but only has a shoulder strap. I decided this trip merited special luggage. After much online research a few trips to REI, I settled on the Osprey Transporter 60. So far I've taken the bag on a week-long sailing trip and a two-week drive down the east coast. Having lived out of it for a total of three weeks I am very happy with my purchase. The Transporter has shoulder straps and a hip belt, both of which are comfortable under a moderate load. These straps then tuck away when you'd like to carry it as a handbag. There are also eye-holes for shoulder straps. The back of the Transporter is half inch foam padding which helps protect sensitive gear from injury. I should mention that the Transporter doesn't have wheels. Where I'm going there aren't really surfaces on which wheels would be practical, but if you're more a first world traveler, you might want to look at something that has wheels. + +Okay, well. The osprey was a uh, mixed bag. Sorry. But yes I liked it because it's one giant cavern, no pockets to dig through. The suspension could be better, but the foam padded side saved my stuff a couple of times (Generally, when traveling by bus or truck, your bag will end up on top. Some strapping young lad will then cinch it down with rope. Usually by putting the full weight of his body on the rope and then tying it off. The effect on you bag is something like a cheese cutter. The foam helps. + +I've since purchased a very nice bag, the Voyage 65 from Eagle Creek. It's easily the best travel pack I've owned, highly recommended. + +

Sweetwater Purifier System

+ +MSR Sweetwater Purifier Most people seem to go for bottled water when traveling in third world countries. There are two reasons this is stupid: price and ecological impact. Water in most the places I'm visiting/have visited is expensive. And the bottled water in foreign countries is not Aquafina. Most other countries do not have the regulations on bottled water that we in the West do, you may well be drinking tap water. Most of it is probably fine and I'll likely buy a few myself, but it's not fail-safe. More disturbing is the ecological impact. Constantly buying and disposing of water bottles has a tremendous ecological impact on the areas you visit. It increases the burden on a country's landfills, ends up on the street, in the river and floating in the ocean. Don't be an America idiot, bring your own water filter. I chose the MSR Sweetwater filter with chlorine drops to kill viruses. I used to work for The North Face and when I decided to get a water filter this was the one I remembered. It's also the best. If you do research on this stuff keep in mind that there are water filters and water purifiers. If you're going abroad, you want a purifier. + +Much as I would like to say I used the filter. I didn't. It won't be coming next time, though I stand by the reasoning for it. + +

ALL NEW SECTION - stuff you don't need

+ +Mostly what I learned traveling is you don't need much. A pair of pants a pair of shorts, swim suit. Two shirts. Don't bother with t-shirts, just buy some when you're there. 3 pair underwear. 3 pairs of socks. Sandals or flip flops. Shoes. That's it. The best thing I brought was my Choco sandals. Pretty much lived in them and they have no wear to speak off (this is still true in 2014). My shoes, as noted elsewhere wore through the soles completely. + +First Aid Kit. — Bring a few Band Aids (plasters if you happen to be from any part of once massive Commonwealth of Great Britain). Maybe so gauze. Aleve comes in handy when it's only 50 cents for 650 ml of beer. Everything else is a waste. If you hurt yourself get to real hospital. + +A sewing kit is handy. Actually Lifehacker has a link to an article that puts together a little survival kit that fits in an Altoids tin, which would be handy. Next time I go my first aide kit and survival kit will all fit in an Altoids tin. + +A List by an Amateur. Yes this was a list compiled by an industrious young woman whose identity shall be protected. But don't laugh because you would bring this crap too. So, to help you out, I've done a bit of editing. + + + +I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, *hey, wait, some of that stuff is handy... like an electrical adapter and converter*. And yeah, you're right. You might want to buy that. Or course I bought a nice one in the states and it blew up in India. Then I bought one for 200 baht ($5) at a black market electronics market in Bangkok that lasted for five more months and it's still going strong in 2014. So you know… do what you feel is best. + +And now a word about technological gadgets. I can now say, without jinxing anything, that you were wrong Todd. Wrong wrong wrong. My laptop will not disappear the first ten minutes I'm in India. In fact it won't disappear at all. In fact i'll leave it unattended on trains, buses, trucks, restaurants, shoddy guesthouses and all manner of other stupid places and it will never be stolen. In fact I worry more about it being stolen from the coffeehouse when I use the restroom than I ever did in Southeast Asia. [Historical note: in 2005 traveling with a laptop was a rarity.] + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-10-20-twenty-more-minutes-go.txt b/jrnl/2005-10-20-twenty-more-minutes-go.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cdb6ba5 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-10-20-twenty-more-minutes-go.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.63332664528318,-117.90302036551485 +location: Newport Beach,California,United States +image: 2008/heretogo.jpg +desc: Swings have a rhythm of up and down, that mirrors all of existence, the tides, love lives, population, the stock market, the sun and moon, hem lines, economies, your chest when you breathe, everything is up and down. +dek: Well it's the night before I leave. I just got done pacing around the driveway of my parents house smoking cigarettes… nervously? Excitedly? Restlessly? A bit of all of those I suppose. I walk across the street, over the drainage ditch and head for the swing set at the park. Right now I'm swinging in a park in Costa Mesa California. Tomorrow France. Weird. [Photo to the right, via Flickr] +pub_date: 2005-10-20T18:19:10 +slug: twenty-more-minutes-go +title: Twenty More Minutes to Go +--- + +Well it's the night before I leave. I just got done pacing around the driveway of my parents house smoking cigarettes… nervously? Excitedly? Restlessly? A bit of all of those I suppose. + +Across the street from the house I grew up in (which my parents still live in, wonderfully quaint isn't it?) there is a rather large park. Actually, it may be that the park isn't that large, but it spills out into the baseball fields of an elementary school. Where the park ends and the adjacent elementary school begins has long been a subject of debate. One that I experienced previously from the perspective of shrill recess whistles. We used to try and sneak slowly, feigning at playing outfield, toward the tennis courts and library that lie opposite the school. Every now and then we would actually make it. A feat something akin to those crazy soldiers covered in twigs who can crawl painstakingly slow across a field and pop up right in front of you without you ever realizing that they were anywhere near you. + +Nowadays I just walk across the street, over the drainage ditch and head for the swing set. Sometime late in high school I discovered that swinging on a swing set, which neither I nor my friends had done for years, was really damn fun. So whenever I come home, being the insomniac that I turned out to be, I inevitably head over to the park for some night swinging. + +Swings have a rhythm of up and down, that mirrors all of existence, the tides, love lives, population, the stock market, the sun and moon, hem lines, economies, your chest when you breathe, everything is up and down. You kick your legs our straight and propel your body forward and then lean back on the downswing such that you are always both propelling and being propelled by the motion of the swing. + +Then I dig my heals in to stop and light a cigarette or lean back and watch the stars--what are those three stars that form a triangle on the ceiling of the sky trying to do? Am I the only one who sees that triangle or is it universally obvious and I just have a weird hang-up because my high school girlfriend used to say that I pointed to three different stars every time I asked her if she saw it, which might really be the point here, that if you look for it it's there. Any three stars can be a triangle true, but are you looking at the same triangle I am? + +In order to swing there must be a point to pivot around. Between you and those three stars there has to be an axis around which to pivot. Right now I'm swinging in a park in Costa Mesa California. Tomorrow France. Strange swings. Different pivots. Less of swing now than a pendulum circling a point I can't yet see, but my heels drag definite patterns through the sand. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-10-24-living-railway-car.txt b/jrnl/2005-10-24-living-railway-car.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9794697 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-10-24-living-railway-car.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 48.86416424141684,2.3617815968086964 +location: Paris,Ile-de-France,France +image: 2008/sacrecoeur.jpg +desc: I'm in Paris, staying in the Marais, in what might be the smallest apartment ever made. +dek: This French apartment is more like a railway sleeper car than apartment proper. Maybe fifteen feet long and only three feet wide at the ceiling. More like five feet wide at the floor, but, because it's an attic, the outer wall slopes in and you lose two feet by the time you get to the ceiling. It's narrow enough that you can't pass another body when you walk to length of it. +pub_date: 2005-10-24T11:20:54 +slug: living-railway-car +title: Living in a Railway Car +--- + +I'm in France. It still doesn't quite seem real. But I'm here, staying in the Marais, in what must be the smallest apartment ever made. + +I used to stay in a very small apartment in the Village off 6th avenue which I thought was the smallest apartment ever made. But no. This French apartment is more like a railway sleeper car than apartment proper. Maybe fifteen feet long and only three feet wide at the ceiling. More like five feet wide at the floor, but, because it's an attic, the outer wall slopes in and you lose two feet by the time you get to the ceiling. It's narrow enough that you can't pass another body when you walk to length of it. And yet somehow in this space the French have managed to pack a kitchen, a twin bed, a large bookshelf and a shower. Due to the size and arrangement you can go to bathroom, sort your laundry and fry eggs at the same time. Not that you'd want to. + +But it's actually not a bad place. Livable for one, tolerable for about three hours with two. So long as the two are good friends. About two months ago I spent a week living on a 40 ft boat with six other people. In hindsight that was roomy and spacious. So I try to think of this place as a little ship in the vast sea of Paris, which makes it more fun. For those of you thinking, oh it can't be that small, check out the pictures. + +Paris itself is lovely. I'm not exactly sure what to write about Paris because I feel like the only person that's never been here. I'm going to eschew the ‘I went here,' ‘I went there' stuff in favor of more eccentric observations. A couple of things of note… Paris is by far the quietest major city I've ever been in. At least the Marais is quiet at night in ways that New York can only dream of. French pre-packaged food is better than most of the restaurants I've eaten at in America. You can buy things like créme fraiche in little containers at any grocer. Try to even find pre-made créme fraiche in America. And that myth of wine being cheaper than water, strictly myth, though wine is cheap. In general though Paris is more expensive than New York. But like New York, you can live cheap if you know where to go. + +Outside the obvious landmarks, the highlight so far has been the food. For those of you that don't know I've spent the last five years of so working in restaurants, so there may well be a good bit posted about food in the course of this trip. Sort of an obsession of mine. Last night we ate at a very traditional French restaurant, duck breast with poached figs, salade de epinard etc. One nice thing about having worked in French leaning restaurants is, while I may not understand much in the way of French, I can read a menu just fine. Of course I can't really order except with pathetic finger gestures, but at least I know what's being served. + +Speaking of not speaking French, I haven't said much since I've been here. I say **bonjour** and **merci** to be polite, but I haven't gone much beyond that, which I feel a little weird about. The French are intimidating when it comes to language, I'm not sure why, they just are. And I'm not about to try English; I would feel much more comfortable trying to order something in Spanish than English. I feel guilty for speaking English, but then I have weird hang-ups about language so it may just be me. So far I've let L.S. take care of the talking since she's fluent. + +I guess I'll indulge in a little itinerary repetition. Today we went to the Centre Pompidou, which is currently having a huge Dada exhibition. We're saving the Dada for a later day, but we did go to the Big Bang collection and saw some good stuff. Cy Twombly and Basquiat along with a few Picassos and some other good stuff by people I've never heard of. A lot of it was crap (i.e. overly intellectual with no soul, maybe crap is too harsh, just not my thing), but there was enough good stuff to make it worthwhile. + +Then we caught a train out to Père Lachaise, the famous graveyard. We managed to see Apollinaire's grave, Marcel Proust's, and Richard Wright's before we got kicked out because the cemetery was closing. Who knew graveyards closed? We'll have to try that one again. It's a massive, massive cemetery, there's no way you can see it in one day anyway. By the way, if you're into this sort of thing, it turns out there is a search engine for graves. + +Well that's all for now, stay tuned. Also, we're looking to get out of France for an overnight, or maybe two-day excursion so if there's something you know of that you think we really should see, let me know in the comments below. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-10-28-sainte-chapelle.txt b/jrnl/2005-10-28-sainte-chapelle.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..423ef46 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-10-28-sainte-chapelle.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 48.85556694853056,2.3452591892792514 +location: Paris,Ile-de-France,France +image: 2008/saintechapelle.jpg +desc: Sainte Chapelle where the entire Bible is unfolding similtaneously in glass. +dek: Sainte Chapelle was interesting to see after the modern, conceptual art stuff at the Pompidou, rather than simple stained glass, Sainte Chapelle felt quite conceptual. In a sense the entire Bible (i.e. all history from that perspective) is unfolding simultaneously, quite a so-called post-modern idea if you think about it. And yet it was conceived and executed over 800 years ago. Kind of kicks a lot pretentious modern art in its collective ass. +pub_date: 2005-10-28T18:25:56 +slug: sainte-chapelle +title: Sainte Chapelle +--- + +I feel strangely like I live here. This feeling stems partly of course from the fact that I'm staying in an apartment rather than a hotel. + +But add to that last night's dinner with Laura's friend Justine, and couple that with Laura being sick and it all adds up to a feeling of belongingness that leads me to believe that I live here. To which I should add, were it not for the language barrier, I could really enjoy living here. Paris is rather expensive, but in the end probably only a little more so than New York. Oh that and the little fact that the French wouldn't let me live here without tripping through some serious bureaucratic red tape. But were the world what it ought to be, I would move to Paris in a flash. Who knows maybe someday I will. + +St. Chapelle, Paris, FranceYesterday we went to see Sainte Chapelle, cathedral from the 1240s, built by a brilliant architect that history apparently did not recorded. + +But it's kind of great that know one knows who designed the building because it adds an air of anonymous grandeur to it. One obvious thing about the chapel's design, whoever did it, is it's intended to inspire fear and awe. Just daring to look upward at the ceiling induces a dizzying sense of vertigo. + +The chapel was originally built to house what was supposedly the crown of thorns from Christ's crucifixion along with other relics that Louis the IX had purchased from the holy lands. No word on what became of those, though you have to wonder about a King who believed a crown of thorns would last 1200 years. Whatever the history of the place, Sainte Chapelle today is full of spellbinding stained glass, amazing and beautiful to watch the sun stream through. + +St. Chapelle, Paris, FranceThe remarkable thing about it is that all that stained glass tells the entire story of the Bible in roughly one-foot square panels. It was interesting to see after the modern, conceptual art stuff at the Pompidou, since, as Laura pointed out, Sainte Chapelle felt quite conceptual. In a sense the entire Bible (i.e. all history from this perspective) is unfolding simultaneously, quite a so-called post-modern idea if you think about. And yet it was conceived and executed over 800 years ago. Kind of kicks a lot pretentious modern art in its collective ass. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-11-01-houses-we-live.txt b/jrnl/2005-11-01-houses-we-live.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0736887 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-11-01-houses-we-live.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 48.86409366210158,2.3615670200875383 +location: Paris,Ile-de-France,France +image: 2008/pariscityscape.jpg +desc: People are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently +dek: I've been thinking the last couple of days about something Bill's dad said to me before I left. I'm paraphrasing here since I don't remember the exact phrasing he used, but something to the effect of "people are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently." Indeed, Parisian architecture is completely unlike anything in America. Perhaps more than any other single element, architecture reflects culture and the ideas of the people that make up culture. +pub_date: 2005-11-01T10:40:00 +slug: houses-we-live +title: The Houses We Live In +--- + +I've been thinking the last couple of days about something Bill's dad said to me before I left. I'm paraphrasing here since I don't remember the exact phrasing he used, but something to the effect of "people are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently." + +Mr. Bill is widely traveled from his time in the Air Force so it's not like he just pulled this idea out of his ass. I also don't think he meant it in too strict of terms. But with this idea in mind I've been paying more attention to architecture than I ever did in the past and, if for no other reason than that, I appreciate Mr. Bill's point. Or as my dad likes to say, when you get to Paris you really feel like you have gone somewhere. + +Paris's architecture is unlike anything in America. There is really just no comparison. A few neighborhoods in the more modern parts of town remind me at times of San Francisco if it were pancaked and painted mute colors. But by and large, Paris architecture is completely unlike anything in America. And I think one of the reasons that is so has to do with the way in which architecture reflects culture and the ideas of the people that make up culture. So while Mr. Bill may be right that people are essentially the same, nevertheless, important differences distinguish them from one another and sometimes these differences are reflected in the houses they make. + +Eiffel TowerTo Americans the French are renowned for the emphasis they place on pleasure and sensual details of life. When Americans think of the French they tend to think of food and art and sex. Whereas I cannot pretend to tell you what the French at large think of Americans they seem somewhat obsessed with our bad television dramas, particularly those with detective/police/crime bent. Which to seems to reflect a view of Americans that is perhaps not entirely unfounded. + +We're obsessed with regulating things the French don't care about, yet we love the anti-hero who flaunts our own regulations. We're gruff, only semi-civilized and most importantly very, very young as a culture. We still love to play cops and robbers (though cowboys and indians seems to have fallen out of favor). Many Americans would take tremendous offense to the nudes that adorn French gardens, which is just silly, but undeniably part of America's historical Puritanism, a history the French lack. + +Of course I am speaking in clichés and do not want to imply that I actually believe either of these perceptions is in any way accurate or even representative of each culture. Still there may well be something to be learned from clichés. + +There are more concrete cultural differences I've observed, for instance, one which really irritates Laura, is that Parisians at least, have a concept of personal space that's radically smaller than American's concept. The French have no problem basically stepping on you in crowded metro cars for instance. The other related irritating thing is the Parisians' habit of not getting the hell out of the way. For instance no one here runs to catch the metro train. Whereas in New York, if you are descending to the platform and clearly hear or see a train arrive nearly everyone speeds up and tries to make that train, not so here. People continue along at whatever plodding pace they may have and good luck getting around them. Yet curiously they have no problem moving into the 10 inch space between you and the supermarket shelf. These two things combined make the Louvre quite an ordeal even on a weekday. + +Clytemnestra and AgamemnonYet perhaps if you are always running to catch the train you cannot produce something like Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. And I don't mean that in the sense of stopping to smell the flowers, it's much more than that. It's an entirely different approach to life, something so big I don't pretend to fully understand it, but merely catch glimpses of it here and there in the smaller actions and movements of a culture similar too, and yet entirely different from mine. + +At the same time I have come to see certain ways in which I am indelibly American. Laura, who has been here about three weeks longer than me, pointed out that while we tend to think of America as having no unifying culture, it actually does. It's just very hard to see until you look at it from along way away. I think perhaps it's doubly noticeable when encountering a culture that is very close to and yet not, your own. That is to say that certainly India will be so different from America as to virtually incomparable in any meaningful way (which raise the question whether or not comparing cultures is in fact ever meaningful, but I can't go there at this juncture). But France is just close enough that the differences are more obvious. + +Yet similarities remain. For instance if you want to see the French go crazy with Americanesque consumer frenzy just stop by BHV on a Saturday. And BHV is itself a very America idea, and yet, as with everything, the French have refined the Target/Wal-Mart concept to a new and somewhat higher level. Everything under one roof takes on a new meaning at BHV where literally everything is under one roof except groceries. Imagine Wal-Mart mashed with Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, Pier 1, Macy's, True Value, and Ikea. Nine stories of crazed French consumers. And yet the cafe has good coffee, beer and pretty good photography on the walls. They take what they like about an American idea, and add that distinctive French refinement. + +Chocolat ChaudIf you pinned me down and wanted some definitive difference between Paris and say New York, I would, aside from the architecture, point out that Paris has a relaxed culture where the emphasis is on doing things well rather than the quantity of things one gets done. Or perhaps it would be better to say that the things the French love to do, they fashion into an art form, and even when the output may be thought of as consumerist, there is still an art to it that distinguishes it from its American counterpart. Sometimes, as in the case of food, art, etc this is a wonderfully refreshing change from the homogenization of American culture. But other times this can be a bad thing. Which brings me to another point in favor of American culture, despite how many of might complain about a visit to the DMV, the paperwork involved in American life is nowhere near the bureaucracy the French deal with. Interestingly enough the word bureaucracy come from a French word, bureau (meaning office). But if the trade off for the way of life I see around me in Paris is to have a bureaucratic nightmare of a government, well damn it sign me up, I'd love to wait in line for health care. [And please please don't bring up taxes. I guarantee French taxes are nothing compared to visiting the ER in the states] + +What seems like it might be ideal is a melding of the good aspects of both cultures, though inevitably such an idea would be doomed to failure. Perhaps the truth of culture is simply that you cannot have the good aspects without accepting the bad ones. Viewed from this light it seems to me that the question becomes not how much you love the good, but how little you mind the bad. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-11-06-bury-your-dead.txt b/jrnl/2005-11-06-bury-your-dead.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d8fe7e5 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-11-06-bury-your-dead.txt @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 48.88623656623962,2.343757152231122 +location: Paris,Ile-de-France,France +image: 2008/pariscatacombs.jpg +desc: The catacombs of Paris +dek: I would like to say that the catacombs of Paris had some spectacular effect on me seeing that I strolled through human remains, skulls and femurs mainly, "decoratively arranged," but the truth is, after you get over the initial shock of seeing a skull, well, it turns out you can get adjusted to just about anything. Maybe that in and off itself is the scary part. +pub_date: 2005-11-06T18:28:52 +slug: bury-your-dead +title: Bury Your Dead +--- + +I feel I've been neglecting the site lately, but I haven't really done much worth writing about. The last two days I've been inside working on a new project. For those of you wondering how I afford this trip, well that's how, I stop doing fun things, lock the door and write or develop websites as the case maybe. + +In this case I've had to do both in the last two days. So not too much interesting stuff to tell. Yesterday I took a break in the afternoon and we went to see the catacombs. There are some pictures up in the photo section. I would like to say that the catacombs had some spectacular effect on me seeing that I strolled through human remains, skulls and femurs mainly, "decoratively arranged," but the truth is, after you get over the initial shock of seeing a skull, well, it turns out you can get adjusted to just about anything. It was sort of initially horrifying to think that all these bones had been dug up out of their graves and brought here, intermingled, "decoratively arranged" and more or less became indistinguishably melded together into one singular body that stretches in and around an old underground rock quarry. + +But then about half way through I started thinking about a passage in Dr. Lilly's *The Center of the Cyclone* where he talks about his experiments in sensory deprivation chambers, in particular he mentions one experience where, having lost track of any sort of notion of bodily form he reaches a point where all the universe becomes visible as pulses and orbs of electricity, a current he can feel moving through him to the point that he becomes uncertain where he ends and the universe begins and vice versa, and in that light the bones in the catacombs seemed to me an appropriate representation of death, a loss of individuality, a rejoining of some universal body so massive as contain everything and everyone. Besides which, at the rate were going many of us might end up in a big pile of bones ourselves. A word of caution to others, if you're at all claustrophobic don't go down in the catacombs, claustrophobia coupled with human remains every which way you turn is not the recipe for happiness. + +After the contemplation of death it seemed appropriate to spend the next day in a park or garden of some kind and being a Sunday there wasn't a whole lot else to do. We walked down to little square/park and sat in the last rays of sunshine eating salami and butter sandwiches and reading. + +Later in the evening we took a train and bottle of Belgium beer over to Sacre Coure and sat on the steps admiring the panorama of Paris. All in all I had a wonderful time and look forward to returning next spring via the trans Siberian Railway (if all goes according to plan anyway). But now it's time to pack the bags and get ready for India… + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-11-08-riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.txt b/jrnl/2005-11-08-riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cfd5b73 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-11-08-riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.txt @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 48.863514907961644,2.3610734936288558 +location: Paris,Ile-de-France,France +image: 2008/seinetower.jpg +desc: Riots in Paris, the best Iraqi food in the Marais and the long bus ride to points unknown. +dek: Well it's my last night here in Paris and I've chosen to return to the best restaurant we've been to so far, an Iraqi restaurant in a Marais. I am using all my willpower right now to avoid having a political outburst re the quality of Iraqi food versus the intelligence of George Bush etc etc. I'm traveling; I don't want to get into politics except to say that my dislike for the current El Presidente was no small factor in my decision to go abroad. +pub_date: 2005-11-08T18:30:13 +slug: riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine +title: Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine +--- + +Well it's my last night here in Paris and I've chosen to return to the best restaurant we've been to so far, an Iraqi restaurant around the corner from Laura's apartment here in a Marais. + +I am using all my willpower right now to avoid having a political outburst re the quality of Iraqi food versus the intelligence of George Bush etc etc. I'm traveling; iraqi restaurant I don't want to get into politics except to say that my dislike for the current El Presidente was no small factor in my decision to go abroad. But now that I am abroad I prefer not to think about politics too much. + +At the same time I thought I should mention that yes, there are riots in the suburbs around Paris right now. As a matter of fact I had to take a bus out to Charles DeGaulle airport rather than the train, because they shut down the RER to the airport yesterday evening since it passes through the rioting neighborhoods. A number of people have emailed me concerned about the riots and my safety. Prior to the fifth or so such email, I hadn't paid any attention whatsoever to the riots. And it turns out that some gasoline bombs were set off within walking distance of Laura's house. That said, you would never know there are riots just from looking about on the streets. Even the local papers aren't exactly screaming New York Post-style headlines like *Paris Burns!* or whatever. + +And I think the fact that Paris is ignoring the riots is sort of symptomatic of the point that the rioters are trying to make. Lest you be misinformed by the hyperbole prone sensationalism of the America press, I did a little digging and proffer this little summary. About two weeks ago some police officers were chasing three young men. The young men tried to hide in an electrical substation and two of them were killed, presumably when they touched some sort of electrical current. Now obviously, while tragic, this event alone is unlikely to start riots. Unless. Unless the young men were of North African descent and police force in Paris were almost exclusively white. Unless the North African community in the Paris suburbs were marginalized, discriminated against, and generally repressed by the white population of France (I'm not sure if anyone remembers all the apartment fires in Paris this summer and French governments response, which was to round up the displaced from there lean-tos in the street and send them off to god knows where). + +When you have a situation where a large population (there are five million first and second generation North Africans living in France, if you would like to know why, google the terms "French Algerian War") feels marginalized and basically discarded by the dominant population some sort of flashpoint is inevitable. I'm not going to pretend to understand French politics, but my cursory understanding is that top French political officials are generally speaking, inept, out of touch and often blatantly racist in their political decisions. More or less just like top political officials in the United States. + +And so you get riots (New Orleans anyone?). And then you hear officials call the rioters "thugs" and you get more riots. And then the officials hold meetings, and you have more riots. And then the officials vow to "catch the crooks" and you have more rioting. And then the officials hold meetings…. Who knows, maybe France is on the edge of some sort of um, restructuring. Probably not, but they could certainly use a little adjustment. I've only been here two weeks and I've seen two acts of blatant racism, the likes of which I can't imagine in the United States (and I did live in the South for four years). The French, and more generally, all of Europe has a growing population of Muslim immigrants that it needs to address and to find a way to live with, otherwise bad things are going to happen. Are happening. Will continue to happen. + +So yes, there are riots outside Paris, but good lord the US media can blow things out of proportion to sell a newspaper. For instance, yesterday the New York Times headline read "ten French police officers shot in riots." The reality? Well someone fired a scattershot gun into a crowd of cops and several of them were injured. Okay technically you could say they were shot and no doubt it does not feel pleasant, but come on, printing a headline that says ten cops shot implies some serious shooting, a gun battle even, especially to American audiences whom are used to gun battles occurring in the streets. Not only is such reporting misleading, it's just plain wrong. + +So take the headlines with a grain of salt. Or even better keep a whole salt lick by your side when you watch the news. As for me, I appreciate the concern, but I am fine. I even made it here to airport without any trouble and about an hour I'll be on my way to Cochin, India. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-11-11-vasco-de-gama-exhumed.txt b/jrnl/2005-11-11-vasco-de-gama-exhumed.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..33d5ce9 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-11-11-vasco-de-gama-exhumed.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 9.964370231041409,76.24091147315164 +location: Fort Kochi,Kerala,India +image: 2008/fortcochin.jpg +desc: Vasco de Gama died and was buried in Kerala, India for fourteen years before being moved back to Lisbon. +dek: Fort Cochin is curious collision of cultures — Chinese, India and even Portuguese. Many of the obviously older buildings are of a distinctly Iberian-style — moss covered, adobe-colored arches abound. There is graveyard just down the road with a tombstone that bears the name Vasco de Gama, who died and was buried here for fourteen years before being moved to Lisbon (there we go again, more Europeans digging up and moving the dead). +pub_date: 2005-11-11T00:51:41 +slug: vasco-de-gama-exhumed +title: Vasco de Gama Exhumed +--- + +After a sleepless 36 hours I am now in Kerala India. Fort Kochi to be more precise. It's a little touristy for my tastes, but interesting nonetheless. I flew out of Paris Wednesday morning with a four-hour stopover in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. + +In the cursory glance I had given my ticket way back when I got it I for some reason had read Delhi rather than Dubai, so it was kind of exciting to realize I was landing in Africa. The layover was my only time in Africa, which is too bad, but I guess I have to leave some things for the future. The flight crossed over the Alps, which were spectacularly large, even from thirty thousand feet; I now have a strong desire to get back to Switzerland and Austria. Unfortunately I crossed Saudi Arabia at night so I wasn't able to see anything, but judging from the photos around the airport, Dubai seems like Los Angeles twenty years in the future. + +I have to say if you ever fly in this region, look into Emirates Airlines, it's the best experience I've had flying. I mean how many times have you gotten a menu while on an airplane, especially one that boasts gravlax and cheesecake? + +I landed in Cochin after about sixteen hours of traveling and managed to get through immigration and customs without too much trouble. The Cochin airport is quite a ways from Fort Kochi so I had a rather long taxi ride into town, which I was sort of dreading given what I've read about Indian cab drivers (actually Indian drivers in general). However I found the experience an enjoyable, though mysterious, one. Maybe I'm a little crazier than most Americans but the driving didn't bother me. I mean sure, Indian drivers think nothing of passing an autorickshaw with oncoming buses in the opposite lane, but it makes sense when you watch them do it. Nobody is going much over 70km (45 mph) so you have more time than you think you do. Anyway it's not that scary, though after driving around New York with Jimmy I realized that, so long as you can fully inhabit your automobile, to the point that it truly is an extension of yourself, anything is possible when driving. What is kind of scary is that Indian automobiles have no seat belts. + +What is confusing about India's highways is the Indian drivers use of the horn, which is constant enough to emerge as an almost linguistic device. I could tell that the horns constitute a language of sorts, but I couldn't for the life of me understand more than a few syllables so to speak. + +Princess Street Fort Cochin IndiaI directed the cabbie to a hotel which I picked at random out of the Lonely Planet Guide to India and sprung for an air-con double-bed room. It sounds a little crazy, but after that tiny apartment in France, having some space and huge bed was worth the extra 400 rupees. I spent the afternoon in a sort of daze from lack of sleep, though I did take a walk along the waterfront in the evening, just as it was starting to drizzle a little bit, munching on roasted nuts and trying to understand the Chinese fishing nets, which seem impossibly complicated. Apparently they are some sort of cantilevered device which require four or five people to operate. + +About a block from my hotel there is little park/public square that spills across the street and out onto the waterfront walkway, with street vendors and a fish market displaying some rather massive fish that I didn't recognize (though the fish make a strong testament to the feats of the Chinese fishing nets). I didn't partake in it last night, but you can buy a fish at one end of the market and then take it down to the other end and they will cook it up for you. + +treeThe side of the park opposite the waterfront is lined with the most massive trees I've ever seen. The canopy of the trees is at least 40 meters up and stretches almost an entire block. The colossal trunks must be 8 meters in diameter and are covered in a mixture of moss and a fern-like plant—a leafy plant, but the leaves grow in the structure of a fern frond—that extend from the ground to about three quarters of the way into the branches and give the trees the appearance of a shaggy jungle beard. + +After walking around for an hour or so I stopped into a little restaurant with a large hidden terrace/garden in the back where I had some passable vegetable curry, the local variation of rice and a wonderful bread that resembled an over-sized friend egg, but tasted delicious. + +The whole time I was out and about memories of the time I spent traveling around Mexico when I was younger kept flooding back to me, similar smells and sounds rise up out of darkened doorways and muddy alleys, run-down abandoned and overgrown buildings lie right next to well kept, though equally old and moss-covered estates. There is also the characteristic lack of a middle class that puts tarp-covered shanty towns just over the back fence from massive almost hacienda-style mansions. Perhaps the similarities with Mexico come from the presence of the Portuguese in this area a few hundred years ago. Many of the obviously older buildings are of a distinctly Iberian-style—moss covered, adobe-colored, arches abound. There is graveyard just down the road with a tombstone that bears the name Vasco de Gama, graveyardwho died and was buried here for fourteen years before being moved to Lisbon (there we go again, more Europeans digging up and moving the dead). The Dutch appear to have had an influence as well, there is Dutch graveyard somewhere around here and obviously the presence of the Chinese fishing nets seems to indicate an oriental influence, which, according to my guidebook, dates from the Kublai Khan era. + +After sleeping about fifteen hours I got up around noon and went to Addy's restaurant which is a converted Dutch house dating from around the 1770s. I had an amazing dish called fish chootuporichuthu (try saying that five times fast), which was tuna (I think) steamed in a banana leaf with some sort of great spice mixture and served with what passes for an acknowledgement of Dutch heritage—Belgium Fries. + +I spent the next three hours wandering around in the heat of day like a true gringo (not sure what the Indian equivalent of gringo would be) watching all the locals stare at me from their shaded doorways. I ended up at the Dutch cemetery, which is not open to the public, but has some amazing decaying tombs and sepulchers. I stood at the gate for a while wondering which one might be Vasco de Gama's former resting place and why it is that I keep ending up around the dead. + +Afterward I walked clear across town to the market area and bought some fruit and roasted peanuts for breakfast tomorrow. I have decided to skip the backwater tour and keep moving north toward Bangalore. Tomorrow I plan to catch the 2 pm express train the Bangalore, which is a 14 hour journey, so I probably won't be posting anything for a couple of days. The picture gallery has been updated for your viewing pleasure. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-11-15-backwaters-kerala.txt b/jrnl/2005-11-15-backwaters-kerala.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b7f1dff --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-11-15-backwaters-kerala.txt @@ -0,0 +1,58 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 9.958029970964114,76.2533569229791 +location: Fort Kochi,Kerala,India +image: 2008/keralabackwater.jpg +desc: Touring the fabled backwaters of Kerala India. +dek: The guide showed us Tamarind trees, coconut palms, lemon trees, vanilla vine, plantain trees and countless other shrubs and bushes whose names I have already forgotten. The most fascinating was a plant that produces a fruit something like a miniature mango that contains cyanide and which, as our guide informed us, is cultivated mainly to commit suicide with — as if it was no big deal and everyone is at least occasionally tempted to each the killer mango. +pub_date: 2005-11-15T00:53:50 +slug: backwaters-kerala +title: The Backwaters of Kerala +--- + +I am back in Fort Cochin after a brief and ill-advised stay in Ernakulam. I took a ferry across the harbor into Ernakulam Friday morning with the intention of buying a train ticket to Mangalore for Saturday. + +I brought all my bags so it would be easier, just get up and catch an autorickshaw to the train station. I found a rundown hotel that had reasonable rates and decent rooms, dumped my bags and headed to the train station. Unfortunately first class was already booked for the Saturday train and the particular train I needed doesn't run on Sundays so I bought a ticket for Monday and went walking around Ernakulam thinking that perhaps it would reveal something cool. + +###You Never Had To Go Anywhere### + +Ernakulam IndiaUnfortunately that just wasn't the case. Ernakulam is a large city with large city problems, pollution, garbage, traffic, unfriendly people, confusion, noise, touts, etc. If I wanted to go to New Jersey I would have gone to New Jersey. But I had already paid for the room so I stuck it out for the night. + +I have no doubt that Ernakulam does have some good things in it, just like New Jersey does, but they aren't things that a tourist gets to see. Cities are private things held in the minds of the people that inhabit them; you can never know anything about a city until you live there. So this one remains a city like any other, and the next morning I high tailed it back to fort Cochin and got a room. + +With some time to kill before my Monday train I figured I might as well take the fabled backwater tour of Kerala. If you've never been to India or even looked at it in any detail this might bear some explanation. Kerala is one of the Southern states of India and lies on west coast just below the state of Karnataka (whose capital is Bangalore, which most of you have probably heard of— it's where your calls to tech support get routed to). Anyway the main draw of the Kochi area of Kerala is the "backwater" area where the numerous lakes and rivers in the region come together and meet the Arabian Sea to form a massive area of lagoons and canals. Most guidebooks say that a tour of this backwater area will be the "highlight of your Kerala stay," so I figured I might as well sign up for a tour. + +Before I left on this trip I wrote a piece about travel blogs on the net and travel writing in general and swore up and down that I would not resort to the "crazy bus ride" or "cabbie from hell" or "eccentric local doesn't know much but his simple wisdom has showed me the key to life" clichés when writing for luxagraf. I bring this up mainly because I never actually published that piece (because it wasn't that good). If you dig into the world of travel writing you will find that these plots occur over and over again and have become terrible clichés, but seem to be what editors want. I wanted to point this out because though this story could go that direction it does not, because I am not trying to sell this to Conde Nast. In fact the bus was destroyed before it got to me, the cabbie was a very good driver and I did not get any morsels of wisdom from the locals, just a coconut. + +###The Way We Get By### + +Those that know me well know that if I had known the tour started at 8 AM *before* I paid, I would have booked a different tour. But I did not know that until the money had changed hands and the transaction seemed too concluded to back out. So I set my alarm for seven and got downstairs at just about eight. Just as I walked outside there was a bus leaving, which I must say did not seem to encouraging. I asked the hotel manager if anyone had asked for me and he said no, but then when he realized I booked a tour through someone other than him, he became decidedly less helpful. So I sat down and smoked a cigarette and waited. And waited. Eventually a guy on a motorcycle came up and asked if I was waiting for a tour bus. I said yes, but generally ignored him since I figured he was trying to con me into a different "better" tour. Finally he convinced me that he was in fact with the tour company I booked through and that the bus had been destroyed in an accident. He said he would take me to where the rest of the people were (apparently everyone else was from one hotel and I was the oddball stop). So I hopped on the back of his motorcycle and we went about 2km to another hotel where the rest of the tour was staying. + +I waited around with two couples from Belgium while the man and another tour rep tried to find us some transportation. After about 20 minutes they told us a cab was on its way. So the six of us (including) driver piled into a fairly compact automobile, though by Indian standards this was far from crowded. The drive took about 45 minutes and we had to make several stops for our very nice, but understandably confused, driver to ask for directions. Eventually we got to the dock where about 15 other people were waiting. Everyone piled into a large thatched roof boat and we were finally underway. There was a large family from Bombay, another couple and their two kids from Delhi, an Iranian couple that now lives in London, the Belgians and myself. + +We cruised around the islands for about forty minutes watching people on the shore and men out in canoes fishing. Eventually we stopped on one island to tour a factory. fishermenI believe that during the week you get to stop off at places where you can see native workers doing their thing, making fishing nets, weaving rope, etc, but because it was a Sunday we got to go to a Calcium Hydroxide factory. Which was better because it certainly wasn't a show being put on to entertain the tourists. This is how the island dwellers really survive. They turn shells into calcium hydroxide and sell the results to cement companies. Except that in this case apparently a new buyer has come in the last six months, yes that's right everybody's favorite, hey look at us we help third world economies, Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. Apparently various pills are made from calcium hydroxide (that is, the actual stuff you want is suspended in calcium hydroxide). It was an interesting portrait of the changes rural India is undergoing. + +###Mixing Up The Medicine### + +The after a short walk through the jungle we came to one of the worker's houses where our guide went through the front garden and showed us all the plants and what they were used for. As we approached the front yard of the workers house, to an untrained eye such as mine, the plants looked random, like parts of the jungle that hadn't been cleared because they gave shade, but in fact they weren't random, they were carefully cultivated. + +The guide showed us Tamarind trees, coconut palms, lemon trees, vanilla vine, plantain trees and countless other shrubs and bushes whose names I have forgotten. plantsNearly all of them had some medicinal use not just in their leaves and fruit, but also the roots and bark, and most of them had four different uses depending on which part of the plant you wanted to use. The most fascinating was a plant that produces a fruit something like a miniature mango that contains cyanide and which, according to our guide, is cultivated mainly to commit suicide with, though cyanide does have other uses. + +After getting about an hour's worth of botanical information we got back on the boat and headed back to the launch area for lunch. We were served a meal typical of Kerala, which was more or less the same thing a waiter gave me two days before when I asked for some typical Kerala cuisine, boiled rice, vegetable curry, and various slaws of carrots or beans or cabbage. With the exception of the rice, which I find tastes just like overcooked white rice, I enjoy Kerala cuisine although it is very different from what gets served as Indian food in the States or Europe. + +###Sittin In A Rag Top Soaking Wet### + +At this point we hopped back in cab and drove to a second wharf area where we got aboard smaller boats that could navigate the narrower canals. Similar to dugout canoes, but not dugout, these boats were piloted by two men, one on each end using long poles to push off the bottom. Sort of like rowing, but less effective. + +As my guidebook says of the longboat tours: "along the way are settlements where people live on narrow spits of land only a few meters wide." The thing it fails to mention is that you are more or less traveling through people's backyards, which felt sort of invasive to me. Women were doing laundry or taking a bath only a meter or so from our boat, which felt decidedly intrusive, though I suppose the people that live in these areas must be used to it by now. + +One of the strangest things I saw was a fairly large lizard on a lily pad floating several meters from shore, which, if you're a lizard, is quite a ways even if you can swim. We also saw some sort of water snake (which the guides said was not poisonous), numerous Kingfishers, and from a distance an elephant walking down the road. + +At one point we stopped and some of the guides climbed up a palm tree and retrieved coconuts which were first cracked and drank and then split open and eaten. I've never been all that fond of coconut so after drinking the juice I sort of wandered back to boat, hoping perhaps the elephant would return and watching the sky to the north turn so dark it looked like night.coconut + +Then it was back in the boats and onward. It started to rain a little bit, but not too hard at first and I thought we might make it back without getting soaked. But then with no warning the sky just opened up and a deluge of water poured down on us. Luckily I had learned couple of days previous that you really shouldn't go anywhere in southern India without an umbrella so I had one in my bag. Of course it's still about 85 degrees and even the rain is warm so getting wet wasn't that big of deal, but digital camera's react poorly to water, so I kept the umbrella mainly over my bag and partly over the older India man who sat next to me. + +riverboatWe stopped the boats and everyone piled out and went up on the porch of someone's house where we waited for while. But the rain showed no signs of letting up and after half an hour our taxi and everyone else bus were summoned to come and pick us up. Driving back to Fort Cochin our taxi was kicking up a roaster tail of water higher than the car itself and our driver had to turn around several times where streets became impassible, but eventually we made it back. + +And there you have it, the backwater tour extraordinaire. Later this evening I will be boarding an overnight train for Mangalore and then switch to another train that should get me to Goa by late Tuesday evening. The picture gallery has been updated. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-11-20-fish-story.txt b/jrnl/2005-11-20-fish-story.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..541a907 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-11-20-fish-story.txt @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 15.277230227117771,73.91541479989145 +location: Colva Beach,Goa,India +image: 2008/colvabeach.jpg +desc: It's not the cheapest meal in Goa, but you should definitely treat yourself to a whole curried fish at some point. +dek: The Arabian Sea is warm and the sand sucks at your feet when you walk, schools of tiny fish dart and disappear into each receding wave. In the morning the water is nearly glassy and the beach slopes off so slowly one can walk out at least 200 meters and be only waist deep. +pub_date: 2005-11-20T00:54:46 +slug: fish-story +title: Fish Story +--- + +I ate a whole fish—skin, flesh, and all. Yes, after about 24 hours of traveling I finally made it to Goa. I'm staying at Colva Beach, which is in Southern Goa and apparently less of a party town than some of the areas to the north. + +Quite frankly the idea of coming all the way to India and being surrounded by partying Euroteens just didn't appeal to me, so I opted for Colva Beach. This area also seems to be popular with Indian tourists. Colva Beach IndiaAnyone who's ever been to Panama City, Florida and stayed at the west end of the beach knows pretty much what this area is like. For you west coast folks think Rosarita Beach in Mexico. From Hawaii and Florida to Mexico or India tropical beach towns are all more or less the same, thatched roofs abound, chaise lounges and bars with twinkling Christmas lights are tucked between coconut palms, outrigger fishing boats, everything and everyone is relaxed and friendly. + +

Orange Blossom Special

+ +But before I say much about Goa itself I wanted to tell a word or two about trains because until Tuesday I had never actually ridden on a train. The first train I took from Ernakulam to Mangalore was overnight and first class. Strangely enough first class was cheaper than 2nd sleeper, I guess because of the lack of air conditioning, but with the ceiling fans and open windows there was plenty of circulating air to keep cool. The second train from Mangalore to Margao, Goa I opted for regular sleeper class. The main difference between first class and regular sleeper seems to be the amount of padding on the seats. And regular sleeper is a little more crowded, but still quite comfortable. + +There is of course chair class, but it doesn't seem practical with the amount of luggage I'm carrying. I enjoyed traveling by train; I didn't sleep much, but that was more me than the train. I spent most of my time by the open door watching the Indian countryside whirl by in a kaleidoscope of greens and reds and then flashes of purple and blue and white whenever we passed through a town. I saw quite a number of a very eagle or hawk-like birds, not unlike a bald eagle from the states, but with the white extending further down its body. Whatever it is, crows certainly seem to hate it; I saw whole flocks trying to attack these hawks or eagles with very little success. + +The other entertainment of an India train is listening to the calls of "chai garam" (hot tea I think) from the venders continually marching up and down the aisles. Traveling by train in India is sort of like being on a moving smorgasbord. One can get everything from biryanis to dosas to a fried dough concoctions, not unlike an American doughnut but not sweet, to of course chai, which in India is just tea, not the chai you get at Starbucks, though that is available as well. + +The second train passed by the massive 17m high Gomtateshvara statue in Karnataka, which was beautifully lit up on the horizon, though too far for pictures. I arrived in Margao, Goa at about 9:30pm roughly 26 hours after I left Fort Cochin. I very nearly missed the station because the signs for the station were labeled Madgaon, rather than Margao. Almost every other station I went through the name was simply the name of the town and I'm still not sure if Madgaon is simply another name or Margao or if they changed the name recently—India loves to change names, for instance Bombay is now Mumbai (even though everybody still calls it Bombay), they seems to slowly shedding the British colonial legacy— or what, but luckily I got off and didn't end up going all the way to Mumbai. + +I took a cab from Margao to Colva Beach and dragged the poor cabbie through three different hotels that were all full before I gave up and let him take me to an overpriced place that was nice, but really not much more than you get at the cheaper places. Except. Except this place had hot water which was nice for shaving. I have learned to do the cold water shave and it isn't as bad as it sounds, but obviously hot water is better. + +

The Sleepy Strange

+ +The next day I moved across the street to a place called the Joema Tourist Home which is structurally not unlike the little compound I used to live in Athens, GA. When I arrived the owner told me that there was a room available, but not until evening. I said fine I'll take it and went to go get my bag and have some breakfast. When I returned two hours later he apparently had given up on me and rented the room to someone else. But he said he felt bad about the mix-up and offered me his son's room in the main house. Because it's very crowded around here and I wanted to stay on the cheap I took him up on the offer and spent the night with his family, who were very nice and accommodating. His younger son was working on a silk painting of the Madonna and Child next to Shiva, a coupling that is not uncommon in India. He was a very talented painter even if the subject was not necessarily one I would choose. He had fantastic attention to detail, especially in the faces, the eyes of which were exactly as I think of the Virgin Mary, flat and lifeless, but with some excruciating depth behind them that makes you feel as if you are falling into a pool of blackness. + +The next morning I went to a travel agent and booked a flight from Goa to Ahmedabad and a train from Ahmedabad to Udaipur. I had intended to travel all of that by train, but I'm starting to feel like I'm running out of time and I really want to see Rajasthan so I went for the flights, which ended up being only about $40 more than the trains and saves me about 48 hours of travel time, sadly I will miss Mumbai (Bombay). After taking care of the travel details and moving my stuff into the new, private room I headed down to the beach for a swim. + +

A Salty Salute

+ +Colva SunsetThe Arabian Sea is very warm and the sand sucks at your feet when you walk, schools of tiny fish dart and disappear into each receding wave. The sand is a kind of silt which must come from rivers up the coast as no ocean is capable of grinding out sand this fine. In the morning the water is nearly glassy and a fairly decent swell brings waves with maybe two foot backs, big enough to ride for a little ways though the beach slopes so slowly one can walk out at least 200 meters and be only waist deep (which makes body surfing tricky); I have seen men in the afternoon walk to the fishing boats moored quite a ways off the shore. They use a single outrigger fishing boat here and everyday many of them lie unused on the beach, painted in dazzling almost garish hues of blue and green and orange with blue plastic tarps to cover the nets lying in the stern of each boat, and when the breeze kicks up in the afternoon, keeping the mosquitoes and sand fleas and countless other bugs at bay, the tarps on the unused boats luff up and you can see the brightly colored orange and red buoys of the nets lying beneath. It's a nice reminder that Colva is not just tourism, at least some of the residents still earn their living by fishing. + +For about two a kilometers in either direction of the main beach the shoreline is dotted with thatched roof huts selling drinks and various foods, a couple of them even offer tandoori, though the ovens never seem to be on when I ask, but I can't say I blame them as the midday heat combined with a tandoor oven would be miserable. The main appeal of these huts seems to be that, provided you purchase something from them, you may lie on their chaise lounges and, more importantly, they keep an eye on you things while you go swimming. I would like to say they also keep the countless girls selling jewelry and sarongs and fruit and every other portable, saleable item you can imagine from pestering you, but unfortunately they do not. + +I have decided to spend the entire week here lying on the beach, staring out at the Arabian Sea and otherwise doing nothing. Laura told me the other day that I wrote her an email years ago saying I wanted to lie on the beach, sip pina coladas and do nothing, well, for a week anyway, I plan to do just that. I spent that first afternoon staring out at the ocean, watching the light reflect off it and create rippling textures that moved as surges of water and light, not unlike the way sunlight glitters in a stained glass window, which was undoubtedly (to my mind anyway) inspired by someone staring at the sea. And the substance of glass was, perhaps not coincidentally, right beneath my feet; I enjoy the possible symmetry of some ancestor melting the shoreline to capture the undulation and glitter s/he saw out on the sea. + +

It's A Sight To Behold

+ +The Joema Tourist home is sort of one part hotel, one part residence and one part farm. Pigs and chickens scratch at the dirt and root in the bushes below my window and on the way to the beach there are several cows that consider the field you pass through more theirs than yours. It would be nice to imagine that leopards and even tigers might lurk in the bushes, but like everywhere else in the world, the big cats have long since been driven out and retreated up to the hills where they hide in the few nature preserves and national parks of India. Still, I do get to feel a bit like I am living in the forest on a little farm with all the animals, including the extremely annoying rooster who starts in at about six AM.sacred cow + +The food in Goa is more what we from the States think of as Indian Food, though, as my waiter some nights ago explained, this sort of food is actually only one region of India—Punjab—where a lot of people were displaced and apparently resettled in America. But Goa is enough to the north that one can find spectacular tandoori dishes, the best I've ever had, and wonderful naan and biryanis. The specialty here in Goa is, naturally enough, fish. I spent all day on the beach watching the fishermen out in their boats so I thought it only appropriate that I actually eat some of the local catch. + +Last night I trekked down the road to what everyone claims is the best, though not the cheapest, restaurant for fish. And I didn't want just a fish curry or some bits of fish with other things, no, I wanted a whole fish like I have seen some people eating when I walked by. So I asked and did receive. They first brought out a platter of whole raw fish for me to choose from. There was a mackerel, a red snapper and something that looked like what I call a sunfish, but may have other names. It's a flattish fish sort of like a halibut but not that flat and I don't think it swims sideway like a Halibut. Whatever the case that's what I picked. + +When it finally arrived the fish was about the size of your standard American dinner plate and surrounded on one side byme saffron rice and the other by steamed cauliflower with beans, carrots and peas. The entire concoction was covered in a mildly spicy, thick, brownish garlic sauce. Picking the meat off the bones was quite a project, but rewarding once you got the buttery sweet taste in your mouth. It was the best meal so far and yes it was expensive, but it was worth it. And no I didn't pick my teeth with the remaining bones. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-11-24-anjuna-market.txt b/jrnl/2005-11-24-anjuna-market.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2517c7b --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-11-24-anjuna-market.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 15.58128947293701,73.73886107371965 +location: Anjuna Beach,Goa,India +image: 2008/anjunabeachmarket.jpg +desc: Earlier today I caught a bus up to the Anjuna Flea Market and can now tell you for certain that old hippies do not die, they simply move to Goa. +dek: Earlier today I caught a bus up to the Anjuna Flea Market and can now tell you for certain that old hippies do not die, they simply move to Goa. The flea market was quite a spectacle; riots of color at every turn and more silver jewelry than you could shake a stick at. +pub_date: 2005-11-24T00:58:15 +slug: anjuna-market +title: Anjuna Market +--- + +My time in Goa is winding down, tomorrow I catch a plane to Mumbai, another on to Ahmedabad and then finally a train up to Udaipur. + +Two days ago I rented a bicycle and road down the beach to Benaulim, about 2km south of here, which turned out to be pretty much just like Colva Beach, but it was nice to get some exercise. And having been here now for a week, there are those indelible reminders that you are India and not just any beach town, whether it's cows wandering the beach or the endless hustlers wanting you to have a look, just a look… it is always uniquely, somewhat insanely, India. + +Cows on the beach, Goa IndiaIt was not without some regret that I went for a final swim in the Arabian Sea yesterday evening. My time in Goa has felt like nice vacation from my trip. I have stocked up vitamin D as well as increased my melatonin count to the point that some of the girls hawking wares on the beach approached me speaking Hindi and were surprised to learn that I was not Indian. + +Parasailing in the sunset Goa IndiaEarlier today I caught a bus up to the Anjuna Flea Market and can now tell you for certain that old hippies do not die, they simply move to Goa. The flea market was quite a spectacle; riots of color at every turn and more silver jewelry than you could shake a stick at. In the end though it was pretty much the same stuff at every stall and the touts were relentless, especially the ones that want to clean your ear. + +Girl on a tightropeThe highlight of Anjuna to me was actually away from the market, out on the beach where many Tibetan refuges spend their time entertaining tourists, such as the little girl that walked a tightrope with various objects balanced on her head. Then there was a man with a Tibetan flute and a cow that was apparently mesmerized by the flute and could be made to go in various directions according the notes from the flute. He would walk down the beach with the cow covered in beads and silks and kind of maneuver him with a tune. + +I've met several nice people here in Goa including a man roughly my age from Nepal who invited me to stay with his family when I get to Nepal. All in all I've enjoyed my time here, but I'm ready to be moving on. As a final note of weirdness, tonight at the Joema there are two Swedish girls one of whom is apparently an aspiring opera singer and has spent most of the evening working through her vocal scales. It's an interesting contrast, operatic scales, the smell of burning leaves and garbage, the sound of roosters, and to cap it off occasional burst of fireworks from the beach. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-11-27-living-airport-terminals.txt b/jrnl/2005-11-27-living-airport-terminals.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b56491c --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-11-27-living-airport-terminals.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 23.009675285624738,72.56237982693523 +location: Ahmedabad,Gujarat,India +image: 2008/ceilingfanindia.jpg +desc: Airport terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary between where we were and where we will be. +dek: Airport terminals are fast becoming my favorite part of traveling. When you stop and observe them closely as I have been forced to do on this trip, terminals are actually quite beautiful, weird places. Terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary that delineates the border between what was and what will be without leaving any space at all for what is. +pub_date: 2005-11-27T11:56:20 +slug: living-airport-terminals +title: Living in Airport Terminals +--- + +Well I've learned to roll with the punches in India when it comes to traveling so I wasn't really all that surprised that my plane was delayed four hours in Mumbai. Nor did it particularly bother me that I got to Ahmedabad too late to catch the train to Udaipur. + +So I spent an unintended night in Ahmedabad, which isn't as bad as Lonely Planet makes it sound. After buying another rail ticket, I hired a rickshaw and went to a few mosques; saw two of the gates to the city which are all that remain of what must have once been an impressive city wall. I also had dinner at the marvelous Agashiye restaurant which was a rooftop retreat from what all the guidebooks refer to as one of the smoggiest most congested cities in India. City Gate Ahmedabad IndiaI'll grant them the smoggy bit; I've never experience air that bad, far more than even Mexico City. Two blocks of walking and I would have a coughing fit and then tears would be streaming out of my eyes. All in all pretty miserable place to live, but it wasn't so bad for one day. I figure if you've seen the worst it's all uphill from there. + +But the thing that has stuck with me for the last two days are the airplane terminals. Airport terminals are fast becoming my favorite part of traveling. When you stop and observe them closely as I have been forced to do on this trip, terminals are actually quite beautiful weird places. Terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary that delineates the border between what was and what will be without leaving any space at all for what is. The spaces we use to move through space have no space of their own. + +Something about the mirror polished floors and the ceilings they reflect so that there is no definite up or down, both up and down a reflection of the other, and the traveler never can be sure which is which. And everything in this directionless landscape points to or revolves around the central edifice of the present, the traveler's god, the unadorned but prominently placed clock. It is always high on the wall with lines of sight from nearly any and often all angles of the terminal, not watching over, not even observing objectively, simply present, perhaps merely as a marker of dimensions in a place where space looses it meaning and we must look elsewhere to understand where we are. + +According to author Nathaniel Mackey¹, Sun Ra once remarked that word should be spelled "wered," as if all language in essence creates the past, that word is the past tense of are. In terminals the clock becomes a measure of the wered, for there are often no other words in terminals as if language cannot stand up in this dimensionlessness, instead we rely on simple and universal pictograms and hieroglyphs to indicate the uses of various subdivided spaces like bathrooms or restaurants. All language is swallowed here by a kind of immaculate emptiness that has no past save what we contain within us. + +Even the people moving through terminals quickly loose their words in the reverberating echo of polished stone floors and unreachably tall ceilings so that there is no distinct voice but a murmur of many languages that ceases to be language at all, merely the echoes of our passing. The words that slide off our tongue can find no past to move into here, no space to inhabit and make their own but can only drift about seeking the sliding entry doors and when the doors open to admit that there is world beyond this one the words escape out and are lost to us forever. + +The partitions in the spacelessness of terminals are most often glass walls rather than anything solid so that scenes of outside are projected and bounced around in mirror images, a banner advertising an international film festival that outside hangs over a cement railing and cracks and whips in gusts of wind, becomes for those on the inside only silent motion, the reflection of the banner, its scrambled illegible message moves up and down in the breeze, but all accompanying sound has disappeared so that it merely waves like a loved one saying goodbye and watching as we disappear into a space they cannot, are not allowed to inhabit. But the glass is usually slightly smoked or tinted glass as if to keep the outside world at bay. Not even the heat of the sun could penetrate here and yet light is allowed, for this is no subterranean, Fritz Lang world, but one of light, filtered light. A space that is often the only one for miles to have the antiseptic, centrally cooled air that it has, air lit by tubular light fixtures from the future of light, florescent to add to the effervescent cool whiteness of the terminal. + +Airport Terminal Goa, IndiaThe floor tiles of the main lobby are polished white with inlaid blocks of rusty brown that form geometric patterns, rectangles and squares, the only corners to speak of are here, and carefully placed so that one may not hide in them, but step over them as if they did not exist and indeed here they do not. Cigarettes are for sale in a Plexiglas case with machine cut curves and a smoothness that belies the idea that the world might have corners at all, as if to work our way into the future must begin with the surfaces of the objects we inhabit; to bend them like we bend time and the smoothness of the curves on the armchairs and smoothness of the curves on the cigarette display might allow us, from the proper angle to somehow glimpse the future around the bend. + +Terminals seek to eliminate corners in their quest to bend space and time, there are no angular corners at all, save those out in the middle of the floor and those are after all only corners of color, not true corners that can be felt or nudged, no dust can be swept into them, no cowering is possible. All cowering must be done in the middle of the floor beneath the moving hands of the clock. + +
    + +

  1. 1 This quote was brought to my attention by Laura in a recent and as always timely email. So if it's me quoting Laura, quoting Mackey… well you're now four generations removed from old Sun the one. ↩

    2. + +
+ diff --git a/jrnl/2005-11-28-city-palace.txt b/jrnl/2005-11-28-city-palace.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..36841d2 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-11-28-city-palace.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 24.591304879190837,73.69319914745653 +location: Udiapur,Rajasthan,India +image: 2008/citypalaceudaipur.jpg +desc: Palaces are strange place, they overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details designed to overawe and intimidate. +dek: I spent some time sitting in the inner gardens of the City Place, listening to rustling trees and the various guides bringing small groups of western and Indian tourists through the garden. In the center of the hanging gardens was the kings, extremely oversized bath, which reminded me of children's book that I once gave to a friend's daughter; it was a massively oversized and lavishly illustrated book that told the story of a king who refused to get out of the bath and instead made his ministers, advisors, cooks and even his wife conduct business by getting in the bath with him. +pub_date: 2005-11-28T22:00:46 +slug: city-palace +title: The City Palace +--- + +I arrived in Udaipur in the early morning disembarking from the train bleary eyed and just awake enough to walk past the touts into the first hints of urban sprawl and find a rickshaw that I was pretty sure wasn't looking for a kickback. + +I told him to head to Lal Ghat which is the area I wanted to stay in rather than any specific hotel, lest I find it had suddenly burned down or gone out of business or was run by a very nasty man who breeds cockroaches or any of the other fantastical stories I have heard from touts. But this guy just shrugged and took me where I wanted to go. Once we got to Lal Ghat a man hopped in beside me and started in about his hotel. Luckily for him I was too exhausted to protest much and I agreed to at least look at it. It turned out to be a very nice family run guesthouse that was cheap, immaculately clean, had a lovely rooftop restaurant and, amazingly enough, hot water. All this for a mere Rs 150 a night. + +I tried briefly to sleep but decided that was a waste and set out to explore. I didn't feel up to much and was planning to just walk around for a while and maybe have a bite to eat, but I ended up walking right up to the City Palace Gate. I figured why not and bought a ticket for the museum. The City Palace is sort of a generic name for a whole bunch of palaces that were built over the years, each adding on to what existed before it. Legend has it that the founding Mewar ruler who started it was chasing a hare and when his dog cornered to hare the hare kicked the dog in the face so hard that the dog backed down. So rather than getting a new, tougher dog, the king took it as a sign and built a palace on the hill. Based on what I overheard guides telling other groups, nearly every successive ruler seemed to feel the need to expand and add his own touch to the legacy of what is now City Palace, kind of like the never ending construction projects you see around Boston. So the term City Palace refers to the whole collection and serves chiefly to distinguish it from the Lake Palace (now a hotel) and the Monsoon Palace high atop a nearby mountain. + +After touring the museum section, seeing the various rooms and deciding that Mewar rulers had a serious glass and mirror fetish, I came to a sort of hanging garden courtyard that was just off what was once the King's bathtub, though that term hardly does justice to the massive swimming pool sized bathing area. The garden was ringed on all sides by arched colonnades and then within those were trees and decorative planters intermixed with benches. + +Colonnades City Palace UdaipurI took a seat on a bench in the shade and stared for a long time at a collection of woven cages with rosewood frames and inlaid brass that once housed the king's collection of carrier pigeons. A pair of cages hanging beneath the colonnades outside the main display room were less ornate, solid brass and of a design similar to the one that Sylvester often attempted to decode in his endless pursuit of Tweety. For the most part tourists ignored the room full of cages despite the guides' attempts to impress upon them that once there was no telephone, no email, no long distance communication at all save carrier pigeons. I started to remember all the strange stories I had read about the now extinct birds. Pigeon Cages City Palace Udaipur, IndiaThe best comes from W.G. Sebald in his novel Austerlitz where a passenger pigeon was sent out somewhere and on its journey home it broke its wing and so, with an obsession that borders on human, it walked home over god knows how many miles. And yes it is a novel so it's ostensibly fiction, but I find that well written fiction is often much closer to the truth than things that confine themselves to facts. + +I continued to sit there for quite some time listening to rustling trees and the various guides bringing small groups of western and Indian tourists through the garden. Each and everyone of the guides made a point to say that the King's bath, which was just behind my seat on the bench and sunken slightly into the middle of the garden, to say that this bath was in fact the absolute center and highest point of the mountain over which the palace was built, as if this detail would somehow shed some light on why in fact the bath of all things occupied this particular area when in fact, to me at least, it simply made it all the more curious. It reminded me of children's book that Laura and I once gave to a friend's daughter; it was a massively oversized and lavishly illustrated book that told the story of a king who refused to get out of the bath and instead made his ministers, advisors, cooks and even his wife conduct business by getting in the bath with him. + +About two weeks ago while I was in Fort Cochin I was overwhelmed by the assault on the senses that India presents in both positive and negative aspects and to cope with it I started trying to notice the small details of things that I or anyone else often overlooks when confronted with any sort of overwhelming, novel experience. But the City Palace was confounding in many ways and stubbornly resisted my attempts to find its details. + +I began to realize that perhaps palaces are in effect an attempt to so overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details that it becomes impossible to single them out and that a palace's architectural goal is instead to overawe one into a generalized sensation of wonder or perhaps even confusion. I tried to picture the various kings lying in the bath behind me alone staring at the marble edges or perhaps the leaves in the trees above or even the tiny little plants in their relief cut stone planters along the sides, perhaps he would have noticed that the plants grow in the negative space, Stone Planters, City Palace, Udaipur, Indiawhere the stone is not, the space that actually forms the pattern that has been cut into the stone, or maybe notice that the pattern of the planter is the same as that of the inlays in the marble around the bath, a sort of blunt flower shape that exists as negative space, similar perhaps to the way a king must exist not a person but a negative space into which is poured all the concerns of his land, his people, his economy, and his foreign affairs. + +After a while an older Indian gentleman who appeared tired of the large tour he was partaking in, broke away from the group and sat down on the bench beside me. After asking where I was from and how long I had been in India and other such questions that all the Indians I meet want to know, he started talking about the sheer size of the marble blocks that made up the room around us, not to mention the equally massive stone blocks that formed the walls, all of which had to be dug up, cut to size and hauled up this mountain. We spoke for a while about what the workers lives must have been like in that time and how whatever they did and however they lived is not recorded anywhere in the museum. Eventually the shade of trees above us gave way and bench where we were seated became warm and then hot in the direct sunlight. The man never said another word, simply stood and nodded to me before wandering off to rejoin his tour and I headed back down out of the palace toward the city proper. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-11-29-monsoon-palace.txt b/jrnl/2005-11-29-monsoon-palace.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7e4562a --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-11-29-monsoon-palace.txt @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 24.66199437588058,73.68804930614868 +location: Udiapur,Rajasthan,India +image: 2008/monsoonpalace.jpg +desc: The inside of the Monsoon Palace resembles an abandoned barn, bare floor and walls with pigeons roosting in the obviously modern steel girders that serve to reinforce the caving roof. +dek: We started out in the early evening quickly leaving behind Udaipur and its increasing urban sprawl. The road to the Monsoon Palace passes through the Sajjan Garh Nature Preserve and there was a sudden and dramatic drop in temperature, but then the road climbed out of the hollow and the temperature jumped back up to comfortable as we began to climb the mountain in a series of hairpin switchbacks. As the sun slowly slunk behind the mountain range to the west the balconies and balustrades of the Monsoon Palace took on an increasingly orange hue. +pub_date: 2005-11-29T12:03:31 +slug: monsoon-palace +title: The Monsoon Palace +--- + +If I were to write of everything I have seen and done in this strange and wondrous place I would have to stop traveling now and simply write for months, probably even years, to begin to capture anything. + +I would, like Proust, have to stop living entirely and just write. Just to capture the beam of light across the narrow stretch of lake between this shore and the one opposite me, a light that begins its reflection strong, turning a thick band of water brilliant orange, but then as it extends out away from that shore toward me, the light weakens and narrows like a straight road in the desert, shimmering as it comes to a point and then it begins to break up and ripple across the placid, but not entirely still, water which bends the light and makes it warble side to side until finally it breaks up into individual chunks of light dancing across the waves like luminous water striders in the still eddy of a river; even to capture one small, simple description like this (and we have not even begun to capture it, merely described it) would take hours if not days. Or perhaps to try and describe the emotional impact a simple tree can have silhouetted in a black shroud of leaves and branches against the vague slightly mauve last glow of light eking over the mountains in the distance. But even this simple scene calls up a hundred others, and each of those a hundred more. + +Sunset Udaipur, IndiaI hired a rickshaw driven by a nice Indian man who spoke near perfect English and had clearly watched too many episodes of Pimp My Ride as evidenced by his tricked out rickshaw complete with recessed speakers in the back through which he enjoys blasting strange Indian dance music. I hired him, as I started to say, to take me up to the Monsoon palace at sunset. We started out in the early evening quickly leaving behind Udaipur and its increasing urban sprawl. The road to the Monsoon Palace passes through the Sajjan Garh Nature Preserve and there was a sudden and dramatic drop in temperature that made me question my decision to not bring my jacket, but then the road climbed out of the hollow and the temperature jumped back up to comfortable as we began to climb the mountain in a series of hairpin switchbacks. + +Eventually we reached the summit and parked the rickshaw. My driver and his friend who had accompanied us were quick to point out that this was the highest summit around Udaipur, which is probably why Maharana Sajjan Sigh built his monsoon palace here. In India it pays to have a house in a high place so that when the monsoons come you can observe the torrential runoff from a safe distance (this is also the reason that Hindu temples are often very steep sided, architects found that the quicker the runoff the longer their work lasted). + +Monsoon Palace Udaipur IndiaThe Monsoon Palace is at this point showing its age and the primary caretakers appear to be pigeons and some token gestures by the government, namely introducing UHF, shortwave and now cell relay towers on the rooftop. The result is somewhat disappointing after the City Palace and seems a good argument for the privatization of India's landmarks. Yes, large portions of the City palace are now exclusive hotels, but at least they aren't slowly crumbling into ruin. + +The inside of the Monsoon Palace resembles an abandoned barn, bare floor and walls with pigeons roosting in the obviously modern steel girders that serve to reinforce the caving roof. The stark empty rooms and bare walls give no hint of the splendor that must have once filled them, the only hint of the palaces former grandeur comes from standing in the window balconies and admiring the sweeping mounta + +Shadows Monsoon PalaceI went down out of the palace proper and sat in the courtyard looking up at the three stories of reddish pink stone that make up the various towers and rooms. As the sun slowly slunk behind the mountain range to the west the balconies and balustrades took on an increasingly orange hue. I struck up a conversation briefly with an American couple from Tennessee who raved about the camel markets in Pushkar and then I decided to go back up inside the palace. + +The rooms were still bare and essentially stark, but the light of the setting sun now imbued them with a soft pinkish orange glow and standing in the window I looked back and noticed that even my shadow was slightly fuzzy with feathered indistinct edges. After taking few pictures and admiring the light for while I went back out to the courtyard and sat down to watch the color begin to fade from the walls. And as the sun finally disappeared behind the hills we headed back down to Udiapur. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-11-30-around-udaipur.txt b/jrnl/2005-11-30-around-udaipur.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..13b0db5 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-11-30-around-udaipur.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 24.667610368715458,73.78486632273662 +location: Udiapur,Rajasthan,India +image: 2008/shiplogram.jpg +desc: Udaipur, Bagore-ki-Haveli and the strange, slightly creepy Shilpogram. +dek: Just out of Udaipur is a government sponsored "artist colony" for various cultures from the five nearby states, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, Goa and Madhya Pradesh. On one hand Shilpogram is a wonderful idea on the part of the government, but on the other hand the "artists colony" is slightly creepy. Amidst displays of typical tribal life there were artists and craftsmen and women hawking their wares along with dancers and musicians performing traditional songs. The whole thing had the feel of a living museum, or, for the creepy angle — human zoo. +pub_date: 2005-11-30T19:05:47 +slug: around-udaipur +title: Around Udaipur +--- + +I spent the day wandering around Udaipur, in the morning I visited the Jagdish Temple and the Bagore-ki-Haveli. I don't have much interest in religious temples apart from an architectural standpoint, but the Jagdish Temple was an incredibly impressive design, covered in very delicate and ornate stone carvings depicting everything from scenes of Vishnu to elephants butting heads. + +Carving Jagdish Temple Udaipur India I walked around the main building for a while watching the various supplications going on, one in particular caught my eye, a father and his young son, two maybe three years old, came to pray at the sun god temple on the southeast side of the complex and the boy seemed to instinctively know that something important was going on and as he approached he put his hands together as you would to say namaste, but his father had to show him how to bow and at first he did not, the father had to place his hand on the boy's head and show him what to do which made me feel slightly better, perhaps genuflection is not instinctive with in us, but taught by culture. I sat down on a bench and tried to make sense of the bewildering tangle of carvings on the sides of the main temple. I started thinking about the Taj Mahal, which, for those like myself that did not know this, is actually a mausoleum. I don't know what all the so-called seven wonders of the world are off the top of my head, but I do know that the Taj Mahal is one and the pyramids in Egypt are another which means two out of seven, possibly more, of man's greatest structures are essentially graves. Not temples or churches or monuments, but tombs. + +After the temple visit I wandered down toward the lakeshore and bought a ticket to the Bagore-ki-Haveli. Another word I did not know, but can now offer the dictionary definition: haveli, traditional, often ornately-decorated, residences, which of course means nothing to me or you, except to say that perhaps this is how the upper middle class and upper class, but not quite royalty, seems to have lived. There are havelis all over India, but they seem to mainly be a focus in Rajasthan and Gujarat, and it's here that the most effort has been made to restore some of these often decrepit buildings to their once and former glory. The Bagore-ki-Haveli is one of the high points of these restoration projects. It took five years to restore and capturing the lifestyles of the rich circa 1780. + +Comprising a total of 138 rooms it took me sometime to negotiate the entire museum, which in a way resembles the nicest most labyrinthine dorm you've ever imagined. There were elegant and gracefully decorated rooms that in many ways reminded me of Japanese paintings in and their minimalist, almost spartan aesthetic. There were also rooms for the more everyday life, kitchen equipment, including the biggest cooking bowl—I would say wok, but I know it's not a wok, still it looks like a wok— I've ever seen which was easily six feet in diameter, and then there were game rooms with gorgeous chess sets and some games I didn't recognize, they even restored the bathroom, which was a stunning example of the frozen sense of time that exists in India, since it looks exactly the same as the average India bathroom of today. There were also more of the same inlaid glass peacocks that I saw at the City Palace two days ago. + +Haveli Udaipur IndiaThroughout my time in the Haveli I couldn't quite escape the feeling of false history, of idealizing a culture whose great wealth and power existed on the back of people who are not remembered, whose homes are not on display and whose lives are barely recorded. I guess that to some extent the architecture and daily life of those people vanishes when they do, which is a shame. Obviously it isn't the workers that get to write the story of the building, save with their anonymous hands that laid the stones and marble in place and perhaps the perfection and beauty of the stone is in the end a more lasting monument than restored trinkets and board games. The rich may have lived and played in the Haveli, but the stone workers who built it and the craftsmen and women who carved the intricate chess pieces and pounded out the giant metal cookware are what made the Haveli a place that anyone wanted to live in the first place. + +Dancer Shilpogram, Udaipur IndiaAfter the haveli I decided I ought to head out of town to Shilpogram which is ostensibly a museum of traditional cultures that continue to exist today in northeastern India—the craftsmen and women who would have built a haveli if such things were still built by hand. I took a rickshaw about 4km out of Udaipur to see what is actually a government sponsored project, an artist colony for various cultures from the five nearby states, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, Goa and Madhya Pradesh. On one hand Shilpogram is a wonderful idea on the part of the government—for the India government to actually get anything done is nothing short of miracle apparently, unless you count badmouthing Pakistan and forming grand plans—but on the other hand the "artists colony" is slightly creepy. + +Amidst displays of typical tribal life and buildings from each region there were artists and craftsmen and women hawking their wares along with dancers and musicians performing traditional songs. The whole thing had the feel of a living museum designed to give you an idea of how these people live in their respective villages. The creepiness comes from the fact that I could well have ended the last sentence: *how they live in their natural habitat*, and indeed Shilpogram has the feel of a kind of human zoo, a place for curious tourists to come and observe the anomalous foreign animals in their carefully reconstructed natural habitats. Still, the dancers were stunning in their acrobatic abilities, motions and positions of the body you have to witness to believe and the musical instruments of India are always particularly intriguing to me. I would like to say that what the government of India is doing is a good thing, trying to give tribal people a venue where they can come for two week periods and do what they do, but still the feeling of walking about a human zoo persists and I can not say that I would ever go back. + +As I was walking home from dinner the sound of explosions drew my interest down toward the water where I was quickly caught up in a wedding procession with a number of other tourists. The Indians insisted on us joining them for a number of dances in street and even wanted us to follow the procession and have dinner. I had already eaten so I begged out and wandered down to the shoreline where the little kids were lighting of fireworks. But not the sort of fireworks you can buy in say South Carolina, no these were more like high explosives that had a shockwave you feel when they detonated. I sat up on the steps near the main ghat and watched ten year olds light massive aerial fireworks like the kind that professional companies set off at fourth of July in the U.S. using of course pyrotechnic experts and whatnot, but here anyone seems capable. And nobody lost an arm. At least while I was there. + +My time here in Udaipur has been my favorite so far in India and yet like all things it will soon come to an end. Tomorrow I have errands to take care of and then I catch an early morning bus to Jodhpur where the next unbelievable thing awaits. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-12-02-majestic-fort.txt b/jrnl/2005-12-02-majestic-fort.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d8eb942 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-12-02-majestic-fort.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 26.29741635354351,73.01766871389577 +location: Jodhpur,Rajasthan,India +image: 2008/jodhpurfort.jpg +desc: Johdpur and Meherangarh, or the Majestic Fort as it's known in English. +dek: The next day I hopped in a rickshaw and headed up to tour Meherangarh, or the Majestic Fort as it's known in English. As its English name indicates, it is indeed perched majestically atop the only hill around, and seems not so much built on a hill as to have naturally risen out the very rocks that form the mesa on which it rests. The outer wall encloses some of the sturdiest and most impressive ramparts I've seen in India or anywhere else. +pub_date: 2005-12-02T17:40:02 +slug: majestic-fort +title: The Majestic Fort +--- + +I arrived in Jodhpur on the edge of the Great Thar Desert around midday after an uneventful five or six hour bus ride and disembarked into a sea of shouting gesticulating touts intent on making their commissions. + +Fortunately I had booked ahead on the condition that the guesthouse send someone to get me so, after dodging the touts as best I could, I found the man I was looking for, hopped on the back of his motorcycle and was whisked out of the chaos into the even greater chaos of sprawling Jodhpur. After putting up my things at the guesthouse and arranging for a ticket on the next sleeper train to Jaisalmer, I went out into the ruckus and commotion of Jodhpur's clock tower market. The clock tower is the center of the old town in Jodhpur and from the main square countless markets, each street with its own specialty, from vegetables and fruits to jewelry and silverwork as well as everything from sewing machines to internet cafes, take off from the main square. For the first time in India, somewhere between dodging the camels trotting by and saying no to the shopkeepers grabbing my arm, I got lost. + +Camel Jodhpur IndiaAfter snacking on some fresh roasted peanuts and enjoying a pineapple lassi I asked around trying to find my way back to the guesthouse. Indians have a curious way of shaking their heads that seems to move on two axis at once so that you can't determine anything like yes or no from the gesture. Having observed this movement in context for three weeks now I've concluded that sometimes it means yes, sometimes no and most often, I don't understand what you're saying but I like to listen to you talk. There is also a feeling here that saying no to anything is rude, so even if someone doesn't know where something is, they'll say they do rather than be what they consider rude and say no I can't help you. I've learned the best policy when asking directions is the take a kind of census and go with the majority opinion. Then once you set off it's best to ask again every now and then and see if the majority opinion still favors your direction. Eventually I made it back to the hotel and everything was fine. + +The next day I hopped in a rickshaw and headed up to tour Meherangarh, or the Majestic Fort as it's known in English. As its English name indicates, it is indeed perched majestically atop the only hill around, and seems not so much built on a hill as to have naturally risen out the very rocks that form the mesa on which it rests. The outer wall encloses some of the sturdiest and most impressive ramparts I've seen in India or anywhere else and then within that, mainly on the north side, are a series of palaces and courtyards that, when linked together by the various passages, comprise what was once the ruling seat of the Marwar Empire. The current Maharaja does not actually have any more power than a common citizen, but he does have the deed to the fort and, with no revenue source (i.e. taxes go to the federal government of India, not him), he did the smart thing and formed a trust and turned the fort into the Museum. According the audio tour guide, the initial means of raising money for the restoration of the fort came from selling off the fort's resident bat populations' guano to the farmers in the surrounding area. At some point wealthy investors begin to pour money into the project, including I noticed the J. Paul Getty Trust, and the Fort is now recognized by UNESCO. It has been beautifully restored and just wandering about its various courtyards and palaces gave the feeling of having stepped back in time a few hundred years. + +Each area of the sprawling palace has some fantastical name such as Pearl Palace, Flower Place, or The Courtyard of Treasures which is ringed by arched balconies and hundreds of Jalies (the carved sandstone screens that go over the windows). Jalies Majestic Fort, Jodhpur, IndiaEach Jalie is unique in its pattern and the purpose behind them is to provide privacy and yet still let in light, which indeed they do, it is nearly impossible to see in them from the outside and yet on the inside they let through a surprising amount of light which falls in ever-changing geometric patterns that dance across the floor as if forever running away from the sun. The overhanging curved stone eaves of the windows looked like Mongol warrior helmets from a Kurosawa movie, but were actually inspired by the domed huts in the area. + +The roof overhangs with their sweeping oriental curves together with the intricate patterns of the screened windows gives the Courtyard of Treasures a feeling of architectural schizophrenia, embracing the organic and symmetrical and also the asymmetrical and random. This feeling pervades not just this one courtyard, but the whole palace, and yet somehow the way in which the buildings are linked by the walkways between levels forms a bridge between the two styles and holds the design together as a cohesive whole. + +room majestic fort, jodhpur, IndiaInside the palace is quite magnificent and contains one room that was the most amazing, lavish room I've ever seen anywhere. It was used for poets to recite poetry and musicians and dancers to perform. And to think that most of poets I know have been reduced to reading in the local tavern or some nearly abandoned building on a college campus. I should like to have seen a performance in this room when it was still in use. + +After finishing up the audio tour I set out to walk the length of the ramparts and ran into a German man who had been on my bus the day before. We smoked a cigarette and strolled along the various stone parapets admiring the myriad of cannons on display, including on extremely beautiful one (if one can say that a object of death and destruction is beautiful), that was apparently captured in China during the boxer rebellion, and took in the sweeping views of the blue city below. Once it was just Brahmins that used the blue on their houses, but these days pretty much everyone does it, the house are painted white and then washed in an indigo dye so that the city, when viewed from on high, looks not unlike a sprawling underwater fantasy world. + +The German man, whose name I never did get, was anxious to practice his English so we sat down beside a rather nondescript and long since mute cannon and talked for some time while in the background the sounds of the frenetic clock tower market drifted up the hill with the breeze. He had apparently also been walking around the market yesterday in search of the one street that sells nothing but betel nut in all its various forms. I have seen more than a few betel nut chewers in the last three weeks, it's a habit that seems on par with the coca leaf chewers in Peru and is apparently just as addictive, except that betel nut juice is bright red and rots the teeth and gums. If you ever come to India and see someone who looks like they got their grill kicked in (as Jimmy would say) the night before, that is your betel nut chewer. + +Majestic Fort, Jodhpur, IndiaLater in the evening, after I had returned to the hotel and was waiting for my night train, I sat up at the rooftop restaurant and watched the setting sun turn the distant and very imposing fort ever-brighter shades of red and orange. I tried to imagine the position of an attacking army and what it would require to assault such a fort, which apparently must be more than anyone could ever muster since the fort was never captured. Ten or so India buzzards were circling lazily high of the fort floating on the thermals, some of them able to remain suspended almost perfectly still in the wind, as if they went up there everyday expecting some carnage and feasting they had heard about from their great grandfathers who doubtless could tell tales of carrion banquets after the various attempts to take the fort. + +Later that night I headed over to the train station and caught a sleeper for Jaisalmer (which I've seen spelled that way and also as Jaiselmar—in fact noticing the constant misspellings of English words in India has become a sort of hobby of mine, but this is first time I've seen variable spellings on an Indian word). My time in Jodhpur was short, but I wanted to get up into the desert and I still want to see the Taj Mahal so I must keep moving. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-12-05-camel-no-name.txt b/jrnl/2005-12-05-camel-no-name.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a9dfd85 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-12-05-camel-no-name.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 27.004078760567136,70.89065550770995 +location: Thar Desert,Rajasthan,India +image: 2008/cameltrek.jpg +desc: Riding camels through the desert outside of Jaisalmer. The Thar Desert is a bewitching if stark place. +dek: The Thar Desert is a bewitching if stark place. It reminded me of areas of the Great Basin between Las Vegas and St. George, Utah. Twigging mesquite-like trees, bluish gray bushes resembling creosote, a very large bush that resembled a Palo Verde tree and grew in impenetrable clumps, and, strangely, only one species of cactus and not a whole lot of them. +pub_date: 2005-12-05T22:46:54 +slug: camel-no-name +title: On a Camel With No Name +--- + +I arrived in Jaisalmer at about 5 AM to what has to be one of the most surreal sights in India, the line of touts yelling and screaming, holding up placards for the various hotels in the area, kept at bay by the military police. The military police here always walk around with bamboo canes, but the train station in Jaisalmer is the first place I've seen them brandish, though not actually use them, to keep the touts under control. + +Once again I had called ahead and avoided the mayhem, but it was still a bizarre sight to see when you stumble out of the station half asleep. And once I was at the hotel, I promptly went back to sleep. Later in the afternoon I went exploring in the fort, which is actually still an occupied city and seems very much the same as it must have been in the middle ages except now it's full of tourist shops rather than, well, I'm not sure what the shops would have been five hundred years ago. The walls and indeed most everything in the fort is made of honey colored sandstone, some of which has been walked on so much it's almost glassy smooth and the sunlight glints off its shiny surfaces. After walking around for a while I started stopping in at various different camel safari operators to check out what was offered and how much it cost. Eventually I settled on one that offered a simple overnight trip since that's really all the time I had. + +Bright and early at eight o'clock the next morning I found myself in the back of a jeep bouncing down a dirt road toward some waiting camels. There were only four of us on the trip, Thet, a girl from Burma who grew up in Namibia, but now lives in London, Ignacio a student from Lisbon who spoke flawless French English and Spanish, Casimir an aficionado of Cajun music who was from the south of France and didn't speak much English and myself. An interesting mix to say the least Ignacio would go from speaking French to Casimir and then English when talking to all us. Let me say right now before we go further, that camel is no way to travel if you can help it. Camels Jaisalmer IndiaImagine being on a horse that's twice as fat so that your legs feel like their being ripped out of your hip sockets, now imagine that the horse walks about the same speed, possibly even slower, than a motivated hiker with a backpack—that's camel travel in a nutshell. Camels also tend to fart frequently and with odors like you've never wanted to smell. Luckily the camel I climbed on was sort of the stoic of the bunch and as such was always in the lead. Camels are much easier to control than horse because the reins are attached to what amount to nose piercings, little pegs inserted through the nostrils and attached to a rope, so with only the slightest tug they'll go wherever you want. + +That Desert IndiaThe Thar Desert is a bewitching if stark place, and it reminded me of areas of the Great Basin between Las Vegas and St. George, Utah. Twigging mesquite-like trees, bluish gray bushes resembling creosote, a very large bush that resembled a Palo Verde tree and grew in impenetrable clumps, and strangely only one species of cactus and not a whole lot of them, make up the sparse vegetation and support the village goats and cows that wander freely about grazing. We rode past a few small villages where the children begged for chocolates and rupees. We paused in the heat of the day to make lunch and sit in a dry riverbed in the shade of small tree. We quickly learned that the thistle covered grass in no good for sitting and spent most of our lunch break removing spiked prickles from our clothing. As the heat began to subside a bit we mounted up again and after tanking up on water at the local well, we left civilization behind and headed into the dunes. Except that the dunes proved to be not more than a kilometer square at best and civilization remained visible as distant wind turbines slowly spinning on the horizon. I was told that longer safaris head deeper into the wilderness and to far larger sand dunes, but the majority of the Thar desert lies in a sort of demilitarized zone north of Jaisalmer and stretches into Pakistan, unfortunately you need a special and difficult to obtain permit to enter that area and once you have entered it you must beware of armies and land mines on both sides of the border. + +Our safari might have been short on true wilderness, but after the exhausting day on a camel, we sat facing to the north and it was easy to imagine that we were in the middle nowhere and it was hours before we were willing to move our aching bones again so the illusion reinforced itself. And it was nice to camp out, it had been a while since I sat around a campfire and ate dhal and chapattis. Okay I've never sat around a fire and eaten dhal and chapattis, so that was a unique experience. + +Moonrise Thar Desert, IndiaAnd then the sun set over the dunes and the new moon rose as a glowing red sliver flanking a dusty grey disk. I've never been able to see the unlit portion of the moon so clearly before, but the spectacle was short lived and the moon set after only an hour. But it was just as well that its brilliant light faded away, because when it did the stars came out filling the sky like tiny little diamonds, billions of them, I have never seen so many stars, for the first time in my life I saw the bow, or shield or whatever it is of Orion (see previously I could only take peoples word that it existed so I never bothered to remember what it was). In fact there were so many stars it was difficult to locate the constellations I usually recognize. + +We all lay our bedrolls on the edge of the fire and looked up at the stars. Whenever more wood was added to fire and it got brighter the stars faded out, cloaked in blackness and the radiance of the flames lighting up the nearby bushes. The sky looked then more like does over western Massachusetts, but as the flames turned to glowing coals again and the bitter cold of the desert night fell over us the rest of the stars would fade back in as if the night sky were slowly revealing and concealing itself by turns. Finally I managed to fall asleep for a while in spite of the cold, but it was a short-lived and restless sleep spent curled in a ball huddling with my head beneath the blankets thinking of how hot I was just two weeks ago. + +Our guides were up at dawn making chai, but none of us westerners stirred until the chai was ready and fire had been enlarged so a modicum of warm would entice us from under the blankets. We watched the sunrise and ate a small breakfast of boiled eggs and toast with jelly and then it was back up on the camels for a long ride through the desert. Because we had to cover about twice the ground we had covered the say before we had the camels at more of a trot, though I hesitate to say trot because a camel trotting is nothing like a horse trotting. Still we were moving significantly faster. My camel still led the pack and at some point I was about two hundred yards ahead of the others and did not see what happened, but heard shouts to turn around so I came back to where they were all no dismounted and discovered that Thet had been thrown from her camel. Camels are quite tall so being thrown is roughly the same as falling off a roof backwards, depending on how you land you could easily be paralyzed or worse. Luckily for her the camel had decided to pitch her off right beside the only road in the area. After making sure that she did not seem to have broken her back or any other bones we used cell phones to call a jeep, which came and picked her up. While we were waiting for the jeep I decided I had had enough safari and volunteered to ride back with Thet to the hotel. Neither Ignacio nor Casimir had ever really been in a desert whereas I've been in more than I care to remember so I let them continue on with the guides and after getting Thet back to her room I went to my own room and fell asleep for the better part of the afternoon, happy to be warm and thistle free. + +Oh and truthfully my camel had a name, but I couldn't pronounce it or spell it. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-12-09-taj-express.txt b/jrnl/2005-12-09-taj-express.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bbe6f30 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-12-09-taj-express.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 27.17280401257652,78.04176806317186 +location: Agra,Agra,India +image: 2008/tajmahal.jpg +desc: The Taj Mahal is one of the 7 Wonders of the World. Given that level of hype, I was fully prepared to be underwhelmed, but I was wrong. +dek: The Taj Mahal is one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and, given the level of hype I was fully prepared to be underwhelmed, but I was wrong. I have never in my life seen anything so extravagant, elegant and colossal. The Taj Mahal seems mythically, spiritually, as well as architecturally, to have risen from nowhere, without equal or context. +pub_date: 2005-12-09T17:49:40 +slug: taj-express +title: The Taj Express +--- + +When I first planned my travel route through India I was woefully ignorant. I tried to see too much too fast. I don't regret what I have done, but were I to do it again I would spend twice as long and try to cover half as much ground. When I return, and return I shall, I will come for at least two months and concentrate on two or three states at the most. As it is I nearly missed the Taj Mahal. + +It wasn't until a couple of days before I headed to Delhi that I realized it would be silly to come all the way to India and not see the Taj Mahal. Luckily for me there is the Taj Express train which runs daily from Delhi to Agra (home of the Taj Mahal) and takes only about two and a half hours each way. On the train into Delhi I met a fellow American named John who had the same plan as I did so we got tickets and somehow managed to get up at 5:30 AM and catch the train. + +But before I saw the Taj Mahal I visited the Agra Fort. I have seen about five forts in India now and I went to the Agra Fort more to pass the time than out of any real desire to see anything, but I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. Agra Fort, IndiaThe Agra Fort is a massive red sandstone structure constructed by several rulers over a couple hundred years. It was originally built as an actual fort and then later a palace was added in. As is typical of India designs that were started by one ruler and finished by another, the fort has a sort of split personality. Half done in ornately carved red sandstone and half done in also ornately carved white marble, the blend is not so contrasting as you would think. + +Archways Agra Fort IndiaThe sandstone is finely carved which I know I have said before, but the thing you have to realize is that sandstone crumbles and is probably the weakest stone out there, so to build with it, let alone carve anything out of it, is nothing sort of astonishing and to carve it with the kind of detail that the Indians have is extraordinary. It must be a very frustrating process, I imagine pieces must have frequently chipped or broken and had to be started all over again. Agra Fort was of a more Muslim design than those I saw in Rajasthan and owes this style of scalloped, arched colonnades to the influence of Persia. I was never able to find out for sure, but the Pearl Palace section seemed like it must have been designed by the same minds behind the Taj Mahal as it uses similar inlaid stones to create floral patterns in the marble. + +Sunbeam Agra Fort, IndiaIn one area of the fort right near the entrance to the main palace there was a very dark room with a single screened window that let through an extraordinary little beam of light like a spotlight of sun that slowly migrated across the floor as the morning went on until, by the time we left, it was gone entirely. + +After a few hours in the Fort, my traveling companion and I walked through a rather large park separating the Fort from the Taj Mahal. Like Prospect Park in Brooklyn this park leaned to the wild rather than cultivated side, though there were some areas with fountains and the like. Unfortunately the smog in Agra is very bad and most of the trees had a brownish cast and thick coating of diesel dust on their leaves. Since he was leaving Delhi by plane the next morning, John wanted to do a little shopping while I opted to just head straight into the Taj Mahal complex. After paying the exorbitant 750 rupee entrance fee, you walk past a few red sandstone structures and hang a left toward the massive red sandstone entry gate which is inscribed with verses from the Koran. + +Entry Gate, Taj Mahal, IndiaThe room you pass through is rather dark and it was difficult to see much detail on the inside, but I think the point of the darkness was really to emphasis what the entry arch opens up into. As I have mentioned previously the Taj Mahal is one of the Seven Wonders of the World, along with the great wall in China, the pyramids in Egypt etc. Given this level of hype I was fully prepared to be underwhelmed, but in fact I find it difficult to describe what it's like to pass out of the gate and into the Taj Garden area, there are probably at least dozen synonyms of beautiful that I could toss out, but none would begin to cover the experience. I have never in my life seen anything so extravagant, elegant and colossal. It took twenty-two years to build, but standing in front of the garden waterways staring out at the sheer mass of marble that must of flattened at least one mountain, possibly more for its creation, twenty-two years sounds unbelievably fast. + +The main building, the famous one you see in pictures, is the single most massive structure of marble I've ever seen. It sits on a raised platform about twenty meters high and then towers over everything in the surrounding area by at least two hundred meters. The main building is flanked on either side by a pair of mosques, only one of which is actually a mosque, the other, because it faces the wrong way, is purely for symmetry. And symmetry is the theme of the Taj Mahal; the main mausoleum building is perfectly symmetrical and looks exactly the same on all four sides. In each corner, set about one hundred meters from the building are four minarets made of the same semi-translucent white marble that makes up the rest of the mausoleum. The marble is covered in inlaid stone and semi precious minerals some or which are floral patterns and some of which form verses of the Koran. The vaulted archways of the main building have some of the most complicated curves and vaulting you can possibly imagine and yet are made of massive blocks of marble, a marvel of engineering that probably couldn't be repeated today without laser saws. And let me point out that when I say massive and colossal I don't necessarily mean just big, it is big, but not that big, it is, well it's so solid, so unbroken by windows or anything else save archways which really just make it seem even more solid. It's very difficult to capture with words. + +Taj Mahal IndiaI spent about three hours wandering around the garden sitting down on different benches and just staring at the Taj Mahal. It's quite literally indescribable. I finally sat down on one bench on the west side of the garden and tried to let the place sink in a little bit but it just wouldn't do it. It is too big, too massive, too marble, too beautiful to swallow. Where the Louvre would take two lifetimes to see every work of art, the Taj Mahal would take two lifetimes simply for its existence to become real to me. The grounds were crowded with tourists, Indian and Foreign alike, but not so crowded as the guidebooks make it sound, they milled about pointing cameras at the Taj often with friends or lovers in the foreground as if just the building itself would be too much, that it needed some sort of human reference point beside it to make any sense. + +Taj Mahal Sunset, IndiaPerhaps what makes the Taj Mahal so magnificent is that it provokes no singular association, no context, no memory that can be associated with it, but rather seems to call on all your references, all your memories and all your past associations at once so that your brain is overwhelmed and goes completely blank leaving you with the sensation that it might be a threat to your very existence, that the Taj were capable of wiping you to a blank slate and then writing or not writing whatever it might choose, so that the feeling you are left with is that the Taj Mahal seems mythically, spiritually, as well as architecturally, to have risen from nowhere, without equal or context. + +And that is the only stab I will make at describing what is a singular experience, and I will not even begin to tell you what is on the inside in the hope that perhaps one day you will make the journey to see it for yourself. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-12-10-goodbye-india.txt b/jrnl/2005-12-10-goodbye-india.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eb381f1 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-12-10-goodbye-india.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 28.6418241967323,77.21092699883451 +location: Delhi,Delhi,India +image: 2008/indiadelhi.jpg +desc: I have traveled nearly 4000 km in India. The vast majority of that distance I traveled by trains, in all classes, even regular chair. I have seen everything from depressing squalor to majestic palaces and yet I still feel as if I have hardly scratched the +dek: I have taken almost 750 photos and traveled nearly 4000 km (2500 miles) in India, the vast majority of it by train. I have seen everything from depressing squalor to majestic palaces and yet I still feel as if I have hardly scratched the surface. I can't think of another and certainly have never been to a country with the kind of geographic and ethnic diversity of India. +pub_date: 2005-12-10T17:53:25 +slug: goodbye-india +title: Goodbye India +--- + +Strange though it seems my time in India is over, I leave this evening on a plane bound for Nepal where I will be spending the next two weeks. While I am excited to be heading for Nepal, I am sorry to be leaving India. India has been at times challenging, at times overwhelming, at times horrifying, at times gorgeous, at times tranquil and peaceful and at times the most magical place on earth. + +The India people are the friendliest I have ever met and even when they are trying to sell something they are also genuinely interested in you, where you come from and how you like India. Even the touts, while annoying, are something you get used to and even sort of enjoy after a while, provided you aren't already frustrated and tired. + +I have taken almost 750 photos and traveled nearly 4000 km (2500 miles) in India, two bus rides and two quick domestic flights, but the vast majority of that distance I traveled by trains, in all classes, even regular chair. I have seen everything from depressing squalor to majestic palaces and yet I still feel as if I have hardly scratched the surface. I can't think of another and certainly have never been to a country with the kind of geographic and ethnic diversity of India. Everywhere I went was nothing like the place before it, and even though it can be overwhelming and hard to deal with at times, I think it's worth it and I would do it again. I plan to return to India someday and see the Darjeeling and Himachal Pradesh areas as well as Varanasi and Kolkata (Calcutta). + +There is really no way to describe or categorize the India people except to say again that they are the warmest and friendliest I have ever met. I have talked with everyone from accountants to hotel owners to waiters and busboys, rickshaw drivers, school children, beggars, shoeshine boys, fruit stand dealers, professional photographers, camel drivers, religious pilgrims, hustlers, con artists, tour guides, bus drivers and just random people on the street. Everyone wants to meet you, know where you are from, what you do, and most of all what you think of India. Nothing makes an Indian happier than the hear you say you love India (though quite a few thought I was crazy because I didn't mind Ahmedabad). + +Still it would be remiss of me to leave India without touching on the subject of poverty. The worst slums and shantytowns in all of Southeast Asia are here in India and at times the poverty of the people can be overwhelming. I have seen things that made we want to cry, but were so shocking I remained mute, temporarily unable to think. But in spite of the obvious and confronting poverty and yes the dirt and cow shit and human waste, in spite of all the pollution, garbage and general filth of many India cities, the people here remain the most gregarious and good natured I have ever met. Just yesterday on the train back from my daytrip to Agra while I was waiting in the station several little boys came up begging for change as they do in every railway station in India. The Indian people generally give a few rupees to the beggars, particularly the older ones badly afflicted and misshapen from Polio or Leprosy, but most western tourists tend to turn the other way or pretend as if the person at their feet simply did not exist. I myself have turned away at times, but at other times I give a few rupees to the beggars, especially the children. Yesterday however I did not have any change so I went and bought a bunch of bananas and gave them to one little boy and it made him very happy. He ate them and then followed me around for the rest of the wait talking in Hindi and playing hide and go seek in the train car until it started to move and then he waved goodbye and jumped off. It isn't hard to bring out a smile even in the most impoverished and seemingly depressed of Indians; their smiles are never more than a kind gesture away. I have had total strangers offer to share their lunch with me as I walked by them in a park or invite me to have chai with their families, even the shopkeepers who bargain hard insist you sit and have a cup of chai before they try to rip you off. + +Several westerners I have traveled with who witnessed me giving money here and there to children have told me I shouldn't encourage children to beg or they'll be begging the rest of their lives. But the truth is they'll be begging the rest of their lives anyway and later many of them will contract Polio or worse from tainted water and will become the misshapen men and women pulling themselves along on their mutilated hands still begging for change. To think that there are opportunities for begging children to improve their lot is naive and delusional. Just as it would be delusional and naive of me to think that I can give anyone more than five minutes of relief from their life. + +I could not begin to suggest what India ought to do to help its poor, but I am glad that Bill and Melinda Gates are pouring a tremendous amount of money into disease research and medical help for India and other countries like it. It is painful to see the victims of Polio and know that Polio is a preventable disease. Polio is rare to nonexistent in the west and yet here thousands die of it every year simply because the vaccines can't get from A to B. I don't know why the vaccines aren't distributed the way they need to be, there are probably a thousand reasons but none of them are good. + +In closing let me also say that I have spent a good deal of time thinking about cultural differences since I have been here. I have learned to never let my left hand get anywhere near food, I've come to the conclusion that squat toilets are actually easier to use, though harder to keep clean than western ones, that lane lines are not necessary, that time is a purely western concern, that driving a rickshaw is actually pretty easy, as is riding a motorcycle, that I can say my name and ask how someone is doing in Hindi, that saying no is impolite, that the sky has more stars than we know, that trains are the best form of transportation and most of all that patience is not a virtue, but a way of life. In spite of that there are some aspects of Indian culture I cannot abide by. My conclusion on cultural differences is that any cultural practice that fails to treat your fellow human beings with the same respect you accord yourself is not a cultural tradition worthy of respect. + +And finally for my fellow Americans, please get out and see the world. We are an isolated country both geographically and culturally and the rest of the world is going to pass us by while we have our heads buried in the sand. The rest of the world looks to us, but then discovers that we are often ignorant and ill-informed, that we start wars and fail to allow for anyone who disagrees with us, that we expect and demand that the world bend to our ways when we have never experienced theirs. We have the power and resources to transform so much of the world for the better and the more of us that come out here and see what the rest of the world is like, what they want, what they love, what they would die to protect, the more we will be able to understand and help them. The day and age when we could be isolationist and ignorant came and went before we were born, we owe it to the world to see them on their own terms. So pack your bags, I'll meet you in Nepal. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-12-15-durbar-square-kathmandu.txt b/jrnl/2005-12-15-durbar-square-kathmandu.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e362997 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-12-15-durbar-square-kathmandu.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 27.703363690641837,85.31737803225191 +location: Kathmandu,Kathmandu,Nepal +image: 2008/durbarsquare.jpg +desc: Nevermind the Beatles, Durbar Square is still very much the hub of Katmandu. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: After saturating myself with the streets of Thamel I went on a longer excursion down to Durbar Square to see the various pagodas, temples and the old palace. The palace itself no longer houses the King, but is still used for coronations and ceremonies and Durbar Square is still very much the hub of Katmandu. +pub_date: 2005-12-15T17:57:48 +slug: durbar-square-kathmandu +title: Durbar Square Kathmandu +--- + +I flew into Katmandu around ten o'clock at night, which meant I unfortunately missed any view of the Himalayas. I spent most of the next day walking the streets of Thamel (the backpackers' area of Katmandu) looking at the endless tables of vegetables, fruits, spices, and most omnipresently, curios of all kinds, statuettes of Buddha and Ganesh, tiny Buddhist prayer wheels, Gurkha knives and swords, wooden carvings of various gods, wooden flutes, endless stalls of wool hats, wool socks, and the nearly ubiquitous stores full of Pashmina shawls, scarves, bedcovers, sweaters and even dresses, most of which are probably 60% pashmina at best, but of course carry the full pashmina price tag. + +Katamandu CuriosThe Thamel area has been the center of tourist activity in Katmandu for so long now that it very much resembles a European city, complete with salami and butter sandwiches available in little garden cafes, which I had quite a few of during my stay in Paris. I suppose you could say that Thamel is the touristiest area I've been in yet, but that hasn't really bothered me. There are all sort of western foods available, everything from tacos to great big pepper steaks. It's a nice change to have a variety of culinary options, I will confess to being sick of Indian food. With the exception of a few nights here and there, I ate exclusively Indian food for 30 days. I don't think I've ever eaten so much of one nationality's cuisine in my entire life, so the change is nice. And from what I've read and heard from other travelers, Nepali food is nothing to get excited about (their chai is certainly lacking by Indian standards). + +Nearly everything in Thamel is somehow geared to Nepal's biggest tourist draw—trekking. Every other store on the streets is either a trekking guide company or sells knockoff trekking gear with fake US brand labels. The gear was particularly fascinating to me because I used to work at a North Face store in Costa Mesa and one of the things we were trained to do was spot fake gear that climbers brought back from expeditions. Whether the climbers were conscious of what they were doing or not depended on the individual, but invariably the cheap stuff they bought in Nepal fell apart and, by passing it off as genuine, would be covered by the North Face's lifetime warranty. Most of the time it was pretty easy to spot fakes, telltale signs like terrible stitching or zippers that opened to nothing and existed only because the original had a pocket there, but some of the jackets and backpacks I saw on the streets of Katmandu were pretty good forgeries and it made me wonder if perhaps we missed a few things here and there when I worked at the North Face. There is one legitimate North face store somewhere in Thamel and though I have not been there, I was told that the prices are only marginally less than those in the US. + +Durbar SquareAfter saturating myself with the streets of Thamel I went on a longer excursion down to Durbar Square (durbar means palace) to see the various pagodas, temples and the old palace. The palace itself no longer houses the King, but is still used for coronations and ceremonies and Durbar Square is still very much the hub of Katmandu. I haven't talked to any Nepalis about it, but the King seems less than popular shall we say. The current King of Nepal came to power under rather bizarre circumstances and seems to be unpopular if the local English newspapers are to be believed. I arrived on International Human Rights day, which is an area where Nepal is, um, lacking. Along these lines I have added Amnesty International to the list of charities on the donations page. + +Unfortunately most of the structures in the Durbar Square area were destroyed in a large earthquake in 1934 so, while much of the amazing teak woodwork was salvaged, the actual buildings are all relatively new. On my walk down to Durbar Square I passed hundreds of little shrines lurking in every corner of every streets; so many in fact that it was overwhelming and nearly impossible to keep track of even with my guidebook¹. I decided to hire a guide for a walking tour of Durbar Square itself with the hope that maybe that way I wouldn't overlook anything. After skipping over the expensive and pushy guides near the entrance to the square, I managed to find one that was willing to work for cheap in exchange for an English lesson after my tour. + +Each temple in the area is generally for a particular god and only a couple were actually open. I went in the Kumari Bahal which is The House of the Living Goddess and is, as the name implies, home to Kumari the living goddess reincarnated in the figure of a little girl. Every decade or so the Nepalis have to find the new Kumari through a process not unlike the way Tibetans find the next reincarnated Dalai Lama. Once found the young girl lives in Kumari Bahal until she reaches puberty at which point the goddess leaves her body and the search begins again. Presumably the girl then returns to her normal life though I didn't actually get that part of the story. + +Most of the other buildings and temples are only open on certain festival days, but you can go inside Kasthamandap (from which Katmandu takes its name) which began life as a community center for festivals and ceremonies and was only later turned into a temple for Gorakahnath. Originally built in the 11th century and supposedly constructed from a single tree, Kasthamadap, which means house of wood, was greatly rebuilt following the earthquake. Katmandu and Nepal in general has an interesting mixture of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs which also draw somewhat off of older tribal religions to create a wholly different sort of hybrid. Thus I also saw temples in a Muslim style with statues of Krishna inside and traditional Hindu gods with the head of Buddha. + +The touristy aspect of Durbar Square is unfortunate and part of me spent much of my time wondering what Katmandu was like when the first mountaineers arrived overland from India, or even when the Beatles came and sat up on top of the temple. My guide claimed that many Nepalis thought for a while that these curious bleached skinned longhaired strangers must have come from space, which I didn't really believe, but it must have been a strange site to see the Beatles sitting up on the temple steps smoking hash with the sadhus while throngs of Nepalis gathered to watch the incongruous strangers + +After the tour we went to a little cafe and had some chai and I tried to help him understand the English verb "get, which is harder than it sounds, especially if one takes into account the number of idiomatic expressions that involve get. For instance "I'll get you for that" or "how do I get to ______" none of which seems to translate very well to Nepali. I don't know that I helped him all that much, but he seemed to pick up a few things and was satisfied enough to pay for the chai. The walk back to Thamel took me through what amounts to the garment district where I picked up a new hat and a pair of shoes which may well fall apart before I have a chance to wear them, but $3 US is hard to argue with. + +I have slowly adjusting to the sight of my breath in the early morning chill of Katmandu's unheated budget hotels. The nighttime temperatures drop near freezing, but, wrapped in a couple blankets and wearing my fleece jacket to bed, I have managed to stay comfortably warm through the night, though I have picked up a bit of a head cold probably due to the continuous and inescapable chill. + +Swayambhunath Katmandu, NepalIn spite of an annoying nasal drip, the next day I set out for Swayambhunath, better known as the monkey temple. I was planning to walk, but about half way there a taxi driver convinced me to take a ride and after seeing the steps up to the main stupa I was glad I gave up the idea of walking. I entered the area from the back where a golden Buddha dominates the entrance to the monastery area and then walked over several smaller hills and then up to the main stupa. The stupa (the stupa being a sort of hemispherical Buddhist temple structure) is surrounded by numerous smaller shrines some in Buddhist styles and some in Hindu styles, which again illustrates the curious mix of religions in Nepal. The most interesting thing I saw was an inscription in Sanskrit which dates from the 12th century. + +MonkeyAnd yes there were indeed a number of monkeys in the temple grounds. The monkeys are considered holy because the monkey god once came to the aid of Shiva (at least I believe it was Shiva) when some bad monkey's kidnapped one of his wives. I suppose it's the curious nature of religious belief that the monkey who rescued her comes to symbolize all monkeys rather than those that kidnapped her. Had it gone the other way I suppose I would be able to dine on monkey some evening. + +I have also been to Pashupatinath by the Bagmati River where the Hindus cremate the dead, but my experiences there were enough to warrant a full article so you'll have to wait a day for that one at which point I will also upload some more pictures. + +
    + +

  1. 1 Incidentally if you come to Nepal bring something other than the Lonely Planet Guide to Nepal, it's terrible. I swapped mine for a Rough Guide, which is much better. ↩

    2. + +
+ diff --git a/jrnl/2005-12-15-pashupatinath.txt b/jrnl/2005-12-15-pashupatinath.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1b0b067 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-12-15-pashupatinath.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 27.71057315568692,85.34853457216452 +location: Pashupatinath,Kathmandu,Nepal +image: 2008/nepalburninggahts.jpg +desc: Nestled on a hillside beside the Bagmati River, Pashupatinath is one of the holiest sites in the world for Hindus, second only to Varanasi in India. +dek: Nestled on a hillside beside the Bagmati River, Pashupatinath is one of the holiest sites in the world for Hindus, second only to Varanasi in India. Pashupatinath consists of a large temple which is open only to Hindus, surrounded by a number of smaller shrines and then down on the banks of the Bagmati are the burning ghats where bodies are cremated. +pub_date: 2005-12-15T18:02:59 +slug: pashupatinath +title: Pashupatinath +--- + +It was well past noon before I dragged myself out of the comforts of Thamel and caught a taxi to Pashupatinath. Nestled on a hillside beside the Bagmati River, Pashupatinath is one of the holiest sites in the world for Hindus, second only to Varanasi in India. + +Pashupatinath consists of a large temple which is open only to Hindus, surrounded by a number of smaller shrines and then down on the banks of the Bagmati are the burning ghats where bodies are cremated. After walking around the various pagodas and little temples I made my way across the river on one of the small foot bridges and up the hillside on opposite bank past a series of eleven small temples of Shiva to the top of a terrace. + +Pashupatinath Katmandu, NepalI sat up above the river on the terrace where there were some wooden benches whose beams seemed perhaps deliberately too far apart to be comfortable, as if comfort were not something to be found here. From the temple across the river came a continual ringing of bells and the sound of a flute which seemed to irritate the resident flock of pigeons sitting on the roof. Every few minutes the pigeons would launch off into a circuitous arcs seemingly blown like leaves, streaking along the river in a cloud so thick it was impossible to distinguish individual birds. Below me another funeral pyre was being prepared. After washing away the ashes of the last fire, workers began stacking cordwood and bamboo at cross patterns like Lincoln logs and then over the wood were draped long garlands of marigold flowers. In each corner of the pyre was a bamboo pole with leaves still at the top to form a canopy over the wood. Around these poles they slowly wrapped more marigold garlands and over the top they laid a piece of red silk. This pyre was for an upper caste person while farther down the river less ornate pyres were still burning. In the air I could smell the smoke of burning bamboo which mixed with the vague odor of burnt flesh though I could never decide whether or not that was merely my imagination. + +After an hour of preparation they brought out a body wrapped in linen and lying on what amounted to a bamboo ladder borne by four Hari Krishna's who lifted the body up on to the pile of wood, covered it with grasses and then, with very little additional ceremony, they lit the pyre. Throughout this process the family of the deceased, who in this case was some sort of dignitary since the pyre was on one of the upper caste platforms, followed behind the Haris signing various songs in Hindi. The family was dressed in white the traditional Hindu color of mourning. Once the pyre was lit and the songs finished the family threw little bits of marigold petals on the fire and then retreated back into the building behind the ghats where there are rooms for the traditional Hindu mourning ceremonies. + +I've remarked before on the number of times death has come up in my travels, but this certainly was the most culturally jarring thing I have witnessed thus far. I've been to a number of funerals in my life and looked in on a couple of autopsies before and the dead are always a strange site, but I had never witnessed a body being destroyed in flames before and something about it was very disturbing. You can't actually see the body burn because the wood and grass is hides it, but it's still a very disquieting just to know that under the grass and wood is a once living human being. I have often thought that I would rather be cremated than buried and I still think that I would, but I'm not sure I would want anyone to watch. + +Pashupatinath Funeral Pyre Katmandu NepalAfter watching the pyre burn for a while I recalled a horrific story I read in the Indian paper about a woman whose family could no longer afford to pay for her health care and since she was catatonic they simply took her to a crematorium and left the body. The man who prepared her fire was about to lift her body into it when he noticed tears in her eyes. At the time I found the story disturbing, but now as I remembered it it produced a slight feeling of vertigo and dizziness as I thought of the woman unable to move and thinking that she was going to be burned alive, able to communicate the pain and loneliness she must have felt only by the welling of tears in her eyes. + +Overcome with a sort of panicky feeling, but a feeling that was distinctly different than an actual panic attack to which I am prone; this was more a feeling of the world spinning as if I had for the first time become aware that even while standing still we are moving at around twenty thousand miles per hour and could feel the motion in my head; I decided to head back to Thamel. I don't have a real distinct memory of getting down, I could not really say how long I had even been up on the terrace. I remember walking down the steps from the terrace because I stopped to make a quick photograph of a doorway that had caught my eye earlier and somehow I centered my attention for long enough to photograph it, but then I don't remember much except that the sky was just then nearly obliterated by a flock of circling pigeons whose flight I watched until I realized I was still very dizzy and needed to sit down again. Pashupatinath Katmandu NepalI remember thinking that the pigeons looked like a broken kaleidoscope whose fragments had gotten stuck in my eye. And then I leaned against a bench for support and looked up at a little temple or pagoda rather that was next to me and saw the Kama Sutra carvings that often adorn the roof beams of temples in Nepal. + +I leaned there for some time thinking that about the cycle of birth love and death that makes up our lives and that at Pashupatinath the cycle has become a singularity so that the distinction between life and death no longer exists. The strange spectacle around me had brought birth love and death together in one place and compressed it down as if to say, despite the procession of time which makes it seem like a cycle, this progression is in fact not a progression, but a single point from which all other things emanate. These thoughts gradually pulled me out of my dizziness and the feeling of falling away from myself until at some length I was able to find my way back to Thamel. + +And as the taxi dropped me off in front of my hotel, it occurred to me that losing one's mind might be one of the central attributes of traveling in the first place; not necessarily going crazy, which really I am not, but finding one's mind displaced enough that it begins to feel slightly alien, as if certain contexts which we are raised in and simply accept without ever thinking about become suddenly out of their element and foreign as we absorb different, new and strange contexts. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-12-17-sunset-over-himalayas.txt b/jrnl/2005-12-17-sunset-over-himalayas.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2737887 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-12-17-sunset-over-himalayas.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 28.210482777870325,83.95820616507119 +location: Pokhara,Kaski,Nepal +image: 2008/pokharaboat.jpg +desc: Rowing Fewa Lake, laying back, looking up at the Annapurna range in the destance. +dek: After about forty-five minutes of paddling I reached a point where the views of the Annapurna range were, in the words of an Englishman I met in Katmandu, "gob smacking gorgeous." I put down the paddle and moved to the center of the boat where the benches were wider and, using my bag a cushion, lay back against the gunwale and hung my feet over the opposite side so that they just skimmed the surface of the chilly water. +pub_date: 2005-12-17T21:03:43 +slug: sunset-over-himalayas +title: Sunset Over the Himalayas +--- + +It was around four in the evening when I walked down to the lake shore with the intention of renting a boat. I had spent the morning and early afternoon walking the streets of Lakeside looking up at the soaring peaks of the Annapurna Range and stopping in at some of the dozens of nearly identical curio and fabric stores, occasionally bargaining for a piece of cloth or vaguely interesting knickknack though in truth I did it more for the game of bargaining then any desire to possess the items in question. + +Any time I could get a store owner below 25% of the original asking price I felt as if the game were over and I obligated to complete the exchange by handing over money and departing with the object. In this way I came to own several shawls, a mask supposedly antique which I don't really believe though it is of superior quality to all the others I saw, and one wooden flute, all of which excepting the mask will be given to friends when I return home. After stopping off at my hotel to deposit the days catch on the unused second bed which I had pushed up against the wall beneath the window, I went out as I said to rent a boat and paddle about Fewa Lake. + +At just over $2 US per hour the boats were hardly a bargain (my hotel is the same per night) but I rented one anyway and opted to paddle myself, partly for the exercise and partly to escape the constant barrage of questions I had endured throughout the morning and early afternoon. boats Fewa Lake NepalIt is very difficult to find any peace and quiet in areas like Pokhara and while it's fun to talk to the local people, especially the children who are almost always sincerely interested in you, whereas the others usually have an end goal of selling you something, I was wanting some peace and quiet. Part of the reason I talked to so many people is that the off-season had arrived in Nepal and very few tourists remain, in fact in my four or five hours of wandering I came across only two other tourists a woman and her daughter bargaining for some embroidered silk shawls. + +The boat I received for my 150 rupees could easily have seated a family of six and two oarsmen and consequently moved sluggishly with one lone paddler seated at the stern. Once I got past the Varahi Temple, a small island temple not fifty meters from shore where a modest and possibly ceremonial fire was burning on the left side which sent a plume of smoke drifting out across the still lake waters and looked, with the jungle hillsides in the background, not unlike some of the foggy river scenes in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now; I turned back toward shore and saw the cake-icing snows covering the peaks of Lamgung Himal and Annapurna II. Annapurna Range Pokhara NepalSuch views spurred my paddling on until I was well across the lake skirting the opposite shore among a multitude of water striders darting on the placid, hill-sheltered waters where the views were even more spectacular. + +A handful of other boats were on the lake, but I seemed to be the only foreigner out at such a late hour, indeed this was one of many times I felt that I was in fact the only foreign tourist in Pokhara. Most of the other vessels on the water were fishermen bringing in their nets for the day or heavily loaded transport canoes hauling goods from Lakeside to the isolated west shore, which is only reachable by boat or on foot. Here and there were a few people out for fun, including two boats chock full of local school children still in their blue and white uniforms, one boat full of girls and one of boys each racing the other back to the landing. After about forty-five minutes of paddling I reached a point where the views of the Annapurna range were, in the words of an Englishman I met in Katmandu, "gob smacking gorgeous." I put down the paddle and moved to the center of the boat where the benches were wider and, using my bag a cushion, lay back against the gunnel and hung my feet over the opposite side so that they just skimmed the surface of the chilly water. I lay like that for some time snacking on a snickers bar and drinking water as the sun painted very subtly changing orange hues across the mastiff of Machhapuchhre; I thought of all the Nepali people I have met in the last week and a half and how while they are slightly more reserved than Indians they are every bit as friendly and probably even more genuine. I remembered the story a British climber told me about the sherpas that accompanied his expedition, who, despite the fact that their homes were a hard two days hike over mountainous terrain, waited beside the runway until the expedition team's plane had taken off, which, as he told me, was delayed several hours, but the sherpas insisted on waiting. I could picture them standing at the side of the runway smiling and waving as that plane finally lifted off, tucked in its wheels and disappeared. + +I must have laid there an hour or more thinking about how much I have seen and how many little tiny incidents could be entire stories in themselves until finally I noticed the moon rising over the eastern ridge and it occurred to me suddenly that it would soon be dark and I had the better part of an hours paddle back to the landing I departed from. By the time I finally made it back the boats owner was nearly the only person left and he already had his flashlight out to guide me in amongst the boats, but he too seemed unperturbed at waiting. + +

Sarangkot

+ +The last day I spent in Pokhara I rented a bicycle in the morning and road around Fewa Lake stopping off occasionally to watch fishermen, women watching clothes in the tributary streams and children herding goats on the now barren hay terraces at the upper end of the lake. Upper Fewa Lake, NepalI rested for a while in the shade of a large tree and several young boys playing on a nearby bridge came over to see if they could ride my bicycle while I rested. While the older boys took off on the bike one younger one who was too small to ride it, sat with me in the shade and I showed him how to use my camera. + +Local Boy, NepalAfter using up most of the memory I had left he finally got the hang of having to wait after each picture (no instance gratification on my aging equipment) before taking the next one. He was actually pretty good with the camera, in fact he took the picture of the lake above and then like most other children I've met insisted I take his picture. On the way back the chain on my bicycle broke which made for an unplanned and fairly long, but not unpleasant walk around the lake. + +By the time I made it back to my hotel I was exhausted, but I had only one more chance to get to Sarangkot which is the main overlook for the Annapurna Range. Despite being tired there was no way I was going to be in Nepal and not see the sunset of the Himalayas. I was resting in the garden court of my hotel talking to the owners sun about hiring a taxi to get up to Sarangkot when he offered to take me by motorcycle. I've come to enjoy motorcycles on this trip so I took him up on the offer. Sarangkot is about 1200 meters above Pokhara of which it is possible to climb about 800 of them by road. + +Annapurna NepalWe parked the bike at the end of the road and began to ascend the nearly vertical stairs that lead up the other 400 meters. I couldn't say how long it took, perhaps an hour, but it was definitely the hardest hiking I've done in quite sometime. For those used to nonmetric systems we climbed roughly 1300 vertical feet in less than a mile of walking. And apparently the Nepalis have never heard of switchbacks. + +Annapurna Sunset, NepalOnce we finally made it to the top the exhaustion quickly became a memory and we sat on benches atop the hill looking out at the Annapurna Range. The mountains felt so close you could reach out and touch them. When the sun begin to set the wisps of clouds around the peaks turned into what looked like a pinkish mist, as if someone has airbrushed it into the scene. There is really no way to describe the view and unfortunately my camera was not up to the task either. I have put up the new photos, but they fail to capture it for me, the mountains were in fact much closer than the lens of my camera makes them seem. Nevertheless I have the images in my memory and I am glad that I made this side trip to Nepal. + diff --git a/jrnl/2005-12-25-merry-christmas-2005.txt b/jrnl/2005-12-25-merry-christmas-2005.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..957d171 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2005-12-25-merry-christmas-2005.txt @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 13.761790973148347,100.49344538243446 +location: Bangkok,Bangkok,Thailand +image: 2008/bangkokfort.jpg +desc: I just wanted to post a little seasons greeting message to all of you still following along and thank you for your support. +dek: Seasons Greeting from luxagraf. I'm in Bangkok, Thailand at the moment. I am taking a short break from traveling to do a little working so I don't have much to report. I've seen the two big temples down in the Khaosan Rd area, but otherwise I've been trying to live an ordinary life in Bangkok, if such a thing is possible. +pub_date: 2005-12-25T18:27:48 +slug: merry-christmas-2005 +title: Merry Christmas 2005 +--- + +Seasons Greeting from luxagraf. I'm in Bangkok, Thailand at the moment and while it doesn't have a very Christmasy feel, but it's a great city. Very much like Los Angeles — looks similar, weather's about the same, but the food is ten times better and the river actually has water in it. + +I am taking a short break from traveling to do a little working so I don't have much to report. I've seen the two big temples down in the Khaosan Rd area, but otherwise I've been trying to live an ordinary life. Get up in the morning and work, take a lunch break go back to work, ironically most of the things I didn't want to do back home. Strange though it may sound, this routine is actually appealing right now, but that will probably only last another week. + +I just wanted to post a little seasons greeting message to all of you still following along and thank you for your support. + +Cheers! + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-01-01-are-you-amplified-rock.txt b/jrnl/2006-01-01-are-you-amplified-rock.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..937e3b9 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-01-01-are-you-amplified-rock.txt @@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 13.761790973148347,100.4934453824343 +location: Bangkok,Bangkok,Thailand +image: 2008/bangkokriver.jpg +desc: Happy New Year, 2006, from luxagraf +dek: It's a new year, are you amplified to rock? Ready, set, go. +pub_date: 2006-01-01T18:37:48 +slug: are-you-amplified-rock +title: Are You Amplified to Rock? +--- + +

"Are you amplified to rock?
Are you hoping for a contact?
I’ll be with you
without you
again"
- Robert Pollard

+ +Happy New Year from luxagraf. I hope everyone had a wonderful and semi-safe New Years Eve. I will be back to traveling and doing my usual, once-a-week-or-so postings again in the very near future, stay tuned.

+ diff --git a/jrnl/2006-01-03-brink-clouds.txt b/jrnl/2006-01-03-brink-clouds.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2c5eeba --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-01-03-brink-clouds.txt @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 13.750921779579318,100.54314135105552 +location: Bangkok,Bangkok,Thailand +image: 2008/bangkokfrombaiyoke.jpg +desc: "The city is a cathedral" writes James Salter and nowhere in Bangkok is it more so than in the view from the top of the Baiyoke Sky Hotel +dek: "The city is a cathedral" writes James Salter, "its scent is dreams." Salter may have been referring to New York, but his words ring true in Bangkok. And the best place to feel it at night is on the river or from the top of the Baiyoke Sky Hotel — where a circular, revolving observation deck offers 360° views of the Bangkok nightscape. +pub_date: 2006-01-03T20:38:27 +slug: brink-clouds +title: Brink of the Clouds +--- + +Two days after Christmas, I had just finished some internet business at the McBen Coffeehouse on Sukhumvit Soi 8, but I didn't yet feel like heading back to Khoasan Rd, so I took the sky train to Siam Square and walked over the Khlong Saen Saep canal to the Baiyoke Sky Hotel, which, as it proudly proclaims to anyone who will listen, is the tallest hotel in the world—not building mind you, I believe that honor goes to the Taipei 101 in Taiwan—the Baiyoke Sky is the tallest *hotel*. + +It can claim the tallest building in Bangkok though and indeed all of Thailand. It stands a singularly massive, circular structure jutting up into the Bangkok sky and looking up at it from the bridge over the canal gave me a mild feeling of vertigo, something that has always happened to me when gazing up at some great height. Strange but I have always experienced vertigo looking up at heights, never looking down from them. + +The Baiyoke Sky Hotel is circular and the revolving observation deck on the eighty-seventh floor slowly swivels around at a soaring height of three hundred meters and, though the Empire State building is taller than the Baiyoke (by eighty one meters), is not as dramatic from the top. The Baiyoke has sheer, architecturally unbroken sides, when you lean out you look straight down and, unlike the Empire State building which is surrounded by other high rises, the Baiyoke massively dwarfs everything else in the area, which makes it seem much higher than the Empire State Building. + +However, for me, the most amazing thing about the Baiyoke Sky Hotel is the elevator. Somehow, seemingly by bending the rules of physics, LG has managed to construct an elevator that ascends nearly three hundred meters in forty seconds and produces almost no discernible sense of motion. Not only is that faster than any elevator I've ever ridden in, but even while watching the city lights shrink toward my feet, I still could not convince myself that I was moving. The sensation was almost creepy as if the movement were staged; the elevator motionless and a fake background rolling by; my ears popping at the rapid change in height were the only tangible sense of motion I could feel. It was such an extraordinary experience that before I left I rode it twice more up and down, just to make sure that my mind wasn't playing tricks on me. + +Bangkok Thailand NightscapeThe physics defying ride exited on the eighty fifth floor and from there I made my way up two flights of stairs to the observation deck. The Bangkok nightscape stretched out beneath me like radioactive paint flung on a black felt canvas. From such heights it is difficult to pick out individual people and even cars on the highways and overpasses, the streaking red taillights and the dirty, yellow-white headlights, the color of angel wings too long in the smoggy air, become one continuous river of light flowing amongst the glittering black rock of buildings. The deck creaked as it turned and the occasional thumps and bumps of the mismatched joints beneath the steel top were the only sounds as I glided around the hotel, which gave me the sensation of standing on a ballerina's shoulder as she turned a slow, continuous pirouette round the clouds. + +In those moments when the mechanisms of turning fell silent, the faint sounds of the city could be heard rising from below, nothing distinct, more like the hum of a computer when you walk in the room, or the white noise of your refrigerator droning that you don't notice until you're sitting there late at night in the silence of an empty and sleeping house where suddenly the sound of the coils and Freon become an almost deafening noise. So with the sound of Bangkok from a great height, a height from which even Celine could not piss, though apparently the metal grating, which makes a nice brace for long exposure night shots, is the result of a team of Norwegians who base jumped from the deck in 2000. I tried to find out if anyone had ever committed suicide from the deck, but no one would give me an answer. + +After having my fill of the heights I wandered down to the bar area two floors below the deck where supposedly the elevator ticket was good for a free drink, descending as I did into a candlelit darkness. Everyone seemed to be clearly out just as I arrived, but isn't that the way it always seems? I took a seat in one of the red vinyl chairs near the entrance just in front of a baluster that seemed to be imitating a telescope, starting small at the base and progressively growing out toward the ceiling, little circular shelves, a perfect matchbox race track complete with tubular florescent road lights that wound around, beads of blue light driving up the tiny path toward the ceiling. The tiny blue lights and a few candles were the only light in the bar. The darkness was occasionally punctuated by the lightning flashes of snap happy tourists at the window in front of the elevator apparently unaware of the limited range of such bulbs, but, sitting next to the window staring out at the city below the combined effect of the height and flashes of light gave me the feeling of sitting in some great stationary thunderhead, as if at any moment the wind might kick up and carry us westward dumping torrents of rain over the neighborhoods until finally we would dissipate over the South China Sea. + +As I sat in the lounge sipping whiskey from a crystal cordial glass which somewhat contrasted with the otherwise futuristic decor, I tried to calculate how long you would fall from this height. I'm not real great at math, but think you have about 12 seconds to regret your choice, or if you're Norwegian, to open your chute. + +"The city is a cathedral" writes James Salter, "its scent is dreams," and though he may have been referring to New York, his words ring true, perhaps to a lesser degree but true nevertheless, in every large city. Or maybe you just have to be a lover of cities to feel it. We seem to embrace the hive replicas built perhaps from memories embedded in our DNA; we feel safety in numbers, a desire to be close to one another, yet seek to find our own honey in the comb as it were. And so cities become our greatest cathedrals, redolent with our most venerable dreams reflected out of the darkness of our fears and nightmares. Perhaps this is why night in the city is so compelling—this mixture of dualities, the one place where we can see everything together and mingling. + +I always feel younger in cities, something about the city at night makes everything seem possible, the sound of the wheels on the concrete, the determined and purposeful stride of strangers around you on the sidewalks, everything seems to have its place in the city, it grows out of the darkness of night to bring light. Even in Bangkok as I walked to the Baiyoke Hotel I found myself thinking of New York and how much I miss it, particularly the sound of the wheels on sixth avenue in the rain, that wet hiss punctuated with splashes and the rain muted sound of horns; in October when it starts to turn cold and all you want to do is get off the street into somewhere warm with friends, but something makes you linger there on the street watching the endless glitter of lights and windows reflecting and refracting in some perpetual bouncing circle so that you can feel earth turning, as if the energy of its core were right beneath you. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-01-05-buddha-bounty.txt b/jrnl/2006-01-05-buddha-bounty.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2c7fcb5 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-01-05-buddha-bounty.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 13.726128126466529,100.547304139446 +location: Bangkok,Bangkok,Thailand +image: 2008/jimthompsonhouse.jpg +desc: Exploring Jim Thompson's house and orchid gardens in Bangkok Thailand. +dek: The house Jim Thompson left behind in Bangkok is gorgeous, but the real charm is the garden and its orchids. I wandered around the gardens which really aren't that large for some time and then found a bench near a collection of orchids, where I sat for the better part of an hour, occasionally taking a photograph or two, but mostly thinking about how human orchids are. +pub_date: 2006-01-05T18:43:03 +slug: buddha-bounty +title: Buddha on the Bounty +--- + +I went for a walk one evening along the concrete pathways that line the Chao Phraya river trying to work out a the solution to a broken bit of code that had gotten tangled up in my mind and in the project I was working on. I find that walking tends to work these sorts of things out; either that or they simply float away like butterflies in search of a different orchid. + +Sunset Chao Phraya River Bangkok, ThailandI was walking toward the park where the last Tai Chi class was finishing up and the lights had just come on at the Phra Sumen Fort; it was just after sundown, the sky still glowed with the hazy goodbye that lingers for about half an hour as a red glow in the west. The park and the fort are familiar to me now in an odd way as I have walked by them nearly every evening for the past two weeks. It's strange how fast you can leave your familiar only to recreate it again wherever you go. + +For some reason a story Haruki Murakami recounts in his novel *South of the Border, West of the Sun* about something called Siberia Hysteria, popped into my head. I have no real way of knowing if this is true or not, but it is a good story and like most things probably gets closer to the truth if it isn't true. Murikami's narrative of Siberia Hysteria tells us to imagine that we are farmers in Siberia. Difficult at first, it works better if maybe you picture Barstow or Amarillo, someplace desolate, and everyday before dawn you get up and work the fields until sundown. Your life as a Siberian farmer is essentially, as Hobbes said, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." [In context this remark of Hobbes' comes from refuting the then popular notion, which still carries some currency today (especially among western travelers in the east), that "natural man," which is Rousseau's enlightened pre-civilized conception of utopia, somehow lived a life of great spiritual enlightenment etc.] But this life of farming in the tundra is your life and you have no other and so you live it day in and day out, excepting of course the wintertime. But then one day you wake up and find that you can no longer do what you have always done. Instead of heading to the fields to work that day like you did the day before, you throw down the plough and begin to walk west to the mythical land beyond the sun. You walk day and night, never stopping to eat or rest. + +The idea that one day something in you snaps and you are simply unable to do what it was you did the day before seems a common thread in the lives of my fellow travelers. Sometimes it is not you that snaps but the world around you, however, usually if the world around you has snapped chances are you were close to snapping too. And by snapping I don't mean anything necessarily bad. Though the word "snap" perhaps carries a negative connotation in this context, I do not mean it that way, this is not the sort of snap that postal workers were historically prone to (no offense to Andy's dad or my mother's cousin Dick), but a snap that is simply a hairpin turn of capacity. + +The Siberian Farmer story was in my mind as I walked along the river though in truth I was wondering about Jim Thompson more than the possibly mythic Siberian farmer. For those that have never heard of him, Jim Thompson was an American born expat, who came to Thailand toward the end of WWII. He was sent as a military attache to help organize a Thai resistance and drive out the Japanese. But by the time Thompson got to Thailand the Japanese had already surrendered. He returned to Thailand shortly thereafter under the auspices of Allen Dulles' OSS, the precursor to the CIA. + +I haven't been able to dig up much information on what it was that Thompson did for the OSS, but clearly he liked Thailand. Thompson stayed around for a while before returning to New York where he had been an architect. But something in him must have snapped because he returned to Thailand two years later with an interest in the then cottage industry of silk weaving. He proceeded to single handedly created the modern silk industry in Thailand and in the process became fantastically wealthy. He built, or rather collected, a beautiful traditional Thai home, gathering buildings from around the country and bringing them together in Bangkok. Today his house is a museum open to the public and I had recently visited the area, which was why Jim Thompson was on my mind. + +But it wasn't the house I was thinking of exactly, I was wondering what happened to Jim Thompson. In 1967 Thompson went on vacation with some friends in the Cameroon highlands in Malaysia. On the afternoon of March 27th his friends lay down to take a nap and Thompson said he was going for a walk. He was never seen again. What's more there has never been a single shred of evidence of him ever found. It certainly wasn't for lack of trying. Malaysia sent four hundred soldiers into the jungle to look for him. They found nothing. No evidence of foul play, whether it have been human or tiger playing the foul, and no evidence of, well, just no evidence at all. + +It seems unlikely at this point that we will ever get to know what became of Thompson. It's possible he was kidnapped. It's possible a very thorough and hungry tiger ate him. It's possible he willfully disappeared. His brief employment with the fledging CIA naturally leads to speculation about these things since any sort of legitimate trading operation would be just the thing the CIA loves to use as a cover, but the truth is no one knows and know one ever will, it's as if Thompson simply slipped through a worm hole into that land beyond the sun. + +Orchids Jim Thompson's House Bangkok, ThailandThe house he left behind is gorgeous, but the real charm is the garden and its orchids. I wandered around the gardens which really aren't that large for some time and then found a bench near a collection of orchids, where I sat for the better part of an hour, occasionally taking a photograph or two, but mostly thinking about how human orchids are. Of course in the west were most familiar with the ones on corsages, but Orchidaceae is one of the largest families in the plant kingdom and ranges in flower from tiny little ones the size of a mosquito to others the size of dinner plate. But the thing that struck me about them, which I had never noticed before is that the flowers of orchids are almost perfectly bilateral, just like the human body. Perhaps we are drawn to orchids because they reflect our symmetry and the symmetry we try to find in our lives. + +Symmetry implies a kind of duality, but dualities are out of vogue I suppose, Einsteinian notions being more cutting edge these days, and yet dualities still seem to pop up where ever you look. After staring for a while at the various red and yellow and purple orchids dropping gently at the end of their stalks, I started to think that maybe an Einsteinian world and a world of dualities are not so much at odds as we might think. Take the orchid for instance; on one hand its flower is bilateral, symmetrical, dual sides built around the tongue where insects land, and yet within this seeming constraint, the diversity of the flower size and color is relative to the species producing it. + +Eventually I pulled myself away from the orchids and went to see the collections of Thai silk and artwork that the tour mentioned, but skipped over. Thompson, while not a Buddhist, was a great collector of Buddhist art. Thailand is saturated with images of the Buddha, saturated and venerated to the point that sometimes it seems like perhaps the message of Buddha has been overlooked in favor of his iconography. 7th Century Buddha, Bangkok, ThailandLike most religious inspirers I believe it's likely that Buddha would quietly shake his head at the things people do in his name, but some of the pieces at Thompson's house were old enough and humble enough that they seemed like something the Buddha himself might have collected, were he a collector of art, which he most certainly was not. The one piece that particularly fascinated me was a headless, armless Buddha which the tour guide claimed was from the 7th century. After making my way through the various displays of very old silk, I returned to the headless statue of Buddha. + +I know I shouldn't have and I never have in a museum, but something about the stone, the ragged edge where the head had once been contrasted with the smooth, worn surface the builder intended, I couldn't help myself. After making sure no one was around, I ran my hands down the side of the statue along the broken edge and then across the polished carved portion. It was cool to the touch and though it may have been my overactive imagination, the stone felt somehow alive. It was then that I realized I don't want to see any more images of the Buddha, that stone was as close to Buddha as we will ever get. + +What made this Buddha different was its humility; it was broken, cracked, worn and somehow human. Perhaps that's our ultimate fantasy of art, that our Pygmalion wishes be granted, that art might literally become alive to us. But it already is alive, the stone is living, living so slowly and quietly that it's imperceptible, but living nonetheless. I've always found the duality in the question, ‘does life reflect art or art reflect life' to be the most irritating of dualities. Clearly both happen. True the statue that stood before me was not as it had been designed, its head had come off by accident not purpose, but isn't that why we make art, too see it interact with history? Without history, art becomes airless and stale, it's for sale at the side of the street—a ten dollar trinket. Isn't that the two way street, art does not reflect life it molds itself in life's reflection and life does not reflect art, but recasts art with the passage of time. This headless Buddha is both a reflection of life, of Buddha and yet life has added its own truth, taken away the head, as if to say, be honest, you have no idea what the Buddha looked like, better that you should not even try. + +Phra Sumen Fort, Bangkok, ThailandI sat down on a bench beside the fort to rest for a little while with thoughts of orchids, Jim Thompson, headless Buddha and Siberian Hysteria whirling round my head in an endless dialogue with one another when a headline from the morning's paper jumped out at me, it had said that a team of researchers using some advanced facial recognition algorithm to calculate that the Mona Lisa is 83% happy. I don't know much about algorithms except that there seems to be newer and shinier ones everyday. Arthur C. Clarke once said, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Algorithms are, to lay-people like me, sufficiently advanced as to appear magical. So I reworded the news in my head: a team of researchers used magic to determine that the Mona Lisa is 83% happy. What a poor use of magic. Better to have lopped the head of Michelangelo's' David so that in fourteen centuries we will remember what we don't know. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-01-12-you-and-i-are-disappearing.txt b/jrnl/2006-01-12-you-and-i-are-disappearing.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1ade480 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-01-12-you-and-i-are-disappearing.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 18.787042343613653,98.9876746993555 +location: Chang Mai,Chang Mai,Thailand +image: 2008/changmaiumong.jpg +desc: Exploring the Wats of Chiang Mai, Thailand, particularly Wat UMong, home of the emaciated Buddha statue. +dek: The all night bus reached Chiang Mai well past dawn, the city already beginning to stir. I considered trying to nap, but in the end decided to explore the town. What better way to see Buddhist temples than in the dreamy fog of sleeplessness? Chiang Mai has over three hundred wats within the somewhat sprawling city limits, most of them reasonably modern and, in my opinion, not worth visiting. I narrowed the field to three, which I figured was a nice round one percent. + +pub_date: 2006-01-12T00:52:30 +slug: you-and-i-are-disappearing +title: You and I Are Disappearing +--- + +I had been watching the eastern horizon for what felt like an hour, waiting for some perceptible change that would signal the coming of dawn, but it wasn't until after the bus stopped and my fellow passengers and I disembarked at the 7-11 next to the truck stop, that I finally noticed a slight glow. + +It had been, as Snoopy would say, a dark and stormy night, except that it wasn't stormy, it was simply dark. I have become completely incapable of sleeping in any sort of moving vehicle. When warping space through movement, time slows down and while this may sound metaphorical given that a bus does not move through space fast enough to *actually* slow down time, it is not. The two weeks I spent in Bangkok flew by, but when I am moving from place to place time always seems to slow down, and not just the actual traveling time, but all time, even that spent in a restaurant or at night in bed with a book; everything happens slower when you're traveling. + +I got off the bus and studied my fellow travelers many of whom I spent the last three hours observing in their sleep, comparing the personas I had invented for them while they slept with those they really possessed. I was tired, bleary-eyed tired, but for some reason unable to sleep. I spent most of the journey listening to my iPod with Daniel Carter's *Luminescence* looping over and over, which made a particularly compelling soundtrack to the passage of the darkness outside the window and the small beam of light on the highway in front of the bus. + +I bought a bottle of orange juice and sat down on the curb to watch the sunrise, but found my attention drawn instead to a dying moth fluttering about on its back making near perfect circles on the concrete. It continued without rest the entire time I sat there and seemed to me to signify something, though in my foggy sleep-deprived state, I could not say what it was the moth's movements meant to me, merely that they meant something. + +By the time we actually reached Chiang Mai it was well past dawn and the city just beginning to stir. After securing a room and depositing my belonging I considered trying to nap, but in the end decided to explore the town. What better way to see Buddhist temples than in the dreamy fog of sleeplessness? Chiang Mai has over three hundred wats within the somewhat sprawling city limits, most of them reasonablely modern and in my opinion not worth visiting. I narrowed the field to three, which I figured was a nice round one percent. + +Wat Chiang Man, Chiang Mai, ThailandThe most striking of the three was the oldest, wat Chiang Man from which Chiang Mai takes its name. The main stupha near the rear of the temple compound was a decaying edifice of what appeared to be limestone. The structure was about average in height, that is to say around 30 meters, and near the base a number of carved elephants jutted out. The stone was weathered black and splotchy from various lichens and mosses and of course the rain and pollution. I have no doubt it is earmarked for renovation, but I find that I enjoy crumbling, weather beaten temples more than those that have been carefully restored. Perhaps it is that the wear and tear of ages spent in the tropical sun lends some authenticity of age to stone, a reminder that these structures were around even when my own culture was still wearing its metaphorical diapers. I have always thought of the standard timeline of history as a circle viewed from the side, and from this perspective there is a backside to what we normally think of as the passage of time. Rather than moving forward down a line, events recede and grow closer as they move through time; the weathering of the stone elephants was to me a reminder of this two dimensional movement of time, as if the stone had not only passed along a line, but also moved forward and backward, picking up here and there a spot or streak of rain or growth of moss. + +While all of the wats were interesting in their own way, none compelled me to linger long and, finding myself at loose ends, I decided to ruin my round number and head to one more wat, wat Umong, located just outside the old city. I caught a ride with a songthaew (a truck taxi basically) to the entrance and wandered in. The main appeal of wat Umong was that, unlike the wats in the city, it sprawled out over a large forested hill. The forest reminded me a little of the area around Athens GA, but with no kudzu, a sort of forest I've never been able to put my finger on, not true jungle, but with lots of undergrowth and creeping vines crawling up the trunks of hardwood trees, and then broad leafed shrubs with white flowers, and an endless variety of ground cover much of it sprouting small purple flowers, even an orchid or two clinging to the trunk of an oak near the entrance; not what I would call jungle and not what I would call deciduous. + +Most wats have a central focal point, some particular image of Buddha or an old temple building or something that creates a locus around which everything else has been constructed, but wat Umong lacked that focal point entirely. Various paved trails took off in all directions and I could see a number of buildings poking their characteristic pointed roofs up into the branches of nearby trees. Toward the back of the wat was a network of tunnels quite obviously dug out by human means. According to the monks I spoke to no one knows who originally dug the caves; the local legend is that a solitary monk came here to meditate and created the place himself. Wat UMong, Chiang Mai, ThailandAnd though there is no historical evidence to support that story, I couldn't help but thinking of that solitary and one might think, maybe a little crazy, monk digging these tunnels with his bare hands. Such thoughts made the otherwise rather sterile and plain tunnels invested with an idiosyncratic quality, as if perhaps this fictitious monk were trying to get at some point in the tunnels, not some physical thing, but rather convey some mood or meaning through design alone. + +Perhaps the reason wat Umong has no centrality is that the main image of Buddha at the wat is rather frightening looking and represents the Buddha at the end of one of his failed early attempts at enlightenment. For those that aren't familiar with the life of Buddha, Buddha tried unsuccessfully to reach enlightenment through various methods before he found the middle way as it is known. The method represented at wat Umong shows Buddha as an emaciated skeleton at the end of a long period of self-mortification. What was so striking about this statue once one gets past the near skeletal appearance of Buddha were the eyes which seemed to glow with, for lack of a better word, hunger. Emaciated Buddha, Wat Umong, Chiang Mai, ThailandBut not the calm sort of hunger that one might imagine the Buddha to have, this was more of a ravenous devouring and vaguely frightening hunger. The sort of piercing stare that threatens to engulf you when you step into it. + +After loitering for a while in the peripherals of Buddha's famished gaze I made my way down to a small pagoda near the fishpond where, as the sign near the entrance had claimed, there would be an informal discussion on Buddhism with a monk. Several other westerners slowly trickled down as the appointed time arrived, including an older American man I had spoken to earlier. He had asked where I was from and I generally just answer that with the last place I've lived, which as it turned out he had also lived in. We spoke for a while of weather and the Red Socks and other things only New Englanders really care about and then I had wandered off to explore. + +The session began slowly, no one wanted to ask any questions and my sleep-deprived mind was too slow to formulate anything intelligent enough to say out loud. For their part the monks were perfectly comfortable with the vast periods of silence which I could tell left many of those in attendance feeling a bit awkward. It's not often you meet people who are comfortable with long periods of silence. Eventually a few questions were voiced, mostly technical things like the difference between how monks practice Buddhism versus what you could call a layperson practices Buddhism, or what the goals of meditation are. I had a number of questions in my mind by then, but for some reason found myself unwilling to ask them. Part of me suspected that perhaps I did not really want to know the answers as the more I learn of Buddhism, the less I agree with it. + +No matter where the questions began, in the course of his response the monk kept coming back to the phrase "cause and effect," which in his pronunciation sounded more like "cause and affect." This slight semantic difference became somehow telling to me the more he repeated it, as if his own language were betraying him. I have struggled to understand Buddhism as it is practiced in Thailand since I arrived. Much of what I have seen at wats has been out of line with what I know of the Buddha's teachings and indeed the monks confirmed that as with any religion, many of those who follow Buddhism do not really practice what the Buddha taught. The chief thing the monk seemed concerned with was the relationship between the causes of action and effect of those actions. But his, and perhaps Buddhism's in general, interpretation of that relationship seemed to me woefully simplified. + +I kept wondering what Buddhism would say to a theory like chaos mathematics. I did not ask because really I did not want to know, I prefer to wonder about these sort of things rather than have any definitive answer, assuming a definitive answer to such a nebulous question were even possible. But I failed to see how one could ever really determine a relationship between cause and effect given that the chain of events that follow from any one thought or action are far too wide reaching, complicated and extensive for the human mind to keep track of, and even if we were able to follow the chain clearly, it is unlikely that just because one's intentions were good, that it necessarily follows that the outcome of those intentions are positive for all that end up being effected by it. + +Somewhere in the middle of the talk I realized that, while it may have betrayed my westernness in thinking so, I believe in randomness and ambiguity and patterns so complex as to be indecipherable and to try and find the order and meaning within them is to miss the point of their existence. There is actually a word for this idea, pareidolia, which means simply the fanciful perception of meaning in something that is actually ambiguous, and this is perhaps what troubled me about the monks ideas, not that they were wrong, but that they strove to remove all ambiguity from life. I thought again of the moth fluttering on the concrete; the pattern of his dying arcs could hold some meaning if I chose to attach one to the other, but at the same time, perhaps the deeper meaning lay with my own awareness that I was creating it. That is to say, perhaps the moth was simply dying and any connection beyond that was an act of my imagination, not something inherent in the moth's death, which isn't to say that that connection shouldn't be made, but merely to acknowledge that the connection arose from the imagination. + +Umong fishpond, Chiang Mai, ThailandEventually as new people arrived questions and answers began to repeat themselves and as discreetly as possible I slipped away and wandered down to the shores of the pond to watch the cumulous clouds forming over the distant hills. I sat for a while on a small bench near the shore thinking of the clouds and the patterns and shapes we sometimes see in them, which like the moth's circle are inventions of our mind at play. As I stood to walk home it occurred to me that perhaps that the joy of life is not to puzzle out the connections between things, but to play amongst them and with them. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-01-17-down-river.txt b/jrnl/2006-01-17-down-river.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f57acca --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-01-17-down-river.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 19.875064447947235,102.13199614056808 +location: Luang Prabang,Luang Prabang,Lao (PDR) +image: 2008/mekongslowboat.jpg +desc: Traveling the Mekong River by slow boat from Huey Xui to Laung Prabang. +dek: Morning in Chiang Khong Thailand revealed itself as a foggy, and not a little mysterious, affair with the far shore of the Mekong, the Laos shore, almost completely hidden in a veil of mist. The first ferry crossed at eight and I was on it, looking to meet up with the slow boat to Luang Prabang. +pub_date: 2006-01-17T20:13:26 +slug: down-river +title: Down the River +--- + +Morning in Chiang Khong Thailand revealed itself as a foggy, and not a little mysterious, affair with the far shore of the Mekong, the Laos shore, almost completely hidden in a veil of mist. The first ferry crossed at eight and not wanting to get caught in the mess of tourists crossing that day, I made sure to be on the first ferry. + +Morning Mist Mekong River LaosAfter crossing through the respective borders and getting my passport stamped, I made my way up the road to the docks where I was to catch a slow boat to Luang Prabang. My head was full of statistics as I walked through the bustling border town of Huey Xui, Laos. I half expected to see a sign that said welcome to the Mekong Valley where the U.S. led troops of Laos and Thailand never fought a secret war, where there were not one and a half more bombing sorties flown than in all of Vietnam, where the total metric tonnage of bombs dropped was not 450,000 which of course, was not a whooping half ton per man, woman and child in Laos, because if it is not written down, it did not happen. But there was no commemoration of the terrible legacy that still haunts Laos. + +You would never even realize a war had been fought here from aboard the slow boat where I and roughly sixty other passengers sat in cramped quarters watching the green jungle covered hills slide past. Indeed it was hard to imagine that anyone would want to invest the staggering $2 million dollars a day every day for nine years that the U.S. invested into the war in Laos. And yet the fact remains, Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the history of warfare. + +The slow boat, which is not necessary slow, it just isn't a speedboat several of which passed us in the course of our two day journey and without exception the passengers looked, cold, windblown, probably near deaf and generally miserable; the slow boat was meant for perhaps forty passengers, could actually seat about thirty and yet as with any transportation in the east, was packed to the gills. But the tight quarters often turn out to be fun in perverse ways; there is a certain bond that forms among those that suffer together. One of the best things about traveling is the people you meet, whether they are fellow travelers or indigenous locals. I had met up with a Swedish man named Robin and an Israeli lad, Ofir on the bus ride from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong and since we were all headed into Laos and down the Mekong to Luang Prabang, we just sort of fell in together. On the boat I found myself seated next to an Irish girl, Siobhan, who later tagged along with our multi-national travel party for a few days. + +Edward Abbey, the source of today's title, once wrote, "everyone must at some point go down the river." No stranger to rivers, Abbey went down a few, both the metaphorical and literal sort and my journey down the Mekong was similarly filled with both the metaphorical and literal journeys. It took two eight hour days in cramped conditions to get from Huey Xui where we crossed into Laos, to Luang Prabang, which was to be my first stop. I was glad for the company of Robin, Ofir and Siobhan, but still there were long periods of near silence in which everyone's face seemed to me lost in some private mental journey, as if it were not possible to simply go down a river, but that the action necessary required an equal action on the part of the mind. + +I do not know what absorbed my fellow passengers between reading and talking, those relatively quite moments (save for the continuous roaring white noise of the smoking diesel engine) where we simply stared at the limestone cliffs or the sandbars along the shore, but for me the mental journey became a process of abandonment. To say that traveling changes you would be a gross misstatement, but it does bring into focus any number of things that may have previously only lingered on the peripherals of your mind. My journey has been a slow process of letting go; I would not say I am different than when I left, but nevertheless I suppose I somehow am. At the end of the day, when the sun sets over whatever river you happen to be headed down, there is inevitably some change from that foggy morning that saw you off. You must let go of things to travel down a river. + +Mekong Sunset, LaosAnd while a voice in the back of my head said just before I stepped off the boat in Luang Prabang, you cannot let go completely of anything, you will always have this thin strand of cotton wrapped about your smallest finger if for no other reason than to let it fall aside is to abandon hope entirely, I did, somewhere in the muddy waters of the Mekong, cast off huge chunks of myself, chunks that had been falling away for some time, but now perhaps because of the river, perhaps only the free and empty time, those chunks seemed to slough off at last. Most of these things that fell off me were too nebulous or vague to understand, I could not for instance say what I was letting go of or whether or not I would miss it, rather that the process of letting go was what was difficult. The thing or idea or dream was inevitably a product of my imagination, it had never been real to begin with, so letting go of **it** was natural, even if the process perhaps was not. + +On the second day, after talking for a while with Siobhan about how dreams and traveling intermingle, I was in the ensuing silence suddenly struck by the thought that perhaps our dreams are ultimately acts of arrogance, or at least become so when we cling to them too tightly, cling to them until they do not guide us, but imprison us. Dreams must be cast off before reality is allowed to happen. + +Which is not to say my friends that a dream can not merge with reality, that they can not be one and same, but merely that they must be let go of in the mind before they will take shape in the world. It is perhaps the act of letting go that eliminates the certainties of cannot or will not, and replaces them with might, could and have; or, to put it in the vernacular of James Bond film titles, never say never. + +This feeling grew stronger and more disorienting when I fell ill with a bout of food poisoning. I lay on the floor of the guest house bathroom for the better part of two days vomiting horrible liquids out both ends of my digestive system, not a pleasant experience I can assure you, but somewhere in those tortured early morning hours, as I hugged the porcelain toilet that had become to sum total of my universe, it occurred to me how quickly our worlds can be reduced. Not just dreams we may try to let go of, but also our physical worlds and not only are we incapable of ever saying anything with certainty, we are incapable of even saying that. In other words, to say there is no certainty is itself a statement of certainty and therefore we find ourselves right where Joseph Heller so aptly described in *Catch-22*. + +Did I travel for two days down the Mekong River here to Luang Prabang? Is there a place where you still are, that I am not? Is there a place here that I am and you are not? Uncertainties I cannot wrap my still fevered brain around except to say that however the words might twist and turn like the Mekong, in the end they are the only things that make it real to me. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-01-17-king-carrot-flowers.txt b/jrnl/2006-01-17-king-carrot-flowers.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9bf053b --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-01-17-king-carrot-flowers.txt @@ -0,0 +1,69 @@ +The light outside was still the inky blue of pre-dawn when the freezing cold water hit my back. A cold shower at six-thirty in the morning is infinitely more powerful than a cup of coffee -- especially when you have no towel to dry off with. + +After dropping my body temperature a few degrees drying off under the ceiling fan, a cup of tea seemed like a good idea so I stopped in at the restaurant downstairs and, after a cup of hot water with some Jasmine leaves swirling at the bottom of it, climbed on my crappy rental scooter and set out for Doi Inthanan National Park. + + + + +I'm not normally much of a morning person, but I know if I wanted to ride the 200 km journey to the highest point in Thailand in a single day I had to start early. + +I rode out of Chiang Mai in the early morning chill. You don't think of Thailand as cold, but it can be plenty cold up here in the mountains. I rode with fists clenched and teeth chattering uncontrollably, but the freedom of having my own transportation paled any discomforts the cold brought about. + +I had forgotten what freedom a vehicle of one's own can provide and I had never known the freedom that a motorbike provides. A motorbike, whether it be a clumsy scooter like mine or a more powerful, faster motorcycle, is to driving a car as body surfing is to using a board. + +Without the surfboard or the car there is a greater intimacy with the environment. The pavement, the curbs and lines of paint, the wind and the whip of passing cars and trucks, the grass growing in the cracks whizzing past below your feet, all of these things and a million other details you don't have the time to absorb become a symphony of movement not unlike the breaking of a wave, a singular sensation which absorbs and is absorbed by your body whole instantaneously and yet seems to stretch on forever. + +
+ +After a 60 or so kilometer ride on the main highway south of Chiang Mai I turned off onto the national park road and began to ascend through the dry grassy chaparral foothills and into the forest proper. My first stop was a small but peaceful waterfall. In fact nearly all my stops on the way to the summit were waterfalls except for one Karin village where I had lunch. + + + + + +My chief reason for coming to the park was the lady slipper orchid. There are many kinds of lady slipper orchids, which as you might imagine has a flower that resembled a lady's slipper, but the particular variety found here is only found here and nowhere else in the world (in the wild anyway). + +Ever since spending time with the orchids at Jim Thompson's house, I have been studying up on them and wanting to see more. The previous day I rode the motorbike up to the Mae Sa Valley where there were a number of orchid farms and a very large botanical garden. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +It was at the Queen Sikrit Botanical Garden that I first read of the Lady Slipper Orchid that resides solely in Doi Inthanan National Park, and the specificity of such an ecological niche fascinated me. + +While wandering slowly through various greenhouses full of the same purple and orange and yellow orchids I had seen in Bangkok and elsewhere, I began to wonder why it was that some are right here, right everywhere, while other orchids require searches that lead to the far ends of the earth whether that be deep in the jungles of Thailand or the keys of Florida. + +What precisely is that drives evolution into such narrow back alleys that it can produce a plant on one mountain or one corner of a swamp and no other? Do all the pieces ultimately fit that tightly? If they do then what does it mean when it turns out that the piece does not fit? What if the mountain changes, the icy northern glaciers begin to grow, the temperature drops and the orchid finds itself alone, stranded atop a mountain it never intended to climb? + +The basic orchid flower is composed of three sepals which make up the outer whorl, the part we generally think of as the flower. Within this structure there are three additional petals which form an inner whorl. With in this is a tongue or lip-like platform for pollinators. The lady slipper belongs the family Pathiopedilum, in which the two lower sepals of the flower become fused together and the lip, instead of being flat, takes the form of a slipper. + +
+ +From the first waterfall where I lingered maybe an hour studying the water polished rocks along the shore of the river above the falls, I continued upward pausing at the Wachiratan waterfall. The Wachiratan falls were larger and engulfed in a misty shroud of white with rainbows arcing out through the spray, moving and receding as I walked around, changing my angle from the sun. + +To escape from the chill of the spray I wandered down the riverbed among oaks and cashew trees with Tamarind trees reaching high into the sky and massive impenetrable stands of bamboo dark and foreboding in the growing afternoon shadows of the forest floor. + + +I had the rather optimistic idea that perhaps I could find a Lady Slipper Orchid clinging to a tree or sprouting out of a rock, but with a flower that rare, one does not just stumble across it. Somewhere along the way I discovered the road also led to the highest point in Thailand as well. + +Near the summit I paused to let some trucks pass and then waited a while not wanting to ride in the trail of exhaust they left behind. I sat on the bike staring at a pinkish leafed tree which stood out against the otherwise green hillsides. Behind the pink tree an afternoon thunder cloud drifted slowly by. + +At the summit I rested for a while beside a sign that read "The Highest Point in Thailand," which was clearly not the highest point in Thailand. To get to that required a five minute walk up from the parking area to the summit of the hill. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +At the summit after guzzling a bottle of ice-cold water and studying the map for a while I headed back down to a checkpoint I had passed on the way up. This checkpoint according to my information had one of the rare lady slipper orchids growing on the back of the soldiers quarters which the rangers would be happy to show you, if you stopped to ask. + +It took only ten minutes of motorless gliding down the hill to reach the checkpoint. I inquired after the orchid, but it turned out that the plant in question had died. With little time left before sunset I was forced to give up the search for a lady slipper orchid and head home. diff --git a/jrnl/2006-01-19-hymn-big-wheel.txt b/jrnl/2006-01-19-hymn-big-wheel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d9ca4fd --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-01-19-hymn-big-wheel.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 19.827433510057354,102.42279051308633 +location: Luang Prabang,Luang Prabang,Lao (PDR) +image: 2008/bluemilkwaterfall.jpg +desc: Sitting in the middle of the river listening to the gurgle of water moving over stone and around trees I began to think that perhaps this is the sound of some lost language, a sound capable of creating mountains, valleys, estuaries, isthmuses +dek: Jose Saramago writes in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis that the gods "journey like us in the river of things, differing from us only because we call them gods and sometimes believe in them." Sitting in the middle of the river listening to the gurgle of water moving over stone and around trees I began to think that perhaps this is the sound of some lost language, a sound capable of creating mountains, valleys, estuaries, isthmuses and all the other forms around us, gurgling and sonorous but without clear meaning, shrouded in turquoise, a mystery through which we can move our sense of wonder intact. +pub_date: 2006-01-19T19:37:46 +slug: hymn-big-wheel +title: Hymn of the Big Wheel +--- + +A misty haze settles over the Mekong River Valley every evening; it begins to gather as an almost imperceptible smoke around sundown, the mountains begin to look farther away, less distinct and then it builds through the night reaching its apex somewhere in the "Bible black predawn" as Jeff Tweedy put it. + +The fog burns off by midmorning, noon at the latest, but for those of us already stirring, perhaps seated at breakfast, bundled in sweaters, the mist has a chill that seems to work its way through any number of carefully layered clothing. When the midday sun finally breaks through the last of the fog and is replaced by a shockingly sudden and intense heat, the sweaters and jackets are quickly shed in favor of short sleeves. + +I have been traveling with, as mentioned previously, Robin and Ofir, as well as a Scottish couple Phill and Lorraine, and an Austrian man named Harry, none of whom have left any inclination toward temples and stuppas, which I sympathize with and understand, once you have seen a couple of temples you have essentially seen them all, and yet I feel compelled to see them still. + +Temple, Luang Prabang, LaosSo I set out alone to see some of the many temples dotted throughout Luang Prabang. As I could have predicted, the temples of Luang Prabang are more or less the same as the others I have seen in Chang Mai or Bangkok or Nepal or India or, well, visit enough temples, shrines, synagogues, churches or any other place a culture calls holy, and you'll quickly realize there is only one thing, call it what you will, only one thing, that dwarfs our existence. For some it may be god by any number of names, but for me it simply wonder, wonder that any of this could have happened, wonder that anything exists, let alone me and wonder that I and the rest of it continue to exist. + +After spending the better part of the morning at a few temples basking in this sense of wonder it seemed only natural to set aside the manmade and head to the natural, the source as it were. + +Robin and I teamed up with a fellow American, Ed, to rent a songthaew out to Tat Kung Si waterfall. The limestone riverbed below the main falls creates series of smaller cascades and the river lacks much in the way of banks; instead it spreads out and flows almost arbitrarily over the whole area wrapping around the trunks of trees and dodging obstructions on its way down to the Mekong. I don't know if it's the stone in the area or some mineral in the water, but the deeper pools that form beneath the falls were a brilliant turquoise color and perfect for swimming. + +Tat Kung Si Falls, LaosAfter a very steep, abrupt and very pointless climb to the top of the highest falls which in the midday heat quickly reduced Robin and I to panting, sweat-soaked misery, we returned to the crystalline waters which had never looked so inviting. We swam for a while in the lower pools and I chatted with Ed, a semi professional photographer, about various photographic geekery which I hadn't thought about since I dropped my art major ten years ago. + +As luck would have it the pool we swam in had a nice tree extending out over it which allowed for excellent jumping and being the sort that still finds infinite pleasure in the simple act of hurling my body out into space, I made several jumps off the tree into the pool which did nothing to help the headache I already had. + +Later, after drying off, I sat at a picnic bench and ate lunch while the package tourists wandered by cameras dangling and with much pointing enthusiasm. I had heard so much about Luang Prabang before coming, everyone raved about it, but I have been somewhat disappointed. I imagine five years ago Luang Prabang was probably alright, but with the paving of highway 13 and the advent of an airport capable of international flights Luang Prabang has turned to yet another touristy trap, which is unfortunate, but seemingly unavoidable. + +River, LaosI decided to take an amphibious walk through the trees to see if perhaps I could clear such negative thoughts from my already overworked brain. It was slow going because of slickness of the limestone, but I managed to work my way downstream to an old water wheel now in a state of disrepair and obviously not used in ages. What struck me most though was that the water no longer flowed beneath the wheel so that even if it weren't falling apart it still wouldn't be able to turn. Lower down the stream I had taken a picture of another wheel, also not working, but still surrounded by water. I started to take a second picture of this wheel but for some reason I stopped. Instead I sat down on a small stone and watched the water swirl past me on either side, still thinking about the sense of wonder that arises whenever I stop to think about anything really. + +But this word wonder is not really what we're after is it? Too nebulous and vague, it could even be something like nostalgia, a failure of feeling, Wallace Stevens called it. No, what we are after is more specific than wonder, perhaps awe or amazement would be closer, perhaps it's a word that doesn't exist, perhaps Jewish mysticism is right after all, we have forgotten the true name of god, or possibly we never knew it. It may well be something that exists before language or beyond language or outside and removed from language altogether. And of course we know language has is shortcomings, the cynical like to remind us that the words are not the things, that words cannot express anything really, that they are a delicate web fabricated and sustained by nothing other than more words, but what else have we got? + +It could also be that the language is in fact that very thing that severed us from this lost word, perhaps language was once something other, not words that conveyed meaning, but sounds that made objects, a language not a reflection, but creation. Jose Saramago writes in *The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis* that the gods "journey like us in the river of things, differing from us only because we call them gods and sometimes believe in them." + +Sitting there in the middle of the river listening to the gurgle of water moving over stone and around trees I began to think that perhaps this is the sound of some lost language, a sound capable of creating mountains, valleys, estuaries, isthmuses and all the other forms around us, perhaps this is the sounds of what we feel, gurgling and sonorous but without clear meaning, shrouded in turquoise, a mystery through which we can move our sense of wonder intact. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-01-21-i-used-fly-peter-pan.txt b/jrnl/2006-01-21-i-used-fly-peter-pan.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fc3a3fd --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-01-21-i-used-fly-peter-pan.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 20.853678554651314,101.19094847224211 +location: Luang Nam Tha,Luang Nam Tha,Lao (PDR) +image: 2008/gibbonexperience.jpg +desc: The Gibbon Experience: sailing high above the jungles of Laos on ziplines. +dek: The next time someone asks you, “would you like to live in a tree house and travel five hundred feet above the ground attached to a zip wire?” I highly suggest you say, “yes, where do a I sign up?” If you happen to be in Laos, try the Gibbon Experience. +pub_date: 2006-01-21T19:42:47 +slug: i-used-fly-peter-pan +title: I Used to Fly Like Peter Pan +--- + +

[Update (09/26/06): Many thanks to Ray who left the current link to The Gibbon Experience Website in the comments below. One assumes that the contact form on their site is working...]

+ +

[Update (7/31/06): For those of you wanting to do this trek... We arranged things from Luang Prabang via email (they have several addresses on this page). Some people have reported that the gibbon experience email address is not working... your mileage may vary. They do actually have an office in Huay Xai, Laos on the main street near the ferry to Thailand. If you're crossing over from Thailand walk up the sloped driveway and hang a left. It's about three doors down on the left (by the way all those people selling you boat tickets along the way are generally a rip off, hitch a ride over to the actual dock and you'll pay less). Sorry that's all the information I have. If you know something more I left to comments open below, feel free to add knowledge.]

+ +The next time someone asks you, "would you like to live in a tree house and travel five hundred feet above the ground attached to a zip wire?" I highly suggest you say, "yes, where do a I sign up?" + +In my case the signing up happened via email over the internet with a semi-mysterious word-of-mouth-only outfit known as The Gibbon Experience. Luckily Robin was familiar with the Gibbon Experience and insisted that we go and check it out. The journey into the northern part of Laos began inauspiciously at the Luang Prabang bus station where, after waiting three hours, we discovered we had been sold tickets to a bus that was already full. Owing to a lack of time (we needed to be in specific place at a specific time in order to be picked up by the Gibbon Experience truck), we were forced to charter a mini bus from Luang Prabang to Laung Nam Tha. Although not cheap, the mini bus did have one nice part, we got to travel at night and have the next day free to explore Laung Nam Tha. Regrettably there isn't much to see in Luang Nam Tha, it's a rather small town on the banks of the Nam Tha River and not much seems to happen there except for the occasional wedding. + +With the exception of route 13, which runs from the far south up to Pak Mong in the North, there are no paved roads in Laos. Thus travel beyond Laung Nam Tha is a fairly arduous, and in the dry season, dusty journey, which is better than the wet season when the roads are impassible. We could have chartered another mini bus, but we decided it would be more fun to take the local bus the rest of the way. The next morning at about six AM Robin and I bought tickets for the bus to Huay Xai and had a woman at our guest house write the name of the small village where we would get off in Lao. After packing up and catching a quick breakfast, we hoped on the bus and handed the sheet of paper to the driver who kind of nodded vaguely. The bus rarely got above 30km/hr, which, having since then ridden on many a local bus in Laos, I can now say is normal. At some point, coming down a fairly steep incline, I turned around to see how my travel companions were fairing and found the visibility inside the bus was limited to about 1 meter, after which everything vanished in an impenetrable mustard yellow cloud of dust. + +unknown village LaosWhen we finally disembarked at the small village the three of us looked like old men, hair and skin silvered with dust and clothes decided more brown than not. After we straightened out some accommodations with a local family, we deposited our backpacks in their living room and, with the help of the local children, made down to the river where we swam for a while, trying in vain to get the dust off our bodies. Later, after watching the sunset over the hills opposite the river, we had dinner on the porch with the Lao family hosting us. The most common food in Laos is sticky rice and though we did not know it then, that meal marked the beginning an eight-day stretch in which we would eat sticky rice (along with a variety of vegetables) for every meal. Luckily I like sticky rice; Ofir and Robin were decidedly less thrilled with the food. + +The next morning after breakfast, a slightly disconcerting meal that was suspiciously similar to dinner and since it was served cold, I could only assume it was in fact dinner; two trucks pulled into the village with the rest of the people for the trek.Strangler Fig Treehouse, Laos Because the tree houses have a limited amount of space, the Gibbon Experience takes only twelve people at a time into the jungle. After meeting the rest of the group (who were traveling from Huay Xui at the other end of the long dusty road), we traveled about two hours up a smaller and even worse road to another village. From there we hiked for roughly two hours to reach the first zip line and tree house. The next tree house was connected to the first by a series of zip lines running through and over the jungle canopy; the highest ran about one hundred fifty meters (500 ft) above the ground. Luckily heights don't bother me, but some people in our group were clearly nervous the first day. As time went on most people adjusted or just learned to not look down and by the third day we were all zipping around for fun. + +Treehouse One Gibbon experience, LaosThe first night Ofir, Robin and I stayed in the main tree house along with three people from England, and a Scottish man, Donald. After watching the misty clouds form in the valleys below us and eating morning glory leaves with sticky rice, one of the volunteer guides from the Gibbon Experience came up to the tree house and we passed around a bottle of lao lao, which is a local rice whiskey. At some point one of the English lads came up with the idea of slowly cabling out to look at the stars. A few of us clipped onto the zip lines and slowly pulled ourselves out into the pitch black jungle to look up with the stars. As with the camel safari back in India, there were more stars than I have ever seen, and again the giant clouds of the Milky Way were visible with the naked eye, but this time I was seeing it suspended from a wire forty meters in the air. I actually pulled myself all the way over to the hillside opposite the tree house and stood for a while in the darkness of the forest listening to various animals rustling about in the leaves and thinking about the now endangered tigers that may or may not have been lurking close by. Eventually when the mosquitoes found me I took a running leap off the platform and into the complete darkness of the jungle, zipping back toward the warm orange glow of the tree house. + +The next day a few people decided to go for a hike to the unfinished fourth tree house which overlooks a waterfall. Having had my fill of waterfalls in Luang Prabang, I decided to lounge around the tree house and get a little writing done. Ofir, one of the girls that works for the Gibbon Experience, and I sat around the tree house most of the morning sharing travel stories and recommendations until a curious creature showed up on one of the extending limbs of the tree. The animal was about the size of a large raccoon with the body and movements of squirrel. According to the girl, who had been there for six months, even the folks at the Gibbon Experience aren't sure what this animal is called. Unknown Creature, LaosThe Lao have a word for it, which I can neither pronounce nor spell, but no one seems to know the species name or any English common name for it. If anyone out there recognizes this animal or knows someone who might, contact me since the folks at the Gibbon Experience would like to know what it's called as well. And just for the record, no it wasn't **that** close to me, the close up photograph was taken by pointing my camera lens into the eyepiece of a 75X spotting scope. + +For the second night Robin, Ofir and I moved to the smaller and more isolated tree house two. Located about halfway down a long ridge, tree house two has a more commanding view of the surrounding wilderness. It's also only a twenty-minute walk from tree house three where everybody went to watch the sunset. Walking back in the rapidly approaching darkness was a bit eerie since we all knew from talking to the guides that dusk is the tigers' favorite hunting time. We never saw any tigers nor any signs of them, but something attacked the pig which lives under tree house one, though it didn't manage to kill it. The other thing was never saw were the namesake black gibbons, though we did hear them singing in the mornings and evenings. + +Zip Lines, Jungle, LaosThe Gibbon Experience was by far the best thing I've done so far in my travels and if you ever happen to pass through Huay Xai, Laos I highly recommend it (the office is just up the hill from immigration on your left). So far the project exists solely by word of mouth and even somehow managed to stay out of the Lonely Planet Guidebook. At some point in the next two years the Gibbon Experience will be turned over to the local people who are being trained and supported for now by three volunteers and the French man who started the whole thing. Hopefully it will, as it was intended to do, help show the local villages that sustainable long-term use of the forest is in end more beneficial than the logging and poaching on which much of the local economy currently depends. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-02-04-lovely-universe.txt b/jrnl/2006-02-04-lovely-universe.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3e744cb --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-02-04-lovely-universe.txt @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 18.92544862065571,102.43755339150223 +location: Vang Vieng,Vientiane,Lao (PDR) +image: 2008/vangveing.jpg +desc: I would like to say that I have something memorable to write about Vang Vieng, but the truth is we mostly sat around doing very little, making new friends, drinking a beer around the fire and waiting out the Chinese new year celebrations +dek: I would like to say that I have something memorable to write about Vang Vieng, but the truth is we mostly sat around doing very little, making new friends, drinking a beer around the fire and waiting out the Chinese new year celebrations, which meant none of us could get Cambodian visas until the following Monday. We were forced to relax beside the river for several more days than we intended. Yes friends, traveling is hard, but I do it for you. +pub_date: 2006-02-04T23:43:28 +slug: lovely-universe +title: The Lovely Universe +--- + +Because we didn't find out about the Gibbon Experience until we were halfway to Luang Prabang, we ended up making a loop through northern Laos and in the end Robin, Ofir and I found ourselves once more in the border town of Huay Xai. Robin had to return to Thailand and then headed home to Sweden. + +After talking it over for a while, Ofir and I decided that two more days on the slow boat back to Luang Prabang was marginally less miserable than taking the bus back over the dusty roads. Beside which the slow boat is good way to meet new people, so we ended up returning full circle to Luang Prabang. + +As it turned out the second trip down the river was an entirely different experience. Our boat was not a talkative bunch and we didn't meet anyone, but I did spend a good bit of time listening to music and contemplating the life the Strangler Fig Tree. + +In the west (or America anyway) the Strangler Fig is more commonly known as the Banyan tree and is most notable for its long drooping roots (which make it ideal for building tree houses since it's a very stable tree). But the most interesting thing about the Strangler Fig is how it grows. The seeds from a mature tree are eaten by arboreal animals that then deposit them (crap them out for the none scientific among us) in the branches of some unsuspecting and already full-grown tree. For a while the Strangler Fig lives a bit like an orchid (and is perhaps one of the reasons people think orchids are parasitic, but they aren't) attached to the host tree, but not yet parasitic. + +As the Strangler Fig grows its roots head downward, thin tendrils searching for the ground. When the roots finally reach the ground they dig in and begin to wrap around the host tree's roots stealing its water and nutrients. From there the fig just sort of takes over and eventually the original tree dies, but you can generally still see the trunk buried somewhere under the roots of the full grown fig. The largest Banyan tree in the world is somewhere in India and occupies the better part of two acres, but in Laos, because the fig must reach up out of the jungle canopy to get light, the trees tend to be tall rather than spread out. + +The fig is, though it may be a bit cynical to say so, is not unlike the ever growing tourism industry. One can almost see the way in which the first guest house in any given town started as a purely separate existence, an oddity growing in the branches of a village, but then, over time, the roots of travelers begin to squeeze out what was once a farming or fishing village, until at some point a critical mass is reached. Sometimes, as in case of Luang Prabang, it's fairly easy to find that tipping point, things like the UNESCO seal of approval and the completion of an airport might well be the moment the roots of the original tree finally give in, the economy shifted and what remains is merely tourism, a fig tree in which an endless amount of guesthouses and western style restaurants begin to appear. + +But perhaps the tree is best left simply as a tree, a good place to build a tree house if that is your inclination, or maybe just something to marvel out while you float down the same river that already took everything out of you; what's left when everything is gone? Laos. Whatever the case Ofir and I had already decided we didn't want to spend any more time in Luang Prabang. + +Sunset view from the river, Vang Veing, Laos + +The plan was to buy a bus ticket and then take it easy, eat an early dinner and catch up on some sleep. Of course when you're traveling that's easier said that done. We were sitting in small cafe on the main street in Luang Prabang when suddenly Ofir jumped up and took off down the street. I saw him talk for a while to someone and then the two of them came back over to the table and I met Andy, a German man Ofir had traveled with some months ago in India. Andy invited us to dinner (which is strange invitation to people eating dinner, but hey) with some people he had met on the slow boat two days before, which is the semi-convoluted way in which I met, Matt from Holland, Jackie, Keith, Matt from London, Georgia, and Debi. Of course the names mean nothing to you, so lets at least try it with a picture, from the back left corner: Ofir, Matt from Holland, Keith from Ireland, Jackie from Germany, Debi from London, Matt also from London, Georgia from Australia and me. + +Group shot, Vang Veing, Laos + +Ofir and I were headed for Vang Vieng and so was everyone else so we made plans to meet up at some point. After traveling more or less constantly for ten days over some very bad roads and very long rivers, Ofir and I arrived in Vang Veing with the intention of doing nothing for at least a week. After that we were planning to head back into Thailand. I had some work to do, articles to write and websites to build so the down time was good for me. Vang Vieng was a curious little town, a town where the strangler fig of tourism long ago squeezed out whatever the village used to be. But sometimes you need a bit of westernism. At this point Vang Vieng is chiefly famous for inner tubing trips down the river and its endless row of bars, the majority of which play old episodes of *Friends* from morning far into the night. + +Vang Vieng, Laos + +I spent the majority of my time in Vang Vieng lying back in a small thatched awning hut beside the river, feet kicked up, alternately reading, writing and watching the light change hues through the afternoon. In the evenings, just after sundown, the cliffs in the distance emitted a massive smoky-looking plume out the western cliff face—bats, thousands and thousands of bats heading out into the night sky. It was one of the more amazing sights I've witnessed in Laos and it happened so regularly you could set your clock by it. + +When Andy and the rest of the larger group showed up, Ofir and followed them to new guesthouse which had nice sitting area, a free sauna, a great restaurant and cheap massages, which isn't bad for three dollars a night (Thank you Georgia). I would like to say that I have something memorable to write about Vang Vieng, but the truth is we mostly sat around doing nothing, making new friends, drinking a beer round the fire at night. + +Vang Vieng River Bar, Laos + +The only thing I managed to do was make a day trip down to Vientiane with Debi. Debi had an infected cut on her foot and wanted to have it look at by real doctors at the Australian clinic and I need to extend my Laos visa, which is strange considering I was only planning on spending a few days here to renew my Thai visa. So it was that we found ourselves at the bus station at six thirty in the morning trying to make a day trip to the capital. After taking care of the various medical and paperwork necessities in Vientiane, we passed the afternoon drinking beer at massage/spa (yes that is a strange place to spend your afternoon drinking beer, but if I were to list all the strange places there wouldn't be much else to write about). Having had no problem getting to Vientiane we assumed it would be no problem to get back, but such was not the case. Finally, after making a tuktuk powered tour of all three Vientiane bus stations, we finally found a bus back to Vang Vieng. + +The piece of bad new we discovered on our day trip to Vientiane was that Chinese new years was in full swing and unlike a western new years, the Asia countries take the whole week off, which meant none of us could get Cambodian visas until the following Monday. And so we were forced to relax beside the river for several more days than we intended. Yes friends, traveling is hard, but I do it for you. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-02-10-water-slides-and-spirit-guides.txt b/jrnl/2006-02-10-water-slides-and-spirit-guides.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..30092f2 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-02-10-water-slides-and-spirit-guides.txt @@ -0,0 +1,64 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 18.06285035750356,104.49783323740189 +location: Konglor Cave,Vientiane,Lao (PDR) +image: 2008/konglorcave.jpg +desc: If you find Ban Na Hin, Laos you're a better traveler than I. I'm still not sure how I ended up here, but I'm damn glad I did, it's been my favorite stop in Laos. +dek: The dramatic black karst limestone mountains ringing Ban Na Hin grew darker as the light faded. I was sitting alone on the back porch of our guesthouse watching the light slowly disappear from the bottoms of the clouds and wondering absently how many pages it would take to explain how I came to be in the tiny town of Ban Na Hin, or if such an explanation even really existed. +pub_date: 2006-02-10T19:47:12 +slug: water-slides-and-spirit-guides +title: Water Slides and Spirit Guides +--- + +The quiet clatter of palm fronds in the evening breeze reminded me of Goa for a while, but soon, as the sun disappeared behind the western mountains, the similarities disappeared, the wind kicked up and the temperatures dropped dramatically, hinting perhaps at an impending storm and which is something that never happened in Goa. + +The dramatic black karst limestone mountains ringing Ban Na Hin grew darker as the light faded and were it not the dry season it would be easy to believe the monsoon had arrived. I was sitting alone on the back porch of our guesthouse watching the light fade from the bottoms of the clouds and wondering absently how many pages it would take to explain how I came to be in the tiny town of Ban Na Hin, Ralph's Restaurant, Ban Na Hin, Laosor if there even existed an explanation. Just to consider how many first dates had to work out to even produce the DNA you call home is more or less a complete reconstruction of the history of the world. But then as we walked down to Ralph's restaurant I realized that kind of detail is best left to William T. Vollman and other prodigious folks with real publishers that deal print on real paper. + +My reconstructions are limited to the last several weeks, though at times even such limited recollections feel as though they might grow ever more detailed with every reexamination, another memory daisy-chained to the back of the one that preceded it, an effort that might ultimately require several chapters. Let us start with Ralph, or, as this chapter could be called, The English are Everywhere. On the bus ride from Vientiane to Vieng Kham we met an Englishman named Ralph, or, if I were to tell the story properly I would say, at some point on the bus ride, right near the end as a matter of fact, Matt wandered off for a bathroom break and returned from the bushes with an Englishman, which, as everyone knows, is not really uncommon, in fact I believe it's more unusual to find bushes lacking Englishman. Were I to ever climb Mt. Everest I would fully expect to arrive at the summit to see an Englishman enjoying an afternoon tea; the English are like that, wherever you go, there they are—Dr. Livingstone I presume? What's even more curious is that often these English folks are often not tourists but simply ended up wherever they are and apparently decided returning home was more traumatic than staying. So yes, out of the bushes came Ralph who as it turned out owned a restaurant in the Ban Na Hin (its worth pointing out that he had been on our bus the whole time, but see Englishmen don't meet each other on buses, they have to be out in foreign bushes before they notice each other). + +So with Ralph's help we were able to reach Ban Na Hin with no trouble at all and even better Ralph's wife Bon helped organize our trip to Tham Lot Kong Lo Cave (which was the real reason we had deviated off the main road in the first place). Bon seemed happy to arrange our transport to and from the cave and also went to the trouble of calling her cousin and arranging for him to make a five hour journey up river to pick us up and take us back down the Hin Bun River to the Mekong where we could continue southward. The Hin Bun River journey was the idyllic way out of the valley, which even the guidebook said could be tricky to arrange; I didn't have high hopes of finding a boatman, but it all worked out. + +The truth is though that it started much earlier than even this. Way back in Vang Vieng. Not unlike Agatha Christie's mystery novel *Ten Little Indians* people began to disappear from the group before we even left Vang Vieng. Some went back to Thailand and others on to Cambodia or Vietnam until in the end there remained only five of us, Jackie, Matt, Ofir, Debi and me. As I mentioned previously we were waiting for the Cambodian Embassy to reopen, or rather Matt, Debi and I were waiting since we had plans to head from southern Laos into Cambodia via the Mekong River. Jackie and Ofir wanted to see southern Laos, but were then headed to Vietnam and Thailand respectively. + +The five of us set out for Vientiane early one morning several weeks ago. Or possibly it was less than that; time is problematic when you're traveling. Whatever day it might have been, we reached Vientiane around noon. Vientiane is the largest city and capital of Laos, but it still manages to feel like a small town clustered beside the Mekong and looking peacefully across at the bustling Thai city, Nong Khai, on the opposite shore. Of course Vientiane has the usual amenities like internet and a wide variety of guesthouses and nicer hotels as well as a large selection of international restaurants, but for all intents and purposes it is more or less an oversized villages with houses made of concrete rather than bamboo. It is without a doubt the most laid back and relaxing capital city in the world. The only real reason we stopped for two nights in Vientiane was to renew our Laos visas and get Cambodian visas since the Mekong border in the far south is the one and only Cambodian border crossing that doesn't offer a visa on entry (I have since heard on good authority that the Cambodian border does now offer visas, but better to be on the safe side). + +After dropping our passports at the various agencies Matt and Debi and I went to the Laos National Museum. The National Museum was an interesting mix of natural history and political ideology. The highlight for me was getting to see the largest of the stone Jars that dot the Plain of Jars just outside Phonsavan, an area I originally wanted to go to, but ended up skipping out of sloth. The highlight for Matt and Debi was the signage in the political history area which constantly referred to "the Imperialist Americans and their puppet soldiers." Naturally I had to travel to the National Museum of the one country that Britain never colonized in the company of two Londoners. But I am winning on the "are-they-yours-or-are-they-mine" game that Matt and I came up with, which consists in finding the silliest looking, idiotic dressed or just generally annoying tourists and finding out whether they are British or American, because they invariably are one or the other. I am happy to report that the score is thus far 3-6, though I am willing to concede that since only 6% of the America population actually holds a passport, I do have a distinct advantage in the game. + +Other than the beating I took on the propaganda, the National Museum was surprisingly informative about the history of Laos and maybe the only place in the world where the French and Americans get lumped together as indistinguishable imperialists. The interesting thing is not one Lao person, even those that I knew are old enough to have been alive when American (and possibly even French) bombs were falling seem to care that I am American, which is a distinct contrast to some stories I have heard of both Americans and Canadians being insulted and spit on by the Vietnamese (why the Canadians got such ill treatment is a mystery, maybe they're guilty by proximate geography or something). + +Dinner by the Mekong, Vientiane, LaosBoth nights we ate dinner at the food venders along the banks of the river gorging ourselves on grilled pork ribs and plenty of laap, the national dish of Laos, or at least it should be, though truthfully it may be the **only** dish of Laos. In either case it's usually pretty good, mint, basil, chili and lime mixed with either chicken, pork, beef or, when by a river, fish. The second night in Vientiane we said goodbye to Debi whose foot still had not healed and was told by the Australian Clinic to go to Bangkok and seek, as they put it, "proper medical attention." Laos is not totally backward, though it is fairly primitive in some areas, medicine being one of them. The general consensus among travelers is that if you injure yourself in Laos, you go to Thailand. Or just amputate, whatever you prefer. Debi apparently wanted to keep her foot attached to her leg so she booked an early morning flight to Bangkok while the rest of us caught the bus south with the vague idea that we would get off in a small town named Vieng Kham and then catch a truck to the even smaller town of Ban Na Hin. Ralph and Bon made the journey simpler than we thought and even cooked us up some dinner at their restaurant. + +In fact we liked Ban Na Hin so much we decided to stay an extra night and spend an afternoon hiking to a waterfall. Unfortunately as previous mentioned, this is the dry season and in many places Laos looks more like Africa than the jungle you might envision, and the waterfall was no exception, trickling over the cliff with little more power than a gibbon with a full bladder. So it was that I found myself back early, showered and city on the back porch watching the sky, listening to breeze and waiting for the others. + +

Konglor Cave

+ +Though mentioned in the Lonely Planet guidebooks it seemed few people deviated from route 13 on their way from Vientiane to Pakse in the south, indeed in the four days we were in the Ban Ha Hin/Konglor Cave area we saw one other western tourist, Andy from Scotland who was traveling by motorcycle toward Vietnam. I would not say we were off the beaten path, but we were at the very least lucky enough to *feel* like we off the beaten path. + +Road to Konglor Cave, LaosOur journey began the next morning after knocking back an English breakfast at Ralph's restaurant. We were picked up by a sawngthaew, piling in with a dozen or so Lao people and a few bags of rice, the odd chicken and duck here and there, all in all a full load. The road, if it may be called that, which heads south from Ban Na Hin to the cave was every bit the torturous, bumpy, dusty experience we all knew it would be, but somehow having travel live up to your worst fears does not make it any easier to bear the bone-jarring, ass-numbing roller coaster ride on wooden planks. The best part was we already knew we would have to repeat the trip the next morning to catch the boat. + +Despite the rough ride the scenery was spectacular and there is nothing like careening across a dried up rice paddy with the afternoon light playing across the distant trees and limestone cliffs to make you feel like yes, finally I have made it out there, whatever out there may mean. After roughly four perhaps five hours, we finally made it to the small village of Konglor where we would be spending the night with a host family. Tree, Road to Konglor Cave, LaosBut before we had time to do much more than drop off the bags and grab a bowl of noodle soup, we were ushered down to the river and immediately set off for the cave. We were trying to make the trip through to the other side, see the hidden valley and make it back before nightfall so there wasn't a lot of time it linger. + +As would happen for the remainder of the time Matt and I traveled with her, the villagers immediately assumed he was her husband (later, in other places they would variously assume I was her husband); we decided without much debate to just leave it alone, since explaining cultural differences in broken English, French and Laos would be more confusing than just rolling with it. The idea that an unmarried woman would travel with three men is apparently unfathomable for the Lao. So it was that Matt and Jackie piled into one canoe and Ofir and I in the other and we set off down the river toward the cave. + +I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting the cave to be like, but I wasn't quite prepared for how absolutely massive it would be inside. According to Lonely Planet it's about 150 meters at its widest and about as high at its tallest. There were several places where the river was too low and we had to get out and wade while the guides carried the boats over various rapids and rocks, but then at other times my headlamp disappeared into to water that seemed like it may well have been 150 meters deep. Inside Konglor Cave, LaosWhen I talked to Ralph about it later he said that no one has any idea how deep it is in some spots and the large cavern where we stopped to look at some stalactites and stalagmites has been extensively explored but no end yet found. If you happen to be into spelunking and such, this is definitely the place for you. + +On the far side of the cave from the village is a huge hidden valley ringed on all sides by karst limestone ridges. The water level was not high enough, nor was there enough daylight left, to go very far into the valley, but we did stop at the first village and enjoy some warm sodas and played with the local children. The sodas and everything else that the village gets that isn't grown by them must come like we did, through the cave. The surrounding ridges are impassible to all but the hardiest of climbers and for all intents and purposes impenetrable. The tribal people that live here came through to escape persecution at various times in their history and so far it has proved entirely successful. + +After taking some pictures and sharing them with the local children (the digital camera is a boon to the language barrier the world over, snap, display, laugh, etc), we piled back in the boats and set off. The boat Ofir and I were in was decidedly slower than the other and we were soon alone in the darkness of the cave, this time without the light of the other boat in the distance. But being the slow boat was actually quite nice since when we finally came out the other side of the cave the sunset was in full swing and as we headed upstream the local people were just wading out into the water and beginning to cast their nets looking for tomorrow's food.Sunset, Hin Bun River, Laos + +Back at the stilt home where we were staying Ofir and I had dinner with our host family, sticky rice and an omelet with some instant noodles (for whatever reason in Laos, instant ramen noodles are regarded as a delicacy, I think more for the ease with which they can be prepared than for the taste, but many a restaurant proudly advertises "instant noodles here"). The dinner conversation was, well, it was non-existent since our Laos was probably better than their English, but we managed to convey a few ideas through hand gestures and some consolation with the back of the guidebook. After dinner Ofir and I went out to explore the village and maybe stumble across a cold Beer Lao, which we managed to find and again endured the awkwardness of impenetrable language barriers. I have managed to pick up a little Lao, I can count to ten, order food, say hello, goodbye, please, thank you, you're welcome, how much, and more of these sorts of things, but nothing approaching conversation. But the Laos people seemed quite happy to talk amongst themselves and watch us drink our beer. We already knew it would be an early night; Lao villagers go to bed around eight pm, which was just as well since we had to get back in the truck at six AM. + +I lay in bed for a while with my headphones on, listening to music and thinking about life in Lao villages. I was trying to go over our actions of the last few hours and make sure that we had not offended anyone; the majority of villages in central and south Laos are animists and believe in spirits, the most important of which is often the house spirit. Consequently there are a number of things listed in the Lonely Planet book that one ought not to do inside a villager's house. For instance clapping is big no-no and will likely result in the slaughter of a buffalo to appease the offended spirits, which is something the villagers can't afford and certainly don't want to do. I'm not sure how intact these beliefs still are given the prevalence of satellite television in Laos (yes even the smallest villages the first thing they do when the get electricity is not refrigeration, it's television), but I didn't want to be responsible for the death of any buffalo. + +According to Ralph, and I relate this as purely anecdotal evidence, shortly after the quake that triggered the tsunami there was a residual quake somewhere in the mountains north and here and it would seem that some sort of large fissure opened up and for the better part of the day the river was swallowed by the earth. The villagers were naturally freaked out by having their livelihood disappear and after gathering the stranded, beached fish they promptly sacrificed a buffalo. One hour later the water begin to refill the riverbed and within the week the river was back to normal. So perhaps their faith in the spirits is understandably quite intact. + +There is a saying in Southeast Asia that the Vietnamese plant the rice, the Cambodians watch it grow and the Lao listen to it grow. I'm not exactly sure what this is getting at since I haven't been to Vietnam or Cambodia, but I think the gist of what it's saying is that the Lao are very very relaxed. And please don't confuse relaxed with lazy; when there is work to be done the Lao do it, but they do it at a Lao pace and according to what everyone who visits comes to refer to as "Lao time," distinctly slower and more relaxed than western time, Lao time accords plenty of the day to having fun. As Ralph said, when the Lao want to build a house they first have a party, when they get done building the house, they have another party. But it isn't that they don't want to build the house, they just seem to recognize that life is in some sense, or is for them anyway, much more of a relaxed, fun-filled experience than for many of us in the west with all our so-called modern worries. I don't know how long it will be before the Lao start to adopt such western worries, or even if they ever will, but let us hope it is no time soon. + +Its easy to see why communism is popular here, the Laos are essentially communist without the ideology, which is not to say that the ideology does not get in the way or that there is none of the usual corruption, of course there is that, but it is no worse than the States. For instance several Lao have complained to us that the hill tribes are being driven out of the mountains and down to the river plains so that the government can award illegal contracts to Vietnamese logging companies which then clear-cut the hills. But the people themselves in their everyday actions are close to what Karl Marx wrote about than anything I have ever seen elsewhere. Or perhaps really they are closer to what Rousseau wanted the ideal pre-civilized man to be; except that the Laos are highly civilized and yet they retain a spirit of community that simple does not exist in the west. + +And they do so without being tight lipped or exclusive, the Laos are in fact probably friendlier and even more inviting than the Indians. I'm not going to pretend to understand Lao culture, nor pretend I have been a part of it, but if you are walking down the street you will be inundated with calls of sabaai-dii (hello) from small children, babies perched in their parents arms, old women smoking cheroot, school children walking home in uniforms, teenagers on bikes, middle-aged Lao eager to practice their English and always excited to teach you some Lao. Late at night there is always someone willing to break the law, sell you a little Beer Lao and try to communicate through a mixture of all languages including the most universal—excitement. Of all the places I have been Laos would be top of the list for a return trip; perhaps it is after all really just a matter or listening to rice grow. + +Sunrise Hin Bun River, LaosThe next morning we awoke at five and walked down to the river to watch the sunrise as the women gathered water in buckets and the children splashed on the banks. Ofir and I then had a quick breakfast with our host family, after which, despite some harsh sounding words from the sawngthaew driver, our hosts preformed what is know as a Baci ceremony. We held a boiled egg and a bit of sticky rice in our right hand while the host waved their hands over ours, saying prayers and offering the rice to the spirits in exchange for luck. The ceremony ended with a simple pieced of string tied about our wrists. Because he was able to speak some French with the other host family, we later learned from Matt that the string brings the luck and blessing of the spirits with you on your journey. Say what you will of animism or any other primitivism spirituality, we have had extraordinary luck ever since those simple pieces of string were tied around our wrist. + +Many thanks to Bon and Ralph as well as Bon's cousin and all the others who helped us see the Hin Bun River Valley and welcomed us into their homes. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-02-14-everyday-fourteenth.txt b/jrnl/2006-02-14-everyday-fourteenth.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d9deed1 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-02-14-everyday-fourteenth.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 16.560435757136183,104.75026129218114 +location: Savannakhet,Savannakhet ,Lao (PDR) +image: 2008/hinbunriver.jpg +desc: We piled four large bags, four daypacks and five people in a six meter dugout canoe and set out down a no name river in central Laos. +dek: We piled four large bags, four daypacks and five people in a six meter dugout canoe. The boat was powered by the ever-present-in-southeast-Asia long tail motor which is essential a lawnmower engine with a three meter pole extending out of it to which a small propeller is attached — perfect for navigating shallow water. And by shallow I mean sometimes a mere inch between the hull and the riverbed. +pub_date: 2006-02-14T19:50:35 +slug: everyday-fourteenth +title: Everyday the Fourteenth +--- + +If the water had been high enough we could have simply headed downstream from Konglor village and followed the Hin Bun River all the way to a small village where we could walk to route 13, the major north south artery of Laos. + +Boat, Hin Bun River, LaosUnfortunately for us the water level was too low to leave from Konglor so we set off at 6 AM by sawngthaew to retrace the brutal journey of the day before. Perhaps it was the fact that we already knew where we were going, perhaps we stopped less along the way, perhaps we went faster, whatever the case, the second time the road didn't seem as long or as bad. We got dropped off at Ralph's restaurant, ate some breakfast and then took a tuk-tuk down to the river with Bon's cousin who was piloting the boat. We then piled four large bags, four daypacks and five people in a six meter dugout canoe. At least it looked like a dugout canoe, but it leaked like a sieve which leads me to believe there must have been a seam somewhere. Jackie and I traded off bailing to keep our bags dry. + +The boat was powered by the ever-present-in-southeast-Asia long tail motor which is essential a lawnmower engine with a three meter pole extending out of it to which a small propeller is attached—perfect for navigating shallow water. And by shallow I mean sometimes a mere inch between the hull and the riverbed. + +Hin Bun River, LaosWe passed through series of stunning valleys with jagged karst mountains on all sides. The dark limestone has a way of looking menacing and foreboding even in the glare of the midday sun. As with the untapped spelunking, there is a wealth of amazing climbing routes just waiting for first ascents from someone willing the brave the tigers and UXO. + +The scenery was beautiful, but the sun baked our skin and the hard wooden planks on which we sat for five hours without stopping did nothing to help our already sore butts. In fact even two weeks later as I write this, I still have difficulty sitting on anything wooden for more than an hour. There is certain point at which even molded plastic chairs seem like luxurious padding. + +We were dropped off in a small unremarkable roadside town and after paying Bon's cousin we walked up to route 13 just as the sun was setting and plopped our bags at the side of the road. I will admit that our prospects for a ride did not look good. We bet on how long it would take and it was Jackie, ever the optimist, who got closest—a mere ten minutes. We barely had time to buy some oranges before a bus came to a roaring stop next to our bags. Waiting for the Bus, Hin Bun, LaosWe threw our belongings on the roof and climbed over the various bags of rice and still flopping fish that are standard fare on any Lao bus ride. We didn't meet them that night, but there was another western couple of the bus who later confessed to being deeply impressed that we were just standing at the side of the road in a town that doesn't even make it on most maps. Of course the truth is our journey off the beaten path was anything but challenging, but naturally we didn't tell them that. + +Matt and I remained standing in the aisle most of the four hour ride to Savannakhet, which was just fine with me since I had been sitting for fifteen hours previously. Checking into a guesthouse in Savannakhet proved a surreal experience since the owner was watching BBC news; I hadn't seen the news since I left Thailand almost six weeks ago. It was vaguely depressing to notice that while the names changed and the countries involved were sometimes different, the news was essentially the same, probably always was the same and probably always will be the same. Ofir and I flipped on the in room TV and watched some Mad Max, which, like the news, was essentially the same as last time I saw it, but Mad Max has a character named "feral boy" which is something the news generally lacks. + +We spent the next day exploring Savannakhet by bicycle, but really there wasn't much to see so we mainly sat in the room recuperating and watching movies. Early next morning we continued on to Pakse, but after one night there we didn't see much point in staying. Jackie, Matt and I headed up onto the Bolaven Plateau to a small town named Tat Lo, which was essentially the same as Vang Vieng though slightly less touristy. Ofir decided to part ways and head down to the four thousand islands area since his visa was about to expire. We were sorry to see him go, especially me since I had been traveling with him for over a month by that point. Good luck Ofir, enjoy the rest of your time in Thailand. + +Tat Lo Waterfall, LaosTat Lo was peaceful and swimming in the waterfall on a hot afternoon was very refreshing but the place didn't really grab us. We decided to wait one extra day and see if Debi would indeed meet up with us again. The only remarkable thing that happened in Tat Lo was Valentines Day which we celebrated by, well, going to bed early and alone the way single people tend to celebrate Valentine's Day. Jackie very thoughtfully gave both Matt and I paper roses and cigarette lighters which she found god knows where. And of course we had nothing to reciprocate with which might go a long way to explain why the both of us are single. But then again the day before, riding in the back of a sawngthaew we watched a young Lao lad on a motorbike try to give a rose to a young Lao girl on the back of another motorbike, which would have been terribly endearing except that she didn't accept it. Sorry we're such flakes Jackie, but you already knew that; this post is hereby dedicated to you. Happy Valentine's Day. + +As I mentioned earlier the idea behind going to Tat Lo was to find somewhere pleasant to wait for Debi to catch up, but Jackie was out of time and went to join Ofir in the four thousand Islands before her visa ran out. I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip Jackie and I promise I'll visit you in Berlin. Matt and I were a little unsure what to do since we had told Debi to come to Tat Lo, but we didn't like it much so we elected to head farther out over the Bolaven Plateau to the town of Sekong. It turned out that Debi was having her own little misadventure having flown to the wrong city in Thailand. So she had to catch an over night bus to Pakse, which despite the hilarity of it (never have your brother's **ex**girlfriend book your plane flight, even if she is Thai), worked out perfectly when she met us the next night in Sekong. + +Many thanks to Ofir and Jackie for the use of their photos; the first is Ofir's and the one of us at the side of the road is Jackie's. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-02-18-safe-milk.txt b/jrnl/2006-02-18-safe-milk.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b5def62 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-02-18-safe-milk.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 14.623949505069236,106.5756225437582 +location: Sekong,Sekong,Lao (PDR) +image: 2008/usbombs.jpg +desc: If you were illegally bombing a foreign country, you probably wouldn't stamp your name on the side of your bombs. But that's what the U.S. did when it bombed Laos. +dek: You would think, if you were the United States and you were illegally and unofficially bombing a foreign country you might not want to stamp "US Bomb" on the side of your bombs, and yet there it was all over Laos: "US Bomb." Clearly somebody didn't think things all the way through, especially given that roughly one third of said bombs failed to explode. +pub_date: 2006-02-18T19:54:24 +slug: safe-milk +title: Safe as Milk +--- + +Sekong was a nice little town with not much in it save the UXO museum, which took all of five minutes to explore. The peculiar thing about the UXO museum was, well, you would think, if you were the United States and you were illegally and unofficially bombing a foreign country you might not want to stamp "US Bomb" on the side of your bombs, and yet there it was: "US Bomb." + +Of course the bomb in the photo below is probably fake, but plenty of the real ones lying about (disarmed and hollow of course) still had paint flakes that clearly read "US" on the side of them. Obviously somebody didn't think things all the way through, especially given that roughly one third of said bombs failed to explode. + +US Bomb, Sekong, LaosSekong province was the most heavily bombed area in all of the "Second Indochina War" as it's referred to around here. Indeed everyday we were in the Bolaven Plateau area we saw at least one U.N. UXO jeep either coming or going somewhere off in the countryside. That said, the threat to tourists is small, the major towns are clear (or simple relocated in the case of Paksong) and even the villages are for the most part no threat. Still Sekong province is not a good place to live out those cross-country bushwhacking-over-the-mountains-to-Vietnam fantasies you've been thinking about for years. If you are planning to travel off the major roads it's a good idea to hire a guide who knows where is safe and where isn't. And keep in mind that UXO is not just a problem here, the same trucks are scouring the hills of Bosnia right now as well, and as Matt and Debi told me even London still turns up the occasional German bomb when somebody digs a new foundation deeper than they should. The tragic reality of war is that it doesn't end when a truce is signed. + +One thing I did not know until I got to Sekong was that there were major ground battles in this area and in fact a U.S. led collection of Thai, Laos, and South Vietnamese armies held the area for a while before being driven out by the NVA. Most of the evidence of such activities, abandoned tanks, jeeps and downed warplanes, has long since been chopped up and carted off to Thailand or Vietnam for sale as scrap metal. Still one does see rather odd things like a thousand-pound bomb sawed in half length wise and turned into a planter for flowers, or a water trough for livestock. The hotel where I am writing this has chopped smaller bombs in half and turned then on their fins to use as ashtrays. + +But the reason we spent an extra day in Sekong has nothing to do with scrap metal or UXO; it was the people. I have written before about how friendly the Lao are, but the farther south we go the friendlier they get. Nearly everywhere we went in Sekong we attracted a throng of people just curiously following along, some stopping to practice their English or find out where we were from (and no they didn't seem to hold it against me that my country bombed the living hell out of them for ten years). + +The very first night, after we met up with Debi, we were all headed out for dinner when two teenage Lao girls riding by on a bike stopped to talk to us. For the most part they talked to Matt and Debi and I continued on ahead not thinking too much about it, people always stop to talk to you on the street. When Matt later joined us, he said that the girls wanted to show us around the town. Again we didn't think too much of it, people always want to show you around, sometimes you let them sometimes you don't. But then the next morning the girls were knocking on the hotel door at ten in the morning. Matt contempates the details of a Lao Wedding, Sekong, LaosAt this point Matt began to get a little nervous thinking perhaps he might end up in Lao wedding if he wasn't careful. So when we ran into them again down at the market and they helped negotiate a cheaper price for our tuk-tuk ride out to see a local waterfall, it seemed only polite to invite them along. I think Matt may have actually started sweating for a minute when we had to stop by the girls' house and meet their parents. It did seem for a while like Matt might be going on a date and of course I did nothing to discourage him from thinking that (hey what are friends for?), but at least half of his suspicions were unfounded. Or maybe a quarter of them. Actually, looking back on it now, he was probably right, he was on a date with a girl and her sister. + +Whatever their intentions were the girls were very nice and spent the afternoon with us at the waterfall. Debi at the pufferfish pool, Sekong, LaosThe waterfall deserves mention if only because the pool below it is apparently home to fresh water pufferfish with, and I quote from The Rough Guide, "a piranha like appetite." The locals claim the pufferfish seems to have a penchant for biting off the tip of a man's penis and we didn't see anyone venture into the lower pool the whole time we were there. Between UXO, penis eating pufferfish and teenage girls chasing blond Londoners through the countryside, we had an interesting afternoon. Speaking of blond I never realized how fascinating blond is to the people of southeast Asia; Matt gets stared at wherever he goes and sometime children will come up and try to pull the hair out of his arms as if checking to make sure it's real. Any westerner who travels to the smaller towns and villages will get stared out, but the attention you get if you're blond is easily double what I get. + +Waterfall, Sekong, LaosIn spite of the pufferfish we swam for a while (in the small pools above the falls rather than the big one below) and even sat in the middle of the falls and let the water cascade over us. Eventually it began to look like rain and thunder rumbled off in the distance (or possibly that was the UXO teams at work you never know), so we headed back to Sekong and had a late lunch. + +The next morning we left for Attapeu but not before the girls stopped by and gave us presents, some polished gourds whose purpose we weren't exactly clear on, but they were very nice. Debi and I couldn't help laughing when we noticed that Matt's gourd was larger, had been more ornately decorated and had a couple extra woven baskets attached to it. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-02-24-cant-get-there-here.txt b/jrnl/2006-02-24-cant-get-there-here.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..19a2a3a --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-02-24-cant-get-there-here.txt @@ -0,0 +1,59 @@ +The most magical light in Laos lives on the Bolevan Plateau. Not many tourists make it out to the Bolevan Plateau. I'm not sure why. The roads are good, transport runs regularly. The villages out here are peacefully quiet. You might even call them sleepy little hamlets if you were a travel guide writer. + + + +All in all the Bolevan Plateau is wonderful, but possibly in part *because* no one else is out here. It's just you, the river, and the people who call it home. + + + +In eight days of traveling we saw maybe ten tourists. The curious thing about it was that those we did meet seemed to assume that we must know what we were doing, where we were going, where they should be going. In fact we never have any idea what we're doing, out here especially. We were usually just wandering around, probably lost. Nevertheless, as luck would have it, the first question someone asked always turned out to be the one thing we did know, which gave this illusion that we knew what we were doing. + +Our last night in Sekong we met a very nice British couple who knew even more than us. And we ended up running into Jules and Ben again on the bus to Attapeu so we all shared a tuk-tuk to the guesthouse, which was actually more of a luxury hotel (by our standards anyway). + +This was where we discovered that many of the nicer hotels have rooms with a double and single bed, thus fitting three people and solving the chief dilemma of traveling with three people, which is that someone has to pay more for their own room. Splitting the nice hotel three ways brought the costs down to roughly equal what we would typically pay at a rundown guesthouse and it was, well, much nicer. + + + +As I've mentioned before, wandering off in the bush around this area of Laos without a guide is not the safest activity in the world, unexploded ordinance an all. Attapeu is about the closest you can get to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, epicenter of American bombing for much of the Vietnam war. Every other guesthouse and restaurant in these villages wants to take you out to see whatever is left of the war. + +Guides cost a good bit of money though. War tourism isn't all that appealing to me, especially if it's expensive. This time though, with five people, we were able to work out a deal that wasn't too much more than just the price of a motorbike for one person. So we went out to see the Ho Chi Minh trail. + +Ask your average American to describe what they think the Ho Chi Minh Trail looks like and they would likely paint you a picture bearing some resemblance to a cheesy Oliver Stone film, a thin trail snaking though the jungle, a network of tunnels and, as I used to think, they would likely say it ran through Vietnam. + +In fact the Ho Chi Minh "Trail" was a road, and not just one road, but a whole network of roads crisscrossing the jungle. The vast majority of it ran through Laos and Cambodia, not Vietnam. + +This is Laos though, so even though we asked to be taken to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, we were first taken somewhere else. Our guide really thought we would want to see a "tribal village", which turned out to be rather more like one woman camped out in the middle of the jungle, roasting a mouse for lunch. It reminded me far too much of the [zoo-like aspects of Shilpogram](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/around-udaipur) to enjoy it. It was one of the many moments I wish I knew more Laos. + + + + +The afternoon was somewhat better; we headed to Pa'am a small village at a junction on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The road getting there was a bit bumpy, especially for Matt and I. With the two of us on one motorbike we easily outweighed the rest of the group by quite a bit. On an aging Honda Dream with nothing much in the way of shocks (or brakes or mirrors for that matter), weight is not what you want. On the way there I made some attempts at dodging potholes and gullies (often skidding to do so), on the way back Matt decided that the straight path was at least quicker, if not smoother. + + + + + +In case anyone had any doubts about whether or not the Russians were helping the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war, they left behind a SAM missile and launcher (presumably the warhead has been removed, but we never got a straight answer on that). Otherwise the Ho Chi Minh Trail was somewhat anti-climatic. It's a famous road that turns out to be, well, a road. + + + +Back in Attapeu we took a stroll around the evening market and then headed down to the banks of Sekong River to watch the sunset and sip a Beer Lao. The light catches the water and seems to linger on clouds far longer than should be possible, like time is moving just a little slower than normal out here. We watched fishermen cast nets and canoes plying their way up and down the river with cargo hidden under tarps. Up the shoreline from us a group of boys played volleyball in the fading light. + + + + +If you look at a map of Laos there is a road that continues from Attapeu back around to Champasak where it rejoins route 13. This bit of road would make it possible to complete a loop around the Bolevan Plateau without having to retrace your steps. Unfortunately no public transportation plies this road. + +Later that evening, after the sun had gone down and we climbed up the bank of the river to a restaurant, we ran into an Austrian man who was traveling by motorcycle (real motorcycle, not a Honda Dream). He had just come over the road. He put it at roughly eighteen hours to cover one hundred kilometers and muttered something about "lots of rivers." He said he managed about five kilometers an hour most of the way, much of it in pouring rain. It made me wish, not for the first time, that I had a motorcycle of my own. + +The next day we did what we could and rented motorbikes again to see if we couldn't at least see a little of the now infamous (to us at least) road. Leaving Attapeu the road wasn't too bad, but looking off at the distant cliffs and hills of the Bolevan Plateau it was easy to see how the road would likely turn pretty awful, pretty quick. We ran out of daylight before we got that far. Nevertheless we had a good ride through the countryside stopping here and there to amuse the locals with our existence. I considered starting some sort of song and dance routine, but just showing up always seemed sufficient for side-splitting entertainment, especially for children. + +It was nearly nightfall by the time we made it back to Attapeu. We grabbed a bite to eat at small restaurant where some Vietnamese truck drivers plied us with drinks and made conversation in very rough English with the occasional Laos phrase. + +Walking home we decided to stop by the carnival that was in town for a few days. We wandered about the various stalls and threw a few rounds of darts at balloons. Debi and I won mints; Matt was somewhat more successful and won an orange drink of some sort. + +We also paid to see two obviously poorly treated monkeys ride bicycles around a centrifuge, which we at first thought might spin them around or something rather awful like that, but luckily for the monkeys their act was short and involved no spinning. + +The spinning was left to the bigger and perhaps one it tempted to say, not as bright monkeys -- humans. Using the centrifugal force about six circus performers climbed walls, sat on chairs and did other tricks for about five minutes. It made me dizzy just to watch them. + +Eventually the number of people began to dwindle and not wanting to steal too much attention from the real circus acts, we headed home, feeling not a little bit guilty about contributing to the rough treatment of what looked like some truly miserable monkeys. Back in the hotel we sat up watching *Lost in Translation* and drinking wine Debi brought from Thailand. The perfect way to end a day. diff --git a/jrnl/2006-02-28-little-corner-world.txt b/jrnl/2006-02-28-little-corner-world.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c763848 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-02-28-little-corner-world.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 14.130915842740961,105.83782194571636 +location: Four Thousand Islands,Champasak,Lao (PDR) +image: 2008/siphondon.jpg +desc: It's difficult to explain, but the further south you go in Laos the more relaxed life becomes. It's a beautiful thing. +dek: It's difficult to explain but the further south you go in Laos the more relaxed life becomes. Since life in the north is not exactly high stress, by the time we arrived in the four thousand Islands we had to check our pulse periodically to ensure that time was in fact still moving forward. +pub_date: 2006-02-28T20:13:00 +slug: little-corner-world +title: Little Corner of the World +--- + +After my time in Attapeu I felt I had had my fill of the various small towns in southern Laos. Debi and Matt opted to head up to Salavan and then on to a small village called Tahoy, where rumor had it the tigers were so plentiful it wasn't safe to go out at night. It sounded fun and if they had seen tigers, I would have regretted my decision, but I've come to be pretty wary of anything written in a guidebook so I opted to take the bus straight back to Pakse where I was pretty sure some website revisions would be waiting for me in my inbox. + +My hunch was correct and I spent a day and a half in Pakse working on the website I started way back in Vang Vieng. After a trip to the morning market the next day, I caught a truck down to Champasak where I was to wait for Matt and Debi. Morning Market, Pakse, LaosThe chief draw in Champasak is an aging wat that dates from the Angkor period and was apparently the northern most outpost of the Angkor Empire. Aside from the wat, the town of Champasak is yet another very sleepily and very small town along the Mekong, but not an unpleasant place to pass a few days. I briefly toured around the wat, which was nice, and perhaps a bit of warm up for Angkor Wat, but regrettably most of the great artifacts from Wat Phu were at some point carted off and then later returned and now housed in a museum at the base of the wat. + +Wat Phu is another UNESCO site and was at the time I was there an active archeological dig. Perhaps at some point the original statues, figures and carvings will be returned to the grounds of the wat, but for the time being there are house in air conditioned comfort and thus the wat itself is rather lacking. Just to once again slag the Lonely Planet Guide to Laos, if, as the book says, this is "one of the highlights" to your visit to Laos, well, I pity you, you have not seen much of Laos. [I have a sneaking suspicion that the authors of the Laos Lonely Planet deliberately build up the more touristy areas and neglect the lesser known parts out of self-interest—they want to keep the good stuff to themselves—which is fine with me since it isn't that hard to figure everything out once you get here, provided you invest a modicum of effort]. + +Mainly I spent my time in Champasak sitting of the veranda of my guesthouse reading and writing. The second afternoon, somewhat to my surprise, Debi and Matt wandered up the stairs.View from Guesthouse, Champasak, Laos I wanted to meet up with them again, but given that we had no real means of communication I wasn't sure it would happen, but luckily it did. The next day I met an American woman, Christie, and we all caught the bus down to the four thousand Islands to relax for a few days before heading into Cambodia. + +It's difficult to explain but the further south you go in Laos the more relaxed life becomes. Since life in the north is not exactly high stress, by the time we arrived in the four thousand Islands we had to check our pulse periodically to ensure that time was in fact still moving forward. That sounds like a complaint, but it's not meant to be. Southern Laos is simply, well, the villagers tend to the fields in the morning and evening, or fish or weave and generally the heat of the day is spent lying around trying not to move. There is good reason for that, it's hot and the air is deathly still most of the time. When the air does move it's somewhat like the puff of heat that might come from a convention oven when you open the door. + +I have long held to a theory that the environment shapes culture and the people who create it. For instance heavy industrial development does not seem to happen in equatorial areas and there's a good reason for that. Those that think the west is more "advanced" because of their work ethic or that sort of thing, ought to come out here to Laos and see how motivated for work they are at one in the afternoon. + +I came to the four thousand islands to avoid everything involving heavy machinery and peacefully wind down my time in Laos. There isn't much to see nor much to do, which provides some excellent time for lying in hammock and reflecting on the two months I've spent here. Just down the Mekong lies a whole new experience—Cambodia—but before I move on I wanted to spend a few days thinking about where I've been. + +Sunset over the Sekong River, LaosAs I've written before I had no intention of spending more than a few weeks in Laos, just enough time to see the big sights and then drop back into Thailand with a new visa. As fate or life or what have you often works my plans disappeared in a puff of smoke somewhere on the Mekong that first day in Laos. This compounded with some personal events that I will not mention here compelled me to dig deeper into Laos. For these reasons and many more, too many to list, Laos will always occupy a profoundly vivid spot in my memory. The people of Laos did what I did not think would be possible, they topped the enthusiasm, warmth and friendliness of India (which is in no way meant to diminish the Indians). The landscape is some of the most beautiful I've seen in Southeast Asia and I will return here someday, I wouldn't consider any trip to Southeast Asia complete without a few months in Laos. + +Farewell Laos and people of Laos, I look forward to returning one day. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-03-07-ticket-ride.txt b/jrnl/2006-03-07-ticket-ride.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9c737dc --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-03-07-ticket-ride.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 13.734549299840165,106.97941301763984 +location: Ban Lung,Ratanakiri,Cambodia +image: 2008/hondadream.jpg +desc: Riding the mighty Honda dream through the backroads of Cambodia. +dek: I can't see. My eyebrows are orange with dust. I cannot see them, but I know they must be; they were yesterday. Every now and then when her legs clench down on my hips or her fingernails dig into my shoulders, I remember Debi is behind me and I am more or less responsible for not killing both of us. +pub_date: 2006-03-07T23:39:02 +slug: ticket-ride +title: Ticket To Ride +--- + +I can't see. My eyebrows are orange with dust. I cannot see them, but I know they must be; they were yesterday. Every now and then when her legs clench down on my hips or her fingernails dig into my shoulders, I remember Debi is behind me and I am more or less responsible for not killing both of us. + +The sudden pain from her fingernails or the flashes of adrenaline that her periodic death grips induce are actually good, they snap me out of my daze and remind me that I am riding a motorcycle on a very bumpy dirt road. I can usually tell where the significant bumps are based on the amount of terror I've managed to induce in my passenger which is good since I really can't see through the dust and wind. The Honda Dream is capable of all. The worst dirt roads are nothing, the dirt bike a luxury no one can afford, fuck it, let's take a Dream. The Honda Dream is capable of anything. I unfortunately am not. The road is shimmering though I can't tell if it's the heat or the tears formed by dust and wind whipping up under, over, and around my glasses as if they weren't even there. Helmets? Helmets? You're joking right? **Name your top three memories from this trip** A voice. Coming from somewhere behind me, distant. I am simply trying to steer through the hunger and exhaustion right now; all my favorite memories of this trip are light years from my brain. When I get a bit feverish I tend to disappear into fantasyland and right when Debi was yelling her question in my left ear Scotty was yelling in the other ear, it's only a Honda dream Jim, you can't push ‘er any more than you are. And then the wheels slipped a bit on a curve that ended up being sharper than I had anticipated and I realized Scotty was right (is he ever wrong?). I slowed up a bit and tried to organize a response. + +At that moment all time seemed a bit compressed and I couldn't for example have told you if that slippage of the back tire was my fault or perhaps I was still on the back of the bike on my way down from Sarangkot to Pokhara, Nepal when the bike also slipped a bit coming round a corner. I did have a distinct memory that sprang to mind but I discarded it because it was less than an hour ago that we crossed the river and strolled up to the Kachon village, a moment that seemed lifted from Indiana Jones, provided Indy were to finally split into a triplicate of American and British particles. For a moment it felt as if we were the first westerners to have ever entered the village, but the girl with the Brittany Spears t-shirt on seemed to indicate that was not true. And then there was the coca cola and exchanging of money for a tour of the spirit houses. But for a moment, walking up from the sandbar where our boatman dropped us, already feeling the first signs of a fever and the beating afternoon sun cooking my face, for just a brief moment I understood what it must have been like to discover an entirely new world, to make contact with people that had never seen white men or women before, and though it might be illusion, it was nevertheless a curiously exhilarating moment. + +Beyond that immediate memory my brain was too fogged to come up with a true answer. Later over a late lunch I finally decided that indeed Sarangkot would be one, Udaipur at twilight would be another and our more recent trip through Kunglor Cave would be the third. Though the food helped somewhat, the fever tapered but did not depart for a few days. + +We had come out to Ban Lung, Cambodia because we knew the northeast corner of Cambodia was likely to be the least touristy part of the country and I for one knew that I needed to ease myself back into the concept of other white people being around. From the moment we crossed under the Laos border gates, Cambodia was immediately and obviously different from Laos, though in ways that are difficult to explain; I might be tempted to say Cambodia is more modern provided you were to take modern in the narrowest possible sense, but perhaps it would be even better to say that Cambodia is louder and more exuberant than Laos. Even the landscape changed significantly once we crossed the border, the trees were no longer leafless and dead looking, the timing of the monsoon here is obviously quite different than it is in Laos. + +We crossed the border at a no name town about two hours north of Strung Treng. After an uneventful bus ride to Stung Treng we set about hiring a taxi (the main mode of transport in the remoter regions of Cambodia is taxi). But this is not a taxi in the sense of a New York City yellow cab. A Cambodian taxi is a white, late model Toyota Camry. The Camry is considered to hold six passengers plus a driver and the purchase of a ride is by seat, but if you don't have enough people to fill all the seats you are expected either to wait until there are enough people or simply buy up the extra seats. Matt, Debi and IWe ended up buying the extra seats since we only have thirty days and Strung Treng seemed more of a crossroads than a destination. We spent the afternoon there waiting on a bus from Phnom Phen which might have been bearing some people interested in going to Ban Lung. We had a bit of an explore around the market and, much to the amusement of the locals, Matt and I decided to get haircuts. + +It was nearly nightfall when we gave up and bought the extra back seat and a Cambodian woman bought the extra seat in the front so that we set out with only five people in the car, which I suppose sounds normal to someone who hasn't been traveling southeast asia for five months where the general rule is if you can move, there's room for more. + +Perhaps the reason I say Cambodia is more exuberant than Laos is reflected by the curious characters we first encountered, namely a man named Mr. T in Strung Treng who spoke excellent English and spent the afternoon helping us organize the taxi. It is difficult now to recall any exact thing he did that could be called exuberant, but he had a personality that was somehow larger than life, which was shockingly loud compared to the people we met in Laos, who were every bit as friendly and helpful, but simply quieter and more reserved by nature. The second person I spoke with at any length was Mr. Leng of the Star Hotel in Ban Lung. We arrived fairly late at night, round tem Pm or so and Matt and Debi headed straight for bed. My seemingly chronic insomnia drove me downstairs to have a beer with Mr. Leng (a beer poured over ice, Cambodian-style he informed me, which isn't as bad at it sounds). + +It was Mr. Leng who gave me the hand drawn map we used the next day to try and find some waterfalls. Debi wasn't feeling well so Matt and I set out on our own. We found one waterfall with relative ease, but then failed to find the others. We did however ride through some quite amazing though obviously replanted clear-cut forests. Ban Lung ForestAnd we got an introduction to Cambodia scooter riding. We're no slouches with the Honda dream and we'd been down plenty of bad dirt roads in Laos, but neither of us had ever been passed by a man on a motorbike with his wife on the back who had a bag of vegetables in one arm and was breastfeeding a baby with the other arm, all the while bouncing over gullies and ditches as if they weren't there. It makes you feel. Well. Like you can do better. + +That afternoon we went back for Debi and then headed out to Boeng Yeak Lom lake, a crater lake formed by an asteroid or something of that nature since it really is a perfectly round lake quite obviously the result of some very large object. Since there are no volcanoes in the area the asteroid story makes since, though I have no idea whether it's actually true. Boeng Yeak Lom, Ban Lung, CambodiaRegardless of origin the lake was a very beautiful, idyllic spot to spend the afternoon swimming, floating and generally lying about doing nothing. + +The next morning we set out for the small village of Kachon people one of several ethnic minorities living in the hills here near the Vietnamese border. The ride out was fine and we managed to find a boat and cross the river to the village despite having no language in common with the people helping us. Rural Cambodian villages are not all that different from rural Laos villages, but this was the first time that the chief had come out to greet us, while the entire village gathered around to watch. We walked through the spirit shrines, which are something like a local variation on crypts, but with effigies representing the deceased person's occupation. + +Spirit Totem, near Ban Lung, CambodiaIt wasn't until later in the even when we were having dinner at the hotel restaurant and Debi casually said yeah that was really nice, quite lovely the way the chief came out and the children were sweet and that guy with six fingers and the boat ride… Wait?! What?! Yes it was only then the Matt and I realized we had apparently overlooked the fact that our boatman had an extra appendage on one of his hands. I don't know about you, but given that we were in a situation where no one could understand each other and there was no harm in saying whatever you wanted in English, I probably would have said, hey guys don't all look at once but that bloke over there has an extra finger. + +But maybe that's just me. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-03-14-blood-tracks.txt b/jrnl/2006-03-14-blood-tracks.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e00d593 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-03-14-blood-tracks.txt @@ -0,0 +1,50 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 11.56597559052094,104.92750166386062 +location: Phenom Phen,Phenom Phen,Cambodia +image: 2008/killingfields.jpg +desc: Fever dreams of Ban Lung, Kratie and Sen Monoron. Dysentery is a bitch. +dek: As I mentioned in the last entry I came down with a bit of a fever for a few days. This was accompanied by what we in the group have come to term, for lack of a nicer, but equally descriptive phrase — pissing out the ass. It's not a pretty picture. Nor is it a pleasant experience, and consequently I don't have a real clear recollection of the journey from Ban Lung to Kratie or from Kratie out to Sen Monoron. +pub_date: 2006-03-14T23:41:41 +slug: blood-tracks +title: Blood on the Tracks +--- + +It was a fittingly dull grey overcast sky, remnants of the previous night's thunderstorm which kept me up for an hour or more while I sat on the spare bed beneath the window watching the room light up like a dance floor under a strobe, it had stopped raining, but it was still cloudy when I climbed on the back of a moto and headed out to the killing fields. + +The killing fields outside of Phnom Penh are in fact just that, fields with depressions, large holes in the ground, some marked with staggering numbers, others with no sign at all. The Khmer Rouge slaughtered over 12,000 people at this site alone. It did not rain any more that morning but the sky remained dark and the holes were partially filled with water. + +As I mentioned in the last entry I came down with a bit of a fever for a few days. This was accompanied by what we in the group have come to term, for lack of a nicer, but equally descriptive term—pissing out the ass. Yes it's not a pretty picture. Nor is it a pleasant experience, but we have all done it, it was simply my turn. Consequently I don't have a real clear recollection of the journey from Ban Lung to Kratie, nor do I have all that great of a recall from Kratie out to Sen Monoron. I do however remember near the end of the journey to Sen Monoron, as I sat in the cab of a Toyota pickup with ass cheeks clenched and stomach rumbling ominously, we came upon an accident blocking a bridge. A large transport truck had rammed into the side of a bridge and apparently been abandoned. Truck Accident, Sen Monoron, CambodiaThe accident did not look recent, but the wreck remained. And was blocking all traffic over the bridge. The majority of the cars using the road to Sen Monoron were four-wheel drive and didn't have too much trouble heading down around the bridge and through the riverbed. Naturally our cheap transport was only two-wheel drive and very top heavy. After studying the situation for the better part of half an hour, our driver apparently decided he could do it. Wrong. Truck Tipping Over, Sen Monoron, CambodiaThe result was a heavily loaded Toyota pickup nearly turned on its side in the middle of a small riverbed. Luckily the villagers in attendance seemed to have sensed our driver's folly and were able to run in with various pieces of wood which they used to brace the truck and stop it from turning completely on its side. It took nearly an hour to get it unstuck and finally across the river. Rather frustratingly about three or four NGOs in their shiny new 4runners passed by without much trouble nor I might add offering much in the way of aid, despite what might have been stenciled on the side of their trucks. + +Matt has a fairly intense aversion to NGO's which I am beginning to share, needless to say this experience did not help their cause in our eyes. The thing is we have traveled quite extensively in the backcountry of Laos and Cambodia and we have seen some pretty intense poverty. However we rarely see NGO groups out in these areas. We tend to find them near large resort towns like Luang Prabang or Seam Reap where air conditioning and western food is plentiful, or as we would witness down south, NGO's seem to enjoy a bit of surf fishing from the comfort of their shiny 4x4s. So yes we have developed a healthy disrespect for those that claim to help, but spend their time close to the comforts of home. Lest we seem self righteous let me absolve a couple of spectacular NGO groups, the land mine people, that is, anyone clearing land mines and UXO, and the Friends organization in Phnom Penh which teaches street children how to cook and run restaurants. These two NGOs are superb and beyond reproach in all respects. However the vast majority of NGOs out here are, in the words of the English, a bunch of wankers. + +Where for instance were the NGOs in 1974? Where was the west in general when Cambodia needed it? Where was the west when 3 million people were killed in less than four years? It's easy to help when somebody else has solved the difficult problems (that would be the Vietnamese who, fed up with the Khmer Rouge, invaded Cambodia and drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979). + +And just who were the Khmer Rouge? For those that don't know here is the sound bite synopsis: in something like 1974 the US backed a military coup by a member of the Cambodian Army named Lol Nol. The coup disposed the King and sent him into exile. Just before he left he told the Cambodian people loyal to him to head to the hills and join the then fledgling Khmer Rouge. Lol Nol lasted some six months in power. The US backed him because he let them bomb the Viet Kong operating on Cambodia soil. Unfortunately he seems to have been quite corrupt and at the bare minimum was not popular. Roughly eight months later the US had lost the Vietnam War, pulled out of Southeast Asia and left behind a power vacuum (sound familiar?) which allowed the Khmer Rouge to step out of the jungle and into power. + +In the beginning the Khmer Rouge were simply Cambodian nationalists who opposed Lol Nol, but by the time they seized power the Khmer Rouge had transformed themselves into something approaching Maoists. The Khmer Rouge's goal was to an agrarian utopia in which all people were equal and worked the land. Unfortunately for the average person this meant the economy had to go. Money was abolished, the post service destroyed, and everyone was driven out of cities into the fields where they were worked to death. The Khmer Rouge set about destroying all literature, art, education, banned music, and basically took all the things that make life worth living and destroyed them. At some point a man whose name is undoubtedly familiar to most came to lead the Khmer Rouge, Brother Number One—Pol Pot. Under Pol Pot the killings escalated. Anyone educated was killed. Anyone literate was killed. Toward the end, anyone wearing glasses was killed. Those that survived did so by hiding and trying to blend in. + +For the actual killings the Khmer Rouge favored lining people up in a field beside a large hole and then walking along behind them bashing in the back of their skulls with a blunt hammer. If you consider they killed three million people in four years you arrive at a figure of over 2000 people a day. The killing fields genocide museum outside Phnom Penh is not the only killing field. There is no "killing field," there are thousands of them. Cambodia is covered in killing fields, the one outside of Phnom Penh is merely the one chosen to represent them all. + +During this time the west did absolutely nothing. + +The U.N. finally stopped recognizing the Khmer Rouge in 1991. + +Imagine for a moment of the UN had recognized the Nazi Party as the rightful leader of Germany until 1957. + +Killing Fields, Phnom Penh CambodiaAfter spending about an hour walking around the Killing Fields, seeing the graves, the tree where children where tied and beaten while their parents were forced to watch, seeing the clothes still leeching up out of the soil, seeing the tree where the Khmer soldiers hung speakers to blare music that would drown out the screaming, seeing the massive towering monument full of skulls and clothes, after seeing as much horror and sadness as I could bear and perhaps a little more, I sat down at a table beneath some trees and smoked a cigarette. Skulls, Killing Fields, Phnom Penh, CambodiaI found it somewhat odd that although the bench and table were concrete they had been molded and painted to look as if they were wood. I thought for a while about the tree rings on display at Sequoia National Park in California where each ring is marked with a corresponding event from history. You can see how large the Sequoia was when Christ was born, when China built the great wall, when Columbus discovered America, and so on. The rings painted on the table before me were spaced rather widely such that as best I could count, given that I am not an expert at such things, the faux tree appeared to be roughly thirty years old, as if the artist may well have intended it to be a way to peer back in time, to create a point a singularity if you will from which all modern Cambodian history must come. The Khmer Rouge reset the calendar, calling the year of their rise to power year zero. The fake tree trunk before was, whether intentionally or not, painted to look as though it began life in that artificial year zero. + +After a while my moto driver saw me sitting there and wandered over, I was half expecting him to say it was time to go, but instead he sat down at the bench opposite me and crossed his legs. *A very sad place no…?* he said. I nodded but did not say anything. I was trying the judge his age. As best I could guess he would have probably been around eight when the Khmer Rouge took power. There is an entire generation missing in Cambodia, people of his generation are few and far between and most that you see are actually Vietnamese or Chinese emigres. + +*I was very young when this happened.* He did not go on. I nodded and he smiled. He asked for a cigarette which I gave him. *I worked in a field. From before dawn to after dark. I was seven. It was very hard. I got a fever and the Khmer Rouge gave us rabbit shit as pills because they could not afford medicine. My parents were dead already, but I had seen my mother boil the leaves of that tree and give them to my brother when he was sick.* I looked behind me and he pointed, but I could not decipher which tree he meant. *So I crush the leaves and made tea and I got better.* + +He did not say any more except to mention that it was time to go if I wanted to see the film at S21, which I did. I sat on the back of the moto as we headed into town wondering what I would do in the face of something like the Khmer Rouge. I decided that I would try to flee, but I'm not sure if that's cowardly or not. If it was too late and I could not flee I do not know what I would do and I do not think anyone can know what they would do until they face such a situation. + +Torture Chamber, S 21, Phnom Penh, CambodiaS21 is perhaps a little less known than the Killing Fields, owing no doubt to its lack of Hollywood endorsement, but S21 is even more chilling for the fact that it looks as if it were abandoned yesterday. Originally a school, the buildings became the central processing area for Khmer Rouge detainees, which is a sanitized way of saying it was a torture chamber. With the typical despots flair for brevity it was designated simply S21. Of the more than 17,000 people that passed through the walls and corridors of S21 under the Khmer Rouge, seven were alive when the Vietnamese liberated Phnom Penh. Other than scrubbing the stains from the walls and floors it seems as though very little had been done at S21. It looks like it might have been an active torture chamber a few hours before you arrived. The left hand building is a series of classrooms each totally bare save for a wire frame beds, a wrought iron bar and a car battery. These rooms served as torture chambers where prisoners' were restrained while their fingernails were pulled out, their bodies electrocuted and battery acid poured on their skin. Standing alone in the bare rooms you can almost hear the screams. + +Victim Photos, S 21, Phnom Penh, CambodiaThe creepy thing about S21 is that the Khmer Rouge were methodical in their record keeping. Everyone who passed through S21 was photographed and a detailed biographical record was made. Some of these were lost, but the vast majority remain. Several halls of the museum are now simply rows and rows of black and white photographs of those who were tortured and killed at S21. I have not been to Auschwitz or for that matter any other genocide museum, but I cannot imagine a more stark and yet moving tribute to the victims than the bare walls and floors and endless rows of photographs. + +Child Victim, S 21, Phnom Penh, CambodiaAfter touring the various rooms and halls of S21 I went up to the film room to watch a documentary film about the Khmer Rouge. The film itself was good, but in no way as moving as the simple existence of the place, which has a physical reality about it that is far more chilling than anything cinema is capable of. I found my mind wandering back to the same question I had been asking all day, How? How could the Khmer Rouge have happened? I've read a couple of books about life under the Khmer Rouge but I still can't wrap my head around genocide, I just don't understand how it happens, or how it can continue to happen. Like most people I want to know some reason, but it's never that simple, there may not be a reason or even a collection of reasons that could explain the Khmer Rouge. + +It would be nice to think the Khmer Rouge were just plain evil or crazy, but I don't think it's as simple as that. Pol Pot was educated in Paris, the head of S21 was a former professor of mathematics and the guards were hardened and formed just like the sadistic guards of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Certainly these were not murderous simpletons on a rampage. The truth is there are a million tiny explanations, a million things that can add up to a genocide, but breaking them down and isolating them does not help to explain the overall phenomenon nor in my opinion does it help to prevent further genocides. I do not believe it is possible to stop wars. So long as there is a disparity of resources there will always be wars. And given that different climates are better and worse at generating resources there will probably always be a disparity of resources. But while it may not be possible to stop all wars, it may not be possible to stop all genocides, if we stop just one that would be a step in the right direction. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-03-16-beginning-see-light.txt b/jrnl/2006-03-16-beginning-see-light.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..93af448 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-03-16-beginning-see-light.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 12.821174848475923,104.04052732926735 +location: Floating Village,Phenom Phen,Cambodia +image: 2008/floatingvillage.jpg +desc: A village that floats on the water is not so ordinary as to be forgotten. And yet surprisingly a floating village is not that different than a village on the land. +dek: Surprisingly, a floating village is not that different than a village on the land. There are the same stores, the computer repair shop, the grocers, the petrol station, the temple, the dance hall and all the other things that makeup a town. I could even say with some authority that the town is laid out in streets, watery pathways that form nearly perfect lines. +pub_date: 2006-03-16T20:45:20 +slug: beginning-see-light +title: Beginning to See the Light +--- + +I once wrote a novel, which thankfully only one person has ever read in its entirety (thank you for suffering through it Rhiannon), and hopefully only one person will ever read. It's a terrible novel (though I like to think well written at least). It is the novel of a very young and very stupid man. While I will not profess to be any smarter I am at least older and I have come to absolutely hate the central premise of the novel. The central premise is so sophomorically postmodern as to be laughable, but here it is— nothing ever happens. + +The central character spends most of the novel waiting for something to happen. Yes just like the Radiohead song. When a band can summarize your novel in a three-minute pop song it's not a good sign. + +I have now after seven months of traveling come to have a journal full of notes, verbal sketches, transcribed conversations, anecdotal stories, and writings of that nature, which are chiefly concerned with the fact that something is always happening. In fact so many things are happening that I am sometimes paralyzed by the thought of having to choose what to record and what to ignore. + +I could for instance describe the early morning market in Phnom Penh that surrounds the bus station. I could tell about the bananas and dragon fruit, the fish arriving in trucks, the women walking among the stalls, the way they paused sometimes to feel the firmness of the piece of fruit or try a taste of some dried meat, the throngs of flies on the pig guts, the blood on the chopping block, the unidentifiable meat hanging in the dark rafters, the blue plastic tarps, the sound of the motorbikes coming and going, the dizzying rush of cars, the lottery ticket sellers, the taxi drivers waiting, the bamboo baskets full of freshwater clams, baskets full of dried shrimp, baskets full of chilies, baskets full of lotus heads, baskets full of dried fish, the baskets full of cucumbers, full of seaweed, full of tomatoes, full of beetles, full of fish, full of things I've never seen before, and the smell of fish and meat and cigarette smoke and rotting garbage and stale water and grilled meat and sautéed onions and noodle soup in bowls climbing up into the already steaming morning heat. + +But none of that is actually in the journal, that's just memory. And that skips all the fun of the dialogue, breakfast at a food stand, Matt and Debi and I bartering for tuk-tuks, waiting in the bus station…. + +I could write about the bus, the bags of mysterious liquid stuff hanging from the backs of the local's seats, the sticky rice with Soya beans cased in bamboo, the book I was reading, the sound of the woman's voice behind me, the creak of the rusty seats, the grinding roar of the engine, the smell of petrol, the inevitable stopping, the chickens clucking in their baskets, the pig squealing in his, or us falling asleep all askew with our mouths open, or the endless bartering to obtain motorbikes for the afternoon. We were headed you see to the floating village of Kampong Luong, just offshore from Krakor on the edge of Tonle Sap. And yes, you might think motorbikes are a poor mode of transport for a lake, but there was the ride to the lake to consider (and of course I have said before that the Honda Dream is capable of all, I have no doubt that somewhere someone has converted one into a boat). But see even with that I've missed a million little details. I remember for instance that on the way back the key bounced right out of my bike. Disappeared into the ether of Cambodian roads, never to be seen again. I remember the trucks and their deafening horn blasts that nearly unseat you when they sneak up behind you and let loose, I remember the laughter on the drivers face as he passed knowing he just nearly made you piss yourself. I remember stopping for petrol and losing something. + +Kampong Luong, Floating Village, CambodiaA village that floats on the water is not so ordinary as to be forgotten. And yet surprisingly a floating village is not that different than a village on the land. There are the same stores, the computer repair shop, the grocers, the petrol station, the temple, the dance hall and all the other things that makeup a town. I could even say with some authority that the town is laid out in streets, watery pathways that form nearly perfect lines. When viewed from above, I imagine the floating village would be scarcely any different than a normal village. But what made it special was that it was not a normal village and while a computer repair store may not be all that special in the average town, float one out in the middle of lake and it becomes fascinating. That such a thing might exist in floating village is remarkable, I for one was not expecting that people living on water would have computers, let alone have enough that there is exists a market for repair. After all it's only a ten-minute boat ride to shore. + +But the one place the notes and photographs fail me are when it comes to describing what it feels like to be there. The further and longer I travel the more I realize that I cannot begin to convey what these places feel like, the smells and sounds can be described, the sights may be captured in words or pictures, but then they are no longer sights, nor sounds, nor smells, they are simply words here on the page, on the screen, repeated in our heads. + +Floating Village, CambodiaI remember the sky was crystalline blue with windswept high altitude clouds that made the water seem brown and paltry in comparison. The villagers, ethnically Vietnamese, were not stoically unwelcoming as the guidebook suggested, but full of friendly smiles and gregarious waves (more or less everything in a guidebook is dead wrong, but you have to actually go somewhere to realize it). I do not know why the village was built on the water, perhaps it's closer to the fish, perhaps all the land was taken, perhaps it just seemed like more fun to them, but I can tell you there is something wonderfully appealing, magical even, amazing, bewitching and any number of other adjectives I can dig out of the Oxford English Dictionary about the place. But I can't tell you how it felt. Maybe ask Debi, she wanted to move in. + +But we wouldn't let her. So the next day we headed on around the lake to Battambang. Just outside Battambang is what's known as the Bamboo Railway. After the Khmer Rouge destroyed most of it, the local rail line was abandoned. Bamboo Railway, Battambang, CambodiaBut the people of Southeast Asia (and I imagine anywhere in the developing world where governments do not do the sorts of things we expect governments to do like build highways) are far too ingenious to let some abandoned track go to waste. They found a bunch of old wheel housings and built bamboo flatbeds for them. Throw in the ubiquitous four-stroke engine and you're away. + +It's a bit kitschy I suppose, even by local standards and it probably only persists because tourists like it, and it **is** fun. We hired motorbikes and rode out to the railroad, this time with guides. We were waiting for the locals to put together a bamboo car to take us back into town via the tracks when we noticed one of our guides was buying a grilled rat. We have seen rat for sale various places in the last two months, typically small villages in Laos, but we had never quite worked up the courage to try any. For me it wasn't so much that it was rat, it was more that it's typically been flattened to the point that it's lost a dimension and hardly seems worth it. Plus, well, it's a rat. We all sort of stood around watching as he ate it. He laughed at what must have been semi-horrified looks on our faces and offered us some. Girl with Grilled Rat, Battambang, CambodiaNow purchasing a whole rat always seemed to me a bit of a commitment, but trying a piece was not so daunting. Still I hesitated. Matt went for it, tore off a bit of stringy meat and started chewing it. Not to be out done I grabbed a piece and popped it in my mouth. Somewhere between chicken and beef, not what I would call good, but not that bad either. Eventually after exerting an undue amount of both Cambodian and English and American peer pressure we convinced Debi to have a bite. Some people claim there was physical cohesion, but that simply isn't true. Matt even had seconds. + +When I was laid up ill in Sen Monoron I watched a bit of the Discovery channel (and no one was eating rats). I saw one program in particular which fascinated me. Biologists in Africa who study elephant behaviors have come to the conclusion that when elephants lay their trunks flat on the ground they are actually listening (so to speak), to distant vibrations. Not listening to sounds that we could hear, or even sounds they could hear, but rather to the very deep long wavelengths of sound that we might, when they're big enough, feel as an earthquake. And what do the elephants learn from such listening? There were if I remember correctly several theories, but none of them are worth recounting, what interested me was that there are hundreds of vibrations that pass under our feet that we are simply not equipped to sense. In fact when you come down to it our sense have a very narrow biological slant—they keep us alive. + +But in narrowing down the world to what was necessary to survive we may have missed out on a whole lot of stuff that was well, fun. Eating rat was not biologically necessary, I wasn't even hungry, but it was fun. Maybe elephants lay their trunks on the ground and "listen" to distant vibrations because they enjoy it the same way your grandmother likes it when you call long distance or your sister likes a postcard from Africa to hang on her fridge or you like to stare at the sunset. Even animals stare at the sunset and you'll never convince me it isn't because they have fun watching it. It's been fun to realize how wrong I was. It's fun to know that something is always happening; you just have to know where to look. + +Matt, me, Honda Dreams, Bamboo Railway, Battambang, CambodiaMy only regret is I cannot capture details as a whole. I have to pick and chose and focus on individual bits to try and build a whole. But words are reductive, they take wholes and deconstruct them into parts and attempt to put them back together, but they never can. All the Kings men can't put the rat in your mouth, but I'm glad we have this at least, some little bit to give and take. Though it may not convey the spatial and temporal and it may not get you here or me there, it does serve as some bridge, however rickety, between worlds. And believe me you'd be surprised the rickety bridges that will actually hold your weight. Oh yeah and I regret that I have a really bad novel taking up space on my hard drive. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-03-18-wait-til-it-blows.txt b/jrnl/2006-03-18-wait-til-it-blows.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1d3e724 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-03-18-wait-til-it-blows.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 13.361228724078332,103.86148451313011 +location: Seam Reap,Seam Reap,Cambodia +image: 2008/landmines.jpg +desc: Land mines are the legacy of modern warfare and Cambodia has plenty. If you'd like to help, consider donating to the Aki Ra Landmine Museum. +dek: One the things I may have failed to mention thus far in my Cambodia reportage is that this was/is one of the most heavily mined areas in the world. You might think that removing landmines involves sophisticated technology of the sort you see in BBC documentaries on Bosnia, but here in Cambodia landmine removal is most often handled by the technological marvel of southeast Asia — the bamboo stick. +pub_date: 2006-03-18T23:52:55 +slug: wait-til-it-blows +title: ...Wait 'til it Blows +--- + +From Battanbang we headed northeast by boat to Seam Reap. The journey was a tedious and very shallow one. The guidebook makes a passing mention of the fact that local villagers are not all that fond of the tourist ferry boats and having ridden some way on the roof and watched the wake sink longtail boats left and right and snag and rip fishing lines and nets, I can see why. + +Eventually the river opened up into Tonle Sap and stopped disrupting the locals, but anyone thinking of taking the journey by boat, I discourage you from doing so. This is first thing I've seen in S.E. Asia that I think should be taken out of the guidebooks and avoided until it disappears. The journey isn't particularly nice or scenic and the fact that you piss off everyone along the way just makes it worse. Take the bus. + +We disembarked about 30 km south of Seam Reap and were met by a cartel tuk-tuk. There is a sort of cartel among guesthouses in Cambodia where you are more or less handed off to the next town. Typically you book a ticket through wherever you're staying and then they call a cousin in the town you're heading for and often they will meet you at the bus station or boat dock or wherever you happen to be arriving. Not to say that there's anything wrong with such practices, they're generally fine since all the guesthouses we've seen here are more or less the same thing with only minor fluctuation in price (the real secret in selecting a guesthouse is to take careful notice of any construction that might be nearby). The funny part about our waiting tuk-tuk driver at the dock was that he actually had a placard with our names on it, or rather the names Matt had given out when he bought the boat tickets. Fake names of course, and misspelled at that. + +The next morning we decided not to head straight for Angkor Wat. We slept in quite late and it was around two (heat of the day of course) when we decided to head out to the landmine museum. + +One the things I may have failed to mention thus far in my Cambodia reportage is that this was/is one of the most heavily mined areas in the world. The Thais, the French, the U.S. and others have all laid mines in the area, but no one laid as many nor with such sick preference for killing and maiming innocent targets as the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge mined the borders to keep everyone else out and the Cambodians in, they mined roads, they mined circular arcs around villages to prevent villagers from leaving. They mined rice paddies, they mined cities, they mined the jungle. They were the Johnny Appleseeds of land mines, except that it isn't funny. And there are still a lot of mines in Cambodia. + +Faux Minefield, Land Mine Museum, Seam Reap, CambodiaThe museum is on the edge of town (though give it a couple years and the town will have far over taken it) and consists of a large shed full of information on various landmines, their manufacturers and techniques for removal as well an educational video and, most fascinating, a faux minefield for you to stare at and try to determine how many you can see. Even when they aren't hidden, as they would be in the actual jungle, landmines are very very difficult to spot. I was feeling pretty good about spotting what I thought was most of the obvious ones when I happened to look up and notice that I was standing under a mortar shell with a bit of fishing line wrapped around a tree. If I were to have stepped to my left I would have tripped the wire. Or course none of them were real mines, but it was a bit unsettling nonetheless. + +Mr. Aki Ra who set up the landmine museum is dedicated to educating the public in landmines (he's also exhibited art as far away as Salt Lake City and participated in several documentaries on the subject). Judging by the photos around the museum area Mr. Ra has been in no less than five armies, which gives you some idea of the turmoil of Cambodian history, including the Khmer Rouge. But at some point, realizing that he had laid one to many land mines, Aki decided it was time to undo what he had done and he has dedicated the rest of his life to both the removal of mines and helping the victims of landmines. In addition to the museum the small compound also provides food and shelter for a number of landmine victims, most missing arms or legs, some both. + +You might think that removing landmines involves sophisticated technology of the sort you see in BBC documentaries on Bosnia, but here in Cambodia landmine removal is most often handled by the technological marvel of southeast Asia—the bamboo stick. (While that last sentence may sound sarcastic it's really not meant that way, In my five months here I have seen people do things with bamboo that had to have taken thousands of years to perfect. Given a choice between a power saw and a good piece of bamboo I would go with the bamboo). The museum has a number of posters showing the techniques used to find and remove the mines. Sadly the removal of mines generally begins with a local villager finding a mine. Provided the mine does kill the person who stumbles across it, Aki is called and comes out with a long piece of bamboo which he used to feel around the mine, determine what type of mine it is and very carefully extract it. Landmine removal has a zero percentage error factor, so the fact that Mr. Ra has been doing this for ten years obviously means he's good at it. Fortunately for the Cambodians most of the mines on their soil are generally older and not quite so deadly as the new and improved mines (like the "bouncing betty" made in the US and designed not simply to blow your legs off, but to actually bounce out of the ground and explode at chest height maximizing the "kill radius" as jargon would have it). + +Landmines aren't glamorous. They lack the universal terror of nuclear bombs or long-range missiles. They aren't the sort of thing anyone but the BBC is going to report on, but landmines kill more people than any other weapon deployed in the world. The problem with landmines is they last forever. Long after both sides have faded into history, the mines still exist. The mines lie dormant in the ground until someone steps on one, drives a car over it, ploughs it up in a field, or trips a wire in the bamboo thicket. Landmines are forever and then some. And because they aren't as obviously destructive as say a nuclear warhead, it's tougher to find support for their ban. Everyone is afraid of nuclear weapons, but only people who have actually dealt with landmines seem to understand how much more destructive and immediate their threat is. + +The real problem with landmines is that they exist. In late 1999 a treaty passed through the UN calling for a worldwide ban on landmines. Lots of people signed it. The U.K, Spain, Ukraine, Germany, 151 in all, but not, you guessed it, the United States. Ever wonder why? I wonder about these things. Why did China, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia and the U.S. not sign a treaty banning land mines? Are these really the countries we want to side with? Landmines aren't actually very effective in today's battlefield where increasingly robots and kids with laptops are the first ones to enter a potentially mined area. It turns out that the five biggest suppliers of arms to the world, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China and France are also all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. These countries have a necessary economic interest in wars; they manufacture the majority of the weapons used, regardless of whether their own troops are involved. And yet, as member of the U.N. Security Council they are ones who often have the power to decide whether or not the wars happen. + +So long as the military industrial complex is pressed between the sheets with the Federal government the landmines will keep getting made. And that's not an indictment against Bush, it's an indictment against the entire US government, Democrats, Republicans and any oddball third parties for good measure. Take away the military industrial complex and see how many candidates can afford television commercials. + +Do I sound angry? Good. I am. I've seen too many things over here to ever be able trust American government. I've seen the effects on innocent people. Regrettably I'm too much of a realist to believe anything can be done. Just remember when you head down to the polling booth to vote for whoever you think is right, that somewhere in the world someone is strapping on their prosthetic leg, or pulling themselves onto their wheeled cart. Someone who very likely has had little or no education, no food and no idea why someone s/he's never even met would want to take away their leg, their arm, or the lives of the ones they love. + +If you'd like to help I encourage you to do so. If you would like to donate some money to The Landmine Museum in Seam Reap, every bit helps. You can have a look at the international ban on landmines which seems like a step in the right direction (and co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize). Write to your senator/representative and encourage them to pressure Bush. Ask them why the U.S won't sign the treaty. But more than anything I encourage you to try to broaden your understanding of current international events. So much of what happens in the world is ignored by the U.S. media. I for one will never be able to read an American newspaper again. Nor will I suffer through the local news bullshit ever again. The whole global village thing that lots of pundits in America like to talk about already exists. America just isn't part of it. We remain with our heads in the sand. Someday the landmines will be on our soil and then we won't be able to bury our heads in the sand any more. We have a choice I suppose, do something about now while we have a choice or wait until we *have* to do something about it. Choose wisely. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-03-21-angkor-wat.txt b/jrnl/2006-03-21-angkor-wat.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d99f7c8 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-03-21-angkor-wat.txt @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 13.497808126788645,103.89289854510803 +location: Angkor Wat,Seam Reap,Cambodia +image: 2008/angkorwat.jpg +desc: Angkor Wat is crowded, but if you go out during in the heat of the day, you can almost have it to yourself. +dek: Roughly half a million people a year visit Angkor Wat. The first evening we decided to see just how tourist-filled Angkor was by heading to the most popular sunset temple, Phnom Bakheng, to watch the sunset. And there were a lot of tourists. Thousands of them. And that was just at one temple. Thus was hatched the plan: see Angkor in the heat of the day. Yes it will be hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot. But hopefully empty. +pub_date: 2006-03-21T23:55:50 +slug: angkor-wat +title: Angkor Wat +--- + +At some point during the four days I was in Seam Reap I emailed on of my friends the following, which she found utterly hilarious: "I can honestly say I have never been this hot or even close to this hot ever in my life. Right now it's about 8 pm and I'm sitting with a fan blowing on me and that does nothing to stop the sweat pouring off of me. It's hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot." Which, aside from Angkor itself remains my overwhelming impression of the place. + +I have since read in several places that mid March to mid April is the worst time to be in Seam Reap heat wise, but then again I never have been much for planning and that's what you get when you don't plan. So yes, it was hot. Really really hot. Think of Phoenix in the summer and then turn the humidity knob to the Spinal Tap favorite and you'll be in the neighborhood. + +But if it's going to be hot, well you might as well embrace it. We eschew air conditioning (why tease yourself?) and make it a point to do any walking in the heat of the day. Perverse though it may sound it's not without reason, particularly in tourist mecca's like Seam Reap where you can generally have the sites to yourself at those hours since no one else is crazy enough to go out at one in the afternoon. Including the Cambodians who, like the Laos and Thai, generally spend the hours of noon to two sitting in the shade under fans doing as little as humanly possible. The heat of the day is the way forward, trust me, but in Seam Reap we took it to another level by throwing in dehydration, hangovers and no sleep. It may not be the key to longevity if Benjamin Franklin is to be believed, but for Angkor Wat I firmly believe it's the way to do it. Or not. + +Crowds at Phnom Bakheng, Angkor CambodiaThree day passes to Angkor Wat can be purchased starting at 5pm in the evening and that evening does not count as one of the three days. I mentioned this to someone recently and they seemed a little surprised. "You spent three days at a temple?" Angkor Wat is, yes, a temple, but it's not the only temple. Angkor, as the general area is known, contains more than 100 stone temples in all, and is all that remains of the grand religious, social and cultural seat of the Khmer Empire whose other buildings — palaces, public buildings, and houses — were built of bamboo and are long since decayed and gone. Angkor Wat itself is the largest religious structure in the world (Though I suppose if you wanted to get technical, Animists, Transcendentalists, Pagans and any of the Goddess/Nature religions have the worlds largest religious site, since the whole world is a religious site in those religions). + +I have since read that roughly half a million people a year visit Angkor Wat. That first evening we decided to see just how tourist filled Angkor was by heading to the most popular sunset temple, Phnom Bakheng, to watch the sunset. There were a lot of tourists at Angkor Wat. Thousands of them. And that was just at one temple. Thus was hatched the plan. See Angkor in the heat of the day. Yes it will be hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot. But hopefully empty. What we were not counting on was the sudden appearance of Rob and Jules. + +After splashing out of a lovely dinner at a posh hotel, the three of us were innocently walking around Seam Reap looking for a spot to have a drink when all the sudden I looked up to see a strange man shaking hands and hugging Matt. After traveling for a while the appearance of random people you know is not all that odd, and in fact we had even heard Matt mention that some of his friends were in the area. We had even heard a few stories, particularly about Rob. Debi and I briefly discussed whether or not we ought to fade away and let friends from home catch up. It's one thing to run into people you have traveled with, that happens a good bit, but it's rare to have visitors from home. After conferring once or twice we decided that what we had here was a beautiful opportunity to hear hilarious stories about Matt from two of the people that knew him best. And Rob did not disappoint, he is a master storyteller, particularly the embarrassing sort of stories that we wanted to hear. And while I decided I would not repeat any of them here, I do have a couple questions for you Matt… what were you planning to do with the toilet? How did you get a large tree into the room? And why of all things a ski jacket? + +Anyway we stayed up far too late, drank far to many beer Lao and eventually decided that since sunrise was just around the corner anyway we might as well stay up all night and catch sunrise at Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat Sunrise, Angkor CambodiaWe started at Angkor Wat, which in spite of the row after row of coaches parked out front, didn't feel as crowded as it was. I went in briefly, but did not spend too much time exploring. I went back outside and made a few quick photos and then lay down on a stone wall and watched the onslaught of temple goers heading inward. + +I was feeling a bit grumpy by the time we headed to Angkor Thom and Bayon. Our tuk-tuk driver had put me in a foul mood. Generally speaking the people of Southeast Asia are the nicest and warmest I've met; unless they happen to be tuk-tuk drivers, the majority of whom can choke on diesel fumes for all I care. Our tuk-tuk driver started out nice and friendly and then things went downhill when he found out we didn't want to spend two hours inside Angkor Wat. Apparently he had agreed to another fare thinking that we would be in the temple for the standard amount of time. Unfortunately for him, this was not part of our plan. And this is the thing I hate about guides and drivers, you never get your experience, you get theirs. Eventually after arguing a bit, I simply walked away and let Matt use his diplomatic touch. I was all for the plan I used frequently in India—smile, jump out without paying and move on to the next tuk-tuk. + +I was going to skip Bayon and pass out in the tuk-tuk but since the driver was aggravating me, I decided to make a quick loop through the main courtyard. I did fall asleep in the tuk-tuk while Matt and Debi went to see a temple that didn't look like anymore than a crumbled wall of stones to me. + +I snapped to for Ta Prohm, which was the one temple I really wanted to see. Ta Prohm is the least restored, most overgrown of all the Angkor Temples and I was looking forward to seeing it. Ta Prohm, Angkor, CambodiaAs I wandered about Ta Prohm I couldn't shake the feeling that it all seemed somehow familiar to me. I started half thinking maybe I was getting in touch with a former life as a 700 AD Khmer priest when I overheard someone saying that Ta Prohm is where they filmed the first Tomb Raider movie. I've never seen the movie, but I did once for about a month get highly addicted to the game. I must confess to Shirley, that I really wanted to do some crazy kicking back flip combination move that would unlock all the cool weapons and find myself suddenly in possession of the grenade launcher, which was, in the context of the game, my favorite and highly overkill means of getting rid of the pesky bats that drain your energy bars. + +The real Ta Prohm has no bats, nor sadly, any sign of Angelina Jolie (though Cambodia is missing a small child; if anyone happens to run into her maybe mention it). It may not have been the religious experience it's builders envisioned but I felt strangely connected to it nevertheless, if only through a video game. + +The Angkor Temples are difficult to describe. For one thing all the temples are different and while they have common threads, such as sandstone blocks, they vary quite a bit in styles and even religion. The temples were built by various rulers of the Khmer Empire between 800-1400 CE during which time the principle religion was Hinduism. Thus the temples bear some resemblance to those I've seen in India, with bas-reliefs depicting Hindu mythology as well as the various exploits of kings and armies, but the architecture is unique and utilizes massive sandstone blocks. They are also all in varying conditions. Creeper Figs, Angkor CambodiaMany have been or are being restored. Others are still overgrown to the extent that it's difficult to tell whether the creeper figs (remember creeper figs? They're back) are holding up the walls or the walls are holding up the fig trees. I actually enjoyed the temples that were in various states of disrepair as they had more of a sense of history about them. After all one doesn't really expect buildings over a thousand years old to be in that good of shape, especially in this climate. + +But restoration seems to be the wave of the future. I for one hope they don't take it too far. However if they are going to take it too far, I have a suggestion. If they are going to restore the temples to "former grandeur" they may as well take the next step and improve upon them slightly. And what you may ask would I suggest as an improvement? Simple, the same thing I want every time I stand on top of something—zip lines. Think of it, you climb to the top of Angkor Thom or Angkor Wat, you don't want to climb down, the reward is in the uphill; the downhill is just a necessity, or in the in case of Angkor Wat, vaguely dangerous. Zip lines are the way forward. Clip on and away you go. Angkor Wat is only ten years from being Disneyland anyway, might as well get started with the rides. + +After falling asleep in the back of the tuk-tuk a second time we decided that perhaps skipping sleep, while adding a vaguely hallucinatory element to the temples, was maybe not the best way to see them. We went home and slept the remainder of the day. That evening over dinner we decided that tomorrow would be full on, none of this stopping at noon to get out of the heat crap. We set off just after dawn and did not return until after sunset. I climbed up and down so many temples I lost track of which were which, though truthfully I don't think it ever mattered to me. I am not a historian nor am I a temple connoisseur. Angkor Wat is a grand experience, but describing it seems tedious. There are a whole lot of limestone blocks, vines, moss and carvings. Carved Face Bayon, Angkor CambodiaAt its pinnacle it must have been quite a things to behold. But now it exists much like an echo, it gets inside you and bounces about in some way you can't quite figure out. We spent the entire day dragging our grumpy and very reluctant tuk-tuk driver all over the place, not in the usual order, we just glance at the map and went here, then there, then back to here then… it was great, I've never enjoyed temples so much as when we sat in the shade of a pillar atop, well I could look up the name I suppose, but it really doesn't matter. We sat in the shade of a pillar and looked down on the courtyard below and passed long periods of time in total silence praying for the occasional puff of wind the might make you temporarily feel like it was just hot, instead of hot hot hot. + +Later in the evening we went back to Angkor Wat proper to watch the sunset which was this time quite nice and not too many tourists about. I climbed up to the top and spent a good while dodging security guards who were trying to get everyone out before the sunset. I wanted to be up there to watch the sun actually set. Luckily the shadows deepen around then and with a bit of walking in carefully timed circles and sliding into darkened corners, I was able to pull it off. Eventually I wandered back out to the courtyard to find Matt and Debi passing a few surprised security guards on the way. If you planned ahead and brought a pillow you could probably spend the night up there. If you wanted to that is. + +Like the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat is, despite the hype, a pretty amazing monument. Its architecture is based around Hindu mythology with the five towers representing the peaks of Mount Meru the center of the universe (think of Meru as the Mt. Olympus of Hindu cosmology). The walls surrounding the temple are meant to represent the mountains at the edge of the world and the moat symbolizes the oceans beyond. Naturally this sort of embedded architectural meaning extends down to the smallest levels as well. The Entire wall of the inner temple is lined with various bas-reliefs that tell the story of Hinduism which one archeologist called the greatest linear stone carvings in the world. It's no wonder that everywhere you go in Cambodia there's a picture of Angkor Wat, from the flag to a can of beer. + +Beng Melea, Outside Angkor, CambodiaBut that said, I think the best temple is actually outside the immediate area of Angkor. About sixty kilometers northeast of Angkor lies the temple of Beng Melea. Not only has it not been restored at all but the Khmer Rouge helped the forces of nature out a bit. What remains is a truly Indian Jones, buried in the jungle, sort of adventure that could awaken the amateur archeologist in even the most jaded of temple visitors. Beng Melea is also a sprawling large temple which covers over one square kilometer. As with Ta Prohm, Beng Melea is overrun by vegetation, giant piles of crumble stone are now buried beneath the descending roots of fig trees and the walls that still stand are spider webbed with roots and vines. There are very few carvings or bas-reliefs. Our guide claimed that when the temple was active it would have been covered in painted frescos and carvings, but the jungle and rain have claimed their own. Beng Melea was constructed before much of Angkor and may in fact have been a sort of prototype effort so it has a rough around the edges feel to it. At the time of its construction, Beng Melea sat on the crossroads of several major highways that ran to Angkor, Koh Ker, Preah Vihear (in northern Cambodia) and northern Vietnam. Now Beng Melea is quite removed from any crossroads and to get there required the longest tuk-tuk ride ever—something like two hours each way. I ended up thinking that perhaps a compromise is best, let Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom and the other temples be restored, but leave some, Ta Prohm and Beng Melea, the way they are, where they can continue to be slowly consumed by the jungle if only to remind us that while we made build epic monuments, the forces of decay always win in the end. + +Debi, Me and Bayon, Angkor CambodiaBeng Melea took the better part of the day. We arrived back in Seam Reap around three and ate a bit of lunch and lounged for a few hours. Then we decided to utilize our full three days and catch another sunset. Matt opted to take a nap but Debi and I dragged our perennially grumpy driver out to the park to have one last sunset. We went to Bayon since it isn't a very good place to watch the sunset and there are few tourists there at that time of day. It was a nice quite way to end an experience that had begun rather full throttle, as if maybe Angkor still has a sort of hold over the world, can still make you slow down and be a bit humble in the face of it. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-03-26-midnight-perfect-world.txt b/jrnl/2006-03-26-midnight-perfect-world.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..779c40d --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-03-26-midnight-perfect-world.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 10.438267017137903,104.32325361706974 +location: Death Island,Kampot,Cambodia +image: 2008/deathisland.jpg +desc: A lost island off the Cambodian coast where the crab is fresh and the bungalows cheap. A perfect world. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Death Island, as Rob nicknamed it, was just what I needed. The first day we sat down for lunch and ordered crab; a boy in his underwear proceeded to run out of the kitchen, swam out in the ocean and began unloading crabs from a trap into a bucket. It doesn't get much fresher than that. Throw in a nice beach, some cheap bungalows and you're away. +pub_date: 2006-03-26T23:58:12 +slug: midnight-perfect-world +title: Midnight in a Perfect World +--- + +I lounged for a while in the shallows letting the small waves lapped over my back while I studied the rock and shell bed that lay just under the surface of the waves, watching the stones and bits of shells pitch back and forth to the rhythm of the sea. The undulation of water and light distorted and rippled the size of the stones such that after a while I decided they appeared to be a distant mirage in some watery desert. + +Up on the shore I could make out several hammocks, grass huts and some slatted bamboo platforms on which Debi and Jules were lying. Two ducks wandered about beneath the platforms scratching at the sandy dirt and making curious wheezing sounds I didn't know ducks could make. Up the beach to my left were three trees with dense spindly branches which harbored hundreds and hundreds of yellow butterflies that fluttered in and out of the green leaves. Islands, CambodiaEvery so often a few would break off and began to drift down the beach toward me weaving about like little bits of clothe torn and floating on the breeze over the blue green water. Rob was down the beach somewhere looking for fisherman with something better than a squid jig and a million reasons to stay on shore. The lazy midday nothingness was briefly interrupted by the curious sight of villager driving a cow into the sea, whether for a bath or for his own amusement was hard to tell from our vantage point up the beach. The cow seemed less than thrilled with the operation. Sunset, CambodiaFor some time I had noticed Debi alternate between staring out at the infiniteness of the horizon which was shrouded in grey thunderheads such that the boundary between sky and sea was obscured and indefinite, and scrutinizing me or Matt as if trying to memorize us, much the same as I was beginning to do to them, trying all the while not to think too much about our limited time left. I could occasionally hear the strains of The Rolling Stones **Sympathy of the Devil** drifting out of her headphones, a song that for me has long called up visions of Bulgakov, Dostoyevsky and a Russia that exists only in my mind and probably bears little resemblance to the Russia of today. The image in my head inhabits some boundary world between history and magic. + +After three days of Templing in Angkor we were spent. We joined forces with Rob and Jules and headed back down to Phnom Penh for a day. The next morning, after a bowl of noodle soup at the local soup shop we negotiated a cab down to Kep on the coast. And guess what? Down on the coast things are much cooler. In Kep things dropped back down to just hot. We took a room in a nice hotel overlooking the meager, but ever so inviting beach. I for one parked myself in a hammock and proceeded to do a good three hours of absolutely nothing (unless you count writing as something). Eventually Rob and Jules came to find me and I met up with the rest at the local crab shack. A whole crab can had in Kep for one U.S. dollar. Not Alaskan King Crab by any means, but good size and extremely tasty. We ordered up about thirty crabs between the five of us and proceed to feast—crab in pepper sauce, crab curry, steamed crab, grilled crab, endless endless crab. Beautiful. + +There wasn't a whole lot to Kep; as seaside towns go it felt a bit like an appetizer, whereas we were ready for a main course. We decided that what we really needed was an island. Luckily for us there is an island or two off the coast of Kep. In fact there's at least twenty, but a lot of them are Vietnamese and off limits from this side. We settled on an island that shall for selfish reasons remain nameless. Or better yet we'll just give it the name Rob gave it—Death Island. + +Yes somehow in the midst of nearly deserted tropical paradise with gentle lapping waves, warm breezes, hammocks and grass huts, Rob managed to step on a sea urchin, bash his head on a bamboo roof, stub his toe on a nail, get bitten by red ants, step on another sea urchin…. Death Island it is. + +Beach, islands, CambodiaI found Death Island to be the best island I've been on in all my travels. Though that may not be much of a complement since it was also the only island I've been on. I knew Death Island was just what I needed the first day we arrived when we ordered crab and a boy in his underwear proceeded to run out of the kitchen and down to the water where he swam out and began unloading crabs from a trap into a bucket. It doesn't get much fresher than that. Throw in a nice beach, some cheap bungalows and you're away. + +The island consisted of a few scattered fishermen's huts on the leeward side and some long nets cast out over the rocky shores where the local gathered and dried vast amounts of seaweed. On the leeward side of the islands were three bungalow operations of more or less similar quality, one of which rented us two fairly large bamboo and grass huts, which we called home for three nights. The first day I walked around the island (not far really, only a two or three hour hike) to get a feel for it, see what the locals did all day and find a descent spot for snorkeling. The best spot as it turned out was just up the beach from where we were staying. After renting a snorkel mask that looked as if it had been left behind by a young Jacque Cousteau in the late fifties, but which functioned perfectly well, Rob and I did a bit of snorkeling. For the most part it was just rocks, though here and there were bits of coral and a few fish, but it wasn't much. The only notable thing we saw was a sea snake, a rather fat, ugly creature with black and red rings around his body. Otherwise, while a fun diversion for the morning, the snorkeling wasn't much. + +Sunset Hammock, Islands, CambodiaWe generally went swimming in the mornings, lay on the sand and read or listened to music and then around lunchtime ordered up crab. I came close to eating nothing but crab for three days, lunch and dinner. The afternoons we spent under the shade of the trees playing cards or telling stories and flicking giant red ants off our legs until the sun began to sink down to the horizon and we moved back out to the beach to watch it set. The restaurant would then start up the generator for a few hours to provide light and allow us to take turns charging camera batteries and ipods and such. + +restaurant, Islands, CambodiaIt turns out that Rob is a card player. I think it was about two hours between learning that tidbit and the start of the first hold ‘em game. It had been a while since I played any hold ‘em, not that it's a game you forget, but it was nice to play a few friendly hands. After a few beers and a few hands I once again had those fantasies of quiting my job to play cards full time. Luckily I know I'm not good enough to do that. And besides I don't have a job to quit so it just wouldn't work. But it was a nice change from the most popular travelers game—shithead. If you've never played shithead learn it before you travel. I for one love shithead even if I'm not that good at it. It seems to be one of the universal languages of traveling. Something miraculous happened one day on Death Island when we were playing shithead. But I'm not going to say what it was. Just that that was the one and only time it ever happened. You know how some people are evilly good at cards? Well even those people have their off days. + +We spent three days on Death Island. Late the second night, after the cards were put up, the generators shut down and everyone had headed off to bed, I decided to go for a midnight swim. As I waded into the water I noticed little bubbles glowing around my feet. At first I thought they were catching the faint glow of the moon which was poking through the sullen thunderheads and casting a bluish pallor over the water in front of me. But, as I got deeper, I noticed that bubbles at my feet continued to glow and were joined then by bubbles coming off my legs and stomach as well. I grew up by the ocean and have done plenty of nightswimming in nearly every ocean and sea, but I have never seen anything like this. I laid back floating looking up at the stars between clouds and watching the phosphorescence of the bubbles out of my peripheral vision. + +Off in the distance I could hear the faint mutter of a long tail engine coughing to life and dying and then coughing to life again as some wayward fisherman tried to get home. The mainland was faintly visible through the low clouds. I saw the flicker of lights and the long dance of high beams on the coastal road, which eventually rounded a bend and disappeared. The long tail engine came to life again with a steady puttering that gradually trailed off over some horizon of sound too distant to see in the increasingly cloud-obscured moonlight. I laid down once more, floating on my back and for a few minutes, as the water filled in my ears shutting out the sound of the sea, I felt as if I were actually floating amongst the stars in the sky, phosphorescent blue stars below me and more distant white and yellow ones in front of me. + +I had had **Sympathy of the Devil** in my head most of the afternoon and I noticed then, floating there in the water that the drum beat in my head matched almost perfectly with gentle lapping of the ocean on the shore. I got out of the water for a while and sat with my back to the ocean listening to the waves, watching the coconut palms and pineapple trees rattle in the wind and wondering whether we'll ever figure out the exact nature of the devil's game. If, as Bulgakov would have it, heaven is the dominion of god and earth that of a rather swanky and stylishly likeable devil, then, as Mick Jagger suggests, the nature of the devil's game is also the secret to living well. There are of course those that do not think life is a game, that it is dead serious business, but then perhaps that's just their manner of play, just as there are some that can sit at a hold ‘em table for hours without cracking a smile. I've realized lately that I haven't been playing very well myself, but for a moment or two there on Death Island if you had met me I think I would have had the courtesy, sympathy and taste that we're all looking for. + +After a while I waded back out into the water and they there floating under the stars. Directly overhead was a curious cluster of four stars forming a midsized square, a nearly perfect square, either a curious pattern formed by cloud and stars or perhaps part of some constellation I had never noticed before. Whatever the case it quickly disappeared behind a fast moving cloud and a slight drizzle began to fall creating endless ripples on the otherwise glassy surface of the water. The blue bubbles rising off my legs floated up and were pitched about in the rippling surface until they ruptured and disappeared, quickly replaced by new ones. Eventually the clouds covered the stars entirely and as my legs and arms grew still, the bubbles stopped, the water filled in my ears and a general blackness fell over the sky and sea and land until all was one. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-03-31-book-right.txt b/jrnl/2006-03-31-book-right.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8fcb733 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-03-31-book-right.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 10.626275865572227,103.49945066918632 +location: Sinoukville,Koh Kong,Cambodia +image: 2008/goodbyes.jpg +desc: Combining the essential elements of Goa and Thailand, Sinoukville, Cambodia is a pleasant, if somewhat cheesy, travelers haven. +dek: The next day we continued on to Sinoukville which is Cambodia's attempt at a seaside resort. Combining the essential elements of Goa and Thailand, Sinoukville is a pleasant, if somewhat hippy-oriented, travelers haven. We rented Honda Dreams and cruised down the coast to deserted white sand beaches, thatched huts serving noodles and rice, where we watched sunsets and dodged rain storms. +pub_date: 2006-03-31T00:01:02 +slug: book-right +title: The Book of Right On +--- + +The mountaintops were shrouded in clouds and what could have been a view of the ocean was instead a sea of swirling white, misty moisture on our faces. There was an abundance of purple flowers stretching out from the back patio of what was once the king's summer home. Behind us the summer home itself was in a state of disarray, or, actually, disarray is too mild, ruin would be the proper word. + +Flowers, Bokor Hill Station, CambodiaThe clouds continued to blow up the valley at speeds that reminded me of scenes from Koyaanisqatsi, where sped up film makes clouds appear to break like waves over a mountain ridge. But this was no trick of cameras and film. These clouds were actually blowing up fast enough that it felt as if a misty white sea were breaking over us. + +Between the seaside town of Kep and Sinoukville lies the hill station Bokor Hill. Once a thriving community and summer home of the king of Cambodia, it now lies entirely in ruins. The king's former house (which I would not call a palace for it was rather small and even in full splendor still too small to be called a palace) is on one side of the mountain and then acrossChurch Bokor Hill, Cambodia a bumpy dirt road on the other side is the actual town which now consists of an abandoned Catholic church and a once lavish hotel and casino, both rumored to be haunted. The town was built by the French and then abandoned presumably when the French decided to do what they do best—retreat. + +We had arrived the night before in the coastal river town of Kampot and arranged a tour of Bokor Hill through a local guesthouse. We set out in the early morning with a few other tourists including an English couple named John and Linda who we ran into several times later in Sinoukville. Honest John was a used car salesman (and yes, Honest John's is the name of his lot) and he and his wife Linda were easily the sweetest people I've met on my trip. They were the sort of couple that have been together for forty years and still hold hands when they walk around. The kind of image Hallmark is trying to sell except that John and Linda were unaffectedly natural about it. + +We all rode in the back of a truck on hard wooden benches over a rough bumpy road which ought to sound familiar by now and I won't bore you with the details except to say that I have learned to bear the misery with a kind of stoicism I didn't know I had in me. + +Burned Out Casino, Bokor Hill Station, CambodiaOne of the things travelers love to do is tell stories. eating dinner at night in a crowded restuarant is something akin to Masterpiece Theatre. And people have a natural tendency to retell a good story they've heard, but in the retelling they often put themselves at the center. Everyone does it, even me on occasion. I was sitting with our guide, waiting for the others to finish walking around the casino, half listening to what the guide was saying to another traveler, and half watching the fog blow in. At some point his words began to sound terribly familiar and I realized he was telling a different version of a story Matt had once overheard someone telling and retold to us (without putting himself at the center). In the version Matt heard the events happened to the traveler that told it. And it took place at a no name bar in a small Cambodian town, exactly the sort of embellishment your typical traveler would add. The guide's version took place at Chinese New Year at Bokor Hill Station among a crowd of thousands, not quite as glamorous but infinitely more likely. I have no idea who has the real version, but I suspect that whoever told the story to Matt heard it here first and then placed themselves at the center of it. Remember the telephone game you played as a child? Well stories among travelers often grow in the same way. The strange part was to actually get to hear the other version, usually you just suspect the made up parts, but I got to hear the actual difference between the first telling and the later. Kudos to Matt for not retelling the story with him at the center. So anyway, one night I was at this dumpy bar in this little backwater town in northeast Cambodia and these guys pull up in a Mercedes, windows all tinted, the cars looking hard you know what I mean? And bright, I mean interrogation room bright, fog lights shining right into the bar. So this one local guy who's at the bar gets up and says something in Cambodian and these guys get out of the car looking pretty heavy, Mafioso types you know? And then all the sudden…. + +After wandering around the church and the casino, which are both burned out abandoned stone buildings that do have an eerie quality to them that would certainly lend itself to visions of ghost and ghouls, we headed back down the mountain for a swim in the local river.Swimming, Near Kampot, CambodiaWith the kind of foresight that I demonstrate regularly I forgot to wear swim trunks and I already knew it takes days for my shorts to dry and they tend not to smell so good at the end of it. I skipped the swim. After a dunk in the water we took a half hour or so boat ride back to Kampot. I've seen sunsets over just about every possible terrain on this trip and sunsets from Southeast Asia rivers are still my favorite. River Journey, Kampot, CambodiaI'm not sure what it is exactly but there is something so completely relaxing about cruising down a river on a boat as the sun sinks behind the hills. It just feels… natural, as if that is in fact what one ought to be doing as the sun disappears. + +The next day we continued on to Sinoukville which is Cambodia's attempt at a seaside resort. Combining the essential elements of Goa and Thailand, Sinoukville is a pleasant, if somewhat hippy oriented, travelers haven. The town itself is lovely, but the travelers tend to head for the beachfront bungalows (remember what I have said before, there is a time to head for the hills and a time to embrace and get crazy with the the cheese whiz). We managed to find a decent room about fifty meters from the shore and kicked back for a few days. We rented Honda Dreams and cruised down the coast to deserted white sand beaches, thatched huts serving noodles and rice, where we watched sunsets and dodged rain storms. And yes ate hamburgers and chips and even went to a late night beach bonfire/micro rave sort of thing where plenty of hippies were twirling stick and fire and other things that hippies tend to do. + +Everyone, Sinoukville CambodiaIt was good fun, but for me there was the depressing thought that these were our last few days together. And while that didn't stop me from having a good time and cleaning up in a few hands of hold ‘em (I told you Rob, I'm no good at tournaments, but I can hold my own in limit and I'll take your salary in no limit), it did cast a sort of melancholy quality over the days. And strangely the weather seemed to feel the same way, continually providing sunsets that had a certain lingering sadness to them, something my friend Michael and I once termed "the happy sad," which I can't precisely explain; it's something about the right minor chord phrases and and big drums. If you've listened to enough Springsteen, you know what I mean. + +And then there was that day. That day when everyone went there own way. We have reached the point where I have to say something, but I've lost the script, this was not in the original text, this was adlibbed. And now I have to capture some sort of meaning and summation, or at least I feel like I do, and yet I can't. I could talk about the bus station where Debi and Rob and Jules headed off back to Phnom Penh and on to Vietnam or Matt and I playing a few games of pool that last night after the others were gone. But none of that gets at what I mean. If they had words that could capture feelings there would be no need to write, I think here I'd go for verse, but I'm no good with it. I haven't got any minor chords on the laptop. Matt and Debi on the Honda Dream, Sinoukville, CambodiaSomeone I was traveling with recently read me an article on the emotions of animals, and the author, in the course of making the point that animals most probably do have emotions but we will never understand them, used the example of human empathy. That is, I can try to understand how you may feel, but I can never actually **feel** what you feel nor you feel what I feel. It is therefore impossible to explain what it's like to spend nearly every waking minute of every day for three months with someone. Instead I'm having a DFW moment where the narrative thread breaks down and I have to step in and say that even now, writing this nearly a month later, I don't know what to say except… do you know, do you know what I mean…? Can you feel… no I can't do it. Jimmy, that bit just doesn't sound as good as when you said it. Anyway I'm going to give up and just cut and paste from an email from someone who's traveled more than I because this is better than I can do: + +
+ +You meet the best people while traveling, get really close really quick, then the goodbyes come way too soon. Some of my best friends in the world are people I only spent a couple weeks with in some far flung country, haven't seen in years, but still keep in close contact with. Coming home is also a part of travel. People never want to hear all the stories ya have to tell. Life for them has been the same old shit and attention spans for tales of nasty bathrooms and chicken buses only last so long. It's the other travelers that want to hear your stories. It's kind of a club of sorts us travelers. You often have a very clear picture of where people have been before ya know their surnames or what they do back home. Home kind of fades. And yes, the goodbyes are tough, but paths once crossed have a funny way of doing so again. + +
+ +So Jules and Rob, and especially Matt and Debi, wherever you are (oh yeah, I know where you are but forgive me while I go for a little drama) — cheers. I've never liked prolonged goodbyes so I will just go with the song. It was indeed right on and perhaps my friend is right, paths once crossed may cross again (the next rounds is on me). I miss you all. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-04-11-going-down-south.txt b/jrnl/2006-04-11-going-down-south.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4cdad29 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-04-11-going-down-south.txt @@ -0,0 +1,54 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 7.735826857017756,98.77876280363327 +location: Koh Phi Phi,Karbi,Thailand +image: 2008/kophiphi.jpg +desc: Somehow I wound up at the Phi Phi Island Resort, a private beach, beautiful reef, fancy swimming pools and rooms with real sheets. Unheard of. +dek: The Phi Phi Island Resort, where some friends were staying, is nestled on the leeward shore of Koh Phi Phi Island and posts a private beach, beautiful reef, fancy swimming pools and rooms with real sheets. Unheard of. I sauntered in a day early, acted like I owned the place, rented snorkel gear, charged it to a random room number and spent the afternoon on the reef. If only I could have put it on the Underhill's credit card. +pub_date: 2006-04-11T00:10:50 +slug: going-down-south +title: Going Down South +--- + +Matt and I spent one day by ourselves in Sinoukville and though we never spoke of it I thought it was pretty appropriate that when we went back to the beach shack with the good food they were closed. When we tried to spend the afternoon in the sun, it poured. But then I write, so a bit of drama is never a bad thing. + +We had a good time anyway. And the next morning we headed back across the border into Thailand. Strange to think that I had gone to Laos for the sole purpose of renewing my Thai visa and here I was, three months later, finally returning to Thailand. If I've learned anything it's the truth of Woody Allen's phrase, "if you want to make god laugh, have a plan." + +By a strange act of god (who must have been having himself a laugh at the time), both Matt and I were headed back to Bangkok to meet up with friends from home. But before that we made an honest effort at tracking down Ofir. I had kept up with Ofir via email ever since he left Laos, and, though I hadn't heard from him in a few days. I knew he should be in Bangkok at the same time as Matt and I. I also knew that he was flying out the next day to return home to Israel. I compulsively checked my email throughout the evening but never heard anything. Matt and I hatched a plan that must have split god's sides with laughter; we decided to set out into Bangkok in some vain hope of running into Ofir. A city of seven million, how hard could it be? + +Our best hope was the Khao San Rd. I don't believe I devoted any time to the Khao San Rd in my previous Bangkok posts which is largely because I avoided it like the plague. Khao San is everything I don't like about traveling, thousands and thousands of western tourists behaving badly. But, taking a tip from our experiences with heat, we thought why not? Why not embrace the cheesy touristy aspect of it? And we also thought Ofir, having his last night in Bangkok might think the same thing. So we hit the Khao San in full swing. As it turned out, Ofir had more taste than we did and was nowhere near the Khao San Rd on his last night in Bangkok, but we had fun nevertheless. We ate a bit of street food and parked ourselves in the cheesiest, most tourist saturated bar and watched the parade of humanity that is Khao San. + +And then we gave up. The next day we both had errands to run, I need a plane ticket to London among other things and so Matt and I split up for the day, which was a bit strange since all the time he and Debi and I traveled together we always stuck together. But the strangest part is, and this goes to show you the fallacy of plans, about six hours later Matt and I ran into each other at the central pier. Yes, in a city of seven million, I ran into the one person I knew. This is why planning never works. Things happen or they don't and there's nothing you can do about it. + +Traveling for as long as I have, one tends to lose track of time. It's been months since I could have told you with any confidence what day of the week it was or what day of the month, once I even got the month wrong. It just isn't something worth keeping track of; time exists to measure days that in reality aren't worth measuring. When I was managing a restaurant I could have told you not just day and date, but probably the hour and often right down to the minute because this is how we manage to do the things we have to do. It's been nearly a year since I've had to do anything. + +It should then have been no surprise when the phone rang a day earlier than I expected and familiar voice sank slowly into my still sleep-fogged brain. Oh crap. My friends aren't coming tomorrow, they're here today. Whoops. I said a hurried goodbye to Matt (yes that was always how it was going to end wasn't it? Cheers mate), and slipped into the next chapter as it were. + +Leah and Kate were staying at the Westin Sukhumvit which was shall we say a bit nicer than my lodgings. It was something akin to culture shock to step into the immaculateness of the Westin after spending the last six months in sleeping quarters where the old saying "don't let the bed bugs bite" isn't an antiquated joke, it's genuine advice. Not that I mind high class resorts nor look down my nose at them, so long as we all understand that high class resorts are for vacations; they don't qualify as traveling. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Change and adaptability are what got humanity this far and who am I to buck evolutionary trends? So I spent a minute in the lobby before I went up to their room, adjusting myself, adapting. It sounds stupid, but it does take you a minute to orient yourself in five star surroundings after so long in well, whatever. + +After adjusting myself to the idea of air conditioning and polished marble floors and cushioned chairs I hopped in the elevator (elevator, damn I forgot about those) thinking this was probably good since I would be back in the west in less than a month and I needed to get used to these things again. I have for some time been dreading returning to the west with all its stodgy formalities and laws and cleanliness. I don't necessarily have a problem with the west, though I do feel a greater sense of freedom in S.E Asia than I ever have in America, I've just forgot what these things are like. My plan is to head from Bangkok to London and then, after visiting a friend I met in India, continuing on to Budapest where I will meet up with my parents and travel central Europe for a month before returning to the States. When the elevator opened into the large luxuriously padded carpet of the Westin's seventh floor hallway, I realized that I was not mentally prepared to return. I've actually come to rather like dodgy food and grungy guesthouses. + +River Taxi, Bangkok, ThailandThe girls were surprisingly bright-eyed and animated for people that should have been jet lagged and half asleep. My own grogginess was still wearing off, but we set off straight away since Bangkok is pretty warm by midday and the temples have little in the way of shade. Leah and Kate had only one day in Bangkok and wanted to see some temples and other touristy sights. I was planning to take them to Wat Phra Krew and Wat Pho via public transport since that way you get to see the river as well. We hopped on the sky train, caught the river taxi and walked for a bit around Wat Phra Krew. After about an hour it was too hot to think. Bangkok averages in the high 90s this time of year and humidity is around 80. If you look it up on Weatherunderground it has that, "feel like…" index which typically is about 116 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know how they calculate it, but it sounds about right. Wat Phra Kae, Bangkok, ThailandIt's hotter than it ever gets in say Athens, GA in the summer, but not as hot as Seam Reap. It's bearable if you're used to it, but coming out of air conditioning into that kind of heat and humidity will quickly drain you. + +We decided to give up on the temples and head back to the hotel. The girls went up to the rooftop pool and I set out to buy a plane ticket to London and on to Budapest. After walking around in the heat for two hours and realizing that there is some sort of price fixing travel agent mafia in Bangkok, I gave up and went to the pool myself. After a few hours in the sun and a bit of snooze on the couch, we set out for dinner at Sciorocco. I hadn't been up to the towers before, but the view was roughly the same as the Baiyoke Sky hotel—stunning. Unfortunately, a few minutes after we were seated, it started to pour. Everyone scattered for cover and the restaurant struggled gamely to accommodate everyone that had been outside, inside. Curiously the only additional seating they seemed to have was a room two floors up which was half set for a wedding reception the next day. + +We tried to make ourselves comfortable but it was a bit peculiar, particularly the ceiling which looked like the inside of a massive telescope, white hexagonal tiles with metal bracings and exposed pipeworks, across which various colors of neon lights in cheesy floral patterns performed highly unnatural sweeping motions. For a minute I felt like I was at some really bad laser lights show back in Los Angeles. After sitting there for a few minutes in fits of laughter, half expecting Pink Floyd to come erupting out of some hidden speaker system, we decided that it just wasn't going to work. Normally I wouldn't complain about it, I even liked the campy aspect in some ways, but the girls were only going to have one fancy dinner in Bangkok and they understandably didn't want it to resemble a wedding reception at the Hollywood bowl. After speaking to the hostess, we decided to head down a few floors where there was an Italian restaurant. Not very Thai to be sure, but damn it was good. + +The next day the girls left for Phuket. I spent another day in Bangkok, finally bought my ticket to London and on to Budapest, and then caught an overnight bus to Krabia which is about half way down the peninsula of Thailand. The plan was to meet up with Kate and Leah again on Ko Phi Phi. On the bus ride down I met a very nice woman from Sweden and spent the day walking around Krabie with her and while I liked Krabie, I couldn't see any reason to stay. I caught the last ferry of the day out to Ko Phi Phi. + +Phi Phi Don from longtail, Ko Phi Phi, ThailandKoh Phi Phi is small island just south of Phuket, about an hour by ferry, and west of Krabie, about forty minutes by ferry. Actually Koh Phi Phi is two islands, Ko Phi Phi Don which is developed and Ko Phi Phi Leh which is not. Phi Phi Don is a long skinny island which at one point narrows to an isthmus less than a hundred meters across. On both sides of the sandy isthmus are towering limestone cliffs and to the west there is nothing but Andaman Sea. As a result, outside of Phuket, Koh Phi Phi Don was probably hit the hardest by last year's tsunami. The initial wave actually broke over the island at the isthmus, wiping out the entire area and killing over 1737 people. + +The truly strange thing is, aside from a gap in the otherwise omnipresent palm trees and a tsunami memorial, you'd never know the area was almost completely destroyed just over a year ago. Nearly everything has already been rebuilt and life seems to have returned to normal on the island. And for Phi Phi normal means tons of tourists and resorts catering to western cravings—burgers, Swedish meatballs and the ubiquitous traveler favorite, banana pancakes. The problem with Phi Phi is that in spite of its tourism and crowds it is a truly stunning island, one you ought not to miss if you ever find yourself in the area, just be aware of what you're getting into. + +I spent the first night on the isthmus at a small guesthouse slightly inland from the beach and then the next morning I chartered a long tail around the island to the resort on the eastern shore where the girls were staying. After spending most of the day crashing the resort, Leah and Kate finally showed up and I felt a bit more legitimate. The Phi Phi Island Resort where the girls stayed is nestled on the leeward shore of the island with a lovely private beach that slopes ever so slowly into the sea and about two hundred meters out gives way to a beautiful reef. I rented a snorkel and mask and spent the afternoon on the reef with Leah. Generally when people talk of Thailand's islands they talk of the scuba diving, but the snorkeling is also first rate. The water clarity is generally better than anywhere else I've been though evening storms did stir things up a bit while we were there. The best thing about the resort is that it provides an escape from the crowds concentrated around the isthmus. For the better part of the afternoon Leah and I had the reef to ourselves save for the occasional long tail passing off in the distance. + +Cruise Ship, Phi Phi Don, ThailandThat evening after dinner we booked a boat trip to go around Phi Phi Leh with several stops for snorkeling and swimming. By nine the next morning we were onboard a large powerboat headed for Phi Phi Leh. As we came around the southern tip of Phi Phi Don where the island juts westward toward the isthmus I realized just how lucky we were to be in the relative isolation of the resort. Anchored just off the main harbor was a massive cruise ship which must have deposited several thousand additional people in the isthmus area. + +Cliffs Phi Phi Leh, ThailandLuckily we breezed right by the isthmus and cruise ship booth bound for the reef on the east side of Phi Phi Leh. The underwater scenery was spectacular, loads of fish, not as much coral as some places I've been, but I don't know if that was from the tsunami or just the way the reefs are in Thailand. After snorkeling for an hour or so we hoped back on the boat and headed into a very narrow shallow bay surrounded on all sides by steep limestone cliffs. turquoise waters, Ko Phi Phi Leh, ThailandThough there was no reef below it was nevertheless amazingly beautiful. We anchored for half and hour and took turns jumping off the upper decks of the boat into the perfect, bathwater warm, cyan-colored bay. + +After swimming for a while in the bay we began to circle around the island to the west. Our next stop was a sheltered lagoon which holds the only real beach of Phi Phi Leh. We stopped for lunch and bit of swimming and sunbathing. + +I've never personally seen it, but supposedly the movie The Beach was filmed there. After lunch we continued around the backside of Phi Phi Leh which consisted mainly of imposing sheer cliffs that rise straight out of the sea. After rounding the northern point of the Island which conveys just how narrow Phi Phi Leh actually is, we headed back to the resort. As Phi Phi Leh shrunk in the distance I watched my fellow backpackers zoom by on speedboats packed together like sardines under the meager shade on cheap canvas canopies. Silly backpackers. + +That evening we watched the clouds glow pink and orange and bright red with the fading light of a sunset we couldn't directly see and I taught the girls how to play shithead, which Leah and Kate on the Boat, Ko Phi Phi Leh, ThailandI proceeded to lose at. Rather badly. The results of which shall not be mentioned here. The next day I headed back to join my fellow silly backpackers on the isthmus (luckily the cruise ship had moved on by then). It was really nice to spend time with Kate and Leah, you meet many people when you're traveling but it's not often that you get to see people from home. Thank you girls for letting me crash your vacation and I hope you had as much fun as I did. I only wish we had more time. Oh and for those who were wondering… I charged the whole thing to the Underhill's credit card. You want the number? + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-04-22-beginning-end.txt b/jrnl/2006-04-22-beginning-end.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e6c74e3 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-04-22-beginning-end.txt @@ -0,0 +1,53 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 7.4090692758064645,99.207916245987 +location: Koh Kradan,Trang,Thailand +image: 2008/kokradan.jpg +desc: Ko Kradan is a slice of Thailand the way it's often describe by wistful hippies who first came here forty years ago. +dek: I wasn't expecting much from Ko Kradan, but in the end I discovered a slice of Thailand the way it's often describe by wistful hippies who first came here twenty years ago. Tong and Ngu and the rest of the Thais working at Paradise Lost were the nicest people I met in Thailand and Wally was by far the most laid back farang I've come across. I ended up staying on Ko Kradan for the remainder of my time in the south. + +pub_date: 2006-04-22T00:11:20 +slug: beginning-end +title: Beginning of the End +--- + +I will confess to being a bit melancholy on the ferry from Ko Phi Phi to Ko Lanta. It was slowly beginning to sink in that my trip was nearly over, the money nearly gone and coming home no longer felt so far in the future. + +After leaving Leah and Kate at the resort I returned to the isthmus to find Thai New Year, or Sonkron as it's called, in full swing. I had planned to spend a quiet day writing and relaxing, but things took a different turn. It wasn't long before I was completely soaked (one of the traditions of Sonkron is to throw water) and covered in white paste. I stopped in for a drink and next thing I knew it was late at night and I was due to catch a ferry the next morning. + +I wasn't expecting much from Ko Lanta; I was using it mainly as a jumping off point for some of the islands to the south. Regrettably Lanta was as touristy and underwhelming as I expected. Lands End, Ko Lanta, ThailandThe majority of the big resorts are clustered at the north end of the island so naturally I headed south toward the marine park and stayed at the southern most bungalow operation I could find. The next thing south from where I stayed was the national part headquarters and the lighthouse at the southern terminus of the island. I spent the first day on the beach under overcast skies wondering just what it was that I was missing. The sunset was spectacular, probably the most spectacular I've seen in all my travels and yet it failed to move me. + +Sunset, Ko Lanta, ThailandMy overwhelming memory of Lanta is the smell of garbage. Trash piles at the side of the road, beside guesthouse, restaurants, dive shops, ferry docks, everywhere you turn there's another pile of trash. The way I figured it the best bet would be to rent a Honda Dream and try to move faster than the piling trash. For the most part all the development on Ko Lanta is along the western shore and it's heaviest at the north end of the island. The next day I rented a motorbike and drove down every single length of road on the island. It turned out that the eastern shore is largely undeveloped at least in the tourist sense. There is a very pleasant Muslim fishing village toward the southern end of eastern side. The local children were still celebrating Sonkron and stood by the side of the road chucking buckets of ice water on passing cars and motorbikes which was refreshing enough that I would slow down for a bit of dunk each time a passed. + +The next day I got on a ferry bound for islands to the south. I hopped off at the first stop, Ko Hai, about 20 km south of Ko Lanta. Ko Hai is small and most people visit Sunset, Ko Hai, Thailandit only as a snorkeling stop on island hopping day trips. Nevertheless there are two resorts and one small collection of bungalows around a restaurant. For once Lonely Planet was right about something, the bungalows, while pleasant enough, are staffed by Thais so grumpy and unfriendly as to ruin the experience (which is exactly what it said in the guide). Still I spent three nights on Ko Hai. A short walk from the bungalow area and there was a half a mile of deserted white sand beaches. I was finally able to catch up on some writing and reading and generally unwind. + +But after three days I was sick of the staff and sick of the annoying Swedish girls cluttering the main beach. I hopped on a four island tour boat that passed by in the morning headed for Ko Kradan. Though I only paid for the boat ride, the crew of the boat were kind enough to lone me a snorkel mask each time we stopped. I snorkeled on the backside of Ko Hai and swam through the spectacular Emerald cave to the hidden valley beyond it. Outside Emerald Cave, Ko Muk, ThailandFor eighty meters you swim in complete blackness and emerge out the other side to a valley that's about two hundred meters in diameter with cliff walls at least that high. Unfortunately, because it's such a small and dramatically high enclosure it's nearly impossible to photograph. + +Eventually the boat stopped for lunch on the windward side of Ko Kradan or what should have been the windward side, but at the particular moment, with an offshore wind blowing in from the east, was the calmest part of the island. The ferry dropped me off at a deserted beach and the captain pointed to what looked like just jungle and said that if I followed that path I'd get to the other side of the island. Ominous black clouds had been moving westward all day and were nearly overhead by the time I jumped off the boat so I quickly gathered up my things and headed inland. The path actually did exist when I got closer to the tree line and in the end wasn't that long. I emerged out of the jungle into a small clearing with a restaurant and a few bungalows. Paradise Lost Resort was not listed in most guidebooks so after chatting a moment with the American who owned it, I continued on to the other side of the island in search of where I had intended to stay. Just about the time I reached the eastern beach it began to pour. I took shelter under a few of pine trees that lined the back of the beach and met Zoë, who had been on the beach and also taken shelter from the storm. We chatted for a while and she recommended that I stay at Paradise Lost rather than continue up the beach to the other resort which she described as "more of a refugee camp." + +So it was that I came to meet, Tony, Zoë's husband, and Inda, their three-year-old daughter, as well as Wally who runs Paradise Lost, Tong who cooks and looks after the resort and Ngu who also works at Paradise Lost. + +Up until I arrived on Ko Kradan I had been, were I too be honest, not too fond of Thailand. Despite its reputation as the land of smiles Southern Beach, Ko Kradan, ThailandI hadn't found the Thais to be nearly as friendly or welcoming as the Cambodians and Lao. I also generally found the travelers in Thailand to be a rather cold and often downright rude bunch. As a result I spent the month of January alone and ever since the girls left I'd hardly talked to anyone. But on Ko Kradan I discovered a slice of Thailand the way it's often describe by wistful hippies who first came here twenty years ago. Tong and Ngu and the rest of the Thais working at Paradise Lost were the nicest people I met in Thailand and Wally was by far the most laid back farang I've come across. I ended up staying on Ko Kradan for the remainder of my time in the south. + +Wally arrived on Ko Kradan six years ago having spent the twenty years before that sailing all over the South Pacific. How exactly he came to start a guesthouse operation I never did hear, but it was quite an operation. Tong was an excellent cook and had an especially tasty (and spicy) massaman curry which is a southern Thai specialty, but Wally also offered a full range of barbeque options from massive steaks to pork chops and chicken. And as I discovered one night, when you order the grilled chicken dinner you in fact get a grilled chicken, as in the whole damn chicken, which works out well for the six or seven dogs that live at Paradise Lost (all purebred Thai ridgebacks and probably the best cared for and most spoiled dogs in all of Southeast Asia). Me and Tang, Ko Kradan, ThailandOne of the dogs, Tang, took a liking to me (or else he just liked company on the beach, who knows) and would follow me down the beach everyday, though he usually took off once I disappeared on the reef. + +The reef off the southern end of Ko Kradan was the best snorkeling I found in the Islands provided you made it out during high tide, as it could be tough to navigate at low tide. For the entire week I was there I spent nearly every morning on the reef swimming amongst the Moorish Idols, Parrot Fish, Trigger Fish, Cleaner Wrasses and Butterfly Fish as well as the ever present Sergeant Majors and Barracuda. Ko Kradan was barely touched by the tsunami so the reef was as it had always been. According to Wally there were a breeding pair of turtles somewhere out there, but regrettably I never came across them. So long as I got out there before noon when the day trip boats began to arrive, I had the reef to myself like some sort of private underwater playground. + +Afternoons were my favorite time on the island, after the day tripping long tails from nearby Ko Muk departed for home and the four island tour boats from Ko Lanta moved on to the next island, a peaceful silence and almost total stillness settled over the beaches of Ko Kradan. Often a westerly breeze would kick up around two providing a welcome relief from the midday heat and the tide would retreat to the point that when I went back out on the reef the coral fairly scrapped my nose as I floated about, listening to the sound of Parrot Fish munching on bits of lumpy coral or the broken antlers of staghorn coral already half eaten and partly covered in sand. + +I got in the habit of not using fins when I snorkeled so I tended to just drift with the currents moving rather slowly over great fields of coral, reddish brown staghorn with white tips and countless fish hiding in the numerous tangled shadows, including schools of smaller iridescent blue fish with yellow tails, fish whose bodies seemed to me the brightest and most intense blue I've ever seen. Other times I'd do a bit of swimming to follow one of the massive Parrot Fish who's front fins flapped not unlike the wings of their arboreal namesake. These huge riots of pastel hues, pinks and greens and blues and yellows often seemed, when viewed at very close range, to be so finely detailed and the colors so smoothly flowing in gradients of pastel that would have made any circa 1986 interior designer proud, that it was impossible to distinguish scales and after a while they seem to have been perhaps airbrushed or created by some Photoshop whiz. Moorish Idols too, which most often swim in pairs, have such fine scales that even up close with the water magnifying everything it's still impossible to make out the scales. + +Whenever I was on the reef a school of juvenile parrotfish, small wrasses and Sergeant Majors would follow behind me nipping at my knees and ankles hoping for a bit a bread which they are accustomed to getting from the tour boats. Despite the fact that I never had any food they persisted from one end of the reef to the other. Once I stopped to adjust my mask and stood on a large lump of coral. While I was fiddling with the mask I could feel, but not see, something nipping at a cut on my left foot. I put the mask back on and peered down to discover that I had stopped at a cleaner wrasse's station and though no doubt slightly confused by my foot, the fish was nevertheless gamely doing what it did best. I waited until the fish seemed satisfied with his work and then I swam off following a parrotfish so large it had a sucker fish attached to its gills. + +Sometimes I swam out past the reef, where the bottom turned sandy and dropped off rather quickly making it impossible to see, in hopes of finding the turtles or perhaps a black tipped reef shark (which are perfectly harmless for the most part), but neither ever showed their faces. Eventually I would give up and move back toward the reef which by then would be very shallow indeed and only passable by carefully swimming through the sandy gullies between the fields of coral, an experience somewhat like I imagine it would feel to fly low and fast through the canyon country of eastern Utah and northern Arizona. + +Closer into shore where the coral began to drop off, great fields of giant black sea urchins lay swaying in the currents and small waves in such a way that the spines looked like little fingers feeling about in the murky water, and at the center of each a great yellow and blue "eye" stared back up at you. Where the coral stopped and rocks began to be half covered in sand, the water visibility dropped and the fish became fewer limited to delicately colored yellow and blue striped fish with bodies and eyes that resembled squirrel fish and a few tiny Gobi fish that darted skittishly about as I floated over them. The reefs around Ko Kradan are known for their abundance of rock fish which sit here in the shallows, heavily camouflaged and difficult to see as they remain still, perched on their front flippers, as if patiently waiting for the fins to evolve into arms so that they can leave the sea behind once and for all. + +I never wanted to get out of the water, but inevitably some reminder of my terrestrial origins would come back, thirst, hunger or perhaps just exhaustion, and I would head back to Paradise Lost for a late lunch. Everyday around six I would take the trail back to the beach where I was originally dropped off and watch the sunset from the lookout on the bluff. + +Eventually Tony, Zoë and Inda left for Malaysia and for two days it was just Wally and I. But then a few yachty friends of Wally's sailed in and I met, Brian, Dawn and CT, the crew of a fifty-two foot yacht sailing under the name Ten Large. While they slept on the boat, the three of them came ashore during the day and always ate dinner at Paradise Lost. Another yacht whose name I've forgotten also with a crew of three came ashore for two days and eventually an Australian named Peter escaped the other resort (refugee camp was a rather apt description I discovered when I finally made it down that way) to stay at Paradise Lost. Unfortunately for Wally, because he isn't listed in very many guidebooks, the other resort is able to waylay travelers in Trang with package deals paid for in advance. They simply meet the trains arriving from Bangkok and book an all-inclusive package, boat transfer, lodging, etc. and ask for the money up front. Eventually most of these folks find Paradise Lost and end up eating there, but because they've already paid for the lodging their stuck down at the refugee camp. It's too bad because Wally has a great place with friendly people, excellent food and nice bungalows. If you happen to be headed to Ko Kradan or any of the south Thai islands I encourage you to stop by. Wally has a website with contact info, but beware that there is no internet on Ko Kradan and the cell phone reception isn't great so you may have to call a few times to get a decent connection. Although I just showed up and got a room it's worth calling ahead, especially in the high season since there aren't too many bungalows available (though Wally is building more every year). + +I spent the evening eating barbeque and chatting with CT, Dawn and Brian about our various travels and some of their sailing adventures (they recently became mini celebrities in the yachty world when they were boarded by pirates while passing through Malaysia). One day I took a break from snorkeling and made a return trip to emerald cave with the crew of the other yacht. It was a nice change and this time we had the cave to ourselves for quite some time. + +But like all things that begin, my time on Ko Kradan had to end. Sunset Ko Kradan, ThailandI didn't want to leave, but I had a plane flight to London that couldn't be missed. So after seven brilliant days on Ko Kradan we all caught a long tail for shore as Ten Large needed to clear customs and Wally needed supplies for the island. After spending the day running errands with everyone, they dropped me off at the train station and I headed back up to Bangkok. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-05-01-closing-time.txt b/jrnl/2006-05-01-closing-time.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d69dc60 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-05-01-closing-time.txt @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +The morning was a blur. The early morning boat ride in to the mainland was rough. Not the sea, which was choppy, but not to bad, but I was still suffering from an over celebration of ANZAC day the previous evening. Peter was the only Australian at Lost Paradise, but we wouldn't have wanted him to celebrate alone so we pitched in. What are friends for? + + + +I spent the better part of the day running errands around Trang with Wally and crew. After the customs house and immigration, we moved on to Tesco, and other warehouse stores for Wally's supplies. I stocked up on snacks for the train ride, and after lunch they dropped me off near the train station downtown. + +I spent the remainder of the afternoon wandering around downtown Trang, a pleasant little provincial riverside town. The train left just before sunset, sliding smoothly, far more smoothly than an India train, out of the station, through the suburbs of Trang and into the countryside with its banana trees and coconut palms and tamarind trees and bamboo thickets and jungly undergrowth of vines, some of which, if I'm not mistake, were Kudzu. + + + +The sky was a dull grey overcast with some strikingly dramatic cloud formations on the eastern horizon. I was lucky and had the two-person berth to myself for the majority of the journey. I sat by the window and watched the scenery slide by thinking about Wally and the rest probably motoring past Ko Muk or perhaps already back on Kradan unloading the weeks supplies into the cycle cart, or maybe already back at the restaurant lounging under the thatched roofs telling stories over cold Chang. + +Barbeque orders would be placed and Ngu would be grilling or tinkering about with the one remaining generator. The dogs would be prowling for scraps, the puppies wrestling in the yard, Tang and Blondie still off at the beach, lying in the shade, bellies full of chicken carcasses and pork scraps begged off the tourists that had lunch on the beach. Life everywhere continues as it was without you. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +Children in backyards leaned over the fence watching the train as it passed. My time in Southeast Asia is nearly over. Four days in Bangkok to do a bit of last minute work, maybe buy some bootleg DVDs, and then poof, it disappears from me for now. It's less the place I will miss than the people, both the locals I've met and the travelers. + +I'll miss you Southeast Asia, you've changed my whole outlook on the world and shown me things I never dreamed I'd see. + +Like the evening light now falling on the hillsides just north of Trang, a quiet, relaxed light that falls like one of Winslow Homer's washes over the green hills and white thunderheads turning them a golden orange against the distant blackness of a storm over the gulf of Thailand. Thailand in this light becomes a softer, subtler place, less dramatic and harsh than in the glare of the midday sun. + +I started to write a bit of reminiscence, try to remember the highlights of my time in this part of the world before I return to the west, but about halfway through I kept thinking of a popular Buddhist saying—be here now. Most of these dispatches are written in past tense, but this time I want to simply be here now. This moment, on this train. This is the last time I'll post something from Southeast Asia. There is no way I could sum anything up for you, no way I can convey what I've seen and done and even what I have written of is only about one tenth of what I've actually done. So I'm not going to try. + +I know it's hard to do when you're at home and working and everything is the same shit happening over and over again, but it really is true, that bit about tomorrow... that bit about yesterday... one is gone forever and the other will never arrive. There is only now. But I'm not very good at this sort of thing; instead I'll leave you with some thoughts from others: + +"To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question." – Edward Abbey + +"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter." -- e.e. cummings + +"What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?" – George Eliot diff --git a/jrnl/2006-05-10-london-calling.txt b/jrnl/2006-05-10-london-calling.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0c170b0 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-05-10-london-calling.txt @@ -0,0 +1,74 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 51.55119204682159,-0.1495599746495864 +location: London,London,United Kingdom +image: 2008/londonthames.jpg +desc: London called, but then it almost didn't answer. Or, how I got into Great Britain by making snide jokes about America. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: London: The British don't want me -- no money, no proof I'm leaving and no real reason for coming, good lord, I must be a vagabond, up to no good, surely. Eventually the customs agent relents and lets me in, a favor I repay by nearly burning down one of London's bigger parks. Seriously. +pub_date: 2006-05-10T00:16:42 +slug: london-calling +title: London Calling +--- + +"Why are you choosing to visit your friend now?"
+ +(shrug) (smile)
+ +"How much money are you bringing in?"
+ +"Money? On me? None. I was planning to use that ATM behind you."
+ +"Do you have any bank statements showing how much money you have?"
+ +"Uh, no, I didn't know that I needed…"
+ +"You have onward tickets?"
+ +"Yes."
+ +"May I see them?"
+ +"Uh, no. I haven't printed the receipt yet."
+ +"When are you planning to do that?"
+ +"Soon."
+ +"So you have no money, no proof of onward travel and no reason for coming to London?"
+ +"Correct."
+ +"If I showed up in the States you would turn me around and send me back…"
+ +"Well, **I** wouldn't… and besides why would you want to go to the States?"
+ +This last line elicits the faint traces of a smile and the otherwise very serious and prim border agent relents. She says something about a verbal warning but stamps my passport anyway letting me into the U.K. I try not to run but hurry just in case she changes her mind. I find it highly ironic that of all the borders I've crossed in countries that were only recently at war the one in Heathrow was by far the hardest. That's the west for you. Reasons and rules. Welcome home. You were right Wally; you do have a lot more freedom on Ko Kradan than anywhere else. + +My advice, when crossing borders and just generally when traveling, is to learn a bit of self-deprecation, or national deprecation, particularly if your American. By and large the world seems to like Americans, but that doesn't mean they don't enjoy making fun of us. We seem to be seen as sort of hapless idiots who don't really mean any harm, but just aren't very bright. Which is basically accurate I suppose. The nicest thing anyone's said to me on this trip was my friend Keith who looked at me one night and said, "you're the least American American I've met." So it goes. + +I don't want to come off as being down on Americans, I'm not, but I do sympathize with the world's disdain for certain, er, character flaws we seem to have, such a tendency to be a bit squeamish and particular about sanitation. And our use of the English language is a bit um, primitive. But you don't need to travel to know that. The English for instance absolutely hate American slang and when you get down to words like, "dude" and "awesome" does make you sound a bit daft. + +But I didn't come to England to practice the Queen's English; I came to see Thet who I met way back in Jaisalmer India on the camel trek. Thet and I kept in touch periodically and since my Thai visa expired a week before I was due in Budapest, she kindly said I could spend a few layover days with her in London. Thet and her flatmate live a few blocks off Holloway road in what I believe qualifies as North London (if I'm wrong about that set me straight in the comments section). + +Compared to getting through customs, finding Thet's flat was ridiculously easy. After a lovely breakfast and some catch up travel stories, we set out to explore London. We took the bus down to Trafalgar square, walked through Chinatown and snacked on dim sum before making a brief walk through of the National Gallery. Then we ended up in SoHo where we managed to find a bar with £2 drinks at happy hour. Forgive me for interupting the narrative with pointless tangents, but I spent the last three months around Londoners so I had a fair number of expectations, er, misconceptions. The first thing I have to set straight is London's reputation as the most expensive place around. Now if you're coming in with dollars or euros or any currency other than pounds, yes London is expensive. But the expense is in the exchange rate. If you happen to live in London and earn pounds I think London is actually quite cheap. Drinks are rarely more than a fiver, a huge meal can be had for fewer than £10. I can't comment on rent, but in general living expenses in London are less than New York and certainly less than Paris. The key is to earn pounds. If you don't have sterling than yes London will drain your wallet in the time it takes you to work out the difference between pants and trousers. + +The next day we set out for the Tate Modern and were joined by Thet's friend Terese who's originally from Sweden (Another friend of Thet's, Joy is from Thailand and her flatmate is from China. I traveled extensively in SE Asia with Londoners and spent my time in London with emigrants, which is exactly how I'd want it). London Bridge, London, EnglandAfter taking the bus down to Bank and having a look at London Bridge, we walked in the sunshine along the Thames. We paused briefly to inspect the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare's works were first brought to the stage. I didn't go in because I wasn't in the mood for an organized, narrated walk through. Shakespeare Globe Theatre, London, EnglandPerhaps it's just the nerdy English major coming out in me, but it made me feel good to see that not only is Shakespeare still in print and still read, but the English have taken the time to reconstruct the Theatre as well (the original was destroyed by a fire and then The Globe V2 was destroyed by those pesky puritans). Art isn't dead. And people still read, pundits be damned. And the show always goes on. + +The Tate Modern is an imposing, factory like building housing an impressive collection of Modern art. What's most impressive about the Tate Modern is that it's free (anyone been to the MOMA in New York lately? Decidedly not free), well you have to pay for the exhibitions, but the permanent collection is free. Unfortunately the Tate Modern was re-hanging much of their permanent collection (my museum timing has always been awful) so there was a limited amount of art on display. Cy Twombly, Tate Modern, London, EnglandThere are a number of amazing pieces by Jean Miro and Max Ernst, as well as some Picassos and the usual suspects of 20th Century art. But for me the highlight was Cy Twombly's paintings and sculptures. I have a friend who loves Cy Twombly so I was familiar with his work through books and photos, but frankly it always seemed a bit jumbled and lacking to me. However when you get up close to the actual canvas the detail is amazing and something about the four paintings at the Tate (entitled Quattro Stagioni - a painting in four parts) were spellbinding to me. Cy Twombly, Tate Modern, London, EnglandIts as if you can actually feel the swirling chaos begin to envelope you and then settle to produce a calm that wasn't there before you stepped in front of them. I must have spent twenty minutes staring at them. Long enough that Thet and Terese were already outside waiting for me. Eventually I tore myself away, though I honestly could have stood there for a couple of hours. + +We walked down the river toward another gallery I have never heard of but which Thet promised me was good. It turned out that the gallery had packed it in and moved to Chelsea but I did get to see the London eye and Big Ben and Parliament and such tourist sites. Parliament, Thames River, London EnglandEventually Terese had to go home and Thet and I stopped in at a riverside pub and sat outside drinking a few glasses of bitter. Oh yes, I forgot the best part, it was twenty degrees, the warmest day of the year so far in London and hardly a cloud in the sky. The atmosphere on the streets was near jubilation everyone smiling and invested with that same strange energy that I used to see after the first true thaw in Northampton. There is something about a long dark winter that makes you appreciate spring so much more. We sat in the sunshine and chatted about future trips and the essential differences between Americans and the British and then we headed home for a bite to eat. + +The following day the thermometer climbed up to 25 Celsius and we scrapped our original plans in favor of a barbeque in Hampstead Heath. We stopped by the grocery store and picked up a disposable grill and a few pieces of chicken and sausage and headed for the park. After climbing up a hill that overlooked all of London we sat down in the high, unmowed spring grasses. Luckily said grasses were green and water logged or we would probably have burned down a good portion of Hampstead Heath with our portable grill. We did not, as is suggested in the instructions, elevate the grill on rocks or bricks. No, we just set it on the grass and lit it up. As the flames whipped in the wind and began to light the long strands of grass on fire we started to get a little nervous. I stayed by the grill trying to press the grass down on all sides so it wouldn't catch fire while Thet looked for some stones or something nonflammable to set the grill on. I was a little concerned that the heat from the bottom of the grill was going to ignite the hillside before she got back (we all know the temperature at which books burn thanks to Mr. Bradbury, but I haven't a clue what temperature grass begins to spontaneously combust). Fortunately Thet found a good size log and disaster was averted. I would like to have seen the look on that border agent's face if I had burned down Hampstead Heath. + +Hampstead Heath, London, EnglandWe grilled chicken and sausage and it wasn't long before every dog in the park was sniffing their way over to our little spot. For the most part they left when their owners called but one lab just stayed. Molly was her name and curiously she never went after the food. She simply sat in the grass in front of us and hung out. Perhaps she was just bored with her owner or maybe she was trying to escape the three poodles that she apparently lived with, whatever the case we had a dog for the afternoon. A friend of mine once suggested that there ought to be a dog rental service for those that wanted a dog, but not all the time. Well if you want a dog, get a grill and head for the park. Just be careful with the flames, London has a bad history of fires. + +Thet, Terese, Joy and me, London, EnglandLater that night we met up with Terese and Joy and hit a few pubs on a street whose name I don't remember but which I gathered was well known for its bars and pubs. + +My last day we took it easy. I accompanied Thet on a few errands (by bizarre stroke of chance I have now been to the employment offices of both England and France, but still never made it to one in the States) and then we went to another park. That evening after having the requisite dinner of fish and chips we wandered about to a few pubs and called it an early night since I was leaving quite early in the morning. + +All in all I adjusted fairly quickly to being back in the west. Strangely the things that I thought might bother me didn't too much and things I hadn't considered became very noticeable. The most interesting change that I hadn't considered was the length of the day. For the last seven months I have been within a few hundred kilometers of the equator which means that the sun rises at about 6:30 and sets at about 6:30. In London however the sun doesn't set until well past eight at night, which completely messed up my sense of time. The best thing about the west though is that you can drink the tap water. I don't know why I enjoyed it so much, London at night from the busprobably simply because you can. And true tap water rarely tastes very good, but you don't realize what a great thing it is to brush your teeth in tap water until you haven't for a long time. Wash machines were also a revolutionary idea, too revolutionary for me. + +I wish that I had been able to stay in London longer, it's by far my favorite city I've visited on this trip and the only other city I would rank with New York (Paris and Bangkok are both nice and I enjoyed them both, but neither of them is at the same level as New York and London). There is something about both New York and London that the minute I arrive, I feel at home, as if that is where I ought to be, have always been and may well be forever. + +Many thanks to Thet and her friends for their hospitality and kindness to strangers; should I ever actually have a place in the U.S. you are all welcome whenever you like (and I'll read up on Manhattan landmarks so I can figure out where they are). Cheers. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-05-11-refracted-light-and-grace.txt b/jrnl/2006-05-11-refracted-light-and-grace.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e397946 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-05-11-refracted-light-and-grace.txt @@ -0,0 +1,54 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 47.483800862289485,19.062137601106286 +location: Budapest,Pest,Hungary +image: 2008/castlehillbuda.jpg +desc: Going upscale in Budapest: watching the Danube from my balcony, smoking cigarettes and enjoying the nightscape of Buda's Castle Hill. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Evening, after dinner, outside on the balcony, smoking cigarettes and contemplating the nightscape of Buda's Castle Hill rising up out of its own golden reflection in the shimmering Danube waters. The drone of car horns in the distance and the electric tram squealing as it pulls out of the station below on the river a boat slowly churns upstream... +pub_date: 2006-05-11T00:26:59 +slug: refracted-light-and-grace +title: Refracted Light and Grace +--- + +My first impressions of central Europe were from the plane coming in low over Budapest where I noted that the typical Soviet architectural blights. Every colonizing country seems to leave behind some token of itself, a scent, not unlike a dog pausing to lift a leg on every tree it passes. + +The French tend to leave behind Arc de Triomphes of varying sizes and a deep knowledge of bread making. With the Spanish it tends toward Stucco churches, the English a habit of afternoon tea and some distilleries. The Soviets version of leg lifting can be seen in the form of monstrous, boxy concrete high-rise apartment buildings as ugly, cheerless and cold as the former regime itself. + +From the air over a Budapest the most immediately striking feature are the Soviet style high-rises just outside the old town areas. Which is not so say Hungarian architecture is lacking, just perhaps not as conspicuous ugly as that of the Soviets. I'm sure in due time the Hungarians will tear down these architectural insults as they have all the statues of Party leaders and Communist heroes (which some entrepreneurial sort bought up and placed in a park where today for a modest fee you can see Lenin and Stalin immortalized in iron and carefully quarantined outside of the city which never wanted anything to do with them), but for the time being the dominate the view from the air. + +I spent a few minutes, maybe half an hour, at the airport studying the blocky structures from a distance, trying to get away from the immediately oppressive feeling they gave me. Eventually my shuttle bus arrived and pulled me out of the dismal stupor I had fallen into. The jostling of luggage and fellow passengers finding seats in the van provided a human inertia that slowly propelled me out of the gloomy mood that had crept over me. As we drove out of the suburbs toward the city I watched as the Soviet style apartment buildings slowly gave way to blocks of older vaguely Art Nouveau buildings until finally when we crossed the bridge into Pest I was confronted with the modern Budapest—the faceless glass of modern hotels juxtaposed against a background of striking Gothic-spired Churches and Baroque facades. + +Budapest actually consists of two cities, Buda and Pest separated by the Danube River. The hotel where we were staying was located on the Pest side of the river. Danube banks Budapest HungaryHigh on the fifth floor, where my suitably generic but comfortable room was located, my balcony afforded a view of the small riverside walkway below where several cafes had tables and umbrellas overlooking the Danube and then beyond where the river floated lazily by and in the background Buda's Castle Hill district rose up from the opposite bank. I also had a clear view of the so-called Chain Bridge a few hundred meters up the river, one of three or four bridges that span the Danube linking Buda and Pest. + +After getting settled in the hotel we decided to head out for a bit of an explore up the banks of the river. Walking along the Danube that night as the sun slowly sank behind the north end of Castle Hill and the shadows lengthened across the face of the old Parliament building, I came across a strange and vaguely disturbing monument of iron shoes sitting in pairs at the edge of the river. Most monuments, whether they commemorate misery or good fortune, exist as positive space, a statue in a square, a wall under some leafy trees, a cannon pointing out over a field, but a few, particularly those that commemorate loss, evoke emptiness and anguish through a sculptural negative space. + +The iron shoes scattered there beside the river seemed to me a kind of sculptural synecdoche, tiny parts chosen to represent a whole which was forcibly removed from time. Shoe Memorial, Budapest, HungaryApproaching the shoes scattered on the concrete embankment one does not at first realize they are iron or even a sculpture as the iron is quite blackened and in the fading light of evening they looked as if a group of people simply left their shoes for an afternoon swim. But on closer examination one quickly notices that the styles and cuts of the shoes are outdated and harkened from some moment in the past. But it's a moment curiously suspended, as if the owners might at any moment climb back up out of the river into which they were cast and reclaim their lost footwear. + +None of the various guidebooks we were carrying mentioned the monument, but a small plague embedded in the concrete back away from the shoes themselves commemorates the deaths of thousands Jews who were forced into the Danube by the Arrow Cross (Hungarian Nazi Party). What's most striking about Sculptor Gyula Pauer's memorial is its quietude in the midst of so many rather loud, larger than life monuments and buildings like the towering pose of the nearby parliament buildings whose Gothic high arches and turrets seemed suddenly overwrought and desperate in their attempt to establish themselves. I thought of how sometimes the quietest statements are the most powerful, the way for instance Nick Drake's Pink Moon, though almost whispering at times, is one of the most formidable records I've heard. + +The shoes sitting quietly there on the embankment, very nearly in the shadow of the Margit Island Bridge and so still against the backdrop of the Danube waters reminded me of Newton's famous analogy comparing the concept of time to the Thames River. Castle Hill Buda, Budapest, HungaryIf a substitution of rivers may be allowed, the shoes then seemed to me to perfectly capture a moment, a frozen piece of time which allowed one to circumventing the present through a sculptural trapdoor, to return to something that refused to be swept away by the river. + +I recalled one evening in Cambodia when Rob remarked with some surprise that neither Matt nor Debi nor I had any kind of timepiece between us. And in fact none of us ever had. I don't know about either of them but I don't wear a watch. Once some years ago I badly burned my arm with boiling water. Most of the skin on the back of my hand and part of my wrist sloughed off and was cut away by surgeons. By a strange trick of physics the leather band of the wristwatch I was wearing at the time, wicked the water away from my skin before it could be burned. Thus I had a thin band of flesh surrounded by two rather disgusting areas of boiled skin. Eventually of course the burned skin healed, but curiously, the skin where my watch had been remained several shades lighter than that of the burned areas. In spite of the fact that the watch ostensibly saved my skin, it was that protected portion that looked out of place in the end. I decided then that I would never wear a watch again. + +How I translated a burn and bit of discolored skin into an intense dislike of mechanical time is something I can't quite explain except to say that perhaps noticing what was not on my wrist suddenly made me keenly aware of other things that also were not there. Eventually the whole concept of time came to seem too arbitrary to me. Morning, evening, spring, fall these words evoke things, numbers require second hand translation and seem to me a wasted effort. + +Later that evening after dinner I sat for a while outside on the balcony smoking cigarettes and contemplating the nightscape of Castle Hill which rose up out of the shimmering Danube waters. The drone of car horns in the distance and the electric Castle Hill, Buda, Budapest, Hungarytram squealing out of the station filled the evening air. A riverboat slowly churned up river with a handful of tourists pointing cameras back toward the banks, capturing moments of time, moments they will likely playback later for family and loved ones who were not there. I sincerely doubt if any of them will ever say “this was taken at 7 pm on May 10th.” Instead they will likely say this was our first evening in Budapest, this was the night we sailed along a river, and this was where we walked, danced and swam. + +We set out early the next day to explore the Castle Hill area which is the oldest part of the city. The name Castle Hill fails to encapsulate the area. The left side of the hill is actually a palace where the kings once ruled and now stand several museums. The right side of the hill, still encircled by the castle walls contains Buda's old town quarter. All total the area is more than a kilometer long and encompasses a small city, referred to now as “old town” since like it or not time is our major marker of space. + +Castle hill is a sprawling affair that reminded me somewhat of the similarly sprawling City Palace in Udaipur India. Both occupy the top of reasonable sized hills and both encircle what were once functioning cities. And both were constructed over long periods of time according the changing whims of successive rulers until looking at them today they become a reflection of the changing architectural tastes of their respective cultures. + +Which is not to say that these two very different places have much in common beyond being large castles built on hills. When traveling for long periods of time it's easy to slip into the comfortable notion that one has seen and done certain things that need not be seen or done again. It is in other words easy to feel that if you've seen one tree you've seen them all. But if that were truly the case we could live the life of lightening bugs and be done with it by sunrise. A beech is not a maple is not an oak is certainly not a white fir, the differences in bark and leaves and roots and scent and shade and a million other things will leap out at you provided you pay attention. The notion that the part can be representative of the whole is popular in postmodernist circles, but take it outside the academic and it quickly shows itself as it is—a failure of the imagination. + +I believe that one could pick at random any one object and study it, look at it, feel it, breathe it, hear it and be with it every day for the rest of your life without ever really being able to say that you know it, that you understand it, that it has failed to move you, provoke you or challenge you in some way you weren't expecting. One of my favorite characters in film is Harvey Keitel's character in Wayne Wang's Smoke. Keitel's character, Aggie, takes the same photograph of the same scene from the same place at the same time every day for ten years and has all the prints in massive photo albums and explains to John Hurt's character the subtle differences between each. That's the sort of patience and dedication and love that we all ought to aspire to. + +We spent the better part of the morning wandering the castle grounds, the narrow streets of old town and a made brief visit to the Hungarian National Gallery. Eventually some clouds rolled in and after lunch a light drizzle began to fall. My parents decided to head back since they were still adjusting to the time change. Old Town Castle Hill, Budapest, HungaryI set out to find the underground passageways that lace the hillside beneath the castle. Most of the area from Budapest south is largely comprised a very porous limestone known as Karst (which, if you've been reading this site for while, you may remember also formed the caves I visited in Laos). Over millions of years the water that seeps into the Karst eventually carves out caves and tunnels. The ones beneath Castle Hill in Buda have been slightly improved by man over the centuries and have served as everything from wine cellar to bomb shelter depending on the times. + +Today for a modest fee you can wander through a labyrinth of damp tunnels with dim lights and faux cave paintings in what I believe is supposed to give you taste of Neolithic religion and superstition or at least someone's idea of Neolithic caves, but unfortunately it comes off a little too campy to be all that interesting. It was a nice escape from the rain, but when I emerged out the far end of the tunnel I was craving something a little less Disneylandish. + +I set out alone to escape the crowds of Castle Hill and explore the more modern parts of the city. Something in a travel brochure on the airplane had caught my eye and I decided to see if I could find my way to the tomb of Gul Baba a Turkish Whirling dervish Gul Baba, Whirling Dervish, Budapest, Hungarywho died in Budapest in 1541. I don't know much about whirling dervishes aside from the fact that their Turkish in origin and a friend of mine is in a band of the same name (if you're curious you can visit whirling dervish's website for more info on the band, but the rumor has it that Gul Baba brought the rose to Buda and the hill on which the tomb rests is known as Rose Hill. + +The truth is that while the Dervish tomb appealed to me I mostly wanted to walk through the streets of the real part of the city since the downside to four star travel is that you're typically sequestered in tourist ghettos, though in Budapest it was more of a business traveler ghetto. In either case you don't really get to see the everyday life of the locals. So I walked through the rain to the tomb, made a few photographs and ducked into a cafe on my way home for a cup of coffee and bite of Hungarian pastry. + +I sat in the back corner of the cafe waiting for the rain to let up thinking of the Hungarian Museum of Fine Art. For the most part there was little of note. The only highlight outside the Spanish gallery of El Grecco and Goya was a single piece from Gauguin's period in Tahiti. I don't recall the name of the painting, Old Woman at Window, Hungaryit wasn't very large, but the vibrant colors and almost overwhelming sense of passion and life made it fairly leap off the wall next to more muted Monet's and Picassos. Gauguin paid attention and he loved what he saw. His fascination with color seems to have eclipsed nearly every other concern in his mind. Figures are vague as if transitory and chiefly memorable for the light they reflect, background and foreground blend, what matters is not the precise place, nor the precise time, but the color, the color of the world that distinguishes not between only shade and tone and hue and tint to reveal the kaleidoscope that is always all around us. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-05-16-blue-milk.txt b/jrnl/2006-05-16-blue-milk.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a7728da --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-05-16-blue-milk.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 42.64133838429178,18.10905217872305 +location: Dubrovnik,Dubrovnik-Neretva,Croatia +image: 2008/plitvice.jpg +desc: Looking down at the milky blue waters of Like Plitvice it's hard to believe that the largest European conflict since WWII began here. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: It's hard to understand, standing on the banks of such crystalline, cerulean lakes, whose dazzling colors come from the mineral rich silt runoff of glaciers, that the largest European conflict since world war two began here, at Like Plitvice Croatia. But indeed this is where the first shots were fired on Easter Sunday in 1991 and the first casualty was a park policeman. +pub_date: 2006-05-16T00:32:27 +slug: blue-milk +title: Blue Milk +--- + +It's hard to understand, standing on the banks of such crystalline, cerulean lakes, whose dazzling colors come from the mineral rich silt runoff of glaciers, that the largest European conflict since world war two began here, at Like Plitvice Croatia. But indeed this is where the first shots were fired on Easter Sunday in 1991 and the first casualty was a park policeman. + +Azure Waters, Lake Plitvice, Croatia The Serbs held the area for the duration of the conflict, though it's difficult to imagine why they wanted it. Lake Plitvice is chiefly notable for its natural beauty and as a gateway to the mountains, hardly a militarily strategic spot since no roads actually run up into, let alone over, the mountains. Nevertheless, here is where it began, though as with all beginnings, it did not really start here, it started with the leaders whose poisoned, greedy hearts and minds dragged the former Yugoslavia into a war no one wanted. + +My parents rented a car in Budapest and we drove south through Hungary toward the Croatian border. The Hungarian countryside was unremarkable but pleasantly so; the same sort of scenery one might pass from Philadelphia to Pittsburg or London to Bath. Around lunch time we crossed over into Croatia, a country that had previously existed for me simply as a place where bad things happen — war, ethnic cleansing, etc — not a place at all actually, just a word. Mossy Tree reflection, Lake Plitvice, CroatiaLike most Americans, I never had a real handle on the Bosnia/Croatia/Serbia war. I was dimly aware that The U.S. at some point, with the backing of U.N. (remember when we played by the rules?) launched a campaign of air strikes in Kosovo. For those that like me could never get it sorted, here's a quick rundown (taken half from guidebooks and half from some Croatians and Serbs I met). The former republic of Yugoslavia was an artificially created state that grew out of the end of world war two and a man named Tito. Tito is an interesting historical figure; he managed with some success to keep one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse countries in the world together for thirty-five years. Naturally there were some iron-fisted clampdowns and not everyone seems to have been fond of him, but in spite of his occasionally brutal tactics he did keep the peace (if at the expense of some). And his tactics were certainly no more brutal than the war that followed his death. Shortly after Tito died in 1980 Yugoslavia was hit by heavy inflation which resulted from Tito's habit of borrowing foreign money and Yugoslavia's inability to pay it back. + +Slovenia was the first the break away and is the most ethnically and religiously coherent of the various Balkan states. For the most part Slovenia managed to stay out of the fighting that would soon engulf the area. The Croatians were the next to go, declaring independence in 1991 and finally getting U.N. recognition in 1992. That left Serbia, Bosnia and tiny Kosovo. The trouble was there were a lot of Serbians in Croatia, Croatians in Serbia, Bosnians in Croatia, etc. It's tough to say there was a good side and bad side in the war that followed, but isn't it always? The Serbians started the war; the first shot were fired at Lake Plitvice National Park where my parents and I were staying. And yes the Serbians are guilty of ethnic cleansing, rounding up and killing thousands of Croatians. But then the Croatians drove the Serbs out and turned around and engaged in more or less the same ethnic cleansing. War. Everybody loses. Everybody dies. + +And so today there are four nations Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Bosnia Herzegovina, where Yugoslavia once existed. [Except, before I was able to get this to press, Montenegro has voted to break away from Serbia, so now there are five. I must publish this before Kosovo does the same.] For the most part the war and its effects are gone. Like Cambodia there is a landmine problem that will continue to exist and kill and main for some time to come, but the tensions seems to have passed and aside from a few bullet riddled buildings and bombed out, caved in roofs, you'd never guess that the largest European war since WWII ended just ten years ago. + +Lake Plitvice National Park is a unique geological phenomena formed by two factors: porous karst limestone which absorbs water and erodes quickly, and mineral deposits from since departed glaciers. Walkway, Upper Lake, Lake Plitvice, CroatiaAs lake water seeped into the Karst, the rock decayed forming a series of lakes and interconnecting waterfalls that cascade through the forests. The national park service has created some trails which pass along the edges of the waterfalls and lakes as they wind their way downhill (or if you're masochistic and/or not that bright—uphill). + +The waters are both the clearest water I've ever seen and yet somehow manage to reflect a color close to bright teal and look a bit like photographs of Banff Canada where similar minerals create the same effect on Lake Louise. + +But where Lake Louise is so dramatic as to be almost overwhelming, the natural beauty of Plitvice is quieter and less imposing. There is no overlook or scenic viewpoint with flash popping tourists and calendar worthy photographs, to experience Plitvice you have to get out of the car, Forest Floor, Lake Plitvice, Croatiaoff the road and simply wander the forests in the cool of the morning or evening when the light filtering through the forest is softened by the subtle bending forces of the atmosphere and the forest floor becomes a leaf padded wonderland. + +We started at the highest lake and walked downward through cascades of water and reed lined lakeshores, passing at times through the forests where the moss-covered old growth creates a canopy through which sunlight trickles in to form pools of light and shadow forever shifting about as you walk. Strangely there was very little in the way of wildlife. The lakes were choked full of fish, but the forests curiously empty, though I did see a frog lazing in the sunshine near the lakeshore. + +As with any Karst area there are a number of caves in Lake Plitvice one of which forms a near vertical chasm through the hillside and can be climbed by means of a series of slippery switch-backing stone staircases. At the right time of day beams of sunlight fall in from above, Cave, Lake Plitvice, Croatiailluminating the darker passageways and side tunnels which presumably, with a proper torch could be explored. But I neglected to bring any sort of torch and had to content myself with the main cavern. + +The hillsides were covered in the green of spring, the dark shades of firs and the lighter, brighter leaves of beeches and maples. The most remarkable of these trees were the white firs whose branches had nearly florescent tips, the result of fresh spring growth. I spent the first evening in Lake Plitvice studying the white firs around our lodge, trying to make sense of how something so bright could eventually fade to the dark, almost black, green of the inner branches. The newly formed tips were such a striking viridescent contrast to the inner tangle that I couldn't help but wonder what lay within that nearly impenetrable jumble of darkness nearer to the trunk. + +Near the inner tree where the evening light does not penetrate, some hidden gesture of nature as if to remind us that not everything is so easily seen, not everything is in grand sweeping gestures or romantic vistas, sure the highlights capture our attention, but what lies beneath in that dark tangle near the origins? Does the truth perhaps lie in there amongst the dense and inaccessible darkness? Or do I here sound too much like Joseph Conrad obsessed by the darkness of his river and the human heart he saw beating at the end of it? + +It occurred to me that my thinking was mistaken, that in fact due to the physics of light, New Growth Pine Trees, Lake Plitvice, Croatiathe inner branches were in fact actually lighter, they appear darker because they reflect less light back to my eye, but without my eye and its entrapments what you might observe is actually a dense forest of light, all that light not given up by the world and therefore seen by us as darkness. Perhaps that's the reason a number of artists have chosen to start with a completely black canvas and add color on top of it, as if to transcend the limitations of the human eye. + +But perhaps I am too technical since there is no way to see the world as we could say it really is, because the only means we have to see it are our own eyes, our poor senses cannot reveal this impenetrable universe in which not all is illuminated, not everything makes a sound and much carries the scent of nothing on some solar wind which none of us will ever perceive let alone understand. + +I have read that in pure darkness the human eye is sensitive enough to detect a candle at a distance of forty kilometers. Rainbow, Lake Plitvice, CroatiaAnd yet in spite of this remarkable attunement to light, light is our limitation, without it nothing exists for us. Perhaps the inner branches of the firs and pines are merely the unyielding tangle of dead needles and cobwebs and beetles that I imagine and there is no metaphor, no truth which is what drives us out of bed in the vague hint of predawn to stand facing east at the shore of some body of water and wait with such anxious anticipations for the coming of the morning light on the water where, as Flaubert once wrote, “the mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal.” + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-05-18-feel-good-lost.txt b/jrnl/2006-05-18-feel-good-lost.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d47404e --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-05-18-feel-good-lost.txt @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 42.64133838429178,18.10905217872305 +location: Dubrovnik,Dubrovnik-Neretva,Croatia +image: 2008/dubrovnik.jpg +desc: Down to the Dalmatian seaside where the highway hugs the Adriatic Sea and leads, eventually, to the fairy tale city of Dubrovnik. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Dubrovnik, Croatia was heavily shelled during the Bosnian conflict and roughly 65 percent of its buildings were hit, built for the most part you'd never know it. Most of the buildings date from about 1468, though some were destroyed in the great earthquake of 1667, still, by and large, the city looks as it did in the fifteenth century. +pub_date: 2006-05-18T00:38:37 +slug: feel-good-lost +title: Feel Good Lost +--- + +From Lake Plivtice we drove west over the coastal mountains and down to the Dalmatian seaside where the highway hugs the shore and fantastic views of the Adriatic Sea and nearby islands come rolling around with every point and harbor of the shoreline. + +Coastline Near Dubrovnik, CroatiaFrom the road I watched the cobalt seas specked occasionally with a yacht or fishing boat and forming a stark contrast with the red roof tiles of small villages and seaside hamlets such that, after a while, I had the sensation of having played too long with a color wheel, much the same way that staring at a word for too long can make one question the spelling. Eventually, after a four or five hour drive, we arrived at the seaside village of Dubrovnik. + +A walled trading city whose origins can be traced as far back as the 7th century and variously controlled by the Byzantines, Venetians and Turks, Dubrovnik is encircled by high walls and filled with narrow cobblestones streets and looks from above like an endless sea of mottled red and orange roof tiles. + +Owing to a curious set of circumstances our original hotel was overbooked and we were forced to go to a nicer one which also gave me a private room (I hate it when that happens). Sunset from my Hotel Window, Dubrovnik, CroatiaThe Argentinean was very typically European, small rooms heavy draperies and most importantly an old and heavy cherry wood desk, the sort of desk where you could say sit down and get a bit of writing done. I am picky about only two things when it comes to writing, the desk my laptop sits on and/or, as the case may be, the pen I use. The wrong equipment often produces the wrong words, these things are important. Trust me. + +The downside to the Argentinean was its location, a bit of a walk from the old walled city, but after getting settled we set out for a stroll through old town. Dubrovnik's old town area feels a bit like stepping back in time several centuries. + +Most of the still standing buildings date from about 1468, though some were destroyed in the great earthquake of 1667, which leveled nearly everything on the Adriatic Sea. There are the remains of a monastery and nunnery, now merely crumbling walls and piled stones, which date from much early than the rest of the city, but by and large the city looks as it did in the fifteenth century. Long known as the Pearl of the Adriatic, many people think Dubrovnik is the most beautiful city in Europe and from what I've seen I believe them. Main Street Nightscape, Dubrovnik, CroatiaThe downside of course is the resulting crowds, but most tourists seemed to be a bit older than me and for the most part headed home around ten. Insomniacs can have the place to themselves late at night and that's when the city looks its best anyway, the polished stone streets reflect the glittering lamplight and no one is around. + +Dubrovnik is famous for its red tiled roofs. Apparently the tiles were unique, or perhaps just older than the other towns in the area, whatever the case nearly every photograph you're likely to see of the city is from above looking out over the roofs. Regrettably Dubrovnik was heavily shelled during the Bosnian conflict and roughly 65 percent of its buildings were hit, thus Dubrovnik's roofscape is not quite what it used to be. But to my eye it looked better with the new and slightly different tiles mottled together with older slightly yellower tiles. Dubrovnik Rooftops, CroatiaThe contrast between the colors made the roofs look less a postcard perfect vision and more of an actual city. After all fairy tales are myth, reality looks a little more like someone parked a howitzer on the nearby hilltop and started lobbing injustice down on the world. + +The next day we paid the rather exorbitant admission and set out to walk to walls. Dubrovnik's walls range from a thickness of about four meters to as much as ten in some spots and comprise a distance of roughly two kilometers as they zigzag around the city. Walking the walls seemed a bit surreal to me. It would be more proper to say I staggered about the walls in a sort of trance owing to the fact that I had never actually seen a fairy tale city. As with most things that overwhelm me I found myself staring at the often mundane details instead, stockings hanging from a clothesline, a row of potted plants on a windowsill, an olive tree growing over a crumbling stone wall, a garden of lupines and morningbells growing out of an old tile roof. Perhaps the most surreal thing about Dubrovnik is that it still a functioning city and even as we tourists walked about the walls staring down at the narrow streets running off in all directions, Stockings on the Clothesline, Dubrovnik, Croatiathe people of Dubrovnik were tending their gardens and hanging out the days laundry or heading off to work. The sights from the walls looked like something out of a European children's story and any given window may well have contained a princess I simply overlooked. + +To the best of my knowledge she was not a princess, but I did meet a lovely Croatia woman one night who, along with a couple of her friends attempted to explain the Bosnia-Croatia-Serbian conflict to me. However, about half way through both Martina and her friend Marco seemed to lose track of the thread. It may have been the beer, it may have been simply that there are better things to do, but halfway through Marco kind of shrugged and said roughly ‘I don't know, a bunch of assholes shot at us and we shot at them and then it stopped and now it's history,' which more or less covers it I believe. + +I promised I would here mention that Marco and Martina had both recently moved to Dubrovnik to work at a lovely little ultra modern bar named Fresh which also serves various wraps and sandwiches by day. I only went out two nights in Dubrovnik (I had to make use of the lovely desk one night), but Fresh was by far the most fun. It's the sort of spot that aimed both at travelers and locals though on the particular night I was there there were only three of us there and two were new employees which I think made the owner nervous. So I have done my part, if you're in Dubrovnik, stop by Fresh and have a drink or two. + +Rooftop Garden, Dubrovnik, CroatiaDubrovnik was something out of a fairy tale, or at least that's the only way I can contextualize it. I was thinking just the other day about American's fascination with Europe (the number of Americans in Europe is staggering compared to what I saw in Asia. If only 6% of Americans have passports and therefore can leave the country, 5.99% of them come to Europe). I think part of what compels Americans in Europe is simply the idea that there is some history beyond the eighteen-century. Things as simple as that existence of buildings older than the 19th century is somewhat magical to those of us that come from a country whose history is so short. There may be a few old buildings in New York, but by and large American buildings are recent, which is something I don't think Europeans can fully appreciate, surrounded as they are by everyday reminders of the past. We are new. We barely have a past. + +When the majority of European cities were being designed and built America was as yet unknown. Thus for an American to be in a city like Dubrovnik is something akin to stepping into a history book. For instance, near where I grew up one of the oldest areas is a city called Orange. Orange has an "old town" circle area whose buildings date from the early 1920s. This is about as far back as Southern California history goes. When I lived in Athens, GA there were a handful of antebellum mansions that date from more like the late 1700s, but nothing goes back further. To see anything that existed before 1700 is I think, for many Americans, a shocking revelation. Sure we **know** that Europe is there and it has all this old architecture, just like I know central America exists, but it won't mean anything to me until I get there. + +I've never really been one to dig too deep into the history of places, but something about Dubrovnik compelled me to. I spent the first evening digging around in a local bookshop and discovered that Dubrovnik can trace its history all the way back to the seventh century or so. But what I thought about later was not the actual history of Dubrovnik, but rather the realization that the longer I travel the more estranged I am from my own past and yet the more compelled I feel by history. Not that my past doesn't matter to me, in fact it matters immensely since I see the present as a collision between yesterday and tomorrow, but my own history seems to me now more of something I read in a book than events that actually happened. I could not for instance tell you much about what I was thinking before I felt on this trip, but I could talk for hours about Jim Thompson and the silk trade of Thailand. I don't remember what I did in Los Angeles last summer, but I know exactly when the Khmer Dynasty began construction on Angkor Wat. + +When home fades, as it does when you travel, and your past begins to seem more like a secondhand memory, perhaps it's only natural that you feel a bit lost and maybe my fascination with history is merely a grasping at straws to recover something I've lost. Narrow Streets, Dubrovnik, CroatiaPerhaps this is the reason that expats gravitate toward each other, not because they feel some connection with home, but because they seek others who have lost that connection and the connection to the loss becomes their new home. + +A friend of mine used to tell me that, owing to a childhood spent moving from town to town, she never felt like she really had a home. Someone recently wrote me in an email saying, much as Tom Wolfe's novel *You Can Never Go Home Again* implies, once you've left you will forever feel like a foreigner no matter where you may go. It's a difficult feeling to explain except to say that the further you go, through both time and space, the less you feel connected to anything that happened before you left. + +But that's not to say I've forgotten you my friends, people remain every bit as real, it's the events that fade, the mindset that changes. And it isn't a bad thing, on the contrary I find it quite liberating. I am without a doubt happier traveling than I ever have been at home. For the first time in my life, on this trip, I feel like I'm doing what I am supposed to be doing. And it feels good. + +Many people have written to ask what I plan to do when I get home. My quick answer is always, leave again. It may seem like I've been all over the place on this trip, but from my point of view I've merely revealed how little I've seen. The past, something called home, seems at this point unreal. There is so much of my own past that no longer fits in the present and I fear, as my friend said, that I will forever be a stranger in my own land. + +And yet if anything becomes more real without a past, it's a connection to the present. It has become trite, that Buddhist saying, be here now, but now is where we live and no matter what you do you can't live in the past or the future, so indeed you may as well be here now and learn, as I am trying to do, how to feel good lost. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-05-19-ghost.txt b/jrnl/2006-05-19-ghost.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8b2863e --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-05-19-ghost.txt @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 46.05085985632457,14.50674891269926 +location: Ljubljana,Gorenjska,Slovenia +image: 2008/trogirnight.jpg +desc: From the cobblestone alleys and arched doorways of Trogir, Croatia to Ljubljana, Slovenia, home of Europe's greatest graffiti. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Like Dubrovnik, Trogir is a walled city of roughly Venetian vintage, but Trogir's wall has largely crumbled away or been removed. Still, it has the gorgeous narrow cobblestone streets, arched doorways and towering forts that give all Dalmatian towns their Rapunzel-like fairly tale quality. +pub_date: 2006-05-19T19:37:07 +slug: ghost +title: Ghost +--- + +From Dubrovnik we returned north toward Slovenia, stopping along the way to spend one night in the peaceful, almost backwater, Croatia fishing village of Trogir. Like Dubrovnik, Trogir was a walled city of roughly Venetian vintage, but Trogir's wall has largely crumbled away or been removed, though I know not how or why. Still it had the gorgeous narrow cobblestone streets, arched doorways and high towering forts that give all these Dalmatian towns their Rapunzel-like fairly tale quality. + +Trogir was notably different from Dubrovnik chiefly in that it was not inundated with tourists. There were tourists to be sure, but most of them were yachters who contented themselves by sitting in the waterfront cafes just in front of their moorings, admiring each other's yachts and telling sea tales. + +The rest of the town was given over to a handful of tourists who disappeared among the narrow winding streets such that I often found myself walking for long periods of time undisturbed by a soul. We wandered into the main church,sunlight on alter, Trogir, Croatia a large stone block affair just off the central square and only recently restored, just before sundown. The church was small and unremarkable save for its old tombstones or at least headstones, embedded right in the floor next to the pews. I had recently finished reading an essay by W.G. Sebald in which he argues, among other things, that our use of tombstones and crypts is really spurred by an urge to lock the dead in the earth, which we cleverly disguise to ourselves as commemorative memorials. + +I stood for a minute in the church watching the last sunbeams fall in through the windows near the roofline wondering if in fact just beneath me, buried in the fourteenth century, was some man or woman desperate to get out and wander the earth, slightly smaller than in life, as the dead are said to be, but larger in understanding and memory. Grave, Trogir, CroatiaI think it was Nabakov who said in one of his novel that writers and the dead travel in the same thing—the past. Indeed I have found, not just through sloth, that I prefer to write these anecdotes as past tense and see what remains with me a few days after I have left. + +This is why perhaps I may seem to have missed some fairly key things, like for instance the oldest pharmacy in the world which I saw in Dubrovnik, because the truth is, I simply don't have time to record everything. I remember the pharmacy now with its a collection of shelves full of dusty bottles and curios who use has long been forgotten, but when Church Bell, Trogir, CroatiaI came to write of Dubrovnik it was not there. Memories come and go, pass through us like the ghosts that live in them. Sometimes they are there when we want them, sometimes they are not, and sometimes they are there when we don't want them as well. + +So if I say in Trogir that I remember little more than the peculiar quality of the light as the sun set and electric lanterns began to come on, you will forgive me I hope for my inability to say more. Certain memories passed through me walking the streets of Trogir in the fading twilight, that are too old to speak of here, too far gone to retrace, it is enough for them to merely pass through, a bit of warmth and then they move on. I can say of Trogir though, Streets at Night, Trogir, Croatiaif you don't believe in ghosts, have a late night walk in the old city and tell me how you feel about ghosts when you're done. I have never doubted that the dead move among us, and never been so sure of it as standing in that church staring down at the tombstones from the thirteenth century. + +The following morning after watching the fisherman board their craft and motor out to sea, we climbed back in the car and drove on north to Ljubljana, Slovenia. Some of you may know that I have for some years (though not recently) published a literary journal under the name castagraf (which is currently being held ransom by some asshole domain squatters, so no link at the moment). To come to the point, in the course of several issues castagraf Ljubljana, SloveniaI published a number of Slovenian authors, most notably the highly esteemed Tomaz Salamun, Slovenia's national poet, or whatever title they have for the same idea. But along with Tomaz we published to two younger poets whom I would have liked to meet in Ljubljana, but I did not, owing in part to my own incompetence and in part to the estranged relationship I have with my former co-editor who processes their email address. + +Evening light, Ljubljana, SloveniaSo I was unable to look you up Primoz and Gregor for which I am sorry. I should liked to have met you both. But I did enjoy Ljubljana for the two says I spent there, a truly lovely city to call home. Ljubljana is one part old European city and one part college town owing to its relatively small size and large university. The center of town is two streets running parallel on opposite sides of the river, each street lined with cafes and restaurants frequented by locals and tourists alike. + +Though we spent a very short time in Ljubljana it remains one if my favorite European cities and it was fun to wander the streets where so many of my friends have previously been and which I had heard no shortage of stories about. It was nice as well to see the hometown of Tomaz Salamun whose poetry has had no small influence on my own. + +I spent the evening walking the streets trying to get a feel for the city. As the sun set and it began to grow cooler I stopped to put on a sweater and noticed a singularly striking and a little bit frightening piece of graffiti. What struck me about it was the contrast between Graffiti, Ljubljana, Sloveniathe gleaming, blood dripping eyes of the bat-like creature above a bed of blooming flowers which seemed for a moment to perfectly encapsulate the contrast between pain and joy that makes up our world. Later that night I dreamed about the strange bat creature, something about it got the better of my imagination, already overrun as it was with ghosts and memories of the dead, but at the end of the dream, of which I recall very little, the flowers were just coming up out of the soil, and the bat was no longer anywhere to be found. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-05-22-king-carrot-flowers-part-two.txt b/jrnl/2006-05-22-king-carrot-flowers-part-two.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eb0c075 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-05-22-king-carrot-flowers-part-two.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 46.365209982615575,14.109942911091283 +location: Bled,Bled,Slovenia +image: 2008/sloveniachurch.jpg +desc: Neutral Milk Hotel, the mountains of Bled Slovenia and just how many people can you fit in your heart? By Scott Gilbertson +dek: There is a roughly 200km loop of road that leads northwest out of Bled, through a pass in the Julian Alps and then down the other side, twisting and winding back toward Bled by way of craggy canyons, small hamlets and crystalline rivers. We set out sometime after breakfast. +pub_date: 2006-05-22T20:44:33 +slug: king-carrot-flowers-part-two +title: The King of Carrot Flowers Part Two +--- + +The chief attraction of Bled Slovenia is the sweeping panorama of the Julian Alps which lie just beyond its doorstep, which in this case is a lake ringed with castles, monasteries atop crags and palatial hotels that once played host to kings and queens. But owing to a change in the weather which turned from the perfect sunshine of the Dalmatian Coast to rather stormy skies, I did not see much of the sweeping panorama but instead found myself drawn to tiny little scenes in miniature which when examined closely held the same sweeping views but on a different scale. + +monastery, Bled SloveniaThere is a roughly 200km loop of road that leads northwest out of Bled, through a pass in the Julian Alps and then down the other side, twisting and winding back toward Bled by way of craggy canyons, small hamlets and crystalline rivers. We set out sometime after breakfast and first stopped about halfway up to the pass to see a memorial to the prisoners of war who died building the road during the First World War. My parents walked uphill to the monument, but I elected to take a short walk through the forest. The hidden sun cast a fine even light, as if filtered through a veil of ash, over the forest such that there were few shadows and even the deepest reaches of the woods were visible. I stopped near the road to examine for a while the lichen clinging to the side of a tree, which first caught my eye as a grey-green confusion against otherwise dark brown bark, but, on looking closer, I noticed the confusion gave way to an organization. Lichens, Near Bled, SloveniaThe lichen grew in clumps and rows, much as a forest does and in the valleys and hallows between the pale green strands of lichen, dozens of tiny insects wandered in the midst of what, for them, must be towering fronds. Beetles and ants treaded up and down the rows of lichen, while tiny green insects hovered pensively just above, as if trying to decided whether to duck into the forest of pale silvery branches below. + +Lichen are a composite plant consisting of a fungus which contains photosynthetic algae cells. I remember reading once that lichen grow very slowly and that these growths, which often appear on rocks and trees as a crustlike expansion, slowly covering over their surroundings, can live as long and sometimes longer than many of the trees to which they cling. I couldn't help but notice that lichen bears an uncanny resemblance to coral, which also hosts green algae in their tissues to draw nutrients from the sunlight. Coral is one of the smallest creatures in the world and yet it is the only animal whose architecture is visible from space. Only tiny coral joining together into colonies as it does is capable of making something so massive it's visible from well beyond our world. + +Lichen may not be as spectacular in architectural achievement as coral, but then again, neither are we. I continued on into the forest lost in the strangeness of the thought that the largest things should come from the smallest sources. I walked aimlessly and rather slow, letting the forest step by step reveal a path, Forest, near Bled, Sloveniawhich it did; tree by tree, bush by bush it moved me to the only direction I could go. After walking maybe a hundred meters I came to a small clearing where the trees stood apart in a ring and forest floor turned to brilliant green grass and a kaleidoscope of colorful wildflowers—wild mustard, blue-eyed mary, woodruff, dandelions and many more whose names I do not know. I stood in the middle of the clearing and began, for no reason at all to turn in circles with my head tipped back, staring up at the branches and leaves of the white firs and pines swollen with yellow clumps of pollen. When I think of it now I see something a bit like the long panoramic sweeps through the forest that filmmaker Terrance Malik is so fond of, panning up into the canopy of trees and leaves with flashes of sunlight peaking through from behind the milky white low hanging clouds. I continued to spin slowly in a circle, stumbling at times but keeping my head up high until I began to feel as if I were floating up into the air, almost able to touch the top leaves of a nearby beech tree before slowly spiraling back down the earth. + +dandelions, near Bled, SloveniaEventually I was overcomes with dizziness and had to sit down in the middle of the clearing while the world still turned slowly around me. I lay back in the grass so I was eyelevel with the dandelion puffs and watched them shudder in the stray currents of air floating down from the pass which shook the beeches as well making their leaves flutter and quake. I would have been quite happy to have died in that moment, or to have suddenly flown off up into the heavens. There is a peace in mountains, forests, by the sea, in middle of Central Park, Jardin des Plantes, the Garmond in Vienna, a train station in Munich, that does, as the man said, passeth all understanding. Or perhaps, as I have come to believe, the place is entirely irrelevant, it is in fact a place within us that creates the peace, as place as Marc Bolan once sang, "deep in my heart that's big enough to hold, just about all of you." I lay there wondering with smile who exactly wouldn't fit in Marc Bolan's heart and with less of the smile who wouldn't fit in mine. I would like to think that there isn't anyone who wouldn't fit. In fact I decided that the folding chairs in my soul would well be carried down to my heart and used to hold the overflow. Eventually when I had worked out this oversight to my satisfaction, I sat up and lit a cigarette. + +Through the trees behind me, if I craned my neck I could just make out the roof of the memorial. I began to wonder about the soldiers who died here from exhaustion and cold. I wondered if they found the mountains beautiful even in the midst of their forced labor. I wondered what they dreamed of at night as the slept in the tiny shelters which could scarcely have afforded them much comfort. After a while I could almost see them around me, ghostly figures shrunken slightly with death, still wearing the tattered uniforms and worn wool overcoats they were buried in Blue Flowers, near Bled, Sloveniastanding in a half circle on the edge of the clearing, smiling, having found a place beyond the cold, beyond hatred, war and cynicism, happy to be free in some place where we will all one day go to return to the children we once were, to laugh and dance and sing and most of all be silly again. I raised myself on one elbow and looked behind me at the trees and between them the soldiers and smiled to salute them, and they smiled back as if to say it's okay, all is forgiven, you and me and they slowly turned to walk back through the woods. I followed their footsteps retracing my path in the forest back to the road, the car and world of the living. + +By the time we reached the pass the clouds had descended over the upper reaches of the peaks and continued to spill down the hill like milk poured from heaven. We walked for a few minutes around the sandy soils of the high alpine tundra where only the hardiest of plants can grow, the tall trees absent, only stunted white firs and few beds of heather Mountains and clouds, near Bled, Sloveniastretching up the sloping scree and talus peaks. At a small stand beside the park headquarters a little girl and her father were buying postcards from a souvenir stand, the girl repeating over and over to her dad, "look at my beautiful picture, look at my beautiful picture" as she clutched the small piece of paper to her overcoat. She then turned to her mother and began again, "mummy, look at my beautiful picture," as her parents ushered her back in the car. + +As we made our way down the mountain the road joined up with a river and began to wind its way alongside it. We noticed a rickety suspension bridge at one point and felt compelled to stop and walk across it. My father and I walked to the other side, stopping to make some photographs and look at the strange milky blue water of Slovenian rivers, which seem to me the clearest most beautiful waters I've ever seen. I suppose the blue tinge is from the glacial silt, but that doesn't really make sense because it seems to me silt would be washed downstream by the force of the river. Whatever the case, the water is turquoise and standing beside it there is a smell I've never noticed before, a smell of clarity, if such a thing may be said to exist. suspension bridge, near Bled, sloveniaLittle tuffs of cotton-like spores floated downwind in the breeze and I noticed one particular tree which seemed to be milking itself. A strange foamy liquid seeped out of every joint in its branches, bubbling in the sunlight until it settled to clear liquid and fell from the trees to land on our arms. It was not sticky and had no taste. If it was sap it had spent to long near the clear river water until it too had come to possess the same lucid transparency that seems to seep out of everything in Slovenia. + +Down the far side of the pass we turned off onto a very narrow road and passed through several small towns consisting of stone farm houses, wooden sheds and barns and rocky walls dividing up the valley, which was a veritable explosion of spring wildflowers, so dense and colorful as to nearly hide the green grass beneath them. Cord wood, near Bled, SloveniaBeside nearly every house whether solitary on a plot of farmland or clustered in the number of small villages, was a stack of cordwood covered by a small lean-to or roof of some kind. I watched as these piles of firewood floated past my window reflecting on the almost eerie sense of pattern and order visible in them. It seemed to me rather like an architect had planned to intricate combination and balance of angles and light and shadow and positive and negative space, until in the end it more closely resembled a carefully thought out mosaic than a haphazard stack of split wood. + +We stopped in one of the towns to visit an old church lying rather sleepily, nestled in a curve of the road under the shade of an elm which towered majestically above the church bell tower. Church, near Bled, SloveniaI waited across the road while a German couple loitered around the front yard wanting for once to be alone in a church. The church was not remarkable architecturally, not listed in any guidebook, it was simply a village church, humble, but yet standing out from the other buildings by virtue of its tower. Eventually I walked up the steps and into the cool darkness of the foyer, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light before I could continue. As my pupils widened and the darkness took form and shape I made my way forward toward the altar where I stopped to study a small figurine of the Virgin Mary. Her face seemed peaceful looking down at the baby in her arms. I said a brief prayer for the soldiers and, as I looked at Mary and child, I began to think of the girl up at the pass with her beautiful pictures postcards, I thought of a Jeff Tweedy lyric, "my fangs have been pulled" and realized with great sigh that indeed, in the last eight months, my fangs have been pulled and all I want to do is show you my picture, my beautiful, but tragically incomplete picture. + +As I walked out of the church and back toward the car I remember something I believe Picasso said, that we are all trying to remember how to be children. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-05-25-inside-and-out.txt b/jrnl/2006-05-25-inside-and-out.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d983cd3 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-05-25-inside-and-out.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 48.81053057801549,14.317352769766009 +location: Cesky Krumlov,South Bohemia,Czech Republic +image: 2008/krumlovcastleatnight.jpg +desc: I've never heard a color, but I do think they smell differently. Pondering synesthesia at the Egon Schiele Museum in Cesky Krumlov. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Chasing Egon Schiele: The attention to detail that makes the difference between a building and work of art was everywhere in Cesky Krumlov, from the delicate pink and red complements of a fine dovetailed corner, to the white plaster and oak beams of the Egon Schiele museum, which, despite geometric differences, looked not unlike the Globe Theatre in London. +pub_date: 2006-05-25T17:45:12 +slug: inside-and-out +title: Inside and Out +--- + +Cesky Krumlov is a small Czech town nestled on a dramatic bend in the Vltava River. Like any European city worth its salt, it has a dramatic castle on a hill and all the trappings of the once glorious feudal age, but with only one day to spend, a stopover on the way to Prague, I decided, rather than try to run around seeing a bunch of stuff in a hurry, to simply pick a place and spend the day there. + +As it happened, Cesky Krumlov was home to the magnificent Egon Schiele museum, just the sort of place I could while away an afternoon relaxing and wandering aimlessly through an art gallery, for it was indeed more of gallery than a museum. Castle Cesky Krumlov, Czech RepublicSchiele's mother was born in Cesky Krumlov and the artist was drawn here by some compulsion of scenery and setting several times during his life, painting the narrow cobblestone streets and wonderful mixture of Gothic and art nouveau architecture (which what was actually new in his day). One of the most beautiful things about European towns is the rich array of vibrant color schemes you see on even the most ordinary of buildings. The attention to detail that makes the difference between a building and work of art was everywhere in Cesky Krumlov, from the delicate pink and red complements of a fine dovetailed corner, to the white plaster and oak beams of the Egon Schiele museum, which, despite geometric differences, looked not unlike the Globe Theatre in London. + +Egon Schiele Sketch, Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech RepublicThe first time Schiele came to Cesky Krumlov he lived here for several years. It's entirely possible he would have lived here forever were it not that the otherwise conservative town more or less ran him out for what the history books loosely refer to has his “lifestyle.” I don't propose to know exactly what Schiele's lifestyle entailed, but it probably didn't help that his primary work at the time was a series of oils and sketches of nude pubescent girls. Europe, for all its supposed open-mindedness on art, has had its moments of prudishness. Walking the streets just adjacent the town square it wasn't hard to image Schiele being out of place here and from what I know of his life, he probably made little attempt to hide anything, for he seemed to live as he painted, openly, not provoking, but perhaps confused and somewhat dismayed that not everyone found the same joys in life that he had discovered. + +I spent most of the afternoon wandering through the various rooms and the oversized attic of the building which made the most fascinating museums I've ever been in. Heavy, low-hanging oak beams with cracked white plaster ceiling between them and raw unvarnished floorboards that creaked and groaned with every footstep, as if reminding you constantly of your own presence, some subliminal mnemonic of temporal space, made the museum unlike any other I have been too here in Europe or anywhere else. + +Attic, Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech RepublicI've never been one to pay to much attentions to the details of curation, everything from the work selected to the way it's lit and hung, but for the first time I realized how important all those tiny little decisions are to the experience we the viewers come away with and the curation at the Egon Schiele museum was nothing short of genius (for an example of terrible curation stop by the pompous and ill-conceived J. Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles). + +In addition to the permanent Schiele collection, the museum has several exhibitions as well which during the time of my visit were sketches and paintings by Alberto Giacometti and Eva Prokopcova. Giacometti's work was a mixed bag, some of his paintings weren't worth the cost of the oils he bought to make them, but one remarkable series of sketches redeemed him. A “graphic cycle” as the museum called it, entitled **Paris Without End**, featured the charcoal sketches Giacometti made toward the end of his life (most of which he spent in Paris). Displayed as the facing pages of a large sketchbook, the works were intended to become lithographs but that never happened and apparently the whole sequence had never been displayed together in its original form. Giacometti's **Paris Without End** formed a kind of walking tour of the city in sketch form, marvelously detailed and yet extraordinarily minimalist as well. I've developed a fascination with negative space and Giacometti was a marvelous study in what can be created by a few simple lines organizing an otherwise blank page to reveal a small scene of a Parisian side street, an awning in three strokes of pen, a lamppost in the brief blur of charcoal. Walking around the display, which was laid out side by side around a massive white walled room, I had the feeling of having accompanied Giacometti on a walk around Paris during which he might have paused to note something, trace out an outline, remark on a scene. As one continuous experience, that is, all the sketches taken as a whole, the sketches felt like an intensely personal look into another person's soul, to see for a moment how they view the world. Though I knew nothing of him when I arrived at the museum, I couldn't shake the feeling on leaving that we had known each other well and can see myself at some point strolling down an alley in Montparnesse and thinking to myself, oh yes, this is where Alberto stopped to sketch the girl stepping off the train, where he huddled under the cafe awning in the rain to trace out the splash of auto tires on uneven cobblestones. But in spite of the intimate nature of the works, or perhaps because of it, the sketches are not off putting or insular, but have an openness rather like a fun filled confession to which all were invited. + +The other artist on display was a local Czech artist named Eva Prokopcova whose abstract sketches filled the one odd and out of place room in the museum, on the ground floor, a strangely modern industrial feeling room with bare walls and floor to ceiling windows which unfortunately created a good bit of glare. Upstairs was another room of her oil paintings Eva Prokopcova Ink Drawing, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republicwhich displayed chronologically around the room and gave a fascinating glimpse into the progression of the artist, both what changed and what remains the same. On first glance it was easy to see that Prokopcova had been moving away from realistic forms for some time and by the time I reached the far side of the room the canvases bore a stamp of abstraction and fascination with form that owed no small debt to Jackson Pollock, if not in style at least in underlying assumptions and conceptualization of those assumptions. And yet her work is nothing like Pollack's, where he swirled into increasingly muddy tones she seemed to be moving toward brighter and brighter colors and more contrasting tones, colors that exploded to reveal forms you might say. + +The silence of the massive attic hall began to feel slightly oppressive to me after a while and so I wandered through low arched doorway to a smaller room which had one final, separate collection of works by Prokopova, a number of small eight by ten charcoals mounted one after the other, frame touching frame, and encircling the entire room at roughly chest height. Many of these had the most warmth and joy of anything in the museum, Schiele included, and I spent considerable time, circling the room twice to study the exquisite, chaotic stabs and blotches of ink that looked somehow contented in the afternoon light which streamed in through the attic window behind me. It was not unlike the inside of a ring I thought at one point. I sat down in a solitary chair in the middle of the room and tried to imagine myself sitting in the middle of a ring, as if the room were a transparent finger and I inside it. I spent some time considering whether this observation was purely my imagination or perhaps an intension of the artist to transport us, like Sun Ra perhaps, to some ringed planet where the senses spin and mingle more freely. + +I sat for a while in an oversized armchair alone in the center of the small attic room watching the single beam of sunlight slowly move across the floorboards while I scribbled a few notes and listened to some music on my headphones. Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech RepublicI had recently become obsessed with the ambient work of Nobukazu Takemura, or in the convention of Japanese names, Takemura Nobukazu, which somehow seemed to perfectly fit the room, the solitary finger of light dragging across the floor to the quiet chant of children's voices mingled with warbles and bleats of strings and electronic instruments, piano lines that faded to trumpet blasts, the hollow whisper of air over half full bottles, the chime of bells, the tinkling of a jack-in-the-box, and so many sounds which I cannot conjure sources for, sounds which come from a space somewhere in the imagination, as if Takemura had reached behind the curtain of life, some back door to Saturn's outer rings, and retrieved a few moments of musical clarity which he played with until arriving at the xylophonic children's symphony that I could hear in my headphones. Eventually I found I had stopped writing altogether and was simply staring into space thinking about what it would feel like to touch sound. Takemura's compositions seem to wrap themselves around you like blanket on a wintry morning or the sun at the beach, they, not unlike I might add, many of Schiele's paintings, inhabit a space that once entered reminds you immediately why you're happy to be alive, why just being is sometimes enough, no traveling, no movement and very little thought of anything other than the scene laid out before you and perhaps a lingering desire to touch the sound, the wrap your own arms around some sonic wave as it breaks over you. Perhaps you can feel the structure of time disintegrating pleasantly about you, as if a giant hand were pulling apart a pomegranate to reveal a forest of stars and the quiet clouds of light between then, whole nebulae that at once envelope and carry you out over the shadowy afternoon light drenching the forested hills, the trees warbling with birdcalls, and then you slowly spiral down again. Egon Schiele Painting, Cesky Krumlov, Czech RepublicI thought of Kindinsky and his synesthesia, the man whose paintbrush sang to him, who painted in cello blue and trumpet reds. I've never heard a color, though I do think colors smell differently. The room with red walls has a scent far removed from the cool afternoon creams and peaches of the dining room in the house where I once lived. I was too old for the house as it turned out, but I remember the sunlight reflection off the stainless steel kitchen sink sang to me some mornings. + +So far as I know Schiele did not hear color either and perhaps that's why he had to make it sing on the canvas, a cool dark sound you can almost hear drifting in the window from Cesky Krumlov's streets below. + +It was the mingling sausage scents and hunger that finally drew me back downstairs and out into the streets where a synesthetic wonderland was dressed in evening light and sounded like a river running over… Vltava River, Cesky Krumlov, Czech RepublicI decided as I left the Schiele museum behind that we are all synthesists in a way, there are not those clear lines between our sense that we imagine, one cannot see without hearing and tasting and touching and smelling, the sun now before me visible between the narrow slices of buildings the reflection of orange light in the waters of the river, is inseparable from the taste of Budvar, the smell of mustard and shoe polish, the sound of bells, the flapping of pigeon wings, the taste of sausage, the cool damp of the evening air, the gurgle of the river, the voices drifting out of windows, the fine inlay work on the tile floor, the shape of my chair, the yellow brown walls, the schoolgirls laughing, the waitress's perfume, the man in the corner singing softly with a cigar between his lips; everything is always happening everywhere. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-05-26-four-minutes-thirty-three-seconds.txt b/jrnl/2006-05-26-four-minutes-thirty-three-seconds.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7a62e3c --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-05-26-four-minutes-thirty-three-seconds.txt @@ -0,0 +1,55 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 50.089846390847725,14.418117998023494 +location: Prague,Prague,Czech Republic +image: 2008/wallofnames.jpg +desc: What happens when your last name becomes an adjective? Thinking of Kafka in the strange, yellow and yes, Kafkaesque city of Prague. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Just north of Prague's old town square and east of the River Vltava is Josefov, the old Jewish quarter of Prague. The Pinkas Synagogue in Josefov is an unassuming pale, sand-colored building with a slightly sunken entrance. Inside is a small alter and little else. The floor is bare; there are no places for worshipers to sit. The synagogue is little more than walls. And on the walls inscribed in extremely small print are the names of the 77,297 Jewish citizens of Bohemia and Moravia who died in the Holocaust. + +pub_date: 2006-05-26T14:50:24 +slug: four-minutes-thirty-three-seconds +title: Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds +--- + +

“He tried to gather up and hold the phrase or harmony… that was passing by him and that opened his soul so much wider, the way the smells of certain roses circulating in the damp evening air have the property of dilating our nostrils.”— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way

+ +Places have signature colors, they inscribe themselves onto you in liquid strokes of a pen you never quite see until the ink rolls down your forehead and covers your eyes with a thin veil, the mist through which you come to see a place. A place, a scene on a street, a city, a whole country, colors your memory like a child's crayon scribbling across your pupils. Jaisalmer India looks reddish brown and pink in my memory, Laos a dusty beige mist, Ko Kradan Thailand a green and blue cloak… and Prague was a pale yellow just this side of ochre. + +Prague, Czech Republic, nightIt started from the moment we drove into town. Mildly lost, displaced and confused by road construction, we passed by a yellow building several times. I cannot say exactly why I noticed this yellow building over a thousand other, and perhaps more striking details, but it is the yellow building I remember. + +And once the building lodged itself in my mind I seemed to develop some heightened observational acuity for the color yellow — stale champagne flat in its flute, crushed threads of saffron in little tins at the market, primrose blooms in a window planter, lotus in a pond, cough syrup for a child, ecru linen on the laundry line, tarnished gold lamps languishing unused in the dark corners of a hotel room, gilded Torah scrolls, the jaundiced skin of a Golem, faded magazines at the newsstand, sunflowers in a store window, chicken skin on the chopping block and a thousand other snapshots tinted yellow. + +Kafka Statue, Prague, Czech RepublicI read somewhere that yellow daffodils are a symbol of unrequited love. An agreed upon meaning for yellow buildings has thus far remained elusive in my research. Which is to say I never looked into it; I am content with the simplicity of memory unencumbered by meaning. Memory is a strange and mysterious thing, not to be fully trusted. For instance I can't say for sure, but I feel like I saw yellow daffodils in the New Jewish Cemetery near the grave of Franz Kafka, but it's entirely possible I invented this detail on reflection. + +Whatever the case I do know that Prague was home to Franz Kafka, a man who has in death assumed a life so large his last name is an adjective in common parlance, Kafkaesque—an adjective I'm pretty sure I've used somewhere in these very pages. + +I made a cursory visit to Kafka's tomb, just as I did to Proust's in Pere Lechaise, compelled by some sense of validation, as if standing in front of these slabs of granite one can finally feel like one has reached the end of the literary journey and yet knowing that in fact not only is that not true, but just the opposite is true. As with any journey made mainly in the mental space of books and stories, the infringement of the real into the world of the imagination was wholly disappointing. Kafka's grave is unremarkable in every way, a stone monument Franz Kafka's Grave, Praguestanding over a patch of grass beneath which lies what at this point probably little more than dust and teeth, not unlike the dusty yellowing pages of Kafka's books mingling with the old stained-ivory smell of dust mites and dry rot in the musty air of libraries. + +I have spent and still do spend, a fair amount of my time lost in books, stories and poems. One of my favorite lines from Kafka addresses literature as “a hatchet with which we chop at the frozen seas inside us.” + +Someone recently wrote me an email asking me to spend more time talking about places and less time in these abstractions, talking about perhaps nothing at all. A Hemingway fan no doubt. I hate to disappoint, but I seem to feel the need to wield a hatchet against my own icy seas. It is tempting to extend Kafka's analogy in this day and age when there actually is a northwest passage and the literal ice of our seas melts with every passing day, but what I personally find compelling about Kafka's words is the absolute futility they imply. He could for instance have said a hatchet which chops at the frozen blocks of ice inside us, certainly that would imply some chance of success, but he did not. He wrote “frozen seas,” against which a hatchet is most certainly futile. + +Futile but important, for without the hatchet there is no hope at all. And I think Kafka would agree with the notion that while literature may be a hatchet, there are other tools available, the important thing is to chop at the frozen seas, lest they overwhelm us and freeze our souls. And by soul I mean something akin to what I believe James Brown probably meant, something that is at once within us and outside us, something that does not seem to yellow with the passing of time, but as many believe, shall even outlast our teeth, our bones, our history far past the time when we are only a name in someone else's memory. + +Just north of Prague's old town square and east of the River Vltava is Josefov, the old Jewish quarter of Prague. The Pinkas Synagogue on Siroka Street in Josefov is an unassuming pale, sand-colored building with a slightly sunken entrance. Inside is a small alter and little else. The floor is bare; there are no places for worshipers to sit. The synagogue is little more than walls. And on the walls inscribed in extremely small print are the names of the 77,297 Jewish citizens of Bohemia and Moravia who died in the Holocaust. + +It is a stark place and yet not cold. It has a calmative warmth beneath the monstrousness of what it bears witness to that seems somehow hopeful in spite of the past. Some might believe that it is time to move beyond the Holocaust, time to forget, but they are wrong. It is important that we do not forget the Holocaust of World War Two nor any of the many that have happened since. It is important to remember these atrocities not because that might prevent another, which as we surely must realize by now is wishful thinking, Pinkas Synagogue, Josefov, Praguebut because those who died ought to be remembered as everyone who has died ought to be remembered, not for how they died, but for who they were. The Pinkas synagogue reminds us not of the deaths of the victims, but of the lives they once had, reduced here to their essence, their names. + +Upstairs in the Pinkas Synagogue there is an exhibit of paintings done by the children in Theresienstadt (originally named Terezin), paintings that resemble the ones on your refrigerator if you have children or the ones your parents once hung on their refrigerator, except that these were painted by children awaiting transportation to the gas chamber. + +Pinkas Synagogue, Josefov, PragueIt's easy to get rather angry at humanity when confronted with such things, but I stood there thinking instead that those children, young as they were and headed to a fate none of us can imagine, nevertheless managed to produce beautiful finger and brush paintings. Perhaps they were too young to realize what was happening to them, perhaps they were too innocent to conceive of such a thing happening, but what if they did know? What if they knew full well that they were going to die and yet they went on anyway, painting and being children because there was nothing else they could do? Because there is nothing else any of us can do. + +Chopping. Chopping. Chopping. + +[Today's title comes from a composition by John Cage. For those that aren't familiar with Cage or the piece, 4'33" is a piece of music in which the pianist comes on stage, opens the lid of the piano and sits down to play. For 4 minutes and thirty-three seconds he plays nothing. He then closes the piano, bows and walks offstage. + +You can see where it would be tempting to see this as a somewhat pretentious intellectual exercise, but as with Duchamp's Fountain, I think to see this as only as some challenge to our accepted notions is simple minded. Of course it flies in the face of convention, but it also does much more. + +Music, rhythm, harmony, melody and all its other components are capable of inducing all sorts of amazing things in us, both beautiful and terrifying which as Proust says in the quote that started this piece, widens our soul. So what happens when the music is not music, but an absence of music? What Cage has done is handed us Kafka's hatchet, in 4'33" the chopping of the frozen seas is left to the individual. + +I've never actually seen 4'33" performed, but I would venture to say that it isn't silent. While the performer may not make any noise, there will likely be plenty of noise, traffic outside the theatre, a airplane passing overhead, perhaps the wail of an ambulance siren, and even inside—the ruffling of programs and papers of fellow concert goers shifting in their seats, the creaks and groans of humanity sitting still, perhaps even the sound of blood rushing through your veins and throbbing in your eardrums. + +Unlike most public performances, 4'33" is intensely personal. There is no hatchet save the one in your own hand and perhaps 4'33"'s poor reception in some quarters comes from the fact that confronting the frozen seas alone is a desolate and intimidating experience, one we often shrink from in fear. But if the children of Terezin were capable of joy in the face of such a monstrosity, surely we can find a similar kind of hope. + +I can't explain what it's like to stand in a place like Pinkas Synagogue or the killing fields or S21 or any other memorial of mass slaughter, but I can say this, there was no music and yet nor was there silence.] + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-05-27-unreflected.txt b/jrnl/2006-05-27-unreflected.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..72790e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-05-27-unreflected.txt @@ -0,0 +1,64 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 48.209967769727996,16.370648143396814 +location: Vienna,Vienna,Austria +image: 2008/selfportraitconvex.jpg +desc: Finding Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and learning to play Frogger on the Ringstraße. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: The Kunsthistorisches Museum contains probably the best collection of art outside of France — Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Raphael, Velazquez, Bruegel and a certain Italian for whom I have a festering personal obsession, which shall be addressed shortly — and what's remarkable about this magnificent assemblage is that the vast majority of it was once the Hapsburg's private collection. +pub_date: 2006-05-27T23:55:46 +slug: unreflected +title: Unreflected +--- + +I haven't written much about the actual traveling lately, chiefly because it's been by automobile which just isn't very interesting and for some reason seems to put me to sleep, which it never used to do. Before this trip I was a dedicated driver, I've driven coast to coast across the U.S. six times and countless trips through the west, new England and the south (I once did LA to Atlanta in 26 hours straight through), but for some reason I've lost my taste for driving. So I was actually elated when we ditched the car in Prague and hopped a train for Vienna. Public transportation is much much better, you can relax, have a beer and meet strangers with funny hats. + +Of course sometimes public transportation breaks and you find yourself in Slovakia instead of Austria, but these things are temporary. Usually. Or at least in this case it was. We spent a few hours loitering on Slovakian tracks waiting for another train to pass and then continued on in a roundabout way to Vienna during which time I was regretfully reminded of the inanity involved in conversing with Young American Males. + +Vienna is a strange city; one I had trouble wrapping my head around at first. The old town area lies inside the Ringstraße (hereafter referred to as Ringstrasse because writing out that entity in html is a pain)[1]. The Ringstrasse is a wide circular boulevard that runs, as its name implies, in a circle around the old city center. Inside the Ringstrasse are the fantastically massive Hapsburg Palace, several large churches and the upscale tourist destinations, hotels, shops and that sort of thing. The old city is ostensibly closed to traffic, though that doesn't see to stop the taxis, and consequently it's the tourist hub of Vienna. + +Though I'm sure it was a carefully studied urban planning venture, which on paper sounds like a beautiful idea, a vehicleless downtown full of street markets, cafes, cobblestones and coffeehouses, in practice the Ringstrasse effectively isolates the center of Vienna and it left me feeling a bit trapped. Though I was excited to leave the car behind in Prague, I found myself once again seemingly wedged and isolated by vehicles as I watched a dizzying circle entrapping downtown visitors like corralled cattle. One afternoon I sat on a bench beside the Ringstrasse, smoking cigarettes under the still dripping leaves of an elm tree, watching the traffic ferry past like a scene in Koyaanisqatsi, and started to wonder if Frogger was by chance designed by an Austrian. + +St Stephens Cathedral, Vienna, AustriaAfter a day or two wandering among the Baroque facade of St. Stephens Cathedral, snacking of vast arrays of sausage and cabbage, learning to love oversize pints of hefeweizen, and generally avoiding all things castle or palace-like, I finally ventured out to the Kunsthistorisches Museum (which is admittedly not actually outside the Ringstrasse, but something about just seeing the vast open space just beyond the boulevard made me feel like I was again part of a city rather than stuck in a hole, cut off in the middle of a city). + +The Kunsthistorisches Museum contains probably the best collection of art outside of France — Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Raphael, Velazquez, Bruegel and a certain Italian for whom I have a festering personal obsession, which shall be addressed shortly — and what's remarkable about this magnificent assemblage is that the vast majority of it was once the Hapsburg's private collection. The history of European ruling families is soaked in money, petty squabbles, the occasional inbreeding and plenty of sordid underbellies, but some of these families did have remarkable aesthetic vision in spite of their various handicaps. Yes I do think that wealth and power are handicaps to understanding the world around you because they remove you from the intricate struggles of everyday life and that in turn is a handicap to anything that might be called the development of an aesthetic sense based on something more than whim, fancy or cultural popularity, but let's be clear that handicaps are not insurmountable as the Hapsburg collection attests, which is to say that occasionally rich people are able to grasp greatness. + +It had just stopped raining when I made my way from our penzion over to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, rivulets of water ran between the cobblestone cracks and seeped through the long since worn-through soles of my shoes which caused my socks to make disturbing squishing sounds as I walked. The sky was a heavy leaden grey and looked as if it might start again the chilly drizzling rain that had been hanging around ever since we arrived. After paying the requisite fees and obtaining an audio guide (which I generally never bother with but for some reason on that day I felt the need to hear a voice), I wandered about the foyer for a minute absorbing the heavy baroque ceilings three stories overhead and the dark wood floors scuffed by the feet of the millions who passed through before me. + +I had come mainly to see the works of Hieronymus Bosch, or at least out the painters mentioned in the brochure at our penzion, Bosch was the only one I found exciting. If you've never seen a Hieronymus Bosch painting they can be a bit shocking, especially considering he was painting around the turn of the 16th century. Bosch mixed mysticism, realism, religious symbolism, highly cerebral sense of irony, and magical iconography into a phantasmagoric stew that puts to shame the later so-called surrealists. Though I don't know that much about either of them Bosch and William Blake always come together in my mind. Paradise, or Allegory of Vanity, Hieronymus BoschCarl Jung called Bosch "The master of the monstrous… the discoverer of the unconscious," which could just as easily be applied to Blake. Philip II of Spain bought up the vast majority of Bosch's work long ago, and I probably shouldn't have expected to find much at the Kunsthistorisches Museum since I already knew most of his work is in the Prado Museum in Madrid, but I was a bit disappointed to find there were only two paintings in the Kunsthistorisches (**The Adoration of the Kings** is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for those looking for something closer to home). + +Having rushed impatiently through the museum to find the Bosch, which, was every bit as gorgeous as I had hoped, though I was disappointed that the one I liked, **Paradise, or Allegory of Vanity**, didn't have an audio tour entry, I retraced my steps and wandered about the maze-like floor plan absorbing Dutch and Flemish painters whose names rang like a distant telephone you can hear, one you have in fact been hearing for years, but have never bothered to answer; maybe you didn't know it was a telephone, perhaps it just sounded like a murmur, that far off tone of the alarm clock before the world resolves itself out of sleep and becomes an actual object, a thing, an alarm, a phone, a Vermeer. But as semanticists are always pointing out, objects are not actually things, they are events, molecules arriving simultaneously at a lavish ballroom party, spinning, coalescing and collapsing in time to become what we **call** an object. And I don't mean that to be some overwrought analytical deconstruction, but rather as a beautiful thing, an object, whether it be a Vermeer or a Nokia, is an event happening, one which we can participate in, can join in, in fact can not avoid since the event happens solely so that we may see it. And from that perspective there is no historical burden to carry about, no cultural/political/social constructs to worry about, simply a painting coming together in the moment as our eyes sweep across it, which isn't to say that history, context and culture are irrelevant, rather they are optional, they are the gowns and tuxedos of the arriving molecules, the historical costumes of events which sometimes enrich our experience and sometimes stifle it with their gaudiness. + +Off in the side corridor of the Italian wing I rounded a corner still listening to my audio guide rattle on about Rembrant and rather abruptly came face to face with a painting I had been wanting to see for years — **Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror** (my photograph is less than stellar, for a much better image see the Web Gallery of Art version which allows for zooming and enlarging). + +I originally came across Parmigianino through the title of John Ashbery's[2] noted collection of poems, **Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror**. Parmigianino's painting of the same title was the inspiration and graces the cover of Ashbery's book. There is that old adage about judgment and books and covers and things you ought not to do and yet I have often found that in fact sometimes you can judge a book by its cover and Ashbery's collection is, to my mind, such an example. I spent hours of class time studying that painting while others wrestled with the intentions and slippery meanings of the words inside. + +What I never realized until I walked up to it in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, is that the actual painting is convex. Parmigianino had a ball of wood milled and them he sliced off the face of it to have convex surface on which to work. And that's just the beginning of the complexities of **Self Portrait**. + +Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, ParmigianinoWhat drew Ashbery and countless other critics to the painting are the subtle layers within it. Painted as a testament of personal skill, Parmigianino presented the canvas along with two others to Pope Clement VII hoping for a commission. Some have suggested that the enlarged forearm and hand are meant to suggest the artists skills, a sort of mildly disguised bit of self promotion, which sounds fine until you remember that if this is indeed what Parmigianino saw in a convex mirror, then the arm thrust forward is the left arm, not the right, which is traditionally associated with the painter's skills. This is perhaps one of the more trivial points in the painting, but it hints at the kind of layers of meaning and mystery which Parmigianino managed, whether intentional or not, to work into the painting. + +There is within this small (just under 10 inches in diameter) painting so much to dwell on that I spent several hours studying it (Luckily for me there was a chair against the wall just opposite). + +I am not an art critic nor am I a fan of the open-ended scholarly interpretation crap I just indulged in, but I do like to be able to say with some clarity, why I like something rather than simply leave it as self evident or begging the question, and yet it is very hard to say why I like this painting. After spending so much time with it, which I can assure is about one hour and fifty minutes longer than I've ever spent looking at any other painting, I realized it's the distortion within the distortion that compels me, the reflection of what isn't, reflected again in pigment, it's an opening of worlds, a stabbing at understanding which underlies all our endeavors in some way, a recognition of the complexities within complexities. I would like to see another painting of someone looking between two convex mirrors such that an infinite series of outwardly telescoping reflections was created. + +When I was younger I travelled a good deal with my parents mainly camping in the southwestern US. My parents had a 1969 Ford truck with a camper on top. The size and shape of the camper necessitated large mirrors that extended out quite a ways from the door. The main mirror was rectangular and flat, a one to one reflection, but in the lower right corner of the large mirror a small convex mirror had be glued on to provide a wide angle view. Since I generally rode in the passenger's seat of the truck I spent most of the time staring at my distorted reflection, moving my hand in and out with the rush of wind watching it grow larger and more unnaturally arched and warped the closer I brought it to the mirror. + +The first time I saw Parmigianino's **Self Portrait** on the cover of Ashbery's book I thought of the truck mirror and the millions of associations that came with those memories. **Self Portrait** came over time to amalgamate a collection of previously forgotten or overlooked memories until it attached itself and in many way became an inseparable part of the memories themselves. Rather than bandying about under the weight of historical context or canonical scholarship, it collapses now as an event in my own life. + +My friend Mike said something to me the other day about realizing that it's fairly easy to find your way through a house of mirrors if you simply stare at your feet, but then, what's the fun in that? He's right and similarly, life can be fairly simple if you stare at the ground and don't worry to much about what's going on a round you, but the point of the house of mirrors maze isn't to solve it, to get to the end and leave, the point is stumble about, bump into walls, into other people, into your own distorted reflection and have fun while you do it. And in some way that's the pleasure I find in Parmigianino's **Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror**, a reminder that the distortions are the real adventure, the real enjoyment and also the real truth. + +
    + +
  1. + +

    1. For language nerds (because I know some of you are): That entity, the ß, or Eszett as it's known, is a ligature of a long s dating from before the middle ages when ss was a separate letter of the alphabet (in English as well). The Eszett is fading out in modern German (officially dropped by the Swiss years ago and as anecdotally told to me by my friend Jackie, not all that common in modern Germany either), but its usage is still quite popular in Austria. According to the German Spelling Reform of 1996 the letter "ß" is to appear only after long vowels and diphthongs. ↩

    + +
    2. + +
  2. + +

    2. As with anyone who has studied 20th century literature I passed through a certain period in which I became semi-obsessed with John Ashbery. Lots of post grad poetry students (I used to hang around with a lot of post grad poetry students) seem to think it's passé to extol someone as popular and widely established as John Ashbery, but that's just silly. I still, along with Wallace Stevens, Bernadette Mayer, Frank Stanford and Alice Notley consider him to be one of the truly great writers of our times. ↩

    + +
    3. + +
+ diff --git a/jrnl/2006-05-28-i-dont-sleep-i-dream.txt b/jrnl/2006-05-28-i-dont-sleep-i-dream.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8036e28 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-05-28-i-dont-sleep-i-dream.txt @@ -0,0 +1,202 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 48.209967769727996,16.370648143396814 +location: Vienna,Vienna,Austria +image: 2008/freudsoffice.jpg +desc: A mock interview with Sigmund Freud Vienna, composed in what was once the waiting room of Frued's office in Vienna, Austria. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: How can Freud's former residence in Vienna lack a couch? The closest thing is up against the wall, behind a small writing desk in what was then the waiting room — a small divan where one might stare at the patternless ceiling until the patterns emerge as it were. “Tell me about it,” he began. +pub_date: 2006-05-28T15:00:32 +slug: i-dont-sleep-i-dream +title: I Don't Sleep I Dream +--- + +Once you pass through the odd and oversized foyer, which feels like a half finished storefront for H&M or the like, stairs lead up to the first floor. There are essentially only two rooms that bear any resemblance to what the place looked like in his day. In glass cases are a few knickknacks, figurines, actually it's a rather impressive collection with pieces from the Sumerian, India, Polynesia and other exotic locales. Another room is full of photographs and explanatory notation in German and English. + +The rest of the apartment is given over to something between an exhibition room and an art gallery. But what everyone came here for then is absent now. No word on where the couch might have gone or why some duplicate hasn't been made. Plenty of other sofas, divans and other reclining furniture are on display in one of the gallery rooms, but the original is nowhere to be found. + +Waiting Room, Frued's office, Vienna Austria + +The closest thing is up against the wall, behind a small writing desk in what was then the waiting room. There were no ropes saying you couldn't so I did what everyone used to come here for, to lie down on the divan and stare at the patternless ceiling until the patterns emerge as it were. + +I lay down. I stared at the ceiling. + +"Tell me about it." + +"About what?" + +"What did you come here for?" + +"I'm not sure. I think I wanted to see it. To maybe have something to attach the abstractions too, maybe to know, rather than wonder — what did it look like? What sort of trees were on the street? What did the air taste like? How did the concrete and asphalt smell when it rained? What was the view from the window? How hot was the upstairs room where you worked? All the mundane details of life in places where I don't live... And I know I can't know these things in any real way without actually being there at the time. I know all I will find are half truths and suggestions, but the more I know the freer my imagination seems to become, the more it builds things out of the details, things which often bear no resemblance to reality but to me are more real." + +Window, Freud's Office, Vienna Austria + +"Interesting." + +"Yeah it is. It totally contradicts an old quote from somebody named Suzuki that I used to like." + +"Which is?" + +"‘For the beginner an infinite range of possibilities exist, for the expert few options remain.' Or something along those lines. And I don't by any means consider myself an expert. In fact the more I know and see the more I feel like a beginner. I don't even know what an expert is." + +"Perhaps that's the veiled significance of this Suzuki's words, that we are all beginners, that there are no experts so we are free, as you say, with our imaginations. But remember that imagination is not all daydreams and pretty flowers; there are monsters and demons in us too. There seems to be in us all a struggle between light and dark..." + +"Like the Robert Mitchum movie? Or Spike Lee's version? A friend of mine claims that there are equal proportions of light and dark in the world, or good and evil or whatever metaphor you want to use, anyway her point is, I think, that these dualities are struggling for balance and that's where we find ourselves -- caught in that struggle. I think it's actually an idea she borrowed from Jewish Scripture, and it's a good metaphor so long as we consider the fact that which is which -- good/bad etc -- is wholly dependent on our judgments. That is, what you or I call dark or evil is actually neither, that is simple our interpretation of it. Not to be relativistic, which I don't like, in fact I think relativism misses out on the subtle undercurrents of life in favor of simplistic rationalism to offer an easy to grok interpretation of life's essential mysteries. But that said, there is some relativism in our interpretations of good and evil etc. Any given event, no matter how good it seems, is itself the result of all sorts of other events, some may have been good, some bad, but without them we wouldn't be doing that "good" thing now. And so with the future. If I give you some money to pay a debt that may be a good thing, but down the road it's possible that you will find yourself in a bad situation not just in spite of my good act, but perhaps because of it." + +"Mmmhmm. Tell me about your dreams..." + +"No." + +"..." + +painting + +"Okay. Just yesterday I dreamed a friend of mine was in trouble. So today I called her. Turns out she's not in trouble. She's doing just fine. So what the hell does that mean?" + +"Perhaps you feel a certain helplessness at not being able to know whether your friend is in trouble or not. Your subconscious feels helpless and seeks to create a situation in which it can help someone else so that it alleviates the feelings of helplessness." + +"..." + +"The imagination can ruin and cripple as much as it can heal and give hope." + +"Well don't you sort of have a vested interest in promoting that idea since your life's work hinges on it being true, on the notion that there is something wrong with me that I can not directly get to, but with assistance it can be drawn out..." + +"My vested interest was in helping people for whom there was no help at the time." + +"Okay. Fair enough. Sorry. There is just so much baggage around you. I want to believe, I really do." + +"It's possible I was wrong, I did make some mistakes." + +"Yeah you did. Turns out cocaine is addictive." + +"I made bigger ones than that." + +"I know, but I saw that quote over there on the wall by that picture of Dora." + +"Ah yes. Dora." + +"The one that got away huh? So, why was all of your early work focused on women?" + +"..." + +"Okay. Well.... Do you like what they've done with the place?" + +"Well. It was just a place you know. This room we are sitting in was originally the waiting room, the consultations were in there. But it is just a place, one room is as good as another." + +"Yeah. But weren't you the one who always directed attention toward trivialities like "methodological principle," which in some ways is influenced by the room, the mood it creates. I mean if you had disco lighting and Al Green playing when patients came over things would've been different no?" + +"Yes I did say that. And methodology, set and setting as that American doctor put it, are important. But I also said sometimes a cigar..." + +"Yeah and we all wish you hadn't. That undercuts almost everything else you said because it highlights the subjective — dare I say arbitrary? — interpretations in your theories. I mean what if Newton has said ‘well gravity exists, but it doesn't always exist, it certain doesn't exist for me? That's a bit elitist don't you think? In the end we'd have to conclude that either gravity doesn't exist or that a cigar is never just a cigar, neither of which are particularly helpful." + +"You seem hostile toward me." + +"I'm not hostile, I'm just saying that psychology and this therapy bit is, in the end, no different than the kind of insight you can get from a book or a night out with friends or just sitting on the toilet contemplating life. But you invested the whole process with a pseudo-scientific framework that makes some people think they can't find their own answers." + +"People can't find their own answers. And even those that can find some can't find others. We cannot see our own subconscious, we can only see the effects of it, the manifestations of it." + +"Look I'm not saying I have it all sussed out. Far from it. But what you're talking about seems to me like a rewritten metaphor for god. And I think your metaphors were wrong about some key stuff. Like Oedipus for example. First off mythology is probably not a good base to draw from if your goal is to make sweeping ‘scientific' generalizations about human development. And secondly the stages Oedipus passes through, well you skipped a fairly key one, he was abandoned by his parents as a baby, which is tantamount to child abuse and hardly seems archetypical to the way most children are raised. I think you were a brilliant literary critic centuries ahead of his time, but I think your science was, well, to be blunt, nonexistent. Which would have been fine except..." + +"Hmmm. Yes. Perhaps. But I could argue that birth itself is abandonment" + +"Please don't." + +"I wasn't going to, I was just saying I could." + +"And yet that Oedipal theory, while professional psychologists may not pay much attention to it, holds a powerful sway over how we perceive ourselves today. And it carries that weight because it passed and continues to pass as science. See science is our god now so anything that gets you the title doctor is perceived as having some authority that overrides even common sense." + +"Well, in my defense, it isn't really all that different than the story of the fall in the Jewish and Christian mythologies which also influences how you see yourself. And I did have a degree in medicine." + +"I know you did. I'm not debating your training or skills I'm saying that psychology is not was not and never will be a science." + +"..." + +"I'm sorry. It just isn't." + +"Have you read The Interpre..."'Fire' by Giuseppe Arcimboldo + +"Yes. But to be honest I don't see why our dreams need to be interpreted. Isn't it possible that they have no meaning at all? That we really really want them to have meaning because this is what we do, we find connections, metaphors to link things, and we can find threads in our dreams that seem to connect them to this world, but in the end what if they are just dreams? Something outside meaning and interpretation because the world which they inhabit is guided by rules and schema that bear no resemblance to the ones that guide this world? What if there is no common language by which we can make interpretations, metaphors or any meaning at all out of our dreams? + +"..." + +"I'll tell you what does interest me though — the differences in the way we conduct ourselves in our dream lives and real lives and those people who seem to break down the differences." + +"Such as?" + +"Well on the positive side you have someone like Antonio Gaudí or Frank Stanford. But of course there's the negative side as well, Jeffrey Dahmer, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, etc." + +"It's interesting that you choose artists and writers as representative of the positive and serial killers, despots and murderers as the negative... perhaps neither is really accurate. It's possible you know that Gaudí was inspired by imagination and Pol Pot by greed and lust for power and that neither of them is representative of someone bringing dreams to life." + +"Yes but don't dreams underlie imagination and greed and lust and everything else? We act out our dreams in realities. In fact I would say nearly everything we do is an act of externalizing our dreams — the hopes, fears and strangeness that they contain. We bring them forth into the world of struggling forces and they are bandied and battered about by circumstances which are often beyond our control." + +"Didn't you just say the opposite?" + +"No I said it was possible that our dreams have no meaning in this world that we can ever understand, but that doesn't mean we don't spend our lives externalizing them and trying to understand them. + +"Exactly. Sometimes you get art, other times murder, such is the nature of dreams and the world in which we find ourselves." + +"..." + +"..." + +"What do you think of these art exhibits in the other room...?" + +"That's the sort of rhetorical question you pose so you can skip over whatever my answer may be and delve into what you really wanted to talk about — what you think of the art in the other room. Why don't we skip what I think and you tell me what it is you must get off your chest?" + +"You just can't put one over on you can you? I think the art's crap. In execution anyway. But I think the idea of the couch is very significant. I think the fact that you chose to have patients on a couch, or divan, or sofa or whatever you want to call it was genius, possibly your only moment of genius. I mean you could have had then in bed, but that's too close to actual sleep you could easily lose them in their unconscious worlds. You could have had them sit in a chair, but that's too formal, too far removed from dreams. The couch is perfect, reclined, perhaps close to sleep, but not all the way there, still able to pull back from the brink so to speak. It's like that sign over there says: ‘In a prone position, the clear certainties of thought can be diverted from their course into a twilight state of drowsiness and further into the anesthetized state of sleep or into the depths of illegitimate sexuality'" + +"And I've noticed that this thing, this couch, which was fairly arbitrary by the way, has become the symbol of choice..." + +"Yeah if I needed to create one of those universal language airport ideograms for psychology the couch would get the idea across. In the west anyway." + +"But why do you think the art is ‘crap'?" + +"I've come to think painting peaked in the 16th century or so. These modern things just don't have any soul, their narcissistic, self-absorbed, lacking depth... Though some of the painters around your day were good, Egon Schiele, Hannah Höch, Paul Klee, Max Ernst, others. I sound like a grumpy old man don't I?" + +"Well. Yes. But there are great painters in every age, great writers, great musicians, great everything, you just have to know where to look and how to look." + +"I know. I didn't mean it. I got carried away with my tendency toward hyperbole. I do that a lot, but I never really mean it, I just like to string the words together... I try you know. I try to find the good stuff. But sometimes I feel like I'm always trying and rarely succeeding." + +"Trying is all that matters" + +"Just yesterday I was thinking of an old cover from a new York literary magazine... It was a drawing of a pigeon or a dove or some sort of bird, a bird with one wing and one arm. The caption read: trying trying trying." + +"Mmmm. Yes. About like that." + +"Yeah I thought so too, that's why it's stuck with me. Everything seems to stick with me. And yet sometimes I deny remembering things which I remember better and more clearly than the person telling me about them just so I can see what they remember. I don't know why I do that." + +"You're avoiding something." + +"Maybe. Maybe I just enjoy hearing things retold by other people. Maybe I don't like to think too much about the past, my history, the world's history, our history. It can get pretty ugly at times. There is a whole lot of violence and bloodshed and war and famine in the past, sometimes I think that this whole notion of trying is waste of time. I mean we've yet to succeed. Big business runs the world, people die, wars are fought so certain people can gain access to certain things. It seems so totally pointless and stupid and yet we keep doing it. The forces keep struggling and we keep twisting and turning some riding atop and some crushed beneath." + +"Yes the world is a mess. But if we stop trying then there isn't even the hope of anything getting better." + +"Isn't that a tad bit delusional though? I mean if it's always going to be a mess than what's the difference? Why is hope necessary?" + +"Because without hope there is no love. And without love there is nothing, because whoever loves becomes humble; those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism." + +"And it's our narcissism that has us in the situation we find ourselves?" + +"Among other things yes. Naturally nothing is reducible to any one factor, but I would say, did say in fact, that most of our problems, whether personal or geopolitical or anywhere in between, stem from our narcissism." + +'Winter' by Giuseppe Arcimboldo + +"See you were a much better writer than scientist." + +"Well I once wrote, ‘Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me'" + +"Well just about anybody could say that." + +"..." + +"A lot of people I know say they feel lost." + +"They should read more poetry." + +"Sometimes I feel lost too. I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing. Other times I feel like I am in the place where I should be. Lately I've been feeling more confident, but I worry about my friends." + +"Love and work... Work and love, that's all there is." + +"..." + +[Note that some of this faux dialogue is actual quotes and some are more summaries and some I just made up. None of it is in any way intended to represent the opinions in the writings, lectures and other works of Sigmund Freud. More or less if something sounds like it's too smart for me to have come up, that's an actual Freud quote.] + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-06-06-cadenza.txt b/jrnl/2006-06-06-cadenza.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d4402d3 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-06-06-cadenza.txt @@ -0,0 +1,72 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 48.86345844378468,2.3610842224649087 +location: Paris,Ile-de-France,France +image: 2008/parisglow.jpg +desc: Paris in the rain; the glow of the unseen sun is fading behind midnight blue clouds and darkening sky. This is where it all began. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Paris - Outside it's raining. Beads of water form on the window in front of me. The glow of the unseen sun is fading behind midnight blue clouds and darkening sky. An old man in a butcher apron selling oysters under an awning smokes a cigarette and watches the mothers and children walking home with bags of groceries. +pub_date: 2006-06-06T11:01:26 +slug: cadenza +title: Cadenza +--- + +

“On the meridian of time there is no justice, only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and justice”— H. Miller + +Outside it's raining. Beads of water form on the window in front of me. The glow of the unseen sun is fading behind midnight blue clouds and darkening sky. An old man in a butcher apron selling oysters under an awning smokes a cigarette and watches the mothers and children walking home with bags of groceries, the young man with the blue umbrella crosses the street with his head down. The hiss of tires on the pavement comes softly between Satie's piano notes; the wet greens leaves flap against the dark bark of maples trees; the headlights reflect in red and white streaks in the puddles. The digital sign across the street prints out events in red dot matrix letters, concerts, plays, museum openings, things happen in the Marais. Things happen most everywhere. + +For me this thing began happening when I left Paris. + +And now. Now I can see my reflection slighted in the window. I am haggard, tired, my cheeks slightly sunken. My pen is dry, my notebook full, my laptop out of juice and my iPod drained. I have no money, nowhere to stay. My girlfriend tells me she's in love with the Italian deli boy (natch) and the soles of my shoes are worn through so I can feel the cold of the cobblestones when I walk. + +To be honest this isn't how I wanted to return to Paris. + +And yet. And yet. I haven't been this happy in years. + +When I left it was autumn, the leaves were falling. We all wondered aloud if the trees would ever fall from the leaves but knew better and so did not answer. Instead we walked. When the trees fall they take the whole game with them. + +Paris in spring stifles. The leaves uniform monochrome. Except for the Japanese maples which make me hungry for something I've never tasted with their burgundy leaves hinting at autumn before it has come. Another summer to sweat through. Or maybe they are a reminder of an autumn past, some constant by which to trace our elliptical paths through these winding cobblestone alleys. + +Paris is much like New York in that both were designed with autumn in mind. Though New York is a bit short on cobblestones. + +Last night, having nothing to do after I parted ways with someone I met on the train from Vienna, I wandered down to the Latin Quarter, an arrondissement I never really spent much time in. I bought a copy of Lydia Davis' translation of The Way by Swann's and then strolled up away from the Seine. + +It began to drizzle lightly, just enough to mottle the lens of my eyeglasses which made the lights in store windows glitter and blur as I walked past. At some point I found myself under a small awning and I paused to wipe my glasses on my shirt. When I put them back on I noticed that the darkened and grated shop window next to me was full of old cameras — 1960's Pentax and Contax, Kodak Brownings, Leica bodies, rows of Carl Zeiss lens and even a few small collapsible bellows cameras. I thought about an article I had read several days before which covered the recent announcements from both Canon and Nikon that they will cease still film camera production this year. + +Film is already a curiosity. Even small children in out-of-the-way countries expect to see instant results in a small digital screen and are visibly disappointed when they cannot. Silver haloid preserved the twentieth century but now its service is ended. + +Just across the street was well-lit display of digital camera's, cd and mp3 players, plasma televisions. + +For a long time Kodak used the slogan “preserving your memories.” + +I have a lot of pictures. Over 2000 as a matter of fact. Only about twenty are any good, which is roughly the ratio of good to bad that convinced me to give up on being a professional photographer back in college, but strangely it's the really bad ones that are the most compelling to me. Compelling because they look nothing like what I remember and thus do not interfere with the memories. + +I am sitting at the same cafe sipping, but not really enjoying all that much, a chocolate chaud much like the ones I wrote about eight months ago. It isn't as good, there is something missing. Okay let's be honest, someone, but you'll have to do better than that to earn your junior detective badge. + +You know what you learn traveling? After all this time what do I understand now that I did not then? What makes this chocolate chaud less fulfilling than that last? + +Simple. + +You cannot go backwards. + +You will want to go backwards. + +You will want to hang on to things when they are perfect. + +You will want to stay in Vang Veing, a floating village, on an island lost at sea. + +You will want to return even after you have left. + +You will want things to be the same when you return. + +But they will not be the same. The people will be gone. + +And the people were the only reason you stayed. + +You will want to go backwards. + +You cannot go backwards. + +And now I am home. + +for Lilli. Because. Someday you will be the only one left. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-06-09-homeward.txt b/jrnl/2006-06-09-homeward.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..62548fc --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-06-09-homeward.txt @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.975160060264834,-118.42903373977045 +location: Los Angeles,California,United States +image: 2008/trappedmoth.jpg +desc: How do you come home after traveling the world? You don't. So what's it like to be home? I don't know, I'll tell you when I get there. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: New York, New York. John F Kennedy airport 1 am date unknown, sleepy looking customs guard stamps a passport without hardly looking at, without even checking to see where I had been. A light drizzle is falling outside and the subways extension to the terminal never looked so good. What is it like to be home? I don't know, I'll tell you when I get there. +pub_date: 2006-06-09T11:05:34 +slug: homeward +title: Homeward +--- + +New York, New York. John F Kennedy airport 1 am date unknown, sleepy looking customs guard stamps a passport without hardly looking at, without even checking to see where I had been. A light drizzle is falling outside and the subways extension to the terminal never looked so good. Concrete hiss of tires, parabolic freeway ramps, a moth trapped inside an airport bus, the sodium yellow glow of subway lights, the gentle rocking of a train car, the green boarded fronts of a sixth avenue newsstand, shoes still leaking, still tired and still not looking back. + +Just off Bleeker, around the corner from Minetta where I once lived for a few weeks, there is a small coffee shop totally unremarkable in nearly every way save one distinguishing characteristic that drew me to it initially and draws me to it still — it doesn't close. Faced with a thirty six hour layover and nowhere near the cash to pay for a hotel (don't even ask about the credit cards) I figured good old Esperanta cafe was the ideal sort of place to spend the night. + +I would like to say that I got off the plane ready to kiss the ground and mumble something about home at last, thank god home at last, but that isn't how I felt and isn't what I did. soon after I arrived in Los Angeles to see my family, friends started to email and call, which was wonderful, except that nearly everyone asked what it was like to be back. + +I've had three months to ponder that question now and I still don't have a definitive answer, which is at least partly my own fault because I've never asked exactly what you mean when you ask that question. Sometimes people ask that as a sort of loaded question, some people seemed to be waiting for me to bad mouth America. + +So let's start there. I could say a million bad things about America, but the truth is people, things are no better anywhere else, like Tom Wait's said “I know I know, things is tough all over.” There are things America does better than the rest of the world and there are things we could do so much better. + +I could be critical of America's corrupt, inept and lying politicians, but I could just as easily be critical of France's politicians, Cambodia's politicians, India's politicians, Laos, Thailand ad nauseam. We are no better and no worse. + +Then there's the other side of that coin, some seem to expect that I would be overjoyed to finally be back in the U.S., but the truth is I didn't miss it. I missed a lot of people here in the States, but the country itself never much crossed my mind. + +So what is it like to be home? I don't know, I'll tell you when I get there. + diff --git a/jrnl/2006-12-25-give-it-or-turnit-loose.txt b/jrnl/2006-12-25-give-it-or-turnit-loose.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..48eba6f --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2006-12-25-give-it-or-turnit-loose.txt @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.97519564909091,-118.42893718024602 +location: Los Angeles,California,United States +image: 2008/jamesbrown.jpg +desc: James Brown was not a perfect man, but there were moments when he channeled what very few people ever get to feel: true soul power. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Traveling soul. Soul is not something out there or in you, it's the place where you meet the out there; something very similar to what I think James Brown meant — a mixture of the secular and the spiritual, the profane and the sublime. +pub_date: 2006-12-25T19:10:49 +slug: give-it-or-turnit-loose +title: Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose +--- + +As I'm sure everyone has heard by now, James Brown died on Christmas day. Normally I'm not one to dwell too much on celebrity deaths, after all it's not like I knew the man, but some people have an impact that goes far beyond their person or their life. Johnny Cash was such a person and for me, so was James Brown. + +My first encounter with James Brown's music is lost on me. In many ways James Brown was just always there, background music at the Little Knight, something you tapped a foot to while shooting pool. I knew the hits and not much else. + +Then Jimmy played me the Funk Power compilation of Brown's short lived version of the JBs that included a then unknown Bootsy Collins. It would be a slight exaggeration to say the CD changed my life, but not an outright lie. We happened to be driving from Athens GA to New York at the time and we listened to that and Stevie Wonder's Innervisions pretty much the whole way. + +The twelve minute rendition of Soul Power on that record is still probably the hardest funk music I've ever heard and lyrically that record transcends most of the rest of Brown's career. Maceo Parker and the rest of the old band had just quit, Bootsy and the new band would quit inside of a year, but for this one moment the raw unpolished perfection of the JBs comes screaming though. + +I don't particularly like religion, but I think I do believe in the soul. And I realized at some point that when I say soul I mean something very similar to what I think James Brown meant — a mixture of the secular and the spiritual, the profane and the sublime. Soul is not something out there or in you, it's the place where you meet the out there. + +James Brown was not a perfect man, perhaps not even a great man if we are to consider his personal life in detail, but there were moments when he channeled something very few people ever get to touch and that is the real soul power. + +So long Mr. Brown and say hello to Mr. Cash and Sun the one when you get wherever it is you're headed. + diff --git a/jrnl/2007-01-11-sun-came-no-conclusions.txt b/jrnl/2007-01-11-sun-came-no-conclusions.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cf3ddab --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2007-01-11-sun-came-no-conclusions.txt @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.97517340607632,-118.42887280722941 +location: Los Angeles,California,United States +image: 2008/illuminatus.jpg +desc: Robert Anton Wilson, philosopher, visionary, Discordian, author of the Illuminatus! Trilogy and more, passed away earlier today. By Scott Gilbertso +dek: "And so it is that we, as men, do not exist until we do; and then it is that we play with our world of existent things, and order and disorder them, and so it shall be that non-existence shall take us back from existence and that nameless spirituality shall return to Void, like a tired child home from a very wild circus." -- Robert Anton Wilson and Kerry Thornley. Good luck and Godspeed Mr. Wilson. +pub_date: 2007-01-11T18:11:30 +slug: sun-came-no-conclusions +title: The Sun Came Up With No Conclusions +--- + +

“And so it is that we, as men, do not exist until we do; and then it is that we play with our world of existent things, and order and disorder them, and so it shall be that non-existence shall take us back from existence and that nameless spirituality shall return to Void, like a tired child home from a very wild circus.”—Principia Discordia by Malaclypse the Younger, Robert Anton Wilson and Kerry Thornley

+ +Robert Anton Wilson, philosopher, visionary, Discordian, author of the Illuminatus! epic and hacker of the mind, passed away earlier today. I'm rather tired of eulogies, will the people I admire kindly stop dying. + +Robert Anton WilsonWilson had a profound impact on me when I was younger and I'm not exaggerating when I say his book Prometheus Rising completely changed the way I look at the world — in good way — but I haven't read anything by him in some time. + +When I read on BoingBoing this afternoon that he had died, I started digging around the internet, reading and listening to some of Wilson's various audio and video archives. I was struck by the fact that the world just lost one of its great humanizers. + +Wilson is often pigeon-holed by the same cultural reputations of his friends, namely Timothy Leary and William Burroughs, but Wilson always seemed to me less concerned with edification and more interested in humanization, which is something the world will miss. + +And I started thinking about how a man who wrote some of the most paranoid, conspiracy-oriented novels I've ever read could remain, at the end of day, and even the end of his life, eternally an optimist. + +Wilson's final entry on his blog, written five days before his death, reads: + +> Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying. + +> Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd. + +Wilson didn't take much of anything very seriously and that's one of the things I acquired from reading him. I've discovered over the years that many people in my life are somewhat put off by my refusal to take things seriously and I have at times perhaps taken that too far, but by and large I remain convinced that that levity and a lack of certitude are important. + +How do you stay optimistic in a world which is increasing bent on fostering global insanity? I think the first step is to realize that the last sentence is an abstraction and doesn't really mean anything. Which isn't to say we should all stick out heads in the ground and ignore things that upset us, but simply that we recognize that the things that upset us need not define us. + +Illuminatus CoverWhen you read something like Illuminatus, with characters like, Fission Chips, the world's first quintuple compromised secret agent, you can't help but come away laughing. The focus in Wilson's work was never to make you paranoid. “My business,” Wilson once told the LA Weekly, “is not to expose but to collect comparative exposes so that the readers can see that conspiracy is normal behavior and that there's no one big conspiracy that runs everything.” + +One thing Wilson said over and over in the audio I listened to earlier stood out — perhaps we should try using “seems” more often and “is” a whole lot less. Now maybe that only sounds like a good idea to someone who's obsessed with linguistics in the first place, but maybe it isn't that limited. + +At the end of the day there may well be no “is.” I'd be the last person to embrace any sort of relativistic notion of ethics or morality, but I also try to keep in mind that I am a colossal idiot and I have long, tragically long, history of being wrong. Wrong about where the car keys are and wrong about what the world needs, what I need and what those around me need. In short I've come to distrust the certitude of statements involving is. + +Most of the conflicts in this world involve conflicts of is-es — my is is better/bigger/more correct/morally superior/more logical/ad nauseam than your is. + +The saddest irony being of course that in the end all we create are additional problems by arguing about problems (never mind that abstract problems are generally self-invented anyway, probably have no practical solution, and even if they did most of us are powerless to implement a real solution outside ourselves and our own narrow lives). + +Perhaps if we spent more time talking about how the world seems, rather than how the world is we'd construct a more kind-hearted and enjoyable world. + +Happy trails Mr. Wilson, may you finally escape the fnords, we'll keep the lasagna airborne, or as a line from the eponymous song says — let's fuck it up boys (and girls)/make some noise. + +[Update: A bunch of people have emailed me asking for more links to RAW's writings and such. Rather than compile everything again, I'll offer this Reason Magazine article, which is chock full of links.] + +

This Essay is for my friend Hilary who introduced me to the writings of Robert Anton Wilson + diff --git a/jrnl/2007-01-31-catologue-raisonne.txt b/jrnl/2007-01-31-catologue-raisonne.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9ff554d --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2007-01-31-catologue-raisonne.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.975253480901436,-118.42905519744255 +location: Los Angeles,California,United States +image: 2008/indexbooks.jpg +desc: None +dek: Google wants to index all the world's books. I know that doesn't have too much to do with traveling, but in a way it does — most travelers I know do quite a bit of reading. Since searchable books means a better chance to find something you like, who would oppose such a plan? Publishers of course. Fucking luddites. +pub_date: 2007-01-31T17:13:12 +slug: catologue-raisonne +title: Catologue Raisonne +--- + +Jeffrey Toobin, a legal columnist over at the New Yorker, has written a piece about Google's book scanning project and the legal challenges it faces. In a nutshell, two lawsuits are threatening the Google Book Search project, one is from a consortium of big name publishers who, curiously, are also Google's partners in the project, and the other is from the Author's Guild, which I've written about before. Both lawsuits allege that Google Book Search infringes on the publisher's copyrights, which may well be true, but that isn't the problem. + +The problem, according to Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School —and I tend to agree with him— is that if this case get's settled out of court, in other words Google pays up, it sets a precedent for other projects like Google Books. If Google pays why shouldn't everyone else? The thing is, Google can afford to pay but not everyone is steering a 150 billion dollar ship. + +What Google wants to do is quite staggering when you think about it. There are roughly 32 million books in the world and Google wants to scan them all. But it doesn't stop there, Google is also working hard on some projects involving borderline AI translation projects which could someday yield translations to and from any language. + +Giant brain trust sort of projects to bring the world's knowledge together and make it accessible have thus far in history not faired all that well, e.g. the library at Alexandria, but Google seems intent on seeing this through. In all likelihood Google will settle these cases, the precedent will be set and the Google Book Search project will soldier on. + +There was a saying among early and perhaps slightly optimistic proponents of the internet that “information wants to be free.” And by free, we here mean free as in freedom. The problem it seems is that the people who bring the information to the market don't see it that way. They feel that holding knowledge in chains is the only way to make it profitable. + +While I applaud Google's efforts to scan books, it's important to keep in mind that Google may have some high-minded intentions, but Google is also in it for the money. Google Book Search isn't going to set knowledge free, it may make it more accessible, but it won't make it free as in freedom. + +But with the rise of so-called social media, I can't help wondering if maybe there's a better way. Statistics say there are 32 million books in the world, but they also say there are about 300 million people in the United States alone. Throw in Europe and the UK and you have a sizable multitude of potential book scanners. What if every person who owned a scanner went out and selected one book and scanned it? A lot of work sure, but not unthinkable (just don't get stuck with War and Peace). + +It might sound far fetched, but ten years ago Wikipedia would have sounded absurd as well. The landscape keeps changing, sometimes what sounds crazy is exactly what the world needs. + +I don't know, what do you think? + diff --git a/jrnl/2007-02-03-everything-all-time.txt b/jrnl/2007-02-03-everything-all-time.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7cd7b0d --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2007-02-03-everything-all-time.txt @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.97530686407635,-118.42890499373785 +location: Los Angeles,California,United States +image: 2008/end.jpg +desc: Memory is a card house that topples before the pinnacle is reached... the final card lies forever out of reach, beyond tomorrow. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: I don't know if I'm just overly paranoid but when I call up memories in the dark hours of the Beaujolais-soaked pre-dawn, I see a collection of mildly amusing, occasionally painful series of embarrassments, misunderstandings and general wrong-place, wrong-time sort of moments. Which isn't to imply that my life is a British sitcom, just that I'm not in a hurry to re-live any of it. +pub_date: 2007-02-03T11:14:13 +slug: everything-all-time +title: Everything All The Time +--- + +

We'll collect the moments one by one
I guess that's how the future's done — Leslie Fiest
+ +A while back a friend of mine who I hadn’t spoken to in quite a while rang me up. At some point we got to talking of age and memory and time. We were speaking of time passing, of the curious moment we both find ourselves in now — trying to adjust to what I at least can safely call the middle of my life — certainly no longer the beginning. And then my friend said, “remember me as I was when you met me.” + +Window I laughed. Now the time my friend refers to, when we met, I would have been twenty-five or twenty-six. Personally I would just as soon forget nearly anything and everything I did when I was twenty-five as I’m sure it was largely ridiculous and immature. For that matter I should probably forget what I did yesterday as I’m fairly certain it wasn’t a whole lot better. + +I don’t know if I’m just overly paranoid but when I call up memories in the dark hours of the Beaujolais-soaked pre-dawn, I get mainly a collection of mildly amusing, occasionally painful series of embarrassments, misunderstandings and general wrong-place wrong-time sort of moments. + +Five and TenWhich isn’t to imply that my life is a British sitcom, just that I’m not in a hurry to re-live any of it. And I don’t think my friend is either. No my friend was not expressing a desire to rewind as it were, but rather acknowledging that since we rarely see each other these days we must necessarily exist mainly as memories. + +There’s an inevitable sadness to that realization. + +A few days later I was testing a piece of photo software for my day job at Wired and I happened to run across an image from roughly that time of my life. I don’t know for sure if it’s the oldest picture I have, but I’ve always thought of it as the first picture I took of my friend. + +There was a strange disconnect though, as I stared at my friend’s image and my own frozen in pixels. For all we like to think that photograph’s record, they don’t. Kodak was wrong, photographs don’t capture memories they just provide thin little links to them; time passes and memory continues to add impressions and in the end what you have is just one piece of a collage of memories which, taken out of context, as a photograph must be, becomes a distortion, something you no longer recognize as your friend. + +The image in question has a strange yellow glow, distorted toward orange by the blunt sensor of the old Canon, I know the lamb’s wool sweater my friend is wearing is pale minty green but in the picture it looks almost ochre, the walls seem to have been lifted from some smoke stained Parisian bar, my friend and I are slightly out of focus, my jittery arm extends away from my side, but our smiles are not forced. + +Slowly, after staring at the picture for a while, my attention drifted away and other un-photographed moments arose, my own green sweater, darker than my friend’s, wet from dripping awnings as I walked in the rain one night in Vienna, the crystal chandelier in the cafe, sausage and purple cabbage on white china plates. And then to another memory driving across central Utah, the roads winding on narrow fluted mesa tops, the rough hewn wood planks of a tiny general store where I once bought steak and potatoes, the forest campground where the smell of steak sizzled over flames filled my lungs and in the fading light of a sun disappearing over the Wasatch mountains I took another photograph, which is on this very page, the eyeball in the tree that continues to haunt me. + +At perhaps the simplest level remembering is merely reconstructing the past in the present, but there is no continuous motion of memory through time as there is in the present, we do not recall events in the order they happened, but rather by the things that link them. Memories stack up at crazy angles like a card house that topples before the pinnacle is reached, the final card laid, the final card lies forever out of reach, beyond tomorrow. + +MeIn many ways time has nothing to do with memory, save to act as a marker. Time is the space between memories, it lives in the shadows, runs down between and fills the cracks. + +When we do try to introduce time into our memories we often have to stop and think — now when did that happen? The memory, the reconstruction of the past in the present happens unaided but it often bounces here and there joining with other memories linked by smell, taste, sound and more, but almost never by time. Placing a memory at a specific moment in time rarely comes as easily, we rely on context, the shirt you’re wearing, the hat your friend has on or maybe the length of your hair. + +Perhaps we let time slip from memory because it isn’t necessary, perhaps time only matters in the present. But even then we do our best to ignore it. Our escape from time, the trick we use to ignore its passage on the average day is that it moves just slow enough that we don’t notice it except in larger chunks. + +I recently came across someone who subverted that though. Imagine your life displayed in a time lapse film. The very thought of it is intimidating, almost unimaginable. Well have a look at Noah Kalina’s YouTube montage (embedded below). For six years Noah took a picture of himself every day. Personally I find Noah’s video collage to be one of the most beautiful and truly frightening things I’ve ever seen, which probably explains why it’s one of the most watched movies on YouTube. + +Each photograph on its own is mundane, hardly worth comment, but in rapid succession they stitch together and form a thread of time moving through life, and even though we watch Noah pass through six years in three minutes, as you watch his face becomes after a while only a thin veil between our own reflection in the screen and time screaming past. + +
+ diff --git a/jrnl/2007-03-01-goodbye-mother-and-cove.txt b/jrnl/2007-03-01-goodbye-mother-and-cove.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..83b7f5f --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2007-03-01-goodbye-mother-and-cove.txt @@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 34.040907225218874,-118.47207783003557 +location: Los Angeles,California,United States +image: 2008/lacloud.jpg +desc: Los Angeles I'm yours. But I have to go. So, like Bukowski wrote, To all my friends! By Scott Gilbertson +dek: It's strange how you can plan something, go through all the motions of making it happen without ever really understanding what you're doing. I've been doing this for the better part of three years now. I realized recently that I have no real idea how I came to be here. + +pub_date: 2007-03-01T11:15:10 +slug: goodbye-mother-and-cove +title: Goodbye to the Mother and the Cove +--- + +Earlier today I was driving up Santa Monica Blvd, stuck in traffic actually, more like parked on Santa Monica Blvd, staring up a very strange cloud that had been hanging over the west side all afternoon looking a bit like the clouds in Independence Day that show up just before the alien ships emerge from behind them, when it occurred to me that I was leaving Los Angeles again. + +clouds over Santa Monica It's strange how you can plan something, go through all the motions of making it happen without ever really understanding what you're doing. I've been doing this for the better part of three years now. I realized recently that I have no real idea how I came to be here. + +All I can do is trace the timeline like a boring history professor: my girlfriend dumped me, which in turn inspired me to quit the job I had at the time (which I hated anyway) and then I drove to Athens GA because it was the last sane moment I could think of, but I ran into a friend who was recently back from Asia so I decided to go to Asia. I didn't have much money and I didn't want to work. So I came out here to Los Angeles and started building websites for a friend of a friend. By the end of summer I had enough money to go on my trip. So I left, traveled around Asia for nine months and returned here to Los Angeles. Then I got a job writing for Wired from a friend. + +I will never exactly understand how getting dumped and quitting what was arguably a good job in spite of the fact that I hated it, somehow managed to get me to a better place, but it did. I don't even know why I bother to tell you these things, except perhaps as a way of expressing my gratitude to all my friends because if we back up and look at all the key plot points in the last three years of my life, none of them are the result of my talents or skills, they were all gifts handed to me by friends, very good friends, friends I wish I could do more for, friends I will miss very much now that I am leaving. + +I don't really know where I am going, but I'll be sure to send some postcards along the way and when I raise a glass it will be, as Bukowski wrote -- to all my friends. + diff --git a/jrnl/2007-06-15-sailing-through.txt b/jrnl/2007-06-15-sailing-through.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8c55a1b --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2007-06-15-sailing-through.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 32.835570335240995,-79.82256172976372 +location: Charleston,South Carolina,United States +image: 2008/charlestonships.jpg +desc: The American South is curious place. I couldn't hope to explain it, except to say it isn't so much a place as an approach to life. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: The rumors are true. I moved back to the south; Athens GA to be exact. But I hate staying in one place for too long, so after a month or two in Athens I headed up to Charleston to visit a friend. The south is curious place. If you've never been here I couldn't hope to explain it, but it's not so much a place as an approach. A way of getting somewhere more than anywhere specific. Perhaps even a wrong turn. + +pub_date: 2007-06-15T00:15:43 +slug: sailing-through +title: Sailing Through +--- + +It was the middle of the afternoon, we having settled in to watch a bit of the Blues Brothers -- afternoon films being my favorite form of procrastination -- when, just after Belushi remarks that the modern American mall "has everything", the screen blacked out to the sound of bleating sirens and a message began to scroll across the screen in a dull white Arial-derived font -- something about severe thunderstorms. + +We decide to go for a walk. The sun feels like a curse that's been hanging over you since birth. Not a cloud in the sky. + +And so it goes. Here in Charleston, SC. The rumors are true. I moved back to the south, Athens GA to be exact -- more on that later. But I hate staying in one place for too long, so after a month or two in Athens I headed up to Charleston to visit a friend. + +The south is curious place. If you've never been here I couldn't hope to explain it, but it's not so much a place as an approach. A way of getting somewhere more than anywhere specific. Perhaps even a wrong turn. + +Here's what we know for sure: Californian is not the south. Texas is also not the south. Charleston throws seersucker suits in the mix, but hey, nothing's perfect. + +There was a piece in the New York Times a while back that argued that the South begins not at the Mason-Dixon line, as history would have us believe, but where the restaurants switch over to sweetened tea. But most Times writers have never left Manhattan and won't recognize the South even when they're dipped in tar and run out of it. The truth is the South begins and ends wherever you can find Duke's Mayonnaise on the shelves of your local grocer. + +There's mayonnaise. And then there's Duke's. Even at the baseball game there's Duke's. + +But it was the heat that started it. Thunderstorms and heat. + +Apparently the Charleston emergency broadcast system has never heard the story on the boy who cried wolf. Or they just didn't walk away with much. Not only is there not a cloud in the sky, there was a tropical depression big enough to have a name that didn't warrant any alerts when it blew through yesterday. + +It seems safe to assume that the local elements of FEMA are run by the same type of highly qualified individuals that staff the higher government offices of this strange, confused land. + +I first came to Charleston about a month ago, I've come and gone twice since then. The weather was mild when I first arrived, an onshore breeze to rattle the Palmetto leaves, tufts of cloud hanging over the sea. We lay on our backs floating in the brine and watching the sun arc the sky. + +One weekend we wandered the shipping yards ogling the tall ships, a festival of them, blown in on favorable winds you might say. We failed, despite our best efforts, to be shanghaied off into the ocean, pressed into five months before the mast on our way back to Italy. + +A kind of wanderlust seizes me whenever I am near boats -- the world was, after all, discovered by men and women of the sea. And I don't mean those Spaniards with their metal helmets, I mean the much older explorers departing from east on dugout canoes with spears for fishing and courage of a sort that they took with them to their graves. They reached the islands -- Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji and so many more -- before their European counterparts had even consider the mast, let alone pressed anyone into service before it. + +Failing kidnapping, we turned to tequila and night-swimming, always a heady and dangerous mix, but we pulled through in spite of the hiccups. + +It took me nine years to get here. I enjoyed them. Every bit of them. Stay tuned. + diff --git a/jrnl/2007-06-17-being-there.txt b/jrnl/2007-06-17-being-there.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e8350a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2007-06-17-being-there.txt @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.683925130931456,-78.92835615966725 +location: Myrtle Beach Airport,South Carolina,United States +image: 2008/myrtlebeachcrap.jpg +desc: From north of the Mason-Dixon or west of the Mississippi, Myrtle Beach looks like everything that's wrong with America. And it is. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Myrtle Beach does not exist. Nearly everything in Myrtle Beach is a paltry derivative of some original form. For instance, most of the country has golf courses, in Myrtle Beach there are endless rows of putt-putt courses, where most towns attempt to draw in big name musical acts for their tourist venues, Myrtle Beach is content with impersonators. +pub_date: 2007-06-17T02:18:54 +slug: being-there +title: Being There +--- + +Myrtle Beach does not exist. + +Myrtle Beach is in fact a copy of a place that does not exist. + +Nearly everything in Myrtle Beach is a paltry derivative of some original form. For instance, most of the country has golf courses, in Myrtle Beach there are endless rows of putt-putt courses complete with sewage treatment blue waterfalls and variety of kitschy themes. + +And where most towns attempt to draw in big name musical acts for their tourist venues, Myrtle Beach is content with impersonators, which can be found on any given night at any number of lounge venues hacking through pastiches of everything from Prince and Justin Timberlake, to a mock Grand Ol' Opry. + +Myrtle Beach, SC putt puttBut I refer to Myrtle Beach as a copy of a place that doesn't exist because on some level Myrtle Beach is just an imitation Vegas. But Las Vegas has already begun its transformation from imitator of itself to imitator of the world. Just consider the themed hotel resorts -- The Venetian with its canals, The Luxor with its Egyptian theme and of course New York-New York -- all of which are geared toward recreating aspects of other places together in one easy to reach spot. + +Call it real-world virtual tourism. + +The cynical take, for those of us that enjoy traveling to the actual destinations, is "hey, it keeps the annoying tourists out of the real locations." And while I refuse to wholly give in to that notion, I nevertheless admit its appeal. + +It is tempting for travelers to sit back and criticize your typical American, British or German on holidayGondola at the Venetian - Las Vegas (since those are in my experience the greatest offenders in this category) as if the traveler had somehow earned the right to be there -- by virtue of, let's face it, our own invented self-superiority -- which simply isn't true. + +When I was younger I saw a movie, The Man From Snowy River which is set in Australia and involves a sort of feud between high country and low country dwellers (among other things). Both sides are snobs toward the other, the low country folk are rich and land holding while the inhabitants of the high country are mainly poor, but work the actual land -- a fairly typical dichotomy in the western world circa 1900. + +In the film Kirk Douglas plays an old wizened high country dweller who at one point tells the young protagonist, who is caught between the two worlds, "you have to earn the right to live up here." + +And that's a tempting philosophy to cling to, but it has some problems. For one thing, at what point have you earned the right to live there? Who decides what is necessary to earn the right to live there? And the list goes on. + +Still, anyone who's been up to the top of an Angkor Wat temple to watch the sun set knows the appeal of the notion that perhaps, just to cut down on the crowds you understand, perhaps there ought to be some sort of trial in which you have to earn the right to be there. Everyone but you and I of course. + +However, despite recognizing the inherent hypocrisy in the notion of earning the right to be anywhere, there is, I believe, a fundamental difference between a tourist for whom Myrtle Beach is an appealing destination, and, well, the rest of us. + +"Traveler" is the suitably generic term I use to distinguish those who are not simply tourists passing through in air-con comfort. But the real difference between a tourist and traveler is philosophical. + +A tourist attempts to see a destination much in the way we watch an enjoyable television program -- peacefully and without too great of discomfort. Their philosophy (as I understand it from observing them) is to actually *see* a destination with their own eyes, rather than simply watch or read of it. + +These individuals recognize that just watching Rick Steves' thirty minute tours on PBS is not the same as actually walking through the Piazza San Marco in Venice -- but that's as far as they are willing to go. God forbid the air-con fail or the drinks lack ice. + +Piazza San MarcoFor this sort of approach to travel (and let me just say that I don't think everyone on a package tour is necessarily that shallow) the imitation destinations like Myrtle Beach or Las Vegas are ideal. + +The images dancing before your eyes are after all, at least on some level, virtual. + +Thus the tourist's expectations are largely met in a virtual destination -- very little danger, the water is drinkable, the sights damn near the same and there's ice in the drinks. + +On the other hand, travelers don't generally seem to be content with just seeing. There is a more full frontal approach if you will. + +And for those that enjoy small children throwing up on them on crowded buses, accept dysentery as part of price to be paid for the joy of the foreign and who welcome the dodgy food, the suspect ice, the insects, the garbage, the poverty and all the other experiences which, for better or worse make up world travel, there still remains, well, the world.Which is why there's an international airport near you -- even in Myrtle Beach. + +[None of the above photos are mine, click individual images for details] + diff --git a/jrnl/2007-07-23-other-ocean.txt b/jrnl/2007-07-23-other-ocean.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aec702e --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2007-07-23-other-ocean.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.46191438592164,-118.52130172987002 +location: Catalina Island,California,United States +image: 2008/sailing.jpg +desc: Sailing from Newport Harbor to Santa Catalina Island. It might not be crossing an ocean, but it's a step in the right direction. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Consider what would happen if your house were tilted 30 degrees to the left, how this would complicate ordinary activities -- like say walking. Now throw in a bouncing motion that lifts the floor five or six feet up and down in a seesaw-like motion on a perpendicular axis to the 30 degree tilt -- things become more like riding a seesaw that's attached to a merry-go-round which is missing a few bolts. That's sailing. +pub_date: 2007-07-23T11:24:44 +slug: other-ocean +title: On The Other Ocean +--- + +Consider for a moment if your house were tilted 30 degrees to the left. Imagine how this would complicate seemingly ordinary activities -- like say walking. Now throw in a bouncing motion that lifts the floor five or six feet up and down in a seesaw-like motion on a perpendicular axis to the 30 degree tilt -- if you're lucky, if you're not it's somewhat more like riding a seesaw that's attached to a merry-go-round which is missing a few bolts. Now Imagine it's night and throw in a healthy downpour for good measure -- that's sailing. + +Clouds, Santa Catalina IslandFor many this results in vomiting, tears and some cribbed lines about horror from Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness. For others though, like for instance, my uncle, this is the sort of thing that brings out the famous Cheshire Cat grin. Some might attribute this to the general belief that if you're a bit unhinged in the first place, then you aren't going to really hit your stride until the world around you starts to come a bit unglued. + +I'll be the first to admit that I've never really sailed in conditions like that, but I hope to someday and perhaps that makes me unhinged a bit myself. + +But let's back up a minute. Make it daylight and get rid of the rain. That's more akin to the conditions on a windy day off the California coastline, which is where I am at the moment. Which is a good thing because my uncle isn't on this boat and while my father is good sailor, I don't know that he would relish the above scenario with the same sort of gusto it holds in abstract for me. + +And I'm no ace sailor. I understand the basic mechanisms of a boat -- anyone who's sat on a plane contemplating the wind-induced lift of the wing understands, whether they realize it or not, the basic physics of the modern sail, which is essentially a wing turned on its side. + +I can tie knots and I know most the terms the nautical world insists on using like port, starboard, fore, aft, stern, bow, mainsheet, traveler and whatnot. + +More important though, I seem to have an instinctive feel for that point of sail which maximizes the available wind (at least that what the more skilled sailors I've been out with tell me, for all I know they're just flattering my ego). + +blue whaleHowever, it's this last tidbit that means I rarely get the wheel on these week-long trips my family has been taking for the last decade or so. I rarely get the wheel because when I do I frequently fall off whatever course we happen to be on in favor of the best wind. + +If you're looking to go somewhere specific in a boat, I'm not really your man. If on the other hand you just want to lean the boat over as far as possible and try to exceed the designated hull speed without flipping it, I might be able to help. + +Regular readers will know I'm not all that good at reaching specific destinations on land either, I tend to get lured off course by all manner of fascinating distractions. I don't really travel -- despite what it might say at the top of this site, -- I just kind of wander about. + +Which is why it's typically my father who gets us from Newport Harbor to Santa Catalina Island -- if, as occasionally happens, we have a favorable wind that coincides with our course, then I sail, but most of the time I lie on deck in the sun contemplating the sea — watching the occasional blue whale meander by. + +twilight at seaBut my favorite time on the water is twilight. It may just be something that happens in California, but twilight on the sea produces a much deeper red, warm light that hangs around for much longer than its land-loving counterpart. + +Unless you're trying to get somewhere in a hurry, you're typically either moored or anchored come night and while the sea does calm somewhat, depending on the night you might find yourself bobbing about a good bit. And there is very little I know of that will reinforce your own speck-like insignificance quicker than lying here up the bobbing V-berth staring out the companionway hatch at the mast pitching about the stars. + +At the end of the day our tiny cork existences float, bouncing and dancing in an ocean so colossal it's nearly impossible to fathom. + +And yet as I lie here with a thousand thought racing through my head, it also seems that our lives contain immense significance as well -- we contain so much within us as to outstrip even the vastness of the universe we inhabit. + +The largest thing is contained within the smallest thing as the Tao says, we are tiny corks with giant hopes and dreams. Sometimes they play out as we wish and sometimes they do not. As Kurt Vonnegutt was fond of writing, -- And so it goes. + diff --git a/jrnl/2007-11-14-fall.txt b/jrnl/2007-11-14-fall.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c871eea --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2007-11-14-fall.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.9448641194789,-83.38856934340312 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2008/fall.jpg +desc: Fall, Autumn, call it what you like, just remember, the leaves fall for the tree every year, but the tree never falls for the leaves. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: The trees are in full technicolor swing. The land is slowly dying, and not just because it's Fall, we're also in the middle of a prolonged drought and this year the leaves are opting for a James Dean-style, leave-a-good-looking-corpse exit. If you're a leaf and you've got to go, do it with class. +pub_date: 2007-11-14T02:25:17 +slug: fall +title: Fall +--- + +The trees are in full technicolor swing. The land is slowly dying, and not just because it's Fall [1], we're also in the middle of a prolonged drought -- this year being one of the worst -- but this year the leaves are opting for a James Dean-style, leave-a-good-looking-corpse exit. If you're a leaf and you've got to go, do it with class. + +Fall colors Athens GAOut my back door is a spectrum ranging from ochre to vermillion with all the middle hues as well, burnt sienna, tawny cinnamon, sorrel, ginger, puse and more nestled among the staid green of those that refuse to give and the more russet and mahogany tones of indifferent Oak trees. It's the beech and maple that really turn though. Almost makes you think of a certain Rush song, but we won't go there. + +Fall colors Athens GAPerhaps it's a result of growing up in Los Angeles, but Fall never ceases to amaze me and I feel a bit bad for those who don't get to experience it every year. When I worked at the restaurant in Northampton we used to mock the leaf peepers, but we understood why they came. + +It's part of the trade off I guess. My Los Angeles friends aren't running their heater and still wearing a sweater. It gets cold here, not as cold as New England, but certainly colder than coastal California. But I'll take the cold in exchange for some tangible markers of the passing seasons, the passing time, lest it simple blur together and slip away invisibly. + +Just bear in mind that only part of it is passing. As a friend of mine used to say, the leaves fall for the tree every year, but the tree will never fall for the leaves. + +

  1. 1. To my English friends who will insist on Autumn. I have it on reasonably good authority that Fall is actually proper Queen's English that fell out of fashion in the UK near the end of the last century. I intend to bring it back because Autumn reminds me of bad paperback romance novels. ↩

+ diff --git a/jrnl/2008-01-01-new-years-day.txt b/jrnl/2008-01-01-new-years-day.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0271944 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2008-01-01-new-years-day.txt @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.94488637041943,-83.38856397898492 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2008/annienewyears.jpg +desc: +dek: I've always been all for New Year's Eve celebrations, parties, what have you, but somehow the next day always seemed a bit hollow. U2 was, in many ways, correct -- "nothing changes on New Year's Day." But, it's a self-created universe, so whether anything changes on New Year's Day is really up to you. And I've always thought Bono was full of shit. +pub_date: 2008-01-01T11:29:26 +slug: new-years-day +title: New Year's Day +--- + +I have at various times been accused of harboring a certain amount of cynicism (or realism, depending on the point of view of the person leveling such accusations), something I continue to deny. + +New Year's DayHowever, there are a few notable moments of cynical behavior in my past and perhaps the most obvious has always been my attitude toward New Year's Day. + +I've always been all for New Year's Eve celebrations, parties, what have you, but somehow the next day always seemed a bit hollow and I've said as much before. Of course, while recognizing that Bono was in many way correct when he sang "nothing changes on New Year's Day," it is after all a largely self-created universe, so whether or not you think anything changes on New Year's Day is really up to you. And I've always thought Bono was full of shit. + +So this year I managed to drag myself out of bed at a reasonable hour and whip up the sort of breakfast extravagance that seemed befitting of the first day in a new year and actually celebrated its arrival. What's more I'm doing something I haven't done in years -- making New Years resolutions. + +I won't bore you with the whole list, but there's one that's relevant to luxagraf -- I'm going to post a new photo everyday. Hardly original I realize, but I'm hoping that perhaps a little self-kick in the ass might also inspire me to do a bit more writing and otherwise update the site a bit more. + +I may not get around to actually taking [a new photograph everyday][1], but I will at least post one (travel days excepted) and I'll be making an effort to actually take them more often as well. I can't guarantee they'll be any good, in fact I can almost guarantee that most of them won't be any good, but at least one small thing will have changed for me on New Year's Day. + +[1]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/luxagraf/sets/72157603603431255/ + diff --git a/jrnl/2008-03-30-ring-bells.txt b/jrnl/2008-03-30-ring-bells.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9ff3be8 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2008-03-30-ring-bells.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 11.932062265861589,-85.95813630814854 +location: Granada,Granda,Nicaragua +image: 2008/ringthbells.jpg +desc: Wandering the streets of Granada, Nicaragua: colorful buildings, colonial-era architecture and, most importantly, hammocks. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: The Church, which dates from the 1600s has the the narrowest, steepest, circular concrete staircase that I've ever encountered. It had a low railing and circled up four stories worth of precipitous dropoffs before you hit solid ground. From the top was a views of Granada's endless sea of mottled pink, orange and brown hues -- terra cotta roof tiles stretching from the shores of Lago Nicaragua all the way back toward the hills. +pub_date: 2008-03-30T23:37:40 +slug: ring-bells +title: Ring The Bells +--- + +We landed in Managua about eight in the evening, walked outside the airport and smoked a cigarette (I know, terrible, I started smoking again), surveying the taxi drivers all clamoring for jacked up fares from the new arrivals. Eventually we gave up and paid our own jacked up fare to get to a decent guesthouse picked randomly out of the Lonely Planet. + +Granada StreetManagua is a medium sized city, neither the best nor the worst I've been in, but there didn't seem to be much worth seeing, and we only had two weeks to spare so we hightailed it south to Granada at six the next morning. + +The slow, or ordinario, bus proved to just fine and got us to Granada in an hour or so. We were way too early to check in anywhere, but we stopped by a guesthouse (The Bearded Monkey, rating: B-), reserved a room and stashed our bags before heading out to explore the city. + +Granada is famed for its Colonial-era architecture and colorful buildings; it even has the UNESCO World Heritage site stamp of approval. We wandered the streets, taking in the riotous paint jobs and admiring the fantastically massive, ornately carved wooden doors. Behind most of these doorways are fantastic courtyards, lushly planted and beautifully landscaped (judging by the few that were open). + +Granada churchWe stopped by a Church that was holding services and Corrinne was hesitant to go in, but having marched right in to so many Buddhist temples (at the urging of the locals I might add) I decided to do the same with the Catholics, come hell or high water as it were. + +It turned out to that no one seemed to care, or perhaps the tourist-saturated nature of their town has led to an acquiescence that masquerades as acceptance. A very friendly priest of some kind stopped us on our way out and insisted that we go up in the recently restored bell tower to have a look at the city from on high. + +As it turned out, it was the best thing we did in Granada and, for whatever reason, no one seems to do it (or at least no one we talked to). Which isn't to slight Granada, it's definitely worth a day, but there isn't a whole lot to it. Unless you're really into horse drawn carriage tours. + +We paid a nominal fee -- which ostensibly goes toward further restoration efforts since the church dates from the 1600s and could use a bit of work -- and then went up the narrowest, steepest, circular concrete staircase that I've ever encountered. It had a low railing and circled up four stories worth of precipitous dropoffs before you hit solid ground. Never mind the cracks in the stairs, this is earthquake country. It happens. + +Granada rooftopsAt the top you have a great 360 degree view of the city, which becomes an endless sea of mottled pink, orange and brown hues -- terra cotta roof tiles stretching from the shores of Lago Nicaragua all the way back toward the hills. Oh and there's some bells. Bells that quite clearly get rung from below, and, judging by the size, it would be best to not be around when someone yanks the rope. Thankfully no one did and we spent half and hour or more admiring the city and trying to decide if Ometepe, the towering volcano in the distance, half shrouded in the hazy of the lake, was really belching thin gray wisps of smoke. Inconclusive. It certainly *looked* like it was though. + +After admiring the views for a while, the idea of lounging in one the aforementioned courtyards kept coming up. Eventually we gave in and headed back to the guesthouse to do the one thing I'm really good at at doing -- nothing. And by nothing I mean napping in hammocks, sipping Tona, reading, checking out the German guy's EeePC (pathetic: Wired technology writer sees first EeePC laptop in Nicaraguan guesthouse), talking about whether or not our house would work with a courtyard and otherwise dodging the heat of the day. + +We went out for a late lunch and had another explore around the market area, down a few back alleys, past another very 17th century-looking church, through a game of baseball happening in the middle of the street and finally looped back to the church and climbed up the bell tower again to watch the sunset. + +I'm not quite sure what the occasion was, other than a Sunday (could have been a wedding perhaps, this time I decided not to intrude), but the church was in full swing with some extremely morose, gothic-tinged music thundering out of the cathedral hall and punctuated by a man in front of the church launching volleys of giant fireworks, seemingly in time with the music. The effect was like being in a bad Francis Ford Coppola movie (like the Godfather), but the fireworks sounded more like mortar shells than percussion. + +Granada sunsetBack up the scary stone staircase I sat down and closed my eyes for a minute and imagined what the same scene would have looked like twenty years ago when the explosions really would have been mortars. After all, that's what American's think of when they think of Nicaragua: war, death, suffering. Certainly all part of Nicaragua's past, but you'd never know it today. Today it's just fireworks and fugues. + +After the sun set we wandered back over to Parque Colón, the central plaza that anchors the layout of the town and serves as its central hub. We sat down to the side of the park and watched the locals go about their business, enjoying the last few hours of the weekend. + +Eventually we headed back the guesthouse to grab some dinner and a few beers. + +The next morning we were the first bus headed south. + diff --git a/jrnl/2008-04-02-return-sea.txt b/jrnl/2008-04-02-return-sea.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..27ea074 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2008-04-02-return-sea.txt @@ -0,0 +1,50 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 11.254384499067603,-85.8734750628141 +location: San Juan Del Sur,Rivas,Nicaragua +image: 2008/sanjuansunset.jpg +desc: San Juan Del Sur is a bit pricy due to the big expat surfer community, but still a nice stop along the Pacific coast of Nicaragua. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Southwestern Nicaragua is a very small strip of land with Lago Nicaragua to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. The main town in the area, Juan Del Sur, is nestled around a well protected harbor with a mediocre strip of sand. For the nice beaches you have to head up or down the coast to one of the many small inlets. +pub_date: 2008-04-02T20:22:29 +slug: return-sea +title: Return to the Sea +--- + +Rivas was hot, dusty and filled with touts clamoring to shove you a cab bound for just about anywhere but Rivas itself. Not being the sort of tourists that like to disappoint a determined tout, we ended up in one of those cabs, along with a couple of Nicaraguans, bound for the Pacific coast town of San Juan Del Sur. + +San Juan Del Sur + +harborfrontFrom Granada we caught a chicken bus south, headed for Rivas. Southwestern Nicaragua is a very small strip of land with Lago Nicaragua to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Rivas is smack dab in the middle of that strip, a kind of stopping off point rather than a destination, almost like a border town, despite the fact that the border is another hour south. + +You essentially have two choices in Rivas: go east to the lake, visit Isle Ometepe and some of the other islands and small towns along the coast, or, go west to San Juan Del Sur and the other fishing villages along the Pacific (there's also the third option of continuing on to the Costa Rican border, but that wasn't in our plans). + +Curiously enough, the morning we left for Nicaragua we stopped off for a cup of coffee at Jittery Joe's and ran into our friend Nelson, who we hadn't seen since we moved back to town. In one of those strange twists of fate that I've come to accept, it turned out that Nelson had just gotten back from Nicaragua the night before. We proceeded to do a quick five minute brain pick and came up with San Juan Del Sur, which is why we found ourselves trapped in a mid-90s Nissan sedan with the world's slowest cab driver. + +Playa MajagualThe Pacific coast of Nicaragua has long been famous in surfer circles for its near-perfect and seemingly endless breaks (it's featured in Endless Summer if you're into that sort of thing). The last time I went surfing Quicksilver was still run out of a garage and I have no real desire to take it up again, but I rarely say no to some time by ocean. + +San Juan Del Sur proper is nestled around a well protected harbor with a mediocre strip of sand. For the good surf and nice beaches you have to head up or down the coast to one of the many small inlets. And that means you'll either have to catch a cab or take one of several 4x4 drive bus thingies (like troop carrying trucks essentially). + +The problem is that if you stay in San Juan Del Sur, you'll end up spending a good chunk of money getting to the beach, and that has never made sense to me. We did take a cab two days, once to Playa Majagual and once to Playa Maderas, two beaches to the north of the harbor, but they were something of a letdown. + +The beaches themselves were curiously deserted, literally. In two days on two different beaches we were totally alone -- save for our cab driver somewhere back over the dune sleeping in his car. Which is sort of where the letdown part comes in. I realize that we were paying him decent money, but I couldn't help feeling guilty that there was this poor guy waiting all afternoon in his car. I wouldn't want to do that, would you? + +Hammock, Hotel ColonialThe guilt, coupled with the gusts of wind that whipped the sand against your skin a bit like a low grade sandblaster (come to San Juan Del Sur, free exfoliating while you wait!) made the beaches, well, something of a letdown. + +The third day we got it right, we didn't do anything or go anywhere. We lounged around in hammocks, had a stroll around the town, bought our own hammock and hit the harbor front restaurant/bar scene early. + +We ended up taking an upscale room in San Juan Del Sur since the cheap stuff was pretty morbid (it's hard to pay $25 for a room that isn't half as nice as many of the $2 rooms you've had elsewhere). As it turned out a Canadian couple that we met briefly in Granada had exactly the same thought process and ended up in the room next to use at the Hotel Colonial ($46 a night, rating: A). Kenso and Melissa had perhaps a much better justification for splashing out in San Juan Del Sur since they had taken the "loft" at the Bearded Monkey Guesthouse. Corrinne and I were offered the loft when we arrived at the Bearded Monkey, but we elected to hold out for a private room (which we ended up getting, thank god). + +Kenso and Melissa arrived after us and found that, since we had snatched the last private room, they were stuck with the loft, which was essentially a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood nailed midway up a high-ceiling hallway. Not only was there little in the way of privacy, you had to climb a rather precarious ladder to get in and out -- no small feat when you're in a country where beer is only a dollar. + +Somehow they managed to survive and check in next to us at the Hotel Colonial in San Juan Del Sur (and they were nice enough to bear no outward grudge for stealing the last room in Granada). + +sunset San Juan Del Sur + +harborfrontKenso and Melissa were on basically the same trip we were, though after San Juan Del Sur they opted to head to Ometepe while we went straight over to the Corn Island. But we spent a couple nights in one of the many near anonymous restaurants that line the harbor front, talking with Melissa and Kenso and watching the sunset while we ate lobster, fried plantains and, of course, the ever-present gallo y pinto. + +However after three days we felt like we had more or less exhausted San Juan Del Sur. The combination of high prices and a plethora of rather obnoxious American ex-pats that seemed to generally hail from Los Angeles or some equally dreadful American metropolis sort of turned us off. + +San Juan Del Sur is worth a visit, just don't be surprised when you find a battered paperback novel selling for $40 at a coffee shop where no one speaks Spanish. Americans are a cancer, someone needs to stop us (as a friend recently pointed out, something, not someone, is going to stop us -- the Euro). + +And really it isn't that bad. Though San Juan Del Sur may not be my favorite spot in Nicaragua, there is something to be said for watching the Pacific sunsets over a plate of lobster and a cold beer. Life could be a whole lot worse. + diff --git a/jrnl/2008-04-05-little-island-sun.txt b/jrnl/2008-04-05-little-island-sun.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..11b7bda --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2008-04-05-little-island-sun.txt @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 12.297403736673346,-82.97458647526604 +location: Little Corn Island,Autonomous Region,Nicaragua +image: 2008/coconutsun.jpg +desc: Finding paradise on Little Corn Island, literally. We stayed at Carlito's Sunrise Paradise and were about ten paces from the water. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: We arrived on Little Corn Island around sundown and met Ali, whom I at first took to be a tout, but he showed us the way to our guesthouse and, after settling in and getting a feel for the island, I realized that Ali, wasn't a tout, he was just a really nice guy who enjoyed doing favors for tourists, just beware the Yoni beverage he offers. +pub_date: 2008-04-05T23:31:15 +slug: little-island-sun +title: Little Island in the Sun +--- + +From [San Juan Del Sur][1] we caught a cab back to Rivas (much faster driver this time), then a bus to Managua, switched to another bus out to the airport, then hopped a plane to Bluefields and then on to Big Corn Island where we jumped in a boat to Little Corn Island. Pretty much every form of transportation in Nicaragua in a single journey (there are no trains unfortunately). To get from the airport to San Juan Del Sur we spent $40 each. To do the same thing in reverse we paid $6 each. That's called figuring it out. + +[1]: http://luxagraf.net/2008/apr/02/return-sea/ + +Palm Tree, Little Corn Island, NicaraguaOf that journey the only stressful part was the puddle-jumper flight from Managua to Big Corn on an airline that's apparently sketchy enough that U.S. diplomats aren't allowed to fly on it. However, we met up with Kenso and Melissa again a few days later and I asked Kenso about it and he waved his hand dismissively and said the planes were fine (he's flown some pretty sketchy stuff for the U.N. in Africa so I figured it was okay and I relaxed somewhat on the flight back). + +We arrived on Little Corn Island around sundown and met a man I at first took to be a tout who showed us the way to the guesthouse we wanted to stay in. After settling in an getting a feel for the island I realized that Ali, the man, wasn't a tout, he was just a really nice guy who enjoyed doing favors for tourists. He would accept the occasional tip, but he wasn't in it for the money. + +The truth is there's just very little to do on Little Corn Island, so helping tourists passes the time. The only people that work what you and I might call a full day are the guesthouse owners and the fishermen. Pretty much everyone else seemed to not have much to do (and we were there during the the three month off season for lobster fisherman so the island was pretty well laid back). + +Carlito's Guesthouse, Little Corn Island, NicaraguaIn short, Little Corn Island is basically paradise. We stayed at Carlito's Sunrise Paradise ($25 a night, A+, highly recommended) and were about ten paces from the water. One afternoon I took a short nap and I sat up in bed and noticed the view you see in the photo to the right. + +Carlito's, like most of the guesthouses on the island, consisted of a few huts, some shaded tables by the water and central eating area. And of course the most important part -- the hammocks slug between pretty much any two appropriately spaced objects. + +The interesting thing about the Corn Islands is that they're more or less a totally separate experience from mainland Nicaragua. English is the primary language and the native people are of African descent. Naturally there are a number of Misquitos as well as Spanish descendant people, but for the most part the Caribbean coast is a bit like transplanting say, Jamaica, to Nicaragua. + +The Corn Islands are part of an autonomous zone in Nicaragua. I won't pretend to understand the nuances of the government setup here, but as I understand it, the Mosquito Indians pretty much control things and government of Nicaragua supports them (for the most part) but doesn't seem to interfere too much. + +This region of the Caribbean has long been a hangout for pirates and smugglers -- especially these islands, which were a favorite for British pirates waiting to hit the Spanish Galleons coming across the Gulf of Mexico. + +Beach, Little Corn Island, NicaraguaThe pirating tradition continues to day with drug running boats. Drug-running boats en route from Colombia to Miami pass through this area. Though the boats no longer stop on the islands, every now and then someone loads a panga (local outboard boat) with gasoline and heads out into the sea (GPS to the rescue) to refuel a boat. + +When the drug runners come under attack by U.S. Coast Guard boats they typically pitch their rather large bales of cocaine overboard and, owing to a curious combination of wind and currents, those bales (and sometimes barrels of money as well) tend to wash up here. It used to be that the Colombians would buy the drugs back, but from what I've read the Indians have decided to stop that tradition and now get rid of it them themselves. And apparently the Colombian drug runners won't mess with the Mosquito, who are heavily armed, well-organized and have been defending this area for going on six hundred years. In short, they are not people to fuck with -- as the Spanish, British, the Nicaraguan Army, the U.S. special forces and a number of other erstwhile challengers have discovered over the years. + +Thus, while it certainly isn't common, the white lobster, as the bales of cocaine are known here, does turn up from time to time. As do barrels of money. For instance, according to local gossip, the woman who owns the guesthouse next to Carlito's discovered a barrel with $80,000 inside -- more than enough to open a profitable guesthouse. + +As you might expect, this shady past has made for a bit unrest over the years. As little as six years ago, Little Corn was a very sketchy place. Local residents lined their houses with razor wire and the [Casa Iguana Guesthouse][2] had a bucket full a machetes available for any guests that were brave (or foolish) enough to even venture out at night. Luckily for those of us that probably wouldn't fare well in a machete fight, those days are largely over. + +[2]: http://www.casaiguana.net/ + +Corrinne and I, Little Corn Island, NicaraguaThere are still "incidents" on the island, but it's the tamer, stealing-stuff-from-rooms that happens in any isolated, yet heavily visited area, rather than the more violent holdups. + +For the record I never felt unsafe on Little Corn and we walked around at night quite a bit, alone even. Of course some of that has to do with the massively increased police presence that the government sent over for Semana Santa (Easter) who are still on the island. + +But if you've heard the stories floating around the internet about trouble on Little Corn and you're hesitating to go, don't. It's perfectly safe and you'll love it. + diff --git a/jrnl/2008-06-07-love-with-a-view-vagabonds-responsibilty-living-we.txt b/jrnl/2008-06-07-love-with-a-view-vagabonds-responsibilty-living-we.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7a9b30b --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2008-06-07-love-with-a-view-vagabonds-responsibilty-living-we.txt @@ -0,0 +1,168 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.944877470043906,-83.38860689432926 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2008/wrong.jpg +desc: Saying that anyone can just drop everything and travel the world is patronizing and elitist, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Why all the vitriol about a seemingly innocuous concept -- that traveling doesn't have to cost a lot of money, isn't all that difficult and hey, you can even go right now? People like us, who feel tied down by responsibility, find the suggestion that we actually aren't tied down patronizing and yes, elitist. +pub_date: 2008-06-07T14:45:29 +slug: love-with-a-view-vagabonds-responsibilty-living-we +title: In Love With a View: Vagabonds, Responsibilty and Living Well +--- + +Tim Patterson, editor of [MatadorTrips.com][2], recently published an article entitled [How To Travel The World For Free (Seriously)][3]. There are some good tips in the article, even for the seasoned travel vet. + +XKCD Comics: Some is Wrong on the InternetBut what's far more fascinating is the response from commenters many of whom tore into Patterson, calling him everything from a "rich, privileged, arrogant hipster" to a "dirty hippie." + +Here's a random sampling of some comments on Patterson's post: + +>there are three possible answers for how he can do this and not have to worry about his obligations. 1). He's a jobless loser that contributes nothing to society... 2). He's a rich, privileged, arrogant hipster who, while preaching a lifestyle of no consumerism and organic foods, really travels around in a BMW, listening to his iPod, blogging on his Macbook Air, contributes nothing to society... 3). He's a 14 year old idealist who's parents were hippies, but now work for Haliburton. + +That's the sort of cynicism that just depresses me. Why are you so convinced that everyone else is a selfish privileged asshole? At long last, have you no sense of decency sir? + +>Trusting people you don't know while you sleep in their house is a good way to end up half-naked, raped, dead and in a ditch. + +Mom? Is that you? + +>In fact, the further you get from the cities, the more viciously backwards with respect to medicine, hygiene and hospitality the people get... and, eventually, you reach places where the word 'culture' is completely inapplicable, and your life is seriously in danger. + +My personal favorite though is the commenter who cites the words of a Pulp Fiction character as an example of how to live. Wonderful, murderous assassins are who you look up to? + +###Why Vagabonds Make People Mad### + +So why all the vitriol about a seemingly innocuous concept -- that traveling doesn't have to cost a lot of money, isn't all that difficult and hey, you can even go right now. + +Part of the negative reaction comes from the widely-held belief that travelers are a privileged lot -- privileged because, unlike you and I, they can just drop their lives and leave. People like us, who feel tied down by responsibility, find the suggestion that we actually aren't patronizing and yes, elitist -- how dare you tell me what I can and can't do? + +But when I dig a bit deeper into this sort of thinking, I generally find that by elitist, most people really mean enviably rich. + +It may be splitting hairs, but I find that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, Americans actually admire elitists. To paraphrase and twist John Stewart a bit, we want advice from elitists. We don't want advice from people that believe everyone's a murderer. + +But we also don't want rich people who've never struggled telling us that it isn't hard to drop everything we're struggling with and head out into the world. + +The irony of course is that, in this case, the hostile reaction comes in response to an article that has ten tips on traveling cheaply -- in other words, it's trying to show you that you don't need money to travel. + +That said, you'll never find me denying that I am very, very lucky and have been handed an incredible amount of privilege in my life, especially relative to the rest of the world. + +But 90 percent of America is in the same boat. Troops do not storm our houses, bombs do not fall on our cities, Malaria, Dengue Fever, [schistosoma][4] and other killer diseases are unknown here (though [that may change][5]). + +We are all privileged. For one American to call another privileged is a pot-kettle-black debate. + +The privileged part is just a cover for a much deeper and more personal issue in our lives. + +So why do we attack the author as an elitist? It's a psychological defense mechanism. + +Stop and consider for a moment what Patterson is really saying: it's not hard to drop your life and travel. + +###Living Well### + +The debate that happens in the comments of his article cuts right to heart of some very personal ideas -- just how important is your "life"? The unspoken assumption in that statement that ticks people off is the implication that everything you're doing is trivial -- that the life you're leading is so meaningless that it can be abandoned without a second thought. + +That's why the attacks on Patterson are so personal and so vehement, because Patterson is, consciously or not, attacking people's most cherished belief, that our lives mean something and are important. + +Obviously no one wants to think otherwise. + +But I've done it -- dropped everything and left -- and, for me, as much as I am loath to admit it, it was true. Everything I thought I needed to be doing turned out to be totally unnecessary and yes, meaningless. + +In fact I spent the first month of my trip wrestling with that. I was caught between feeling like I was finally doing something that _did_ matter and beating myself up about having been suckered into the previous life, now rendered meaningless. + +In other words I understand why some people reacted to Patterson's piece the way they did. + +The debate that happens in the comments of his article cuts right to heart of some very personal ideas -- just how important is your "life"? + +American culture tries to convince us that if you do the right things, you life is very valuable. There are some long standing, deeply-ingrained, fundamental axioms that lead us to believe that relaxation, travel and not working are contemptible. Instead, we're told, you need to work hard to "get ahead." + +The notion that the importance of your life is dependent on your ability to "make something of yourself" is pretty well ingrained. Advocating otherwise is going to bring you some hostile reactions (as Patterson recently discovered). + +I'm not saying I'm immune. If you learn anything traveling, it's that you can never escape your own culture. That's why I spent most of a week in Goa, India feeling guilty. Guilty that I was enjoying my life rather than working for some future enjoyment. Guilty that I had apparently been wasting my life for some years prior to that moment. Guilty that I was able to finally escape that when so many people never do. Guilty for all sorts of contradictory things. + +And scared. Scared that when I got back, jobless and penniless I would end up homeless and starving to death. Scared that I might not make it back (India's bus system will do that to you). + +This is the part where I'm supposed to tell you about how I came to peace with it all. But the truth is that never exactly happened. In India I ended up meeting an Englishman who had a seemingly endless supply of excellent scotch and I quickly forgot about my guilt and fear. But it comes back. + +I know, that's not the answer you were looking for. Bear with me. + +###Making Something### + +balancing act, goa, IndiaLet's go back to the notion of making something of yourself. I do believe in "making something of myself." And I am aware that that's a uniquely American idea, or at least western, since we seem to have somewhat successfully exported the idea to Europe as well. + +What's interesting is how we define the key variable in that sentence -- what does it _mean_ to make something of yourself? + +In defending his co-writer, fellow Matador author Josh Kearns offers all sorts of ways that travel can [lead to a more meaningful definition of who you are][6]. He cites Alan Watts, Lao Tzu and some other very wise men to point out that in fact traveling can be exactly what you need to "make something of yourself." + +But in many ways that simply begs the question -- if you're open to Alan Watts and Lao Tzu, you probably didn't disagree with Patterson's original argument. If you think Alan Watts was a communist and Lao Tzu comes with Kung Pao chicken, Kearns' argument isn't going to say anything to you. + +How you answer that question -- what does it mean to "make something of yourself" -- greatly affects how you view the world around you and will determine how you react to a stance like Patterson's. + +It's pretty easy to see how the more vitriolic commenters answer the question, all you need to do is reverse engineer the thought process. For instance, it's not hard to imagine that the person quoted above, who says staying with strangers is dangerous, lacks a strong sense of faith in humanity. + +I have no idea why, but I'll make a guess -- one way to make something of yourself is to make nothing of everyone else. + +If you see everyone around you as a murderous bunch of rapists and psychopaths, you get to see yourself and your family and friends as shining examples of humanity. You've made something of yourself -- You're better than the murderous bastards out there -- without doing anything at all. You're most likely going to lead a miserable existence, but it is one way to answer the question. + +For others the answer to the "make something of yourself" question is tied up in western technological superiority. Like the man who says that the further you go "the more viciously backwards with respect to medicine, hygiene and hospitality the people get." + +In order to think that you need to believe that your society is superior to everyone else's because we have all the things _we_ value and they have none of the things _we_ value -- never mind what they value, that's irrelevant. So you can say you've made something of yourself because you're part of (by your own definition) a superior society. + +But here's what I think Kearns and Patterson are trying to say -- these might not be the best ways to "make something of yourself." In fact you might need to get completely outside yourself in order to make something. + +If your definition of living well is making something of yourself and your primary means of making something of yourself is making less of everyone else then it's not surprising that anyone who suggests temporarily abandoning your life and your society is going to make you confused, angry, fearful and perhaps guilty. + +###The View From Here### + +view from a hammock, little corn island, nicaraguaWhich brings me back to my own experiences in Goa -- fear, guilt, anger and confusion. + +No, I never have entirely come to terms with the guilt or the confusion, but the fear and anger did go away. I quickly realized that there was no point being angry with myself for failing to leave my life sooner, I took comfort in the fact that at least I left eventually. + +The guilt is still there. Much as I enjoy [sitting in hammock in Nicaragua][1] I spend a good bit of my time sitting there thinking about how I should be doing something with my life -- writing a novel, building a website, at the very least writing something about my travels. + +You name it, I've felt guilty about not doing it. + +But this last trip I started thinking about something else more troubling -- have I turned back into someone who thinks their life is important? Have I forgotten that feeling of total freedom that comes from abandoing your "life," that relief of realizing that all the things I agonize over in my "real" life, are actually quite meaningless? + +See unlike the commenters who don't buy the vagabond argument, I suffer from a different American cliche. + +For me, America ingrained its devil-may-care adventure motif far more than its make-something-of-yourself cliche. From Lewis and Clark to Jack Kerouac, there's a strong cultural legacy of lighting out for the territories. + +Now I'm in an entirely different situation than I was when I left for my last trip. + +I'll be married later this month. The common wisdom is that traveling with a family is somehow impossible, in America there's a myth that once you're married and have kids you have to settle down and that butts up against the myth I've been buying into all this time -- Kerouac and the rest. + +I still don't know if it's my idea or just me replicating that devil-may-care cultural meme, but I reject the idea of settling down and I've met enough traveling families to know I won't be the first to reject it. + +It may be more difficult to travel with a family, I'll have to get back to you on that, and fear not, I will get back to you because I will do it. + +But the thing that strikes me is that, if I hadn't already set out, rejected my own life and gone through everything that I went through, adding a family to the equation might well make the whole idea seeming completely unfathomable. + +And that's something I think many of these self-styled vagabond travel writers leave out of their "anyone can do it" travel pieces. + +Anyone _can_ do it, but it takes a hell of a lot more courage and effort for some than for others. I have no doubt that Patterson and Kearns are both aware of that and I understand that including the nuances just isn't something online journalism generally allows for, but it's a shame because it ends up alienating the people who could most benefit from some encouraging. + +So while I agree with both authors, I think the "just do it" incantations are every bit as hollow as a Nike ad -- even when they're true. + +And the glibness of most travel writing, particularly those of the so-called vagabond stripe ends up having the opposite effect that the proponents intend ([Rolf Potts][7] is a notable exception). + +I'm not going to tell you that it's easy to drop your life and take off to see the world. + +However, I will say that it isn't as hard as you think. Your job isn't as valuable as you think, there's probably someone who'd love to rent your house and your kids will thank you when they're older (mom, dad, thanks). + +I'm also not going to say that I don't buy the idea that you should strive to "make something of yourself," but the important thing about the "making" is that _you_ define what that means. For some it might mean sticking to one job and providing for a family. For others it might mean dragging your family around the world on a grand adventure. Both answers are valid -- just make sure that it's you, not your culture, making the decision. And make sure that you realize both really are valid possibilities -- the only limitation to your life is your own imagination. + +For me, making something of yourself is a never-ending process and one of the key elements is exploring all the different ways people around the world answer that fundamental question -- what does living well mean? + +[VGB image from Rolf Potts, cartoon from the ever hilarious xkcd] + +[1]: http://luxagraf.net/2008/apr/05/little-island-sun/ + +[2]: http://matadortrips.com/ + +[3]: http://thetravelersnotebook.com/how-to/how-to-travel-for-free/ + +[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schistosoma + +[5]: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/09/dengue_fever/ + +[6]: http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2008/06/04/the-tao-of-vagabond-travel/ + +[7]: http://www.rolfpotts.com/ + diff --git a/jrnl/2008-06-26-returning-again-back-little-corn-island.txt b/jrnl/2008-06-26-returning-again-back-little-corn-island.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5746131 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2008-06-26-returning-again-back-little-corn-island.txt @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 12.290694745245395,-82.97132490910438 +location: Little Corn Island,Autonomous Region,Nicaragua +image: 2008/littlecornagain.jpg +desc: The world is vast, so vast you rarely return somewhere twice, but Little Corn Island demands an exception. +dek: Generally speaking, the world seems so huge and so full of amazing destinations that repeating one never struck me as a judicious use of my short allotment of time. But for Little Corn Island I'm willing to make an exception and of course, the universe being what it is, our second trip to Little Corn Island has been unpredictable and entirely new. +pub_date: 2008-06-26T13:21:17 +slug: returning-again-back-little-corn-island +title: Returning Again — Back on Little Corn Island +--- + +This is a first -- going back to somewhere I've already been. Generally speaking, the world seems so huge and so full of amazing destinations that repeating one never struck me as a judicious use of my short allotment of time. However, given a rather small window of time for our honeymoon, Corrinne and I decided that the vaguely familiar would be more fun than something totally unpredictable and new. + +Big corn Island HarborOf course, the universe being what it is, our second trip to Little Corn Island has been unpredictable and entirely new. Other than the Best Western, still stolidly sitting directly across from the Managua airport, coming back to Nicaragua has presented a host of new and interesting experiences. + +For instance we weren't counting on the fact that the increased gas prices have severely pinched the average lobster fisherman and to protest the fact that lobster prices remain at their pre-expensive gas levels, the fisherman converged on the airstrip on Big Corn Island and proceeded to blockade the runway with trucks and their own bodies, effectively cutting off the island from the mainland for four days. + +All inbound flights were forced to stop in Bluefields, leaving stranded travelers milling around a town with very little to offer. Those looking to go the other way, back to Managua, were in even worse shape -- no incoming planes meant no outgoing ones either. + +Those desperate to make connecting flights onward from Managua were forced to charter fishing boats for up to $1200 and suffer through what had to be a very punishing ride across rough seas all the way back to Bluefields where they might be able to catch a (now very crowded) flight back to Managua. + +Fortunately the same sort of blind luck that has gotten me this far prevailed and the fishermen gave up the strike the morning we were set to leave. + +##Stranded on Big Corn## + +Stranded travelers waiting for the pangaUnfortunately, the drivers of the panga boat that runs between Big Corn and Little Corn didn't feel like there was enough business to bother with the evening trip the day we arrived. So Corrinne and I, along with a dozen or so fellow travelers, were stranded on Big Corn that night. + +Being stranded on an island in the Gulf of Mexico probably doesn't sound all that bad, but if the island happens to be Big Corn, well there just isn't much worth seeing or doing on Big Corn. And everything nice on Big Corn is at the south end, but our ferry was set to leave the next morning from the north end, so heading out for an explore seemed like a good way to miss the morning boat and possibly spend yet another day waiting. + +We holed up in a guesthouse just off the public shipping dock and spent the the afternoon and evening drinking and talking to the other people stuck in the same situation. Most of the local restaurants were closed, though we did manage to find a decent plate of shrimp and of course, plenty of Victoria to go around. + +And I made a hilarious discovery that proved a revelation to even the two dive masters who lived on Little Corn -- topless lighters. The store across the street from the Big Corn ferry sells the sort of cigarette lighters that have built-in flashlights, but rather than a simple LED flashlight, the manufacturer decided to go to the next logical level and packed in an image that looks to have been pirated from 1970s-era Playboy pinups. The result is a spotlight of a half naked Playmate, which provided no end of amusement to our stranded group. + +In fact, Big Corn would have been pretty much okay were it not for the dog somewhere in the vicinity of our guesthouse that sounded like it was being skinned alive. It wasn't, though the next morning several guests volunteered to do so, but it barked, yelped, cried and otherwise howled from around the time we went to bed until just before dawn. I actually didn't hear it much since I can sleep through just about anything, but no one else got much sleep that night. + +##The Wet Season## + +Corrinne and I waiting on the boat in Big Corn IslandThe first day on Little Corn we managed to find a bit of sun in the afternoon and somehow were already under shelter every time the rains came. Shelter is an interesting thing in the rain though, finding a roof isn't enough because the rain is almost completely horizontal thanks to a steady onshore wind, which has been increasing in force ever since we arrived. + +The first night we ate dinner at Casa Iguana with the owner's brother, who is currently involved in a sun-dried fruit project that might, if all goes well, one day be on the shelves of your local Whole Foods or Trader Joe's market. We sat a while afterward drinking mojitos with Camilla, an English girl we met the day before when we were all stranded on Big Corn. + +Still tired from a lack of sleep during the five-day party that was our wedding and the dog from the night before, we turned in early, this time with earplugs firmly in place. + +However, we somehow ended up in the cabin with no window blinds and around midnight a pretty massive storm blew in with winds that howled and horizontal rain driving straight under our porch awning and lashing against the window. But that wasn't what woke me up, it was the lightening flashes that turned night into day and somehow managed to burn through my closed eyelids that woke me up. + +Lightening doesn't especially bother me, I do after all live in Georgia where it's a near daily occurrence in the summer. But as I lay there in bed watching the torrential rains and flaying palm trees in the eery white glow of distant flashes, it suddenly occurred to me that we were sleeping in metal-roofed hut pretty near the highest point on the island -- basically a lightening rod with walls. + +So I lay awake thinking that being killed by lightening on your honeymoon was exactly the sort of horribly cheesy and predictable plot line that life seems to love -- up there with the super athlete contracts cancer, the day trader who suffers a heart attack on the first day of retirement and all the other things that Alanis Morrisette would say are ironic, but of course aren't. They're just strange coincidences. And I fear strange coincidences. + +I lay awake for an hour or more considering safer places to be in the storm and didn't really come up with anything since just about every building on the island has a metal roof. In the end I decided that being struck by lightening in my sleep would be somewhat better than the same while you're awake so I drifted off again and woke up to windy, but sunny skies. + diff --git a/jrnl/2008-06-30-you-cant-go-home-again.txt b/jrnl/2008-06-30-you-cant-go-home-again.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3fa2413 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2008-06-30-you-cant-go-home-again.txt @@ -0,0 +1,68 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 12.289688381766881,-82.97098158635038 +location: Little Corn Island,Autonomous Region,Nicaragua +image: 2008/nohomeagain.jpg +desc: Little Corn Island in the wet season -- horizontal rains and wind that makes even the beach temporarily retreat back out to sea. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: The first time we came to Little Corn Island it was April, the tail end of the dry season. It rained once or twice, but never for more than five minutes and always followed by more sunshine. This time it's the end of June, just well into the wet season, and the island is an entirely different place. +pub_date: 2008-06-30T17:49:43 +slug: you-cant-go-home-again +title: You Can't Go Home Again +--- + +The wind became constant on the second day, changing from the occasional gust that would precede an hour or two of torrential rains, to a steady 20-25 knot blow as if Zephuros himself were paying a visit to the island. + +approaching storm, little corn island, nicaraguaOnce the wind became constant, silence retreated back to wherever silence goes in a world where squalls rule. At first you just notice the clattering palm leaves and of course the near deafening roar of the the rain on the tin roofs. Both mingle with the background of surf breaking just below the bluff where our cabin sits, facing east -- to Cuba and the oncoming clouds. + +But on the second day I started to hear other sounds -- the low steady groan of a turbine, like the sound you make when blowing on the top of an empty bottle. Then there are creaking screws and rusted hooks that hold up the hammocks on my porch. And of course the hammocks themselves, finely woven Nicaragua cotton battered about in the wind. + +When the rain comes it's horizontal, making awnings and porches a useless defense. The only way to stay dry is either inside or pressed against the leeward side of a building. + +The first time we came to Little Corn Island it was April, the tail end of the dry season. It rained once or twice, but never for more than five minutes and always followed by more sunshine. + +This time it's the end of June, just well into the wet season, and the island is an entirely different place. + +Naturally I wasn't really expecting it to be the same. I knew the weather would have changed, I knew the people we had met would be gone, save a few and I knew that it would be a different experience. + +But I wasn't entirely prepared for _how_ different it would be. + +When I first returned from Southeast Asia, I wrote that it was impossible to go back. That travel was singular and unrepeatable. + +My actual words were "You will want to hang on to things when they are perfect. You will want to stay in Vang Veing, a floating village, on an island lost at sea. You will want to return even after you have left. You will want things to be the same when you return. But they will not be the same." + +For all the overly-dramatic certitude, that was just a theory. Being the son of a scientist I hate to spout untested hypotheses, but now we've tested it and I can definitively say that I was right -- there is no going back. + +Going back must mean going again, otherwise it would imply that you, the place and everyone in it are static, fixed, immutable, and of course that simply isn't the world we live in. + +The danger in going again is that we will compare the present to the past and for some reason the present rarely fares well in that comparison. + +So yes, you can go back, physically, but be prepared for something entirely different -- for instance, here on Little Corn not only are the people different, but the very island has morphed and changed -- the rain comes daily and the beaches are almost non-existent. + +ali, corrinne, little corn island, nicaraguaAli, Little Corn's self-appointed medicine man, tells me that the shifting tides pull much of the sand back out toward the reef and the considerably bigger waves breaking on the far side of the reef would seem to prove his point. Eventually, come December, the tides will shift again, bring the sand back in. + +But in the mean time the island has literally shrunk. The beach where we spent most of our previous trip is now under two feet of water at high tide. + +I was sitting up at the Casa Iguana restaurant area yesterday thinking about how much even places can change, not in a matter of years, but months, even days. The remarkable thing about traveling is that it's not simply a matter of moving through space, it's time as well. + +In fact it might be one of life's more undisguised illustrations of the intrinsic link between space and time. + +Arriving somewhere is somewhat like a game of pool slowed down. + +When one pool balls strikes another there is that infinitesimal period of time where the balls actually compress, changing shape as they transfer energy. + +If you were to slow time and and magnify space sufficiently, you would see the balls compress as they touched -- that minute moment of contracting and expanding, the transfer of force, the temporary mingling of color and atoms, the kaleidoscope of impact -- somewhat akin to what it's like to spend a week in one particular place. + +You travel somewhere for a week, a month; you exist in that compressed space, impossible to observe from the outside, but very tangible and obvious within the kaleidoscope of the moment. Everything slows to near stop in relation to the outside world. + +sunnier days, little corn island, nicaraguaTo an outside observer there is merely the impact, some photos on Flickr and the balls are already headed in opposite directions, vast expanses of blue-green felt suddenly between them. + +From the outside it looks like mere mechanics -- people and places collide and some record of time is produced -- but from the inside the experience is very different. + +As the one-time champion of the Denver pool halls, Ramstead Gordon (who was later dethroned by no less than Neal Cassady), once said "This is not a game of physics, it's a game of magic." + +No two shots will ever be the same, no two or three or ten balls will ever cluster exactly the same way twice, no matter how similar they might seem from the outside. + +Duplication is almost certainly impossible, why else would our culture be so obsessed with the things we _can_ duplicate if not as some defense against the things we cannot? + +So yes, as in pool, the places and experiences of travel are finite and you can never go back. But you can go again and bask in the changes because that's part of what makes it so interesting -- just don't try to fight it. + diff --git a/jrnl/2008-07-03-tiny-cities-made-ash.txt b/jrnl/2008-07-03-tiny-cities-made-ash.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..37fba3e --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2008-07-03-tiny-cities-made-ash.txt @@ -0,0 +1,60 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 12.435654551658532,-86.88220022899453 +location: León,León,Nicaragua +image: 2008/citiesmadeofash.jpg +desc: Drinking ice cold beer in the afternoon heat of Leon, thinking about what I've learned in Nicaragua: the world needs more hammocks. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: The church bells of León have become a constant cacophony, not the rhythmic ringing out of the hours or tolling from Mass that the human mind seems to find pleasant, but the atonal banging that only appeals to the young and dumb. But Francisco is entirely unperturbed; He's too fascinated with the tattoo on Corrinne's shoulder to bother with what slowly just becomes yet another sound echoing through León. +pub_date: 2008-07-03T23:21:22 +slug: tiny-cities-made-ash +title: Tiny Cities Made of Ash +--- + +The bells are a constant cacophony, not the rhythmic ringing out of the hours or tolling from mass that the human mind seems to find pleasant; no, this is constant banging, the sort of atonal banging that only appeals to the young and dumb. The firecrackers bursting back over behind the cathedral add an off rhythm that only makes the whole mess more jarring. + +Leon, lion statueBut Francisco seems entirely unperturbed and only once even glances over at toward the other side of the park, the source of all the noise and confusion. He's too fascinated with the tattoo on Corrinne's shoulder to bother with what slowly just becomes yet another sound echoing through León. + +Francisco is a shoe shiner, but since we're both wearing sandals he's out of luck and has reverted to what seems to be the secondary universal appeal of westerners -- a chance to practice English. + +We're sipping Victorias in a cafe just off the main park in León, Nicaragua. It's our fourth day here -- with an extra day spent at the nearby Pacific beaches -- in what is, so far, my favorite city in Nicaragua. + +Architecturally León is a bit like Granada, but since it lacks the UNESCO stamp it's somewhat less touristy and a bit more Nicaraguan, whatever that means. + +Leon, church bellsIt's a city of poets and painters, philosophers and political revolutionaries. In fact, Nicaragua as a whole is full of poets and artists, all the newspapers still carry at least one poem everyday (U.S. newspapers used to do that too), but León is perhaps the pinnacle of Nicaraguan writing and painting, if for no other reason than it's a college town -- the constant influx of youth always brings with it vitality and art. + +There are three separate Nicaragua universities in León and even though none of them are in session right now, as with Athens, GA the fomenting imprint of students lingers even when they are gone -- political graffiti dots the cafes, bars are open later, people seem more active, the bells clang, the fireworks explode on an otherwise ordinary Sunday evening. + +In short, León has something that most of the rest of Nicaragua (and the U.S. for that matter) lacks -- a vibrant sense of community. + +Of course in relation to the States nearly everywhere seems to have a much stronger sense of community and togetherness. + +The irony though is that just writing those words together fills me with dread and loathing, a sure sign of my own inherent Americanism. + +But the truth is community doesn't have to mean over-priced "organic" markets, war protests round the maypole and whatever other useless crap passes itself off as community in Athens and elsewhere in America. + +Every time I go abroad, not just Nicaragua, but Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, just about anywhere, the communities are somehow more vibrant, more alive, more sensual -- full of bright colors, playing children, people walking to work, to the market, to the gym, to wherever. There is life in the streets. + +In Athens there's mainly just cars in the streets. Big, fast cars. + +house, LeonFor instance, in León the houses are not the stolid tans, boring greys and muted greens you find in Athens, but brightly colored -- reds, blues, yellows, crimson, indigo, chartreuse even -- the doors are not shuttered and double-bolted, there are no lawns, no barriers between the life of the home and life of the street, everything co-mingles, a great soup of public and private with each overlapping the other. + +The clatter of the Red Sox game drifts out the window, along with the smell of fresh roasted chicken that mingles with the dust of the street, the kids gathering in the park, the declining light of the day, the first streetlights, the evening news, the women in curlers walking in the shadows just behind the half-open wooden doors.... + +And it makes the streets more fun to walk down, there's something to experience, things to see and hear and smell and taste. + +Which isn't to say that León is Paris or New York, but in its own way it sort of is. Certainly it's better than my own neighborhood where I know exactly what color the houses will be before I even step out the door -- and not because I know the neighborhood, but because I know what colors comprise the set of acceptable options in the States -- where the children are staked in the front yard on leashes (invisible for the most part, but it won't surprise me when the leashes can be seen), neighbors wave, but rarely stop to talk and certainly no one walks anywhere unless it's for exercise. + +doorway, LeonWhy are American neighborhoods so dull? Why no happy colors? Why make things more lifeless than they already are, given that our neighborhoods are set up in such away that we abandon them all day and return only at night to sleep? + +Dunno, but I can tell you this, León, Paris, Phnom Phen, Prague, Vientiane and just about everywhere else is far more exciting to walk around than the average American town. And it isn't just the exotic appeal of the foreign; it's about architecture, design and the sharp division of public and private those two create to make our neighborhoods into the rigid anti-fun caricature that the rest of the world sees. + +Do I sound like a transcendentalist-inspired, anti-american crank? Sorry about that. I like America, really I do. And I hold out hope. One day my house will be vermillion -- my own small step. + +Plus, that's a big part of what I enjoy about traveling -- seeing how other people construct their house, their neighborhoods, their cities, their way of life... see not just how it differs from our own, but perhaps see some ways you could improve our lives. + +Like hammocks. We desperately need more hammocks. Lots of hammocks. + +But León isn't perfect. In fact it fails on several levels -- take that butt ugly radio/microwave/cell tower on the horizon -- why the hell would you put that in the middle of otherwise majestic 18th century Spanish colonial city? + +León, I'll miss you, you're just about perfect as far as Central America goes, maybe just see about moving that radio tower.... + diff --git a/jrnl/2008-07-06-our-days-are-becoming-nights.txt b/jrnl/2008-07-06-our-days-are-becoming-nights.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a38ac3b --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2008-07-06-our-days-are-becoming-nights.txt @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 12.436482242903942,-86.88458203059939 +location: León,León,Nicaragua +image: 2008/daysnights.jpg +desc: Everywhere I go I think, I should live here... and indeed I should, but it just doesn't work like that does it? By Scott Gilbertson +dek: A short thought on the eve of our departure from Nicaragua: Everywhere I go I think, I should live here... I should be able to not just visit places, but in habit them. Of course that isn't possible, which is too bad. +pub_date: 2008-07-06T23:30:25 +slug: our-days-are-becoming-nights +title: Our Days Are Becoming Nights +--- + +Everywhere I go I think, I should live here... I should know what it's like to work in a cigar factory in Leon, fish in the Mekong, living in a floating house on Tonle Sap, sell hot dogs at Fenway Park, trade stocks in New York, wander the Thar Desert by camel, navigate the Danube, see the way Denali looks at sunset, the smell the Sonora Desert after a rain, taste the dust of a Juarez street, know how to make tortillas, what Mate tastes like, feel autumn in Paris, spend a winter in Moscow, a summer in Death Valley. I should be able to not just visit places, but in habit them. + +There is, so far as I know, only one short life. And in this life I will do very few of these things. + +Sometimes I think that's very sad. + diff --git a/jrnl/2008-07-27-rope-swings-and-river-floats.txt b/jrnl/2008-07-27-rope-swings-and-river-floats.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0a4c5d4 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2008-07-27-rope-swings-and-river-floats.txt @@ -0,0 +1,100 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 34.53463159921271,-83.90280245566663 +location: Mountain Cabin,Georgia,United States +image: 2008/chestateeriver.jpg +desc: Inner tubing down the Chestatee River, just outside of Dahlonega, GA. Fun, but possibly a little dangerous as well. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Two weekends ago we went up to the mountains, just outside of Dahlonega GA, and floated the Chestatee River using inner tubes, various pool toys and one super-cool inflatable seahorse. Unfortunately, proving one of my travel mottos -- you can never go back -- a return trip proved disastrous. +pub_date: 2008-07-27T20:14:49 +slug: rope-swings-and-river-floats +title: Rope Swings and River Floats +--- + +Two weekends ago we went up to the mountains, just outside of Dahlonega GA, and floated the Chestatee River using inner tubes, various pool toys and one super-cool inflatable seahorse. We even rigged up an inner tube to carry a cooler of beer and dragged an extra inflatable boat to pick up trash (as well as hold our own). + +Tubing on the Chestatee RiverIt was great fun. We found a rope swing where you could climb up about six feet on the bank and swing out over the river and drop into a nice pool that was plenty deep for the landing. + +What made the whole thing possible is that my wife's parents own a cabin in the area, which they are kind enough to let us use. + +Since this weekend was my father-in-law's birthday, we decided to head up and do another river run. + +Tubing on the Chestatee RiverAfter parking the car at the end and trucking the tubes down to the launch point, we put into the river. Just beyond the launch point there's a couple sizable drops that we walked around last time, but this time, after scouting things out, I figured out how to go down. + +I made it through unscathed and I sat in the lower pool waiting for the others. + +In short, things started well. + +About a minute later a drowning bumble bee somehow climbed out of the river, onto my tube and then stung my right arm. + +For most people that's a moment of discomfort and no big deal. But I'm lucky, I'm allergic to bees so for me it means a moment of discomfort followed by several days of swelling and aching -- as I type this my forearm is about one and half times its normal size. Of course it could be worse, I could be "I have to carry an epi-pen" allergic, which, thankfully, I'm not. + +Everyone asked if I was okay or if we should turn around. In hindsight, I should have said no, I wasn't okay and yes we should turn around -- not because of me, just because I know what happened next -- but I didn't, so we continued on. [This would have been a great time for the crazy old man of the river to come out of the woods, point a crooked finger in our direction and prophetically croak, "you're all doomed." But as far as I know the Chestatee lacks any such character.] + +For about an hour it was the same peaceful float we did two weeks ago, a few rapids, long calm stretches where the river is too deep to touch bottom, just lying back in your tube watching the hardwood's overhanging branches threading across the gray-blue sky. Or the snarled banks choked with laurel and the occasional honeysuckle, roots protruding out like fingers rubbed raw by the passing water. + +It's one of the finest stretches of river I've ever been down. + +And then we came to the rope swing. + +Everything that follows is essentially my fault. + +rope swingSee, I love to jump off of things. Swinging off of things is even better. And if you can dive... If there's somewhere to jump, swing or dive, I'm probably going to find it. + +Of course it's not the safest thing in the world to do, nor am I the sharpest tool in the shed, but you already knew that much. + +When we went down two weeks ago I spied a rope hanging down from a tree. Naturally, I immediately started paddling for the shore. Now I seriously wish I hadn't, but I did. + +I climbed out of my tube and grabbed the rope and walked up the bank. I quickly discovered that I couldn't reach the handle someone had kindly attached. However there was a bit of rope extending down from the handle, which some other shorter person had no doubt added. + +Normally I would have climbed back down the bank and checked to see how far off the ground the little extension of rope would have put me. But for whatever reason I didn't, I just grabbed it and jumped. + +Just below the embankment where you launched from there were some stratified rocks sticking out of the water -- fairly sharp, ridged rocks, the sort of rocks that look to have jutted up straight out of the Mesozoic era. + +And I hit them. About a millisecond after I jumped I knew I was doomed and I pulled my legs up to my chest as tight as could and tried to control the crash. I hit the rocks hard, but with my feet (the Choco sandals I bought for my trip around the world are still the best purchase I've ever made and they allow me to do things like bounce off rocks without a scratch). + +As soon as my feet hit the rocks I twisted my body and pushed off out into the deeper water and managed to avoid more serious injury. However, it wasn't so much my skills or planning that saved me, really it was just dumb luck. + +Undeterred (or stupidly if that syntax works better for you) I climbed back up and was joined by a couple of other people from our river party who wanted to give it a try. + +Long story short: it turned out that if you were about six feet tall you could reach the handle, if you were five ten like me and someone else put their weight on the rope to stretch it, you could also reach the handle. + +If you were five five like one girl who did it, you could be picked up and then grab the rope handle. The problem is that the person picking you up is on a muddy incline and bit off balance themselves. + +Which brings us to today. + +rope swingMy wife's brother Jeremy and I stopped at the swing and his girlfriend, Tova, wanted to give it a try. I held the rope and Jeremy held her up until she could grab the handle. It worked and she swung out over the river and let go. We all had a turn and then another. + +We went up for a third try. + +Same routine, I pulled the rope as taut as it would go and Jeremy held her up to grab the handle. We both thought she had it, but as Jeremy was starting to let go she said, "no, wait." + +But it was already too late, he couldn't have held her if he wanted to. Even if he had been able to they both would have fallen and landed on the roots and rocks below. + +Instead, Tova swung out about five feet and then her grip slipped and she fell, hard, face first onto the same rocks I had hit with my feet. + +When she first came up out of the water I could already see a blue bruise and blood on her leg. I thought for a moment that it was a broken bone sticking up, ready to break through the skin. I went down to help, but there wasn't much I could do. I figured having a broken bone sticking up _and_ having someone throw up on you was probably worse than just the bone. + +I looked around trying to figure out a way off the river and out of the valley. But there wasn't one. Even if we had a cellphone, there was no way you could fly a helicopter into the riverbed, it was too narrow and overgrown (I bet [Kenso could have done it][1], but he wasn't immediately available). + +[1]: http://luxagraf.net/2008/apr/02/return-sea/ + +The options were: walk upstream or float down. That really isn't a hard decision if you spend much time thinking about it. + +Thankfully the majority of her fall was broken by the innertubes we had stacked below to try and cover the rocks in case of something like what happened. Unfortunately we missed a spot, the center of tubes, and that's where her knee hit. + +Luckily it turned out out that bloody blue bruise I saw wasn't a broken bone threatening to poke through the skin. Of course that fact that the bruised, bloody contusion was her kneecap didn't really make things much better. + +After a few minutes of evaluating our options, Tova said she felt okay enough to continue down. We took ice from the cooler and put it on her leg and Jeremy walked the rest of way, guiding Tova in the small inflatable boat, with her leg elevated and the ice-pack resting on her knee. + +Eventually we got back to the car and got Tova to a hospital where X-Rays determined that she had fractured her patella (kneecap). + +Which means Tova floated for over half hour down a river with no painkillers other than ice, with a fractured kneecap. + +You wouldn't be able to do that. I wouldn't be able to do that. But Tova is considerably tougher than the rest of us and she did it. + +I don't know what will happen with her knee in the long run, hopefully surgery won't be necessary. I once did something similar skiing and I know how much joint injuries suck. Her leg is currently in one of those super annoying anti-mobility casts that extends from your mid hip to your ankle, which means you can't drive or really do much of anything. + +If you'd like to send a care package or something of that nature, e-mail me and I'll give you an address. In the mean time hopefully the pain isn't too bad. + +And I have to say, Tova, I think you're pretty badass for floating the rest of way down the river with a shattered kneecap and a smile. I would have cried the whole way. + diff --git a/jrnl/2008-10-31-elkmont-and-great-smoky-mountains.txt b/jrnl/2008-10-31-elkmont-and-great-smoky-mountains.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7280fd3 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2008-10-31-elkmont-and-great-smoky-mountains.txt @@ -0,0 +1,82 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 35.680446234758236,-83.65024565485956 +location: Great Smoky Mountains,Tennessee,United States +image: 2008/reflectedtrees.jpg +desc: Tracking down the lost summer camp of Elkmost amidst the Fall folliage of Smoky Mountain NP. Avoid Pigeon Forge and you'll survive. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Pigeon Forge is Myrtle Beach in the mountains. Redneck weddings cascade straight out of the chapel and into the mini golf reception area. Pigeon Forge is everything that's wrong with America. But we aren't here for Pigeon Forge, it just happens to have a free condo we're staying in. We're here for the mountains. Smoky Mountain National Park is just a few miles up the road. +pub_date: 2008-10-31T15:16:13 +slug: elkmont-and-great-smoky-mountains +title: Elkmont and the Great Smoky Mountains +--- + +The road undulates through the darkness, over the long, arching tails of mountain ridges, where the eastern slopes of the Smokies taper off into the Tennessee River Valley. Divets between tiny the rolling hilltops form eerie microclimes of misty white clouds hugging the valleys and road like the fingers of some wispy white mountain ghosts snaking down from the peaks. + +headlights on the roadWith the windows cracked it's not hard to tell that the pockets of fog gather in the cold crevasses where the temperature drops noticeably along with the highway. From the top of every small hill, the headlights move like shiny ribbons though the knuckles of mountains. As the beams dive back down, the view from behind the windshield becomes a bath of smoky white light -- a film noir scene brought to life. And then the car rushes up out of the chilly depths and into the clear night, atop another ridge where the remnants of wood plank fences line the road. + +From a particularly high ridge the land is lit up by the rising moon and succession of foggy pockets and lumpy ridges between spreads out like cigarette smoke settling in the creases of some red vinyl cushions, tucked in the corner of an all night diner, straight out of the 1950s. + +The Smoky Mountains are, as it turns out, well named. + +Were it light, the landscape and buildings in the area would indeed look much like the 50s. Not a lot appears to have changed on the slopes of the Smokies in quite some time. The new developments -- strip malls, cookie cutter suburbs and giant megastores -- are further up ahead, around the bend in Knoxville, Maryville. + +But out here in the boundary land of mountain and plain it's just the headlights stabbing through the fog. + +I keep half expecting to see some ghostly figure off in the shadowy outline of trees at the edge of the small arc of headlamps, to catch some otherworldly creature slouching through the foggy forest, off to haunt the crumbling farm houses set back from the road, enveloped in night. + +Occasionally I pass through a town -- sudden, brilliant, florescent -- gas stations, neon beer signs in a window, telephone wires, stoplights, downshifting and then fading in the rearview mirror, returning to the murky hills. + +It continues like that with a brief break through Maryville where Starbucks and shopping malls remind me that I am indeed still part of the 21st century. But then that fades as we move into the mountains again, higher, this time in pure blackness, even the fog is gone. + +fog, hillsideAfter a while the zigzags stop and the road follows the river upstream headed to Pigeon Forge, which, when you reach it in darkness, can't help but look like an amusement park at the gates of hell, a last ditch effort of all failed American cultural ideas shored up together -- Elvis impersonators, mini golf, Dollyworld, all-you-can-eat restaurants serving every food imaginable as long as your imagination is limited to steak and pizza, which apparently, for many, it is. + +Pigeon Forge is everything that's wrong with America. + +Pigeon Forge is Myrtle Beach in the mountains, it lacks any basis in reality and, like Myrtle Beach, it doesn't really exist. It's all just redneck weddings cascading straight out of the chapel and into the mini golf reception area. + +I used to think the demise of such places would be gradual, almost imperceptible, until one day they were just vacant and ghostly, joining Bowie CA, Bisbee, St Elmo and other places that simply slipped our collective minds. However, in the case of Pigeon Forge it may well be much faster. The people who come here are the same ones now mailing their house keys to the mortgage companies -- the unreality of it all only lasts for so long. Of course I could be wrong. + +And we aren't here for Pigeon Forge, it just happens to have a free condo we're staying in. We're here for the mountains. Smoky Mountain National Park is just a few miles up the road. + +  + +The next morning I'm sitting on the patio, bundled up against the unseasonable cold, reading Cormac McCarthy's The Orchard Keeper which is largely set here in these same mountains, but back in the early 1920s. The Orchard Keeper is fiction, but McCarthy spent a fair share of his life in Sevier County and knew these mountains well -- you can feel them living and breathing right there in the turning of the page. + +>He came out on a high bald knoll that looked over the valley and he stopped here and studied it as a man might cresting a hill and seeing a strange landscape for the first time. Pine and cedars in a dark swath of green piled down the mountain to the left and ceased again where the road cut through. Beyond that a field and a log hogpin, the shakes spilling down the broken roof, looking like some diminutive settler's cabin in ruins. Through the leaves of the hardwoods he could see the zinc-colored roof of the church faintly coruscant and patched of boarded siding weathered the paper-gray of a waspnest. And in the distance the long purple welts of the Great Smokies. + +ridges of the smokiesAlthough with a bit of driving, and some selective horizon framing, you can find crumbling buildings with collapsing siding that does indeed resemble the "paper-gray of a waspnest," or the ridgelines like bruised knuckles interrupting the sunrise, for the most part McCarthy's vision of the Smokies is just a memory, a half crumbled placemarker at a neglected turnout in the road, a few yellowed, slightly retouched photos in a visitor center, a coffee table book of history purchased for friends back home. + +I would love to know what McCarthy thinks of Sevier and environs now. It would be nice to drink a pint with him and hear about a time when men and women were sane, cautious and respectful. Of course, if you've ever read a McCarthy book you know what happens to those characters, they are, in one way or another displaced by the less savory, the more ambitious, more full of hot air and power-hungry dreams. + +In McCarthy's world the meek very rarely inherit anything save dust and silence, but they do retain their dignity, something painfully lacking in Pigeon Forge. + +  + +river, treesThe mountains are still beautiful, dying perhaps, choking on smoke from Chattanooga and Atlanta, mostly Atlanta, but in the mean time the leaves on the trees run the spectrum from ochre to vermillion with all the middle hues as well. + +We spend a few days, driving mainly, but occasionally walking, through the mountains, the trees, along the rivers and streams, the windswept peaks with fog breaking over them like waves of mist and smoke. + +There are also the crumbling remains of old grist mills and early towns now abandoned; remnants of a time, near the end of the 19th century when hiking and exploring the outdoors was all the rage -- John Muir helped the trend along, but for a time people genuinely liked to get up into the mountains, out in the desert and see America's unparalleled natural wonderland. + +One the byproducts of that era is the ghost town of Elkmont, nestled up against the steep ridges of the Smokies at the end of railway line that used to stretch back to down to Maryville. Elkmont began like as a rough and tumble logging town, and while I couldn't find mention of it in The Orchard Keeper, it dates from 1908 which puts it in roughly the same time frame. + +Over time Elkmont ran out of trees to easily harvest and the town gradually evolved into a haven for the socially prominent and wealthy members of Knoxville, Maryville, and Chattanooga -- summer cottages were built, a central hunting lodge was added and members built a number of trails that lead off into the Smokies. + +At the zenith of its popularity the Little River Railroad, which ran from Knoxville to Elkmont, offered a Sunday "Elkmont Special" -- non-stop train service to the mountains. That proved popular enough that the Sunday special became a regular, several days a week route. + +Then that passed or was diluted somehow, getting out to see the land was condensed down to the somewhat easier, more profitable habit of just buying fleece jackets at the mega-mall and playing a bit of putt-putt golf in Pigeon Forge. + +Oh well. + +  + +One piece of advice, should you head to Smoky Mountain National Park, don't dig too deep, if you do any more than scratch the surface you might discover some unpleasant things -- like the signs along the river that read: Do Not Drink, Swim, Bathe or Touch the Water; River contains fecal matter. + +Yes, the rivers are full of shit. Shouldn't be surprising then that Pigeon Forge is full of shit. Everything trickles downhill as they say. + +And we are all more or less full of shit. + +Don't drink the water. + +And so it goes. + diff --git a/jrnl/2008-12-09-leonardo-da-vinci-and-codex-bunnies.txt b/jrnl/2008-12-09-leonardo-da-vinci-and-codex-bunnies.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b54762e --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2008-12-09-leonardo-da-vinci-and-codex-bunnies.txt @@ -0,0 +1,90 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.521441993672646,-86.81079982502803 +location: Birmingham,Alabama,United States +image: 2009/codexofbunnies.jpg +desc: Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex of Birds visits Birmingham, AL; but the real story is the Ur Bunny of Birmingham. Beware, strangeness ahead. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: A few pages from Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks make a rare trip outside Italy, to Birmingham, AL, of all places. But the Birmingham Museum of Art is home to far more alarming works of art, works which depict the eventual, inevitable, bunny takeover, after which all the elements of our reality will be replaced by bunnies. Seriously. You heard it here first. +pub_date: 2008-12-09T18:18:33 +slug: leonardo-da-vinci-and-codex-bunnies +title: Leonardo Da Vinci and the Codex on Bunnies +--- + +Downtown Birmingham is deserted, even the trees are bare and there's hardly any sign of life, save the occasional car on the interstate somewhere up above, propped aloft on concrete pylons. There's a far too bitter wind for October in the South; it cuts around the brick edifices and concrete parking garages. + +Alabama Power by filam61, flickrI've come to Birmingham for Da Vinci. He of the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel and the Codex of Birds. + +You wouldn't expect Da Vinci in Birmingham Alabama, it of the civil rights struggle, much more readily conjured as a synecdoche of mediocre backwaters everywhere. + +Yet here he is. + +Or his notebooks anyway. + +I should say that I did not so much _want_ to see Drawings From the Biblioteca Reale in Turin, rather I felt that I should, which I freely admit is a very poor reason for going. But in truth there is more to it than that. I didn't feel I should go because it was somehow necessary to see, an educational exercise or anything like that. + +Rather, something in my head kept saying, for no reason I could deduce, _go to that exhibit_. In hindsight I now know that I needed to go for the bunnies. + +But let's start at the beginning, the warm, red-lipped smile from the middle age woman who collects my ticket, the very nice white-haired gentleman who hands me a brochure on Da Vinci and his notebooks, the other elderly gentleman in a blue docent's vest who directs me to the back of the line. + +Oh yes, the line. + +Over two hours worth of people backed up, snaking through the main foyer, up the staircase to the second floor, around the landing and then inside some hidden room where, under glass and guarded by more museum security than I've ever encountered anywhere else combined (Da Vinci may have come to Alabama but clearly no one trusts Alabamians to react well to his arrival), the drawings await us. + + Leonardo Da Vinci, Codex on Flight of BirdsImagine for a moment if, some 500 hundred years from now, a few pages torn from your notebook could draw thousands of people from around the world. + +Be a bit strange wouldn't it? But never mind that. + +I suspect that, had Da Vinci's codex of birds arrived in Birmingham Alabama say ten years ago, I would likely be standing alone right now. But then there was that damnable Da Vinci Code book. + +Yes. I've read it. It was once the only English language book on Ko Muk where I was once trapped for while. It was just me, an Australian who told me with a straight face that he was an ex-lifeguard, a grumpy collection of Thai guesthouse staff, three naked Swedish girls and that damn book. I read it in three hours. + +But I digress. + +We need to get to the beginning. Further back than just the museum, further back than the curator who set up the show, further back than Italy from whence it came, probably all the way back to Da Vinci himself, who once made some doodles in a notebook, drawing people, drawing birds, drawing horses. + +To keep things short we'll setting for the moment I first encountered the bunnies. + +The week before I left to travel the world, months before I would read The Da Vinci code, years before I would go to Birmingham, Alabama, I went up to San Francisco to visit Mike and Hilary. Bill drove, fun was had as I recall. For me the thing that sticks out though are the bunnies on the wall (well, that and the wolf coughing in the living room, but that's another story). + +Uprisings by KozyndanThe bunnies were on the wall. Two dimensional bunnies. There were posters of bunnies. Specifically Kozyndan's poster of various famous Japanese paintings recast with bunnies. Where there should be sea foam [there were bunnies][1]. Where there should have been leaves, [there were bunnies][2]. Where there should have been cherry blossoms, [there were bunnies][4]. + +There were bunnies everywhere damnit. + +Prior to seeing those images I'm not sure I ever gave bunnies much thought (several months later in Austria I would eat a bunny and be somewhat unimpressed), but there, hanging on the wall of a San Francisco apartment, were posters of bunnies, hundreds of bunnies, thousands perhaps and I, for the first time, I was forced to think about bunnies. Bunnies in places you would not expect bunnies. + +You can see where, if, shortly after seeing such a thing you suddenly had roughly an entire year's worth of free time in part of world where beer is about 25 cents a pint, you might develop something of an obsession with the bunnies in places where there should not be bunnies (what if, instead of rats running around this hostel, there were bunnies? And so on). + +I did a bit of googling and discovered that the artist(s) have something of a bunny fetish, [bunny fish][5], [bunnies in winter][3], bunnies in a crowd and so on. When I got back one of the first things I did after I had a roof over my head was order my own copies of the bunny posters. + +Of course none of that prepared me for the Ur Bunny in Birmingham. + +Eventually the long line to see the Da Vinci exhibit made its way up the stairs and around the second story, through a smallish exhibit of Asian art. Finally, I thought, at least there is something to do while I wait, some art to examine. + +As the line wound around the room, there were a number of interesting pieces, but in the corner I spied something that looked like a traditional Japanese or perhaps Chinese landscape paintings -- a tree in fall, some mountains in the background and some, wait a minute, are those bunnies? Holy crap, they are bunnies and they have _glowing red eyes_. + +There, fortunately restrained under protective museum glass, was a Chinese landscape populated by red-eyed bunnies, lurking under trees, trying, but failing, to look innocent. + +red eyed bunniesI had plenty of time to confront the bunnies, to study them in the their natural watercolor state and it didn't take long to feel there was a noticeably evil glint in their eyes, as if wary of being caught in the act of colluding on some nefarious project, almost certainly some sort of world takeover scheme -- not unlike what the conspiracy theorists attribute to Da Vinci, but so much sneakier because no one expects the bunnies. + +Bunnies are cute. Bunnies do not generally attack. Of course there was that incident in The Holy Grail and, as we all know, humor has a way of cutting much closer to the truth, but still, bunnies are harmless right? Cute, fluffy little things... but what's with the red eyes? The artist clearly did not have cute fluffy little things in mind when he painted these bunnies. + +Red-eyed things are zombies, re-animated nightmares, conspiratorial evil plotting against us. Now I understand the kozyndan posters, they're a warning, a vision of future where bunnies have taken over the sea, the mountains, become like water, like snow, like wind to meld themselves irreversibly into the fabric of our existence. + +red eyed bunnies, full imageThink about, with the birthrate of bunnies it wouldn't take but a couple of years for properly conditioned bunnies to replace nearly every atom of our existence with themselves. + +Here's what I know: the Ur bunnies have glowing red eyes and while Da Vinci did not, so far as we know, produce a Codex of Bunnies, given his secret society connections, he surely must have known of the Ur bunnies. Known enough to hide the codex and hide it well. + +As for the stuff he didn't hide quite as well, well, it was interesting, perhaps even illuminating, but somehow it seemed suddenly unimportant in the face of the inevitable bunny onslaught. Remember, you read it here first. + +[1]: http://www.kozyndan.com/new_portfolio/GR28.html + +[2]: http://www.kozyndan.com/assets/the_bunnies_fall.jpg + +[3]: http://www.kozyndan.com/assets/winter_bunnies_800.jpg + +[4]: http://www.kozyndan.com/bunny_blossom.html + +[5]: http://www.kozyndan.com/pacific.html + +[6]: http://blog.al.com/mhuebner/2008/09/birmingham_museum_of_art_sets.html + diff --git a/jrnl/2009-04-13-strangers-on-a-train.txt b/jrnl/2009-04-13-strangers-on-a-train.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d46f612 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2009-04-13-strangers-on-a-train.txt @@ -0,0 +1,70 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.95818694160937,-83.40824602873336 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2009/strangersonatrain.jpg +desc: Traveling by train is a more communal experience; travelers come together in ways that don't happen on planes, buses or cars. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: We mythologize trains because they harken back to an age of community travel, a real, tangible community of travelers, not just backpackers, but people from all walks of life, people traveling near and far together in a shared space that isn't locked down like an airplane and isn't isolated like a car; it's a shared travel experience and there are precious few of those left in our world. +pub_date: 2009-04-13T19:36:13 +slug: strangers-on-a-train +title: No Strangers on a Train +--- + +I have a weakness for trains. It doesn't matter if it's a subway ride across town or the Trans-Siberian railway, count me in. + +The boxcar Children book coverI blame the whole thing on the The Boxcar Children, certainly not the world I grew up in, where there were very few trains.[1] + +Trains are almost totally unknown where I come from. If trains pass through Los Angeles, they don't do it anywhere near where I lived. When it came to traveling from LA there were two options -- get in the car or head to LAX. + +And yet trains lurk in the background of most American myths, from Kerouac hopping freight cars in On the Road to the music of Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Bob Dylan and countless others. Chances are, if something is hailed as "uniquely American," then there's a train in there somewhere. + +So how does a culture end up with a mythology built around something most of us have never experienced in any way? + +The answer lies more in what trains represent than their practical reality. Rail travel taps into a very primal part of the American imagination -- that we're all free. And by free I think we mean the idea that there is still some untapped thing out there that we can, at any moment, propel ourselves toward. + +It's part of the belief that there is freedom in travel -- the way parallel tracks converge in the distance offers the promise of the infinite, toward which we are always running. + +That's why the mythology of trains is tied up in that of nomadic wanderers. The train-riding hobos of old are the modern vagabonds' spiritual predecessors; travelers who, like the hobos of pop mythology, place more value on the freedom of movement than the accumulation of things (there's also the similarity in bathing habits, but hey, you have to take the bad with the good). + +I didn't spend any real time on trains until I got to India, where I spent nearly all my time on trains. + +Train from Trang Thailand to BangkokMy overwhelming memory of India is the Indian railway system, which is simultaneously the most mind-boggling complex thing I have encountered,[2] and also the coolest, most convenient and downright fun way to travel. + +My best memories of India are sitting on the steps of an Indian train car, feeling the rush of air, the thousand foreign smells, watching the scenery pass, from the red mud jungles of the south to the dry barren deserts of Rajasthan. In all I traveled nearly a thousand miles by train in India (and saw no less than four major bus wrecks from the comfort of my train car, which gave me additional motivation to stick to trains). + +The train system is the life blood of India, not only is it the single largest employer in the world, it's how the country moves. + +The vast majority of the Indians I met were fellow rail passengers. The secret is to always travel second class. First is too segregated, you don't meet anyone but army officers and fellow backpackers. Third class is standing room only and generally too crowded to move. Second class is just right. + +In second class train cars I met Indians from all walks of life, from the cobbler's family that asked me to babysit their children and offered me the best samosas I've ever had, to the two teenage aspiring rappers who gave me a full day tour of New Delhi when we arrived. + +Train to Udiapur, Rajasthan, IndiaIndian trains offer something I've rarely found in America -- organic community travel. + +In the west especially, a community of travelers has become little more than businessmen drinking at the Holiday Inn Express bar, or backpackers smoking in some dingy flophouse, or worse, the online communities we mistake for genuine connections between people.[3] + +Trains have become one of the last real manifestations of our longing for something more -- some shared group travel experience that is almost totally lost in American culture. + +I think in the end that's why we mythologize trains, because they harken back to an age of community travel, a real, tangible community of travelers, not just backpackers, but people from all walks of life, people traveling near and far together in a shared space that isn't locked down like an airplane and isn't isolated like a car; it's a shared travel experience and there are precious few of those left in our world. + +
    + +
  1. + +

    1. I do remember once as a child taking the train from Santa Ana to San Juan Capistrano to see the swallows, or perhaps the monarch butterflies, that part is hazy, but the train ride I am certain of.↩

    + +
    2. + +
  2. + +

    2. The single best resource for deciphering train travel and the complexities of timetables is undoubtedly the wonderful Seat 61 website.↩

    + +
    3. + +
  3. + +

    3. Old man internet joke: what's the difference between a 1998 BBS and Facebook? Ten years of rationalizing our isolation.↩

    + +
    4. + +
+ diff --git a/jrnl/2009-05-03-how-to-get-your-butt-and-travel-world.txt b/jrnl/2009-05-03-how-to-get-your-butt-and-travel-world.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b26bf98 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2009-05-03-how-to-get-your-butt-and-travel-world.txt @@ -0,0 +1,214 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.95763520280544,-83.40871809752001 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2009/traveltheworld.jpg +desc: Long term traveling can be daunting; here are some practical, helpful tips to get you started planning the trip of a lifetime. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: How do you make the leap from cubicle daydreams to life on to the road? You want to travel the world, but, like me, you have a million excuses stopping you. How do overcome the inertia that keeps you trapped in a life that isn't what you want it to be? Here's a few practical tips and how tos designed to motivate you to get off your butt and travel the world. +pub_date: 2009-05-03T19:39:16 +slug: how-to-get-your-butt-and-travel-world +title: How to Get Off Your Butt and Travel the World +--- + +How do you make the leap from cubicle daydreams to life on to the road? + +There are plenty of guides on the practicalities of traveling the world -- like planning an itinerary, booking cheap flights or living in hostels -- but sometimes the harder questions go unanswered -- how do you find the courage to travel? + +[Endless road by TheFriendlyFiend, Flickr][8]Even for those that want nothing more than to escape a life of monotony, even for those that hate their jobs, even for those that feel like they have no life and desperately need some excitement, it still isn't easy to actually get on a plane and go. + +I know. I've been there. I decided to travel to world when I was 24. I left to travel the world when I was 29. + +For five years I found excuses to postpone my dreams, not consciously of course, but there was always some excuse to stay. Only years later, once I'd made it all the way to India, did I realize what held me back -- **fear born of inertia**. + +Inertia is a powerful thing -- both imprisoning and liberating at the same time. The negative aspect is the inertia that imbues our lives in the form of habit. We get up, we go to work, we come home, and the same thing happens the next day. + +The first law of thermodynamics says, more or less, that bodies in crappy ruts tend to remain in crappy ruts. + +The good news is that bodies on the road tend to remain on the road. + +The question is: how do we make inertia work for us rather than against us? + +The answer is that it's going to take some energy. You have to make the change happen. You must decide to save yourself. + +One thing that I think is absolutely key to understand is that traveling doesn't have to be turning your back on your life at home. I don't think of travel as escaping from my life at home (which I like), but as something that enhances and informs the life I live when I return home. + +###Eliminate Excuses + +The best way to change your habits is to look at what's stopping you from changing. + +You want to travel the world, but, like me, you have a million excuses stopping you. + +Let's take a look at some common reasons to not travel (this is not an exhaustive list, but it reflects both my experiences and those of people I've met in my travels). + +Most of these reasons (excuses) complete the phrase *i'd love to travel the world, but...* + +**I don't have the money** + +Generally speaking this is a less self-indicting way of saying, *I already spent the money on something else*. + +[Money...What Money, by stuartpilbrow, Flickr][9]Very few of us are so poor we can't save money to travel the world. It doesn't take nearly as much money as you think; I spent $12,000 including airfare ($2000), traveling for three months in Europe and seven months in Asia. That averages out to $1,200 a month, far less than most of us spend at home (and for the record I was not pinching pennies as I traveled, I ate well, slept in nice, clean guesthouses and didn't pass on anything I wanted to do just because it was expensive). + +So how do you save for a trip? That depends, but here's a good place to start: **stop buying so much stuff**. We all spend a shocking amount of money on stuff we don't need, and this is the number one habit to break if you're serious about traveling the world. Live simply and save your money. Here's how [Rolf Potts recently addressed the question of money][7]: + +>The specifics are less important than your attitude. That is, whatever job you take to travel the world and/or fund your journeys, the most important thing is to stay positive, live simply, and discipline yourself in such a way that you save your money. For my first vagabonding journey around the North America when I was 23, I worked as a landscaper for 8 months. This wasn't a super high-paying job, but by living simply I was able to save enough money to travel the USA by van for eight months. + +My experience was similar, I was running a restaurant kitchen (not a good way to get rich), and I mananged to save the money I needed. To expedite the savings I also did some web development on the side. + +Start a savings account and, instead of buying stuff, put your money in the account. If you're new to saving, check out [Get Rich Slowly][111] for some tips and inspiration and [The Art of Nonconformity][222] for some reasons why stuff leads to mediocrity, not the sort of life changing experiences we all crave. + +The key to letting go of stuff is realizing how much more valuable experience is -- this is a profound shift of priorities and, in my experience, goes far beyond just saving to travel. + +I'm not big on being frugal, but if you simply eliminate stuff from your life, you'll suddenly discover you have quite a bit of extra money. + +**I can't quit my job** + +This one is doubly powerful in today's economy. + +[I HATE MY JOB by mikecolvin82, Flickr][10]There are probably some of you who have found completely fulfilling work and are in the place you should be. I understand that, I haven't done a long trip in three years because I had such a job. But if that was really true, you wouldn't be reading this post. + +And if your job is not fulfilling and not making you feel like you are doing your best work for the world, then there is absolutely nothing to lose by quitting it. + +Think of it this way: the world needs you and you're ignoring it. Working at job you dislike is cheating the world out of your creative genius and passion. Don't be that guy. + +As for the current economic situation... if you're really worried about the long-term viability of your job, then what's the harm in quitting? + +**I only speak English** + +80 percent of the world is desperately trying to learn something you already know. You're way ahead of the curve here. + +Would it be nice to speak Nepalese and chat with the sherpas by a campfire in Nepal? Absolutely, but trust me, no one is going to hate you because you can't (that said, a phrasebook is always a good idea, just making a tiny effort will get you a long way). I have the utmost respect for those who can learn languages, but I suck at it and it has never gotten in the way of my travels. + +Besides what better way to learn a language than to immerse yourself in the country? + +**I'm too old** + +No, you're not. + +**I'll do that when I'm older** + +[Old People Sign by rileyroxx, Flickr][11]Sadly, from what I've seen, you probably won't. I've never understood long term deferred gratification -- why would you assume that you will in fact be old? Why take that risk? + +If you've never seen it, watch Rady Pausch's [The Last Lecture][1], which is heartbreaking, but very inspiring as well. And bear in mind one of his central messages: "We don't beat the Reaper by living longer. We beat the Reaper by living well." + +**Isn't traveling just running away from my problems?** + +Possibly, but not necessarily; you'll never know until you go. Even if you are running, it may not be away, it could easily be toward. There's really no way to answer this one until you go. And don't be afraid to fail. If you head out to travel the world and discover that you absolutely hate it, hey, you can always go home. But you'll never be able to answer that question until you leave. + +**I don't have anyone to travel with** + +I'm an only child so I'll admit that this one had never actually occurred to me, but I can say that being alone, even being lonely, can be a very healthy experience. + +However, the truth is, unless you willfully decide to be alone, you're going to meet tons of people on the road. Even if you leave home alone, you won't be alone for long (which is both a blessing and curse, depending on your personality). + +###Inspire Yourself + +Eliminating your excuses is only half the challenge. + +Excuses are the result of movement in the wrong direction, and to stop moving in the wrong direction is progress, but only so much. + +Once you have stopped your old habits, you must shift directions and move again somewhere new. + +Start with something very simple, like taking a different route to work, ride the bus (which also saves money), walking somewhere you usually drive, or otherwise physically alter the way you see the world around you. + +[I used to have Super Human Powers by Esparta, Flickr][12]Start photographing your day, not only will you get a new perspective on things, but if the results are rather dull then you'll have even more inspiration to change. + +Start a journal, write down what you like about your life, what you don't like and how travel is going to change that (this will prove hilarious about halfway through your trip). + +These things might sound silly to you, they might seem unimportant. But traveling is about much more than just going somewhere else; it can offer all variety of life changing experiences, but only if you're ready for them, so get yourself ready by changing *before* you leave. + +###Start Planning + +So you're looking at the world around you a bit differently, now it's time to get serious about this trip you want to do. + +It's time for a concrete plan. The simple action of planning can easily become the inertia you need to propel yourself onto the road. + +Head to your local library and check out some books. Buy them if you must, but remember we're trying eliminating stuff, so try not to buy too many. And don't get guidebooks just yet, pick something like Rolf Potts' book, [Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-term World Travel][2] [1] or Edward Hasbrouck's [The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World][3], both are excellent and will inspire you in numerous ways. + +Delve in into the practicalities of living on the road, sell your stuff, rent a storage unit if you really can't part with all of it, get rid of the things that block your path. + +Also start doing some research on how to travel. It sounds silly, but there is an art to traveling. Read travel blogs of those who have gone before you, [vagabonding.com][4] is a great site (though it's no longer updated), as is [World Hum][5] and [Vagabondish.com.][6] Half of what you learn will be wrong and most of your preconceptions will be shot to hell the minute you land, but it doesn't matter, make yourself part of the travel world and eventually you will end up living in it. + +Figure out where you want to go and how you want to get there. I suggest you buy round the world plane tickets, you'll save a lot of money that way, but be sure that your tickets include overland travel as well[2]. Unless you're hopping islands in the South Pacific, ground travel is almost always cheaper (and infinitely more fun). + +But chances are you will need some plane tickets, so when you're ready to kick your butt in high gear, go ahead and buy them. I used Airtreks, there are others that will work just as well. Or cash in your frequent flyer miles if you have them. + +Buy a ticket, set a date and make the new path real. + +Give notice at work. There are few more personally liberating acts than quitting a job. + +Once you know where you're headed, it's off to the bookstore in your spare time. Read the latest editions of relevant guidebooks, but don't buy any. If you must, buy the guide to the first country you'll visit, wait and buy the rest when on the road. + +But while you're digging through the guidebooks, wander over to the fiction and memoirs sections as well to see if you can find some novels or travel narratives on the area you've chosen. Headed to Asia? Read Graham Green's The Quiet American. Headed to Europe? read Kafka, Dickens or my personal favorite, W.G. Sebald. Headed to South America? Read some Borges, some Marquez or some Neruda. Headed to Central America? Read Arturo Bolano, Ernesto Cardenal or any of the many accounts of the civil wars in the region. + +Here's another one some people will find silly: go have a meal a restaurant that serves food from an area where you're headed. + +Read, eat, sleep and breathe your travel ambitions. Make them real. + +###Conclusion + +Congratulations, you've almost made it. By this point you have tickets in hand, you have some idea of what living on the road will be like, you have some gear and maybe you've even have packed. You've kissed the job goodbye, shed the stuff that was holding you back and you're nearly there. + +About the only thing left to do is get on the plane (or bus or train or whatever). + +It's difficult to describe what that will feel like, I've rewritten this sentence about twenty times now and I still can't do it justice. It's a sense of liberation that you will rarely get a chance to feel. Embrace it. + +Not very many people create the opportunities to live out their dreams; think about how lucky you are when you walk down the concourse and step on that plane. + +###A Word about Failure + +Not every trip happens. When it's your first trip, failure is hard swallow. But the truth is, there's is no such thing as a failed trip, there are just postponed trips. + +For every long trip I've gone on (and that would really only be two long trips, totaling almost two years of traveling), there's half a dozen well-laid plans that have fallen through for one reason or another. I should be writing this from Paris, but I'm not. I bought a house instead -- I failed to travel to Paris. + +Like anything, travel is the result of choices, sometimes you go, sometimes you don't just yet. + +Don't beat yourself up if your initial plan doesn't work out. Hang a map on the wall, keep saving and eventually you'll get there. + +
+ +
    + +
  1. + +

    1. Full disclosure: I write for Rolf's vagablogging.net, it's not a paid job and Rolf has never suggested that I pimp his books. I just happen to genuinely think that his book is one of the best meditations on extended, budget travel that's out there.↩

    + +
    2. + +
  2. + +

    2. One of my only real regrets in my own trip is that I didn't go overland from India to Nepal. I already had the (non-refundable) ticket so I got on the plane. Everyone I've ever talked to loved the journey from India to Kathmandu and I wish I had done it. Next time.↩

    + +
    3. + +
+ +

[photo credits, from top down: TheFriendlyFiend,stuartpilbrow, mikecolvin82, rileyroxx, Esparta]

+ +[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo + +[2]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812992180?ie=UTF8&tag=librograf-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0812992180 + +[3]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566918286?ie=UTF8&tag=librograf-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1566918286 + +[4]: http://www.vagabonding.com/ + +[5]: http://www.worldhum.com/ + +[6]: http://www.vagabondish.com/ + +[7]: http://www.vagablogging.net/3727.html + +[8]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/98063470@N00/326044514/ + +[9]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartpilbrow/2942333106/ + +[10]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecolvin82/730140838/ + +[11]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rileyroxx/151985627/ + +[12]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/esparta/482348262/ + +[111]: http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/ + +[222]: http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/ + diff --git a/jrnl/2010-03-13-so-far-i-have-not-found-science.txt b/jrnl/2010-03-13-so-far-i-have-not-found-science.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2f6fad7 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2010-03-13-so-far-i-have-not-found-science.txt @@ -0,0 +1,104 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 30.91341551845187,-82.18322287959928 +location: Okefenokee Swamp,Georgia,United States +image: 2010/okeefenokee.jpg +desc: A canoe trip through the Okefenokee swamp down in the southern most corner of Georgia, complete with begging alligators. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: A canoe trip through the Okefenokee Swamp down in the southern most corner of Georgia. Paddling the strange reddish and incredibly still waters. Begging alligators, aching muscles and the kindly folks of Stintson's Barbecue all getting their due. +pub_date: 2010-03-13T12:50:48 +slug: so-far-i-have-not-found-science +title: So Far, I Have Not Found The Science +--- + +Kingfisher Landing, on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp, is quiet. A few warblers are flitting around in the fetterbush and holly-like shrubs that line the channel around the put in. I unroll a sleeping pad and stretch out in the sun. It's the first warm day I've seen in months. + +Eventually the others return from the car shuttle run. Gear piles into the canoes and we after it. + +The swamp water is inky black here. Dead still everywhere. + +Kingfisher Channel, Okefenokee Swamp + +When the water becomes shallower on day two it reveals its true colors, a deep cinnamon red that's often compared to well-steeped Earl Grey tea. The color comes from the acid in the myriad decaying plants. The stillness comes from something else. + +The water is so still that even following another canoe, provided you hang back a hundred yards, the water never appears disturbed -- the ripples of previous paddles quickly fade, absorbed into the marshland around the narrow channels. + +It isn't more than a couple of hours paddling before we run across the first alligator, sunning itself on a boggy patch of mud, one of the countless floating islands of the swamp. + +Some of these islands are hardly worthy of the name, a patch of mud barely big enough to support a six-foot alligator, others are immense, supporting swamp cypress, pines and who knows what else lurking deep in the impenetrable thickets of grass and shrubs and undergrowth. + +Okefenokee is a Creek Indian word, O-ke-fin-o-cau, "Land of the Trembling Earth." + +Standing on the islands would be akin to walking on a waterbed. Full of alligators. None of us try it. + +Our route through the swamp takes us mainly through the prairie areas -- grasses and sedges with patches of peat, water lilies starting to bloom, clumps of pitcher plants luring unsuspecting insects. + +Matt paddling a canoe, Okefenokee Swamp + +The first two days we see no one. Once, as the channel swings back toward the edge of the swamp we hear distant murmur of a train whistle. The rest of the time the only sounds are the splash of paddles in the water. The cries of Red Tailed Hawks, Wood Ducks and Cowbirds. The occasional groan of an alligator. + +In the evenings Ibis and Sand Hill Cranes can be heard calling in the shadows of larger islands. The silhouettes of Sand Hills glide across the horizon, their enormous wingspans black against the orange of the setting sun. + +Sunset at Bluff Lake, Okefenokee Swamp + +We paddle for six hours a day. Muscles complain. The shoulders, the triceps, the back. Something called the rotator cuff. It is hard not to suddenly wonder about the exact names of these new pinpoints of pain, muscles previously unaccounted for in daily activities. + +The aches start in the shoulders and generally cascades down the back. But it's bearable. An acceptable trade off for solitude, Sand Hills and a land of trembling earth. + +When the channel narrows and weaves through the dense thickets of forest on day two, our pace slows to only one mile an hour. Otherwise we are able to do two, even three at times, depending on midday beer consumption. + +The last night a smallish alligator, no bigger than your leg really, shows up right around dinner time, circling the front of the platform in what looks like a reptilian attempt to beg for food. At some point the alligator has no doubt been fed a leftover clump of cold pasta, a extra Oreo cookie or some other paddler morsel and is now attempting, as best its species can, to beg for more. + +Strange though it might sound, it's hard not to find the alligator (hereafter, Steve), well, scaly yes, but also somehow strangely, yes, perhaps even cute. + +Alligator, Roundtop Shelter, Okefenokee Swamp + +It's likewise difficult to not regard Steve's dark watery eyes, nearly unblinking in their stare, as quite simply curious. An alligator in the midst of teenage curiosity and rebellion. + +It's hard not to anthropomorphize. It's also hard not to see any single alligator as possessing the entire history of the species. True, Steve in particular has not been alive since the Late Cretaceous Age, but the species has. It found its niche and did so well that evolution decided it was done, perfection attained, no need for further change. And it survived shifting continents, disappearing oceans, possibly comets, ice ages and all other manner of geologic apocalypse. + +Alligators are one of the only living links back to the dinosaurs. 100 million odd years of continuous existence on earth. + +There is something Zen-like about the alligator. A creature which has not only not changed in 100 million years, but found a way to spend the majority of its day simply lying in the sun, eating when it wants, doing nothing when it wants. + +It is the apex of evolution in many ways. Perhaps not the top, perhaps not the goal, but nevertheless able to be here now, then, and like the swamp itself, perhaps here forever. + +In the mean time, we will have to move on. + +

Assorted notes and further thoughts:

+ +
+ +
to the person or persons who complained in the registration book at the Bluff Lake shelter that some "jerks" left a large bundle of plastic piled under the cooking table
+ +
The "jerks" are the rangers who left it there so your hemp sleeping bag won't get wet should the rain become horizontal. Are you by chance the owners of the DIY wooden camper we saw in the parking lot with the license plate VEGANS?
+ +
to people buying things made of alligator skin.
+ +
Desist.
+ +
to the only live armadillo I have ever seen, which was running at breakneck speed toward the very cars and highway that reduced its brethren to the far more familiar smear of blood and guts and flattened shell
+ +
Stop.
+ +
to the very loud, very drunk retirees camping in the monstrous bus-size vehicle near the water at Laura Walker state park who quite clearly were not worried what the neighbors might think
+ +
Rock on.
+ +
to the wonderful people of Stinton's barbecue in Lumber City, Georgia
+ +
The ribs were delicious. We hope that Mrs _____ finds a buyer for her land and that coons are not too much trouble (we can't help thinking six acres for $20,000 is a steal, inquire within). We do not, however, think that the girl sitting at the table by the windows was really old enough to get married. We are assuming this is some sort of inside joke played on passersby like ourselves. In any case, the mustard sauce was excellent.
+ +
to the person or persons who erected the dogmatic, and frankly, quite alarming, religious billboards in Lumber City
+ +
We are concerned about your soul and hope that your view of humanity is soon profoundly improved by something beautiful.
+ +
+ diff --git a/jrnl/2010-04-24-death-valley.txt b/jrnl/2010-04-24-death-valley.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..52c2a2d --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2010-04-24-death-valley.txt @@ -0,0 +1,66 @@ +--- +template: double +point: 36.42090257717807,-116.80985925955854 +location: Death Valley,California,United States +image: 2010/deathvalley.jpg +desc: Watching the sun rise over Zabriskie Point in Death Valley National Park, wondering why I have never been here before... By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Sometimes you ignore the places close to home because, well, there's always next weekend. Which is why I never made it Death Valley in the twenty-five years I lived in California. It took being all the way across the country to get me out to Death Valley. Which might explain why I actually got up before dawn just to watch the sunrise at Zabriskie Point. +pub_date: 2010-04-24T11:45:59 +slug: death-valley +title: (There'll Be) Peace in the Valley +--- + +
+ +

It's well before dawn when we arrive at Zabriskie Point. Stars still fill the western sky, above the snow capped Panamint Mountains. Down the hill from the roadside overlook is a short trail that cuts through the chalky, barren ground.

+ +

The land in front of us looks like the moon. In technicolor. Multi-colored layers of rock and sand, hardly a plant to be found. It's an alien looking place, once a lake, now a sinking basin full of salt and dust.

+ +

When we arrived there was only one other lone traveler standing around the point, which made it seem even more desolate, but by the time the sun begins to paint its way down the distant ridges of the Panamints, the overlook is chock full of people.

+ +

Still, hardly anyone makes a sound, and when they do it's only the soft footfalls of boots treading the alkaline gravel or hushed whispers that fade in the empty stillness and silence of the desert.

+ +
+ +sunrise, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park, CA + +I lived just four hours from Death Valley for twenty-five years. I've been all over Europe and Asia, but I never made the trip out here. Until now. Now that I live clear across the country from Death Valley, I finally arrive. Sometimes you miss what's right in front of you. Sometimes you think you have to go around the world to find the exotic when in fact it's just down the road. + +After the sun is well up and the light on Zabriskie Point has become the even glow of mid-morning we drive down the valley to Badwater, the lowest point in the United States. + +There's no one around. The desert is utterly silent save the crunching of our boots as we walk out on the salt flats. Even in the morning light the salt is almost blindingly bright, by mid-afternoon it will be painful to look at. + +Salt Flats, Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park, CA + +Only one person died to give Death Valley its name. And that was during the winter. Death Valley is also not technically a valley. Valleys have entrances and exits, streams that feed through them. Death Valley is a basin, no entrance, no exit. Whatever little rain falls in Death Valley returns back into the ground, the excess eventually making its way here to Badwater, where it mixes with the salt and slowly sinks into the rock or evaporates off into the air. + +Badwater is where Death Valley ends in that respect. It is the exit point, where the basin returns its water back into the earth, taking the land with it -- Badwater continues to sink down a little bit every year. + +But it's hard to imagine Death Valley as the lake it once was when you're standing in the middle of a salt flat feeling parched, salt caked to your shoes and nothing but pure featureless white as far as you can see. + +The previous day we drove through Titus Canyon. The drive starts on the eastern side of the park where a four wheel drive trail veers off the main road and cuts straight through the high desert. The flat expanses of desert to the east are carpeted with yellow flowers, the product of a relatively wet (by Death Valley standards) spring. + +Eventually the road begins to slowly wind upward, past barren, red rock outcroppings and on toward the appropriately named Red Pass, which crosses the main ridge of the Grapevine Mountains, where the road begins the descent into Titus Canyon proper. + +The canyon itself is an impressive display of geology and the power of earthquakes -- massive, jagged walls of thrust up strata loom at every side. Looking down the canyon is like staring into the history of the earth. + +Black limestone has been thrust up through red and white layers creating a rainbow palate of rock. The dark black rock dates from the Cambrian period when Death Valley was awash in the algae that would later become the limestone that surrounds us. + +Titus Canyon Narrows, Death Valley National Park, CAThe further on we go, heading west back toward Death Valley proper, the narrower the canyon becomes. The rock walls creep closer and closer, eventually squeezing the road and the dry stream bed it has been following into one single track. + +We get out and walk around for while. It's cool here in the narrows, the walls are too steep for the afternoon sun to penetrate. The ranger said there are hanging gardens up on the rock face above us, but the walls here are too steep to see much. + +The next day, after watching the sunrise and seeing Badwater, we drove up to Aguereberry Point, midway up in the Panamint mountains. At the end of the road a short trail leads out to the point where the ridge line drops off into the vast basin below. + +Death Valley is white from above. Slat flats and borax. Once people came here to dig up borax, copper, gold and handful of other metals that have been thrust up from the depths of the earth. + +View from Aguereberry Point, Death Valley National Park, CAPete Aguereberry, for whom the point is named, mined in the area until he died in 1945. But Aguereberry didn't build the road to get the mines, he built his road to the point simply because he liked the view. + +Today the National Park service has built a newer road (still dirt and somewhat rough) but along the way you can still catch glimpses of Aguereberry's original work snaking its way through the sagebrush. + +It must have been a brutal job back when Aguereberry did it. But it is a commanding view, the hills seem to fall away at your feet, offering a glimpse of the land far beyond the basin to the east and up and down it to the north and south. + +Far below, running along the opposite side of the salt flats, I can make out the road that will take us down to the south and eventually out of Death Valley. + +Later, as the car winds down that same road I stare out the window thinking that I should really go to Savannah, Georgia, a place I have heard about for years, but never, in the ten years I've lived in Georgia, have I been. Sometimes you just forget about things that are right there in front of you. + diff --git a/jrnl/2010-05-17-los-angeles-im-yours.txt b/jrnl/2010-05-17-los-angeles-im-yours.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4610af9 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2010-05-17-los-angeles-im-yours.txt @@ -0,0 +1,102 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 34.05582387432624,-118.23588250455148 +location: Los Angeles,California,United States +image: 2010/launionsubway.jpg +desc: Ditch the car and ride the subways of Los Angeles, the toy train world where there is no ground beneath the ground... By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Los Angeles is all about the car. Shiny, air-conditioned comfort, gliding you soundlessly from one place to another without the need to interact with anything in between. But I have discovered that if you abandon the car for the subway and your own two feet, the illusion that L.A. is just a model train set world — tiny, plastic and devoid of any ground beneath the ground — fades and you find yourself, for a time, in a real city. +pub_date: 2010-05-17T16:43:18 +slug: los-angeles-im-yours +title: Los Angeles, I'm Yours +--- + +1. + +As the plane sweeps in low over eastern Los Angeles the heat of the engine exhaust smears the top portion of the view from my window. Everything warbles and blurs in the heat. It ends up looking like a natural, persistent, tilt-shift distortion, turning the building below into a miniature, toy world. + +The effect is odd, transfixing and a bit disconcerting after a while, a feeling heightened by the Hare Krishna sitting next me incessantly chanting the Maha Mantra. + +Later, outside the terminal a sign reads: Welcome to Los Angeles. + +2. + +Union Station Subway Stop, Los Angeles + +Around the time I was in high school Los Angeles built a subway system. I remember it showing up on page 15 of the newspapers. The universal consensus among those of us used to living under the constant threat of earthquake was that voluntarily going underground for extended periods of time would be tantamount to suicide. + +Besides, Los Angeles is all about the car. Shiny, air-conditioned comfort, gliding you soundlessly from one place to another without the need to interact with anything in between. + +Like most, I forgot about the subway as soon as it was done. The only time the L.A. metro system entered my consciousness was when a train accidentally hit someone crossing the tracks. Again, subway == death. + +Then I moved across the country. + +Just before I left to visit L.A., I stumbled upon some photographs of Union Station, which might well be the pinnacle of Moderne/Art Deco architecture. I decided I must see Union Station, and what better way to arrive than by subway?[1] + +The Old Ticket room, Union Station, Los AngelesSo into the subway I went. It was uneventful, an ordinary subway -- commuters sitting stoically, staring into space, a homeless man muttering in the corner, a older woman with a small trolley full of grocery bags, a fanatic handing out flyers for some cause. But Union Station is more than ordinary. + +Coming up out of the subway into the passenger rail terminal at Union Station is a fantastically beautiful step back in time -- back in time to moment when trains were travel, when building were more than containers for retail stores, when architecture mattered, even in otherwise dull places like a train station. + +From the ceiling in the entrance to the heavy, ornate waiting room chairs, Union Station feels more like a cathedral than a train depot -- inlaid marble abounds, backlit windows glow like stained glass. + +L.A.'s Union Station feels like a cathedral in part because the architecture far exceeds the purely utilitarian function it serves -- you can't help feeling that there is some hidden message in its design. Walking under the magnificent heavy ceiling beams in the waiting room, you begin to feel the same sense of tiny insignificance you feel in the Gothic cathedrals of Europe. + +Union Station Ceiling, Los Angeles + +3. + +It's a strange thing to be a tourist in the area you grew up in. I didn't grow up in L.A. proper, but many of my memories of the area are tied to L.A. because that's where everything fun happened -- live music, art shows, restaurants, movies... did I mention live music? + +Aside from the beach, which was closer to home, L.A. was where everything happened and so it figures larger in my memory than in actual waking hours. And yet I've never really bothered to pay any attention to Los Angeles the city, the streets, the buildings, the people. + +It's an easy thing to miss. Los Angeles seems designed to be unreal, a land where everything is plastic and shrunken like set pieces in a toy train set[2]. + +I'm convinced that part of the reason behind the toy train illusion is to protect L.A.'s residents from certain unpleasant facts, like, for example, the fact that there is no ground below the ground in L.A -- there is no real earth. + +I don't mean like a bit of earth showing where the lawn has been worn by foot traffic, but actual earth, large undisturbed expanses of it. It simply isn't there. + +I spent most of my life in Southern California and I could never find the ground below the ground. The actual earth. The sand at the beaches is trucked in from elsewhere and everything is paved. The roads lead to driveways, to kitchen floors, to backyard patio slabs with that strange pock-marked concrete. Even the riverbeds are poured concrete. Who paves a river? + +You might think New york is the same way; it's not. There's plenty of earth in New York. Central Park, Prospect park, any neighborhood park. Subways leak water, betraying what is behind them, under them, around them. New Yorkers have plenty of reminders about the ground under the ground. + +4. + +I still haven't found the ground under the ground in Los Angeles (the subways don't leak, the concrete tubes under the city are still unbroken), but I have discovered that if you get out of your car and walk, the toy train set illusion reverts at least to a life size city. + +Los AngelesThe tallest building on the west coast towers overhead; in the distance City Hall looms and the ultra-modern hideousness of the Disney Concert Hall glitters in the afternoon sun. Further up the hill the Department of Power and Water building seems to float, an island in the middle of a man-made lake. + +Everything is very real. We walk down to a park, the tiniest park I've ever seen, but a park nonetheless. Everything seems very real. + +But only for a moment. A few streets later we stop off for a pint at a pirate bar. Fake sailing detritus litters the walls -- ships wheels, heavy braided hemp ropes, portals to nowhere, flags bearing the skull and crossbones. + +Our table is a fake oak barrel, fake pirate insignia decorate the ceiling. The bar looks like a post-production yard sale from the *Pirates of the Caribbean*. + +The illusion of reality collapses. + +Los Angeles cultivates that aspect of itself, it enjoys the rest of the world seeing it as a completely unreal world. A world of pirate bars and movie stars. You either have to embrace it or get the hell out. + +I went with the latter, but I enjoy returning, trying to find little moments of the real where L.A. drops its pretense and becomes a real city. + +5. + +The next day I walk a mile or two down Wilshire Blvd to Lincoln where I catch the bus to the airport. I drop my change in the box and find a seat near the back of the bus. Someone has scratched the window, initials carved, then crossed out and more initials carved. + +Out of the corner of my eye the scratched window makes the view turn blurry again, the building begin to look more plastic, shrunken. I'm back on the ride. + +The tilt-shift world will go on without me. Nothing to do now but punch your tickets for the toy train and watch the shrunken madness as you slowly click home on the tiny plastic tracks. + +
    + +
  1. + +

    1. Actually there is a better way: to arrive on some trans-continental train. Sadly, that was not an option for this trip. ↩

    + +
    2. + +
  2. + +

    2. I know what you're thinking, to talk about Los Angeles as singular entity is sloppy writing, sweeping generalizations being the number one fallacy of self-appointed prognosticators. Of course you're right, there is no Los Angeles. And yet there is. ↩

    + +
    3. + +
+ diff --git a/jrnl/2010-07-05-begin-the-begin.txt b/jrnl/2010-07-05-begin-the-begin.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cd6af3d --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2010-07-05-begin-the-begin.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 30.380400296597216,-89.03081058216594 +location: Gulf Port,Mississippi,United States +image: 2010/gulf_port_beach.jpg +desc: My trip around the United States starts with rainbows and darkness, as the BP oil spill looms off the coast of Gulf Port. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: It's travel time again. This time I'm driving my 1969 Ford truck out west, to Texas, Colorado, Utah and more — a road trip around the western United States. The first stop is Gulf Port, Mississippi. It's hard to believe, sitting here on the deserted beaches of Gulf Shore, watching the sun break through the ominous clouds, but soon this beauty will be gone. The BP oil spill is somewhere out there, blown slowly ashore by the storm hovering over us, waiting to drown the beaches in crude. +pub_date: 2010-07-05T22:00:00 +slug: begin-the-begin +title: Begin the Begin +--- + +When I first arrived in South Asia I stayed near a Spanish Fort in Cochin, India. The first night of this trip I found myself in Spanish Fort, Alabama. Unfortunately, while both may have been erected by the Spanish (lovers of forts the Spanish), there the similarities end. + +Rainbow in Gulf Shores MississippiWhere Fort Cochin India had cantilevered Chinese fishing nets, massive, ancient trees and endless thalis of fish and sauces, Spanish Fort Alabama can only claim corporate chain restaurants and shoddy, overpriced motels. + +About the only real upside to the southern Alabama I've seen is the plethora of rainbows -- double rainbows, single rainbows, rainbows where the beginning and the end are visible, rainbows that came down and ended right in front of my truck. Sadly, not a pot of gold to be found. + +We left town on the fourth of July -- what better day to start a road trip around the United States? + +I'm not an especially patriotic person, but, were I patriotic about anything in the United States, it would be the land. There are few, if any, other places on the earth with the diversity and beauty you'll find in America. That is, I suppose, what we are all looking for when we travel -- beauty. Beauty in places, beauty in people, perhaps even beauty in ourselves. + +Union Station Subway Stop, Los Angeles + +The first day we drove as far as Spanish Fort, near Mobile on the Alabama coast. The next morning we started out early, cutting off the interstate in favor of the coast road, down to Gulf Shores to have a last look at the beach before BP's oil spill washes ashore. + +Gulf Port already feels like a ghost town. Hardly anyone seemed to have spent their fourth on the coast, hotel parking lots were empty, the roads virtually deserted and we had the white sands of the beach to ourselves. At the actual port the shrimp and fishing boats sat idle, some already being pulled into dry docks, avoiding the coming oil. + +Further down the coast we saw the first cluster of what would be turn out to be hundreds of orange-vested people wandering the beaches, some with plastic garbage bags fluttering in the wind, others with rakes thrown over their shoulders, all waiting. There is nothing to do just yet. For now the oil is still at sea. But the weather forecasts put the oil onshore either tomorrow or the next day. + +Across the street from the beach are the remnants of another disaster that arrived from the sea -- hurricane Katrina. + +It's been nearly five years, but Gulf Port is still littered with empty lots that look like scars amidst houses that remain. Empty foundations are half-obscured in weeds, brick porches lead to nothing, empty swimming pools are cracked, plants growing out their drains. Here and there a tire swing hangs from an Oak tree, still waiting for someone no longer thinking about returning. + +And somewhere out at sea the next disaster is getting ready to arrive. + +I wander the beach for a while, watching the morning sun stream through the dark, sullen clouds that cover the horizon in every direction. I've never seen an oil spill, just pictures and video. It's hard to imagine all the what this beach will will look like when the oil and dead animals begin to wash up. + +For now it is just sugary white sand that squeaks under your bare feet. Small waves lap at the shore, then hiss softly as they retract back to the ocean. + +I return to the truck and head off again, west -- always west, into the future as it were. The road winds along the shoreline. Buses and volunteers are stationed every few miles. The shoreline will be temporarily destroyed, it is a tragedy, all the moreso because it need not have happened, but there are people here who do their best to right the wrongs. + +The land may be beautiful, but it's always in peril. Fortunately, there are people trying to protect it, to restore it, to preserve it. The light turns green and beach begins to fade in the rearview mirror. It's a somber, but perhaps not inappropriate, beginning for a trip around the United States. + diff --git a/jrnl/2010-07-08-dixie-drug-store.txt b/jrnl/2010-07-08-dixie-drug-store.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0babb97 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2010-07-08-dixie-drug-store.txt @@ -0,0 +1,68 @@ +--- +template: single-dark +point: 29.955903613807074,-90.06511865792525 +location: New Orleans,Louisiana,United States +image: 2010/nopharmacymuseum01.jpg +desc: New Orleans is it's own world; one where nothing and everything is always changing. And a wonderful world it is. by Scott Gilbertson +dek: New Orleans is it's own world. So much so that's it's impossible to put your finger on what it is that makes it different. New Orleans is a place where the line between consensus reality and private dream seems to have never fully developed. And a wonderful world it is. +pub_date: 2010-07-08T17:00:00 +slug: dixie-drug-store +title: The Dixie Drug Store +--- + +New Orleans is a blur. It started with a pint over lunch just after we arrived and then there were a few more pints at the coffeeshop down the street from our hotel, where an obnoxious group of people scouting locations for a movie eventually drove us on, to the statue of Ignatius Reilly, then a casino, a slightly lighter wallet, the best muffaletta I've ever had, some very old graves, an unlikely amount of pork, a transvestite beauty pageant and then we hit the road again. + +The corner of Decatur and Barracks, New Orleans, LA Which is not to say I was drunk the whole time, just that somewhere between the beer and the stifling humidity and wholly unique character of New Orleans, everything becomes less distinct. + +New Orleans is only technically part of the United States, a act of map making more than anything else. For me, New Orleans has always been the one foreign country I can visit without a passport. + +New Orleans is it's own world. So much so that's it's impossible to put your finger on what it is that makes it different. New Orleans is a place where the line between consensus reality and private dream seems to have never fully developed. And a wonderful world it is. + +The New Orleans Pharmacy museum sticks out amidst the blurry series of events, perhaps because it was air conditioned, perhaps because of the Grant Lee Buffalo song from which the title of this entry is taken, or perhaps because pharmacology is simply fascinating no matter where you are, New Orleans just happens to have the perfect shrine to it. + +Whatever the case, the museum is a brilliant glimpse of the halcyon days of early chemical experimenters -- that early world where chemicals were understood well enough to be occasionally useful and not well enough to be occasionally dangerous. A time of self-taught chemists, enthusiastic, evangelical drug fiends, pioneers and yes, outright quacks. + +It seems everyone used to be mixing up some sort of medicine in the basement. + +Pharmacy Museum shelves, New Orleans, LA + +In New Orleans there's also a strong connection between the old Vodun religious practices and the potions, cure-alls, medicines and straight quackery that used to be the local drugstore. + +If, like me, you've ever wondered what happened to the days when Coke actually contained cocaine, every woman kept a laudanum tin by the bedside and anyone was generally free to put whatever they liked -- for good or bad -- in their body, then you are no doubt aware of the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914. + +The bill, which overnight made a series of plants and their by-products illegal, is one of those lines in the sand, a marker where, on one side, is total anarchistic freedom (that would be prior to the Harrison Act) and on the other side restrictions, regulations and a government that is suddenly in charge of what you can and cannot do with your body and mind. + +Sarsaparilla, for what ails ya, Pharmacy Museum, New Orleans, LAI don't have any strong opinions on the Harrison Act -- it is what it is, and it's far too late to change it. But I do think that time before it sounds like more fun. Sure, there were some wacky chemicals for sale, things that would poison and kill you, but there are still hundreds of lawsuits every year against so-called medicines that have caused people harm. + +The difference is that now we have a huge multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry that gets to crank out the drugs that kill us. At the end of the day the pharmaceutical industry is about as interested in your health as the smiling shysters hawking jars of god-knows-what out the back of a gaudily painted wagon. + +Walking the rooms of the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum with their seemingly endless shelves full of oils and sprays and pipes and potions proudly proclaiming to cure everything from hiccups to money, luck and love, was a beautiful trip back to time when people did things for themselves; when things were not simpler, they were more complicated and risky in fact, but you were in charge. It was your job to educate yourself, to make decisions, to experiment if you wished, abstain if you did not. + +Stepping back out into the humid heat of Rue de Chartres was like being rudely sucked back to the present world. Fortunately New Orleans is there to cushion your abrupt arrival in the present, more strangeness is right around the corner, you just have to keep walking. + +We walked up to the St. Louis Cemetery, not because it's especially strange, but because I had not been there for sixteen years. So much has changed between then and now it boggled my mind and I mostly walked in silence thinking about the road trip I took sixteen years ago. We had no cellphones then, we wrote on paper with pens, we used paper maps to get around. We were nineteen. The world was utterly different. + +Except for the graveyard. Not much changes in graveyards. The neighborhood around St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 has improved somewhat. There was a giant pyramid crypt that I don't remember from the last trip, but otherwise the graveyard looked just as it did when I was nineteen years old. + +I even managed to take the same picture: + +
+ +Angel in 1995 + +Angel on a crypt, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans 1995 + +
+ +
+ +Angel in 2010 + +Angel on a crypt, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans 2010 + +
+ +The 2010 version needed to be carefully framed to avoid some new buildings to the south and a bit of Photoshop was necessary to get rid of a stoplight that didn't use to be there, but I do find it remarkable, given how much the world around us has changed in fifteen years, that this scene is still there. + +No one wants to live in a world that never changes, but sometimes it's nice to know that bits of the world remain as they ever are. + diff --git a/jrnl/2010-07-11-legend-billy-the-kid.txt b/jrnl/2010-07-11-legend-billy-the-kid.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f058f71 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2010-07-11-legend-billy-the-kid.txt @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 31.981920692582488,-98.03087709969479 +location: Hico,Texas,United States +image: 2010/billythekidmuseum.jpg +desc: The legend of Billy the Kid is like that of Amelia Earhart: the less we know, the more compelling the story becomes. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: History rarely offers neat, tidy stories. But the messier, more confusing and more controversial the story becomes, the more it works its way into our imaginations. The legend of Billy the Kid is like that of Amelia Earhart or D.B. Cooper — the less we know for sure, the more compelling the story becomes. +pub_date: 2010-07-11T18:00:00 +slug: legend-billy-the-kid +title: The Legend of Billy the Kid +--- + +The legend of Billy the Kid has a fork about midway through the story. Either Pat Garrett shot an unarmed Billy the Kid in the back to collect the $500 reward or Pat Garrett shot some other unarmed guy in the back and lied about it being Billy the Kid in order to collect the $500 reward. + +In the end, the story is inconclusive with regards to the fate of Billy the Kid, but one thing is clear: Pat Garrett was an asshole. + +Should you, after careful consideration of the evidence available for both possible stories, decide that you believe the former, then [head to Fort Sumner, New Mexico][2]. If you decide it's the latter, then you need to see the [Billy the Kid Museum in Hico, Texas][1]. + +Alternately you could do what I did -- just sort of stumble into Hico, Texas looking for something to do while your sore ass recovered from five hours in a 1969 Ford pickup that no longer has even the slightest hint of padding left in the seat cushions. The obvious time killer in Hico, should you take this approach, is the Billy the Kid Museum. + +The museum in Hico is a testament to the survival of Billy the Kid, who, in this telling, later emerges as a man calling himself Ollie L. "Brushy Bill" Roberts. This scenario is particularly appealing to people who believe in redemption and the idea that, at heart, Billy the Kid was not a bad man, did not deserve to be gunned down for a reward (class act that Pat Garrett) and turned his life around. + +For those more fond of doomsday, judgments and reaping what you sow, there is the New Mexico museum, which holds that Billy the Kid is buried there, at the Fort Sumner cemetery, dead and done at age twenty-one. + + + +After half an hour or so at the Billy the Kid Museum in Hico, most of which of watching an old episode of Unsolved Mysteries which plays in the back room on a continuous loop, I decided that there is great evidence for both stories and, moreover, it really doesn't matter what happened to Billy the Kid. + +Whoever and whatever Billy the Kid was and did, he has long since passed into legend. History does not catch every story that is slowly slipping through its cracks, some things get caught up in the floorboards and become legends. + +Unlike novels, the stories and legends that never quite make it to anything as definitive as history don't always have neat endings. In fact, the messier, more confusing and more controversial the ending is the more of a legend it becomes. The legend of Billy the Kid is like that of Amelia Earhart or D.B. Cooper -- the less we know for sure, the more compelling the story becomes. + +That the events actually took place in one particular way or another is largely incidental to anyone who is not Billy the Kid, and, one thing we know for sure, like me, you are not. + +Eventually the Unsolved Mysteries tape came back around to the spot where I started watching. I got up and looked at the antique Winchester rifle and old Colt revolvers sitting under glass in the display case. Behind them was a tattered Civil War uniform draped over a wooden chair so old it was gray and looked like the slightest breeze would send it to splinters. + +Along the opposite wall were a series of laminated broadsides telling the less controversial part of Billy the Kid's story in an antique font the purveyors of the museum no doubt believed would give it a more authentic look. + +There wasn't much else in the room, a few other old west artifacts, an American flag, a Texas flag. I wandered back out the front room and chatted for a minute with the woman behind the counter. She was worried about the thunderstorms in Dallas. Whatever hits them ends up here eventually, she said. I agreed, though I have no idea if she was right. It was a good story anyway. + +[The photo of Billy the Kid is from Wikipedia. The Museum photo is copyright Mark Lynch, (via the Billy the Kid Museum), used under the Fair Use provision of U.S. copyright law] + +[1]: http://billythekidmuseum.com/ + +[2]: http://www.billythekidmuseumfortsumner.com/ + diff --git a/jrnl/2010-07-15-why-national-parks-are-better-state-parks.txt b/jrnl/2010-07-15-why-national-parks-are-better-state-parks.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8bc9a48 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2010-07-15-why-national-parks-are-better-state-parks.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +template: double +point: 35.18854030957816,-101.9194793559329 +location: Amarillo,Texas,United States +image: 2010/palodura.jpg +desc: There are many reasons, but here's the one I currently consider most important: national parks, like the nature they protect, never close. +dek: There are many reasons, but here's the one I currently consider most important: National Parks never close. Take Palo Dura State park outside of Amarillo, Texas. Were it a National Park, I would be there right now. But it's not, it's a state park and so I'm sitting in a hotel room in Amarillo because everyone knows nature closes at 10PM. +pub_date: 2010-07-15T10:00:00 +slug: why-national-parks-are-better-state-parks +title: Why National Parks Are Better Than State Parks +--- + +
+ +

There are many reasons actually, but here's the one I currently consider most important: National Parks never close. Take Palo Dura State Park outside of Amarillo, Texas. Were it a National Park, I would be there right now. But it's not, it's a state park and so I'm sitting in a hotel room in Amarillo.

+ +

Of course everyone knows that nature shuts down at 10 PM, so it's not totally surprising that state parks close then. It's not just a Texas problem either, most Georgia parks close at the same time.

+ +

Palo Dura likes to call itself "The Grand Canyon of Texas." It may well be, but I'll never know. And neither will the five or so other cars that turned around and headed back to Amarillo because the park gates were shut.

+ +

The funny thing is, the highway is littered with billboards promoting the park. For 200 miles I was enticed to detour over to the park and not once did any of them mention that it closed at 10. Here's what Palo Dura canyon looks like, should you after 10PM:

+ +
+ +pure black image, since I never got into the park + +So I drove on to Amarillo, got a cheap motel room and crashed out for the night. + +Now it's on to a national park that I know will be open no matter what time I arrive: Great Sand Dune National Park. + diff --git a/jrnl/2010-07-16-comanche-national-grasslands.txt b/jrnl/2010-07-16-comanche-national-grasslands.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6922418 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2010-07-16-comanche-national-grasslands.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +From Amarillo I headed north, taking small county roads through the northern section of the Texas panhandle, into Oklahoma and on to Colorado, where I turned off on a dirt road that claimed it would take me to the Comanche National Grasslands. + +Comanche National Grasslands + +To say the Comanche National Grasslands is off the grid would be an understatement. With the exception of Highway 50 in Nevada, I've never driven through such isolation and vast openness anywhere in the world. And it's easy to get lost. There are no signs, no road names even, just dirt paths crisscrossing a wide, perfectly flat expanses of grass. + +I followed what I thought was the main dirt road through some ranch lands, wheat fields and open grasslands to a cattle grate and a fork in the road where a small sign noted that the Grasslands preserve had begun. + +I had not seen another car since I turned off the main road. Nor would I for the rest of my time in the Comanche National Grasslands. + +Instead there was simply immense, wide open space. Space so big it begins to close in on you, the sky seems so endlessly massive and close that it's disconcerting. The only real limits to your field of vision are the curvature of the earth. You begin to get some sense of how small a thing you really are. If you spend too much time thinking about infinity, you can't help but feel incredibly finite. + +Few of the early settlers who wrote about crossing the plains failed to note the epic proportions of open space. While that space, and the original scale, are long gone, you can get some sense of what it must have been like in the Comanche National Grasslands. If you spend too much time out here, you can still get lost in the vastness of infinity. + +ferruginous hawk, Comanche National Grasslands I distracted myself by watching the birds. There were birds everywhere -- red-tailed hawks on a telephone pole, doves lurking in the sunflower plants that lined the road and meadowlarks that took flight at the first sound of the truck, their cream-colored bellies streaking by my window as they peeled off into the open. At one point I even saw a relatively uncommon pigmy burrowing owl. + +Eventually the road began to drop into some lowlands, small rolling depressions cut by the now dry streams that pass though the area. Eventually I came to the head of Chisolm Canyon (which is actually labeled with a small sign), a much larger gash carved by a still flowing river. On a crest just before the road dropped into the canyon proper I stopped and ate lunch. + +As soon as I turned off the truck engine I was engulfed in silence. It was as utter quiet as anywhere I've been. Only the occasional chirping click of grasshoppers and the eerie moaning of the wind sweeping through the juniper bushes broke the stillness. The only other time I've been somewhere as quiet was in the backcountry of the Sierra Nevada during a snowstorm. + +It was quiet enough that every footstep I took seemed like thunder, the crunch of the gravel giving me away to every other living thing. I could even hear myself chewing as I ate. But the silence was peaceful too, so, not having anywhere particular to be, I climbed on the hood of the truck, leaned back against the windshield and took a nap. + +My 1969 Ford truck, Comanche National Grasslands + +Later, rested and refreshed, I descended out of the limitless plain into Chisolm Canyon where a river has carved down some four or five hundred feet of red rock that is slowly crumbling into mesas and bluffs. Come back in a few million years and there may well be a Grand Canyon here. + +I pulled off near the river and went down to have a swim and sit in the shade of the Cottonwood trees. The river proved too shallow for swimming, though I dipped my shirt in it to cool off. I sat in the shade for bit, letting the truck rest and watching the Cottonwood trees' seeds drift by, little tufts of white seed casing -- the Cottonwood's namesake -- floating in the air. + +I continued down the canyon until it opened up into another flatland and the road began to loop back around and head east again. Eventually I came to the same spot I had started at, but since I was half lost when I got there it wasn't much help. I hadn't intended to spend much time in the grasslands, but sometimes a place just grabs you and you have to stay a while. + +Endless Road, Comanche National GrasslandsUnfortunately I still had a good bit of ground to cover before I got to Great Sand Dunes National Park, where I was planning to stay for the night. The dirt roads around me were far too small to be on my atlas. With no cell signal I couldn't consult Google, and there were no signs to rely on. + +In the end I decided that, since Comanche National Grasslands is more or less a square block of land on the map, if I went in any one direction eventually I'd hit some tarmac. I picked north since that would most likely lead to highway 160, which eventually takes you to Great Sand Dunes. + +It proved a sound strategy. After half and hour or so I was back to a paved road, though there were still no signs indicating which way to go. Great Sand Dunes National Park was west, so I just pointed to truck toward the sun and started driving, figuring eventually I'd get somewhere. diff --git a/jrnl/2010-07-17-great-sand-dunes-national-park.txt b/jrnl/2010-07-17-great-sand-dunes-national-park.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..00a5313 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2010-07-17-great-sand-dunes-national-park.txt @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 37.72673718028319,-105.55097578487117 +location: Great Sand Dunes National Park,Colorado,United States +image: 2010/greatsanddunesh_4.jpg +desc: Wandering the namesake dunes at Great Sands Dunes National Park. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Something about the desert inspires me to get up early and watch the sunrise. The cool mornings seem worth getting up for out here in the high plains of Colorado, especially when there's the chance to watch the sunrise from the largest sand dunes in North America, here in Great Sand Dune National Park. +pub_date: 2010-07-17T09:00:00 +slug: great-sand-dunes-national-park +title: Great Sand Dunes National Park +--- + +The sun is threatening to peak over the ridge before I even get to the top of the first row of dunes. I give up on making the top and sit down to watch the first rays of light slowly crest over the peaks of the Sangre de Christo Mountains and fall on the cool sand beneath my feet. + +Mountains and Clouds Behind the Great Sand Dunes, Great Sand Dunes National Park + +It doesn't take long for the sun to get rid of the morning chill. In half an hour's time the sand will be warm on my bare feet and by the time I make it all the way back to the truck it's too hot to hike barefoot anymore. + +But just as the sun comes up, most of us on the dunes, and there aren't many, are still wearing fleece jackets and wrapping our arms around our legs for warmth. I consider heading back after the sun is up, but that highest ridge of dunes is taunting me, some five hundred vertical feet of sand -- and no telling what lies beyond it, just another, higher ridge? -- that eventually gets the best of me. + +I climb it. + +Looking back where I came from is impressive, people look like ants scurrying over the dunes. + +Dunes ridgeline, Great Sand Dunes National ParkThe dunes themselves are also different up here, the sand is looser, your feet sink deeper and the patterns in the sand, the ridges and ripples shaped by the wind and avalanches are completely different here than they were down below. There are no signs of grass or any other plants up on the top of the larger dunes, just a few track marks from beetles and other creatures that somehow eek out an existence here. + +The view over the ridge is not what I had hoped for. Instead of a vast vista of sand dunes there is simply another higher ridge of dunes -- maybe two hundred feet up from the summit I've already reached. I sit down and enjoy the view, panting, trying to catch my breath. I'm tired, my legs are burning. Climbing in sand is not like hiking through the mountains. For every step you take up, you sink back half the distance, sometimes all of it. + +I rest too long. My legs seem capable of only one direction -- down. I can see the truck from here and even if I head down now I will have nearly an hour of walking before I get back. + +I give up. + +I'm tired and I've hiked through enough mountains in my life to know that there is always another ridge beyond the one you're on. There is only one true exception to this rule -- Mount Everest. As you approach the final ridge of Everest you can have the distinct and completely assured satisfaction of knowing that there is no ridge beyond it. Actually there are other exceptions as well, but they are few and far between. Usually ridges lead to more ridges. + +Dunes, Great Sand Dunes National ParkHowever, if you were the sort of person that reads signs, you would know that that slightly higher ridge I stared at before giving up on the idea of climbing is in fact the highest ridge on the dunes. + +If you're more like me you wouldn't read the sign until after your hike, when you're back in the parking lot again. + +Yes, it turns out there is no ridge beyond the one I saw, just thirty miles of endless -- lower -- dunes. It's quiet a view I am told. I wouldn't know. + +Some times you win. Some times the mountain wins. + +For minute I consider going back up, but my legs already feel like small fires have been lit inside each of my calves and I've got miles to go before I sleep. + +[Note: this story is park of my quest to visit every National Park in the U.S. You can check out the rest on the National Parks Project page.] + diff --git a/jrnl/2010-07-22-backpacking-grand-tetons.txt b/jrnl/2010-07-22-backpacking-grand-tetons.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aeaf85e --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2010-07-22-backpacking-grand-tetons.txt @@ -0,0 +1,50 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 43.79315431684632,-110.79651831037907 +location: Grand Teton National Park,Wyoming,United States +image: 2010/grandtetonsh.jpg +desc: Hiking into the wilderness empties your mind. You fall into the silence of the mountains and relax in a way that isn't possible in the midst of civilization. +dek: Hiking into the wilderness empties your mind. You fall into the silence of the mountains and you can relax in a way that's very difficult to do in the midst of civilization. The white noise that surrounds us in our everyday lives, that noise we don't even notice as it adds thin layers of stress that build up over days, weeks, years, does not seem capable of following us into the mountains. +pub_date: 2010-07-22T17:00:00 +slug: backpacking-grand-tetons +title: Backpacking in the Grand Tetons +--- + +The sun has moved behind the peaks. In the distance the light begins to retreat up the jagged, snow-patched granite walls. A soft twilight falls over the rocky meadow in front of me where a marmot is rooting through the grasses and purple lupines. Some where farther up the hillside from the granite boulder I am leaning against a pair of deer are grazing. Everything seems hushed and perfect. + +Meadow near Holly Lake, Grand Teton National Park + +Further down the stream that runs through this meadow a couple of late arrivals are setting up their tents. The wind that has been blowing all afternoon has died down a bit, though it still gusts and will pick up again before night falls. + +This place feels limitless. The high alpine country of Grand Teton seems to stretch forever in every direction, the sheer granite peaks reach up into the clear blue doom overhead. The wind begins to howl again, blasting at the gnarled Whitebark Pines to my left compounding the wild feeling of the backcountry. + +Here in the meadow the wind is less severe, the pines block the full force of it and it slows to something more like a strong breeze. The lupines sway slightly, the light is retreating up the granite walls on the opposite side of the canyon. I eat dinner, watch the light retreat. + +Smaller Lake near the exit of Holly Lake, Grand Teton National Park Just beyond the pines, over a small ridge where my tent is pitched in relative shelter from the wind, lies Holly Lake, a small, sapphire lake nestled at the base of Mount Woodring. Near the exit of Holly Lake is a smaller pond, cut off from the lake by a rocky moraine, the remnants left by retreating glaciers. To the west is Paintbrush Divide, some 2000 feet higher and still choked with snow. Beyond that lies the seemingly endless Teton Range -- wild mountains stretching clear over into Idaho. + +The Tetons are about as spectacular and dramatic a mountain range as you'll find. These mountains are young (in geological timescales anyway) and jagged, with majestic peaks, pristine lakes and gorgeous meadows carpeted with wildflowers even in July. The meadow in front of me is littered with the purple of lupines, yellow Balsalmroot and the occasional red tuft of paintbrush flowers. + +Part of the reason the Tetons are so striking is that they seem to arise from nowhere. Just a few miles east of my camp is a nearly flat sage-covered valley. There's not much in the way of foothills, the mountains simply begin. That abruptness is part of what makes the Tetons feel so utterly wild -- there is something raw and elemental about the Tetons that sets them apart from other mountains I have hiked through, only the Himalayas convey a similar sense of being in the real wild. + +Of course you probably won't get that sense of wildness if you stick to the paved roads. Grand Teton National Park gets very crowded in the summer. Still, as with most places on earth, if you get our of your vehicle and walk a few miles in any direction you'll quickly find yourself alone in the remarkable wilderness and beauty that exists here. + +That wilderness can bite though. Yesterday when I arrived a storm hung over the peaks raining hail, snow and lightening on a number of climbers trying to summit Grand Teton. All afternoon rescue helicopters flew back and forth, up and down the mountain plucking a total of 16 climbers off the peak, some of whom had been struck by lightening several times. It was the single largest rescue effort in the history of the park. Tragically, one person was killed. (For more details check out this [harrowing account of the rescue on Grand Teton][1]). + +Trail through Paintbrush Canyon, Grand Teton National Park I used to climb, but these days I'm content to just walk. To get away from the crowded campgrounds clustered around the lake area at the base of the peaks I strapped on a pack and hiked up here, to Holly Lake, where I was, for the most part, totally alone. + +I'm not one for covering long distance in short periods of time. I set out early and was at Holly Lake by noon. It's only a six mile walk, though you do go up some 3000 feet. I felt no need to keep going. Part of letting the world slip away in the backcountry means you can let go of that endless need to keep pushing. The exercise is good, but so is the doing nothing. The relaxing. + +I set up camp and walked over to the meadow where I watched the clouds roll by, sometimes finding images in them, sometimes not. Eventually I dozed off for a while and woke up feeling refreshed. I spent the afternoon walking around the lake, exploring the hillsides and the meadow. A few day hikers came up, ate their lunches and left. + +Sunset over Holly Lake, Grand Teton National ParkAs evening fell -- late at these latitudes, it did not get completely dark until nearly ten -- I made a small dinner and sat in the meadow watching a pair of deer eat their own dinner. They watched me, perhaps a bit more warily than I them, but they did not run. + +By the time the stars came out it was too cold for lounging in the meadow, I retreated to my tent, crawled in my sleeping bag and stared up through the mesh top at the stars above. + +Hiking into the wilderness empties your mind. You fall into the silence of the mountains and you can relax in a way that's very difficult to do in the midst of civilization. The white noise that surrounds us in our everyday lives, that noise we don't even notice as it adds thin layers of stress that build up over days, weeks, years, does not seem capable of following us into the mountains. + +Perhaps something about the quiet of the land, the stillness of the evening, the silence of the night, something out here that makes all of that back there fade away for a time. The wilderness is a reviver, a giver of perspective, all you have to do is step out into it. + +[1]: http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/article.php?art_id=6281 + +[Note: this story is park of my quest to visit every National Park in the U.S. You can check out the rest on the National Parks Project page.] + diff --git a/jrnl/2010-07-25-endless-crowds-yellowstone.txt b/jrnl/2010-07-25-endless-crowds-yellowstone.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..935ec28 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2010-07-25-endless-crowds-yellowstone.txt @@ -0,0 +1,66 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 44.46180292448713,-110.82196979172171 +location: Yellowstone National Park,Wyoming,United States +image: 2010/yellowstoneh.jpg +desc: There is wilderness in Yellowstone, even if it's just inches from the boardwalks that transport thousands around the geothermal pools. +dek: There is wilderness in Yellowstone, even if it's just inches from the boardwalks that transport thousands around the geothermal pools. It may not be wilderness on a grand scale — the sweeping mountain peaks or wild rivers of other parks — but in some ways that makes it more enticing. As one Ranger told me, Yellowstone isn't about the big picture, the grand scenery, it's about the tiny details within each pool. To really see Yellowstone, he said, you have to take your time, move slowly and look closely. +pub_date: 2010-07-25T14:00:00 +slug: endless-crowds-yellowstone +title: The Endless Crowds of Yellowstone +--- + +It's four o'clock by the time I reach Old Faithful and, strange as it may seem, I can't help feeling like I'm back in [Angkor Wat][1]. Thankfully it's nowhere near as hot and humid as Siem Reap. And here in Yellowstone National Park it's geothermal weirdness, not ancient temples, that are the main draw, but the draw is similar and like few places I've ever been. + +Old FaithfulPeople. People everywhere. + +The crowds are a testament to the beauty of Yellowstone, but it can be overwhelming, especially if you happen to arrive fresh from [the wilds of Grand Teton National Park][2]. + +Crowds can be fun though. Like Angkor Wat, every fashion faux pas you've ever dreamed of is represented somewhere in the Old Faithful vicinity. I'm partial to the plaid bermuda shorts with collared short-sleeved shirt look, but that's just because I can't figure out where people buy plaid bermuda shorts in this day and age. + +One of the things that is repeated over and over again in Ken Burns' The National Parks series is that the early park advocates wanted to ensure that Yellowstone and Yosemite (the first two parks) did not "become another Niagara Falls." The over-commercialization of Niagara Falls had made America the laughing stock of Europe's late 19th century elite. + +One of the goals of those early parks was to make sure that didn't happen everywhere. + +My first thought on arriving at Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park was, well, guess we screwed that one up. + +There may not be the neon banners and giant lighted arrows you'll find at Niagara Falls (now itself a "National Heritage Area"), but it's pretty much the same idea. There's a service station, several giant hotels, half a dozen restaurants and a colossal new Visitor Center (opening August 25, 2010). + +Traffic jam in Yellowstone National ParkOld Faithful is about as commercialized as it gets in the National Park system and it's a shame. But it could be worse. Before Yellowstone was protected visitors used to take an axe to Old Faithful and break off a chunk to take home as a souvenir. Stay classy America. + +On the plus side, you always know where the wildlife is because there will be a giant traffic jam for every buffalo, moose, elk or grizzly bear that's within visible range of the road. + +As it stands, at least that no longer happens, but Yellowstone is very much a "park" as opposed to any sort of wilderness. + +If you get out in the backcountry you'll find plenty of wilderness, but the geothermal pools and fountains are, for the most part, not in the backcountry. If you arrive in peak season like I did, expect crowds. Disneyland-size crowds. + +The key to any overly-crowded place is either give up and leave or slow down and force yourself to relax. I considered the former, but ended up doing the latter, though not necessarily by choice in the beginning. + +Thanks to some sort of knee strain I acquired up in the Teton backcountry, I spent most of my time in Yellowstone hobbling, limping around the pools at about half-speed. It hurt, as did the blister on my foot, but if I stopped frequently enough and walked slow enough on the downhill stretches it wasn't to bad. And it had an auxiliary benefit -- I saw more. + +Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park + +I saw considerably more than I might have if I had just strolled around. After all, at first glance if you've seen one geothermal pool you've essentially seen them all. But if you spend some time with them (sitting on the benches, rubbing your knee or reading the signs while standing on one leg) you start to notice the little differences -- the way the water changes the limestone structure of the pools right before your eyes or the way the colors are subtly different shades in each pool (the product of slight temperature differences or different solar exposures or the amount of sulfur in the water). + +The famous colors of Yellowstone's thermal pools are the result of bacteria, which, like plants, respond to changes in environment. The water color in the larger pools varies as well -- from a deep sapphire blue to bright teal. The more interesting ones are surrounded by a kaleidoscope of colors created by the bacteria. + +Patterns, Yellowstone National ParkBeyond the colors, Yellowstone is a land of textures -- the bacterial mats form intricate patterns and the movement of the water sculpts them into miniature scenes that look like something from another world. + +In the end there is wilderness here, even if it's just inches from the boardwalks that transport thousands around the geothermal pools. It may not be wildness on a grand scale -- the sweeping mountain peaks or wild rivers of other parks -- but in some ways that makes it more enticing. As one Ranger told me, Yellowstone isn't about the big picture, the grand scenery, it's about the tiny details within each pool. To really see Yellowstone, he said, you have to take your time, move slowly and look closely. + +The Firehole River, Yellowstone National ParkYellowstone may be about the tiny details within the surreal world of it's geothermal pools, but for me the most surreal experience in Yellowstone is not the wild colors, but the Firehole River. + +To all appearances the Firehole River looks like an icy cold mountain stream cutting its way through the mountain meadows and pine forests of Yellowstone. But thanks to all the heat just below the surface, and the runoff from the fountains and pools that it flows by, when you stick your foot in the river it feels like the Gulf of Thailand -- crystal clear, lukewarm and inviting. The sensation is disconcerting, a disconnect between expectation and reality, but it's great for swimming on an otherwise mild day. + +Algae fans in the Firehole River, Yellowstone National ParkThe river betrays it's strangeness in other ways too -- look a bit closer and you'll find giant fans of algae, something you'd never expect in a typical, chilly, mountain stream. In fact the river is more like a tropical sea than something running through the mountains. + +Another of my favorite moments in Ken Burns' National Parks series is something the famously whimsical John Muir used to do: Muir liked to put his head down between his knees and look at the world upside down, to see what he called its "upness." It's a great reminder that the world is always what you see, nothing more, nothing less. But that vision is not something static, it is something you are always taking in, always making new. That even something as simple as looking at it upside down can reveal everything all over again is remarkable when you stop and think about it. + +Yes, Yellowstone is crowded, so is Angkor Wat, but both are still what they are -- beautiful, fantastic, extraordinary. If you take a bit of time, slow down, ignore the bermuda shorts and just look in your own way there is always something out there that no crowds can take away from you, there is always something out there that is you. There is always something out there. + +[Note: this story is park of my quest to visit every National Park in the U.S. You can check out the rest on the National Parks Project page.] + +[1]: http://luxagraf.net/2006/mar/21/angkor-wat/ + +[2]: http://luxagraf.net//2010/jul/22/backpacking-grand-tetons/ + diff --git a/jrnl/2010-07-28-dinosaur-national-monument-part-one-echo-park.txt b/jrnl/2010-07-28-dinosaur-national-monument-part-one-echo-park.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..46482a2 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2010-07-28-dinosaur-national-monument-part-one-echo-park.txt @@ -0,0 +1,74 @@ +--- +template: double +point: 40.52063402652926,-108.99388073317648 +location: Dinosaur National Monument,Colorado,United States +image: 2010/dinosaurh.jpg +desc: Dinosaur National Monument was poorly named. The best part is not the fossils but the remote and wild canyon country. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Dinosaur National Monument was poorly named. The best parts of it are not the fossils in the quarry (which is closed for 2010 anyway) but the canyon country — some of the best, most remote canyon country you'll find in this part of the world. +pub_date: 2010-07-28T17:00:00 +slug: dinosaur-national-monument-part-one-echo-park +title: Dinosaur National Monument, Part One: Echo Park +--- + +
+ +

Damn. The steak was half-cooked before I realized I didn't have any salt and pepper. I was not at the sort of campground where there's a general store just up the road. In fact, it was twelve miles to the nearest paved road, twenty-five more until you hit something that actually had a highway number and some forty miles beyond that before you'd find anything resembling a store.

+ +

While I weighed my options -- none really -- the corn fell off the grill and landed right on the coals. Damn.

+ +

You make do I suppose. I pulled the corn out of the fire, gave it a quick rinse and called it done. I ate the steak straight off the grill, pioneer style -- no seasoning at all. Well, maybe not true pioneer-style. Maybe the style of pioneers with piss-poor planning skills. The sort of pioneers that probably busted on the whole "Oregon or bust" thing.

+ +

Whatever the case, the steak wasn't half bad, even without salt. I was just happy enough to have found some peace and quiet. I didn't much care what I was eating.

+ +
+ +Evening in Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Co + +

After days of wading through the crowds in Yellowstone I was finally in a place where the loudest sounds were the birds and the rush of the wind through the canyon, somewhere without SUVs and obnoxious children screaming from the doorway of their parents' motorhome about the lack of stuffed bears.

+ +

I ended up here in Dinosaur National Monument on a whim. I was planning to drive straight through to Grand Junction, but then I thought, what the heck, it's right there. I detoured off the road up to the rather ramshackle Ranger Station. It turned out the double-wide ranger station is a temporary thing. I went inside and listened to the ranger patiently explain to a very disappointed French couple, that the fossil quarry -- the namesake and main draw of Dinosaur National Monument -- was in fact closed to the public.

+ +

That's when I decided to stay. I've never really been interested in fossils. They're pretty much just rocks at this point. There's plenty of data to be gleaned from them, I get that, but I leave it to paleontologists and geologists to put that in story form for me. Close encounters with the raw materials leave me feeling like I'm missing something -- sort of like looking at a Warhol.

+ +

The truth is, if you really want to see dinosaur bones, you're better off heading to the Smithsonian. All the best fossils have long since been carted off to museums.

+ +

So, in short, this is the perfect time for someone like me to visit Dinosaur National Monument, because, as it turns out, this place was poorly named. The best parts of it are not the fossils but the canyon country -- some of the best, most remote canyon country you'll find in this part of the world.

+ + + +

Whether it was the the closed quarry or just the out-of-the-way nature of Dinosaur I don't know, but Dinosaur National Monument is almost completely deserted. On the drive in to Echo Park I saw only one other car in nearly fifty miles. The campground was similarly deserted, five or six other cars had staked out spots.

+ +

Cliff Walls, Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument Aside from the tributary canyon that provides vehicle access to Echo Park, the area -- maybe five acres -- is completely ringed in sheer sandstone cliffs. As dusk settles in somewhere on top of the mesas above us, Swallows and bats emerge from the cliffs to prey on the insects.

+ +

The wind dies down and mosquitos come out. They are annoying, the most annoying I've encountered on this trip. But world travel gives you different perspective on mosquitos. Here is the U.S. mosquitos are just annoying, they do not carry malaria or dengue fever or yellow fever or any other horrifying diseases (at least for now). The worst thing that happens is you itch a little.

+ +

A small price to pay for peace and quiet and beauty.

+ +

Echo Park1 is really a sand bar that got out of hand. Just a stone's throw from here the Green and Yampa rivers meet. The confluence happens at the start of a very sharp horseshoe bend which means the excess sand and silt of both rivers ends up here, on the far side of the horseshoe.

+ +

River Entrance to Echo Park, Dinosaur National MonumentAt some point in the geologic past the sand deposit got to be too much for the river to carry away, even in floods. Then the grasses took hold, anchoring the sand and sediment. Over time the ground solidified and trees sprung up. That part of nature that needs solidity formed a semi-permanent beachhead -- Echo Park. And yes, it does echo, more on that in part two.

+ +

Of course there's no guarantee Echo Park will be here forever. Look at what the river did to the sandstone that surrounds Echo Park -- it's cut through thousands of feet of sandstone. If the wants its overgrown sandbar back, the river will have it. Rivers always win in the end, but for this geologic moment it's here and it's quite spectacular.

+ +

It's also incredibly quiet and peaceful. As I write this my fingers clicking on the keys are the loudest sound in Echo Park. The songbirds have settled down for the night, the fire crackles softly.

+ +

The people who lived here called Echo Park "The Center of the Universe." It's not hard to see why, the huge, silent ring of cliff walls seem knowing, having watched over this river since the world was made. The rock walls remain whether the swallows come or go, whether the mosquitoes bite or not, whether the river floods or doesn't, whether I keep typing or stop. They simply exist as they have for millions of years -- massive and silent, watching as we, mere blips on the geologic radar, come and go, looking up at them, admiring their near eternity in our momentary passing.

+ +

[Note: this story is part of my quest to visit every National Park in the U.S. You can check out the rest on the National Parks Project page.]

+ +
+ +
+ +
    + +
  1. + +

    Why is every flat piece of land in Colorado called a park? (Estes Park, Echo Park, Island Park, etc) Is that a tourism board thing? Or just a quirk of naming conventions? Cause we have the same sort of things back east, we just call them meadows or valleys or canyons or whatever. But now I think we might be missing out on something... ↩

    + +
    2. + +
+ +
+ diff --git a/jrnl/2010-08-02-dinosaur-national-monument-part-two-down-river.txt b/jrnl/2010-08-02-dinosaur-national-monument-part-two-down-river.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4c8a0ef --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2010-08-02-dinosaur-national-monument-part-two-down-river.txt @@ -0,0 +1,102 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 40.457462390627,-109.25843237269746 +location: Dinosaur National Monument,Colorado,United States +image: 2010/lodorecanyonh.jpg +desc: The best way to experience Dinosaur National Monument is from the bottom - on the river, deep in the canyon country. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: This is the only real way to see Dinosaur National Monument — you must journey down the river. There are two major rivers running through Dinosaur, the Yampa, which carves through Yampa Canyon, and the Green, which cuts through Lodore. Adventure Bound Rafting runs some of the best whitewater rafting trips in Colorado and I was lucky enough to go down the Green River with them, through the majestic Lodore Canyon. +pub_date: 2010-08-02T09:00:00 +slug: dinosaur-national-monument-part-two-down-river +title: Dinosaur National Monument, Part Two: Down the River +--- + +The Gates of Lodore rise up on either side of the river, the massive red sandstone cliffs reminiscent of something out of Tolkien, but less fantastical, more majestic. The large boats are already loaded and waiting, we are inflating the smaller boats while Ranger Dave talks about the skunk problems down river. + +\ + +We're off by noon, a little over an hour after we arrived at the put in. This stretch of the Green River is calm, but moving fast enough that I don't need to paddle much to keep pace with the larger boats. After a half mile of open land, the river passes through the Gates and plunges into Lodore Canyon proper, carving its way through some 3000 vertical feet of dramatic red sandstone. + + + +This is the only real way to see Dinosaur National Monument. Part of what makes Dinosaur National Monument compelling is its remoteness. The nearest major city is over 100 miles away and once you get to the park there aren't many roads, nor even trails. To really see the park you've got to get down in the canyon and to see the canyons up close you must journey down the river. + +There are two major rivers running through Dinosaur National Monument, the Yampa, which carves through Yampa Canyon, and the Green, which cuts through Lodore. Numerous rafting companies run trips of varying lengths through both canyons, though if you want to do the Yampa you'll need to arrive early in the season[^1], by mid-July the dam-fed Green River is your only option in Dinosaur National Park. + +The first day is largely devoid of rapids, a few rough spots where the river tumbles over a garden of rocks, but it does nothing more than splash a little water into the boat. Near the end we run Disaster Falls, which is not nearly as bad as its name might imply. Of course if you're [John Wesley Powell][3] and you're running the Green River for the very first time, pre-dam, in 1869, in wooden boats, you might have a slightly different perspective. + +In fact, Powell portaged most of the rapids he encountered. There is simply no way through them in wooden boats (though honestly, hauling huge wooden boats through the canyon almost sounds worse). However, one of his boats did not see Disaster Falls approaching and went through it with, well, disastrous results. Like most of the names Powell bestowed on the river, Disaster Falls stuck. + +According to legend, after everyone from the smashed boat was safely ashore, the boatmen went back into the river to try to retrieve some of the lost equipment. Powell, thinking the were going to get his lost barometers encouraged them on, but the boatmen were after the barrel of whiskey, which they managed to find. Presumably the barometers are still there somewhere, buried under nearly 150 years of mud and silt. + +We reach our camp, Pot 1, just downstream from Disaster, by mid-afternoon and, after a quick lesson in using a groover[^2], we set up some horseshoes and whiled away the evening drinking beer and throwing horseshoes. Pot 1 and its downstream sibling, Pot 2, were also named by Powell who lost most of his pots and pans in the area. Powell was fearless (especially considering he only had one arm) and an incredible explorer, but he wasn't always creative with his names. So it goes. + +The second day we start off by having to prove we could right the inflatable kayaks under the watchful eyes of our guides. We all managed to do it, though it was in nice calm water. I have my doubts about how well I would have done in a real rapid -- like the ominous-sounding Hell's Half Mile which was waiting for us just a few miles downstream. + +Before we got to Hell's Half Mile, we had to make it through the much more benign-sounding Triplet. As the name implies there are three drops, but the real trick to Triplet is making a hard left turn away from the right bank at the end. The cut-away rocky alcove you're avoiding is like a yawning mouth waiting to suck you in and, most likely, pin you there. + +
+ +Triplet Rapid, Lodore Canyon, Colorado + +The lower portion of Triplet Rapid. + +
+ +
+ +Scouting Triplet Rapid, Lodore Canyon, Colorado + +Everything looks easy from the banks. + +
+ +All of us made it through Triplet without any issues. About a mile further downstream we stopped to scout Hell's Half Mile. It doesn't look like much from the shore, but few rapids do. Depending on the water level Hell's is somewhere between a class III and class IV rapid. Everything started off just fine, I was paddling with Jim, the other guide's father who was a very good kayaker and we made it through without issue. + +Greg, one of the three paying customers on our little trip did not fare as well. He went directly over a boulder known as Lucifer (possibly Powell was reading Dante when he ran the river, or he just loved fire and brimstone names). The drop wasn't really the problem though. It was the landing and the whirlpool in front of Lucifer that did Greg in. I missed the actual flip, by the time I turned around I just saw a helmet and a pair of sandals bobbing through the lower portion of Hell's. + +I don't have a waterproof camera, so I don't have any photos of Hell's Half Mile from the water, but I did find this video on YouTube. The water seems a bit higher than when we were there, but otherwise it's about the same: + +
+ +After the whitewater fun we did a few miles of flat water and came back round down into [Echo Park][4], where I had been a few days before. The view of Steamboat rock from the river is one of the more impressive mastiffs of sandstone I've seen. If you want something bigger you'll likely have to head all the way over to Zion. + +Steamboat Rock, Lodore Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument, ColoradoWe ate lunch on a sandbar at the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers and discovered why it's called Echo Park -- if you yell into Steamboat Rock at just the right spot your echo will reverberate back up both Lodore and Yampa Canyons creating a weird strobe echo effect that's unlike anything you've heard before. Natural reverb on steroids -- if Radiohead had known they'd have recorded an album here. + +While our guides were setting up lunch I waded across the Yampa and out into the confluence, which forms an almost perfect line in the water -- the muddy brown Yampa takes quite a while to fully merge with the much clearer Green River. The strangest thing is temperature difference between the two. Because the water in the Green is coming out of the bottom of a dam, it's much colder than the Yampa, like 10-20 degrees colder. Standing right in the middle of the two is bit like having one half of your body in the pool and the other half in a jacuzzi. + +Confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers, Lodore Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument, ColoradoThe river after the confluence was mainly flat. I rode on the lead raft for a while, just staring up at the canyon walls, watching the red rock shift to lighter sandstone as we went on. We made camp by four again and the paying customers set off on a short hike to what's known as Butt Plug Falls, because you can plug it up by sitting down in the narrow channel just above the falls (presumably Powell did not give it that name). + +I skipped the hike and spent the evening lazing around the river, swimming, and watching the evening light fade across the canyon walls. True to Ranger Dave's word, come nightfall we were defending our camp from several very aggressive skunks that seemed totally unconcerned about humans being around. One was half way in the trash bag when we noticed him and others had no problem marching up to the fire. Luckily none of them felt the need to spray anything. + +The final day we ran several rapids early -- Moonshine rapid and S.O.B. One of the paying customers got hung up on a rock for a few minutes, but otherwise we ran through them like we'd all been doing it for years. Then we slipped out of Lodore Canyon and into Island Park, a long, slow and rather hot stretch of flat water before you pass through Split Mountain. + +Split Mountain is one of the most unusual examples of geology I've ever seen -- the Green River actually splits a mountain in half, rather than going around it as rivers generally do. Split Mountain is one of those strange quirks of the planet, though there is actually a logical explanation. It's all the Grand Canyon's fault. + +Split Mountain, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado + +The flow of a river is largely determined by the terrain it crosses, but there are other factors, like the base level -- the elevation of the river's terminus. + +As the Grand Canyon formed, the terminal elevation for the entire Colorado River basin -- and consequently the Green River -- was lowered. The Green River was, once upon a time, running well over the top of Split Mountain. When the base level changed -- the elevation where the Green runs into the Colorado -- the Green simply cut down through what we call Split Mountain. + +The results are rather striking. + +Just on the far side of Split Mountain was the end of our river journey. We took out near the Dinosaur Quarry (currently closed) and headed back to Grand Junction. Or rather our boats did. I went with the customers back to Steamboat Springs and from there, on to Rocky Mountain National Park. + +Notes: You may have noticed I referred to paying customers a couple of times above. It's true, I was free loading. Rafting trips aren't cheap. Luckily for me, my friend Mike (who also dragged me to the [Okefenokee Swamp][2]) happens to work for Adventure Bound Rafting out of Grand Junction, Colorado. + +When I mentioned I'd be in the area, he insisted I come out on the river. I'm probably biased, but having seen a couple other commercial companies on the river, I wouldn't hesitate to say that [Adventure Bound runs the best whitewater rafting trips in Colorado][1]. I also, having now done a trip, and being aware of the costs, wouldn't hesitate to pay for another. + +[Note: this story is part of my quest to visit every National Park in the U.S. You can check out the rest on the National Parks Project page.] + +[1]: http://www.adventureboundusa.com/ + +[2]: http://luxagraf.net/2010/mar/13/so-far-i-have-not-found-science/ + +[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley_Powell + +[4]: http://luxagraf.net/2010/jul/28/dinosaur-national-monument-part-one-echo-park/ + +[^1]: The Yampa River is that last undammed major tributary in the Colorado River system. Because it isn't dammed, it's only runnable with big boats early in the year when the snowmelt is generating high enough water levels. Canoes and kayaks can do it year round (well, kayaks anyway, a canoe at high water might be a mistake), but if you want a guided trip you'll need to do it before mid-July. Water levels do vary each year, generally speaking the Yampa is runnable into mid-July. + +[^2]: The groover is so named because once upon a time it was simply an old ammo can and thus, left grooves in your legs when you sat on it. Technology has improved over the years, groovers now have toilet seats. Sort of. + diff --git a/jrnl/2011-01-18-charleston-a-z.txt b/jrnl/2011-01-18-charleston-a-z.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e3620b2 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2011-01-18-charleston-a-z.txt @@ -0,0 +1,76 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 32.7859576527261,-79.9366307147337 +location: Charleston,South Carolina,United States +image: 2011/charleston-h_1.jpg +desc: An alphabetical guide to Charleston, South Carolina. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Charleston alphabetically. For example, Q is for quiet, Charleston has a lot of it. Just head down to the Battery area, walk through the park and starting walking down the side streets. Take one of the many alleys and walkways that weave between the massive, stately houses. Get lost. It doesn't take much to find a quiet place of your own. +pub_date: 2011-01-18T15:29:00 +slug: charleston-a-z +title: Charleston A-Z +--- + +Aiken Rhett House, Charleston, SC + +* **A** is for the Aiken Rhett house, one of the few surviving antebellum houses in Charleston. It retains the kitchen, stables, furnishings and even wallpaper from the 1830s. It also retains quite a few misconceptions. Like the idea, repeated several times in the audio tour, that the house gives us a glimpse of "how the people of Charleston lived in the nineteenth century." Sort of the way future historians will proclaim Bill Gates' house to be a reminder of life in the twentieth century. + +* **B** is for Battery and White Point Park where a massive statue pays tribute to the racist slave owners who committed treason against the United States. Or, maybe I misread the sign. + +* **C** is for the Circular Congregational Church graveyard, which has some of the oldest graves in Charleston, many of them adorned with winged skulls (see below). I mean come on, this is luxagraf, of course I went to the graveyard. Circular Congregational Church graveyard, Charleston, SC + +* **D** is for Doh! Imagine you wanted to steal a sailboat. You creep around the docks at night looking for open cabins. You find one. Score. You sail out of Charleston harbor headed south. The only problem is you just stole one of the most recognizable sailboats in the northern hemisphere. Doh. Here's [the story of the initial heist][1]. Alas Charleston's local paper doesn't understand URLs and so the story of the [the recovery][2] and [arrests][3] have disappeared (dead links left as a reminder of how fragile the web is). + +[1]: http://www.thehulltruth.com/boating-forum/5981-57-foot-sailing-yacht-stolen-charleston.html + +[2]: http://archives.postandcourier.com/archive/arch04/0104/arc01301561276.shtml + +[3]: http://archives.postandcourier.com/archive/arch04/0404/arc04301708081.shtml + +* **E** is for expensive. Charleston is. And yet, from what I've ever been able to tell, there is no real economy here, so where does the money come from? Is everyone here either a lawyer or old money? Still can't figure it out. What do you people *do* all day? + +* **F** is for Fast and French, a kind of French lunch-counter style restaurant that could have been pulled straight out of a Godard film. In fact, the only thing missing was Anna Karina[^1]. Not, in my experience, fast, but definitely as French as I've seen outside of Paris. Awesome homemade pate. I also love that it's called Fast and French because apparently no one in Charleston can pronounce the actual name -- Gaulart & Maliclet. + +* **G** is for the ghetto, where my wife used to live, brass knuckles in her dresser drawer. Do not go to Columbus Street. + +* **H** is for is for the Club Habana cigar bar, which looks like a set from Mad Men -- dark wood paneling, smoke-soaked leather chairs and sofas, dim lighting that creates plenty of dark corners and the best Scotch selection in Charleston. + +* **I** is for indulgent. Like say, eating four dozen oysters in a single setting. Yes. We did. And it was awesome. + +* **J** is for just didn't make it. Again. I've been to Charleston five times now and I've still never made the trip out to Fort Sumter. One day. + +* **K** is for King Street. Sure, half of it is full of Apple Stores, Banana Republics and the like, but further down it still manages to retain some, if slightly gentrified, charm. And you can pick up a seersucker suit so you too can look like an idiot. + +* **L** is for the Library Society, one of the oldest libraries on the country. Created in 1748, the [Charleston Library Society][5] paved the way for the founding of the College of Charleston in 1770 and provided the core collection of natural history artifacts for the first museum in America -- the Charleston Museum, founded in 1773. + +[5]: http://www.charlestonlibrarysociety.org/ + +* **M** is for mansions, Charleston has a lot of them. Ridiculous, huge mansions that could house multiple families (and did back in the dark days of slavery). + +* **N** is for nap. Naps are good when you're traveling. They remind you that you don't *have* to do anything. Take one. + +* **O** is for Oyster Bar, specifically Pearlz, which, despite drawing a high percentage of tourists, has the best oysters in town. And the oyster-buyer knew his stuff. When I asked him if he had read The Big Oyster he responded, without a second's hesitation, "history on the half shell." + +* **P** is for People Wearing Fur. For some reason there were a lot of them in Charleston. Including a man wearing a fluffy fur shawl that looked like an ermine had stuck its paw in a light socket and wrapped itself around his neck. Awful, but not terribly surprising for a place that gave us the seersucker and other insults to fashion. + +* Quiet Streets, Charleston, SC**Q** is for quiet, Charleston has a lot of it. Just head down to the Battery area, walk through the park and starting walking down the side streets. Take one of the many alleys and walkways that weave between the massive, stately houses. Get lost. It doesn't take much to find a quiet place of your own. + +* **R** is for restoration, let's have less of it. The Aiken Rhett house was by far the coolest old building I've seen in the south simply because it has not been restored. It's been shored up here and there, but for the most part the decay of it is the appeal of it. The peeling wallpaper, the threadbare furniture, the dusty paintings, the rotting timbers. The termites. The worms. The wood fungi. Decay always wins in the end. + +* **S** is for seersucker suit. Didn't see any this time; thank god for cold weather. + +* **T** is for highway 26, the craziest road I've driven in the U.S. People drive the 26 fast, stupid fast and the minute you move into the slow lane you're stuck there forever. It's insane. + +* **U** is for the Unitarian Church Garden, a beautiful, but little-visited cemetery/garden that's overgrown with wildflowers, trees and vines. It's also reportedly haunted by Annabel Lee, purportedly the the subject of Edgar Allen Poe's poem of the same name. + +* **V** is for very cold, something I don't normally associate with Charleston, but there was snow on the ground all the way into South Carolina. Not quite to Charleston, but pretty close. + +* **W** is for the winged skulls, which adorn many of the oldest gravestones in the Circular Church graveyard. The skulls, which symbolize the soul's ascension into heaven, recall a time when death was somehow more familiar, less threatening perhaps -- look mum, skulls with wings Circular Congregational Church graveyard, Charleston, SC. + +* **X** is for xylophone. Because there aren't many words that start with x. Every plan has a flaw. + +* **Y** is for Yacht. I want one. Some of the nicest boats I've ever seen are in the Charleston harbor. If you have any interest in boats, it's worth walking around the docks for a bit. Who knows, you might even be able to hitch a ride out of Charleston harbor if you know what you're doing. Just don't steal anything. + +* **Z** is for zero, the number of times I have been to the Bubba Shrimp Company restaurant. Fuck you Hollywood. + +[^1]: Technically Anna Karina was Danish, but I always think of her as French since she mainly appeared in French films. + diff --git a/jrnl/2011-01-26-world-outside.txt b/jrnl/2011-01-26-world-outside.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..df906ea --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2011-01-26-world-outside.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.96016249314553,-83.4028816107045 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2011/snowh.jpg +desc: The world outside is the same as it was last night, before the snow began, and yet, it feels totally different. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: The world outside the house is blanketed in snow, a monochrome of white interrupted only by the dark, wet trunks of trees, the red brick of chimneys, the occasional green of shrubs poking through. The roads are unbroken expanses of smooth white, no one is out yet, no footprints track their way through the snowy sidewalk. The world outside is the same as it was last night, before the snow began, and yet, it feels totally different. +pub_date: 2011-01-26T11:56:00 +slug: world-outside +title: The World Outside +--- + +The world outside the house is blanketed in snow, a monochrome of white interrupted only by the dark, wet trunks of trees, the red brick of chimneys, the occasional green of shrubs poking through. The roads are unbroken expanses of smooth white, no one is out yet, no footprints track their way through the snowy sidewalk. + +Snow, Athens, GAThe world outside is the same as it was last night, before the snow began, and yet, it feels totally different. Extraordinary. As if the whole town of Athens, all of us, our streets, our buildings, our lives had be transported elsewhere, as if we were all on some great holiday in another part of the world. + +Even in places where snow is routine, where snow turns black from cars, piles in shopping centers and chokes street corners all winter long, there is something special about that first day of snow -- a reminder that the world is transmutable. + +When the world transforms around us we transform ourselves. I could, on any given morning get up and walk through the neighborhood, down to the main street and get a cup of coffee at one of several coffee shops. I don't. But throw a little snow on the world -- a little novelty -- and suddenly it seems natural to break your habits, do something new. + +Snow, Athens, GAThe snow crunches under our feet, a rim of ice has already formed on the top, a thin sheen of water that makes everything look like a frosted cake. Halfway to the coffee shop we noticed others. Groups of people approaching from every nearby neighborhood, some carrying sleds or trash can lids, some with dogs and children in tow. Everything is different and new, everyone wants a part of it. + +The snow was on the ground for a week, longer in the shady slopes and shadow of the trees. Several nights later we were at a friend's birthday party, standing outside in the snow, gathered around a fire for warmth. Even at night, even when it's well below freezing, novelty draws you out. Cold is a small price for a new world. + diff --git a/jrnl/2011-03-28-we-used-wait-it.txt b/jrnl/2011-03-28-we-used-wait-it.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1ee5b2c --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2011-03-28-we-used-wait-it.txt @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 34.04477171337467,-118.25204621066614 +location: Los Angeles,California,United States +image: 2011/losangeles11h.jpg +desc: Architecture has become all about the bottom line, but the bottom line is not a firm foundation on which to build. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: When we first came here, there was nothing. Downtown Los Angeles was an empty husk of a place fifteen years ago. Now it's reborn, alive and kicking. Yet there is something in the older buildings, something in the old walls, something lost in the bricks, something in the concrete, the marble. Something you don’t find anymore. Something we need to find again. +pub_date: 2011-03-28T21:50:00 +slug: we-used-wait-it +title: We Used to Wait For It +--- + +T*his building was originally part of the financial district*, Bill gestures around the room. *It was a bank or maybe some sort of trading company, the old Los Angeles stock exchange building is just down the street. Then in the fifties or so it became part of the garment district, then it was pretty much abandoned.* + +That's when we first came here, when there was nothing. When downtown Los Angeles was an empty husk of a place, fifteen years ago. + +Bill takes a sip of beer. We stare out the window at the wall opposite his loft, enormous levered windows are folded open, a damp breeze that smells of city and ocean, of age, of death and rebirth and more death, moves through the room. + +There is something old in the walls here, something lost in the bricks, something in the concrete, the marble. Something you don't find anymore. Something of the hard-boiled film world popularized by Sam Spade still lingers here. The streets nine floors below still look like lost set pieces from *The Maltese Falcon*. + +Eastern Columbia building, Downtown LAThe next day we walk around downtown. Bill is an encyclopedia of architectural history in downtown. I don't know where he learned it, but it's obvious he didn't just read it in a book, he absorbed it the way you do when you love something, when you care enough about something to dig deep into it. + +It depresses me, this glimpse of what once was. It makes me afraid of where we are, where we are going. Our path does not feel right. There is something here that we lost, something that we ignored, but should not have. *It's like we just don't care about our buildings anymore*. + +The Eastern Columbia building glistens, a monolithic temple of Art Deco, aquamarine spines reaching for the sky. Love it or hate it, it screams *someone cared*. Even something as simple as the facade of the old Wurlitzer piano building is a work of art, meticulously detailed plaster sculptures covering the columns -- lions mouths, lyre crests and harps -- creating a miniature world of the imagination tattooed in concrete. The theatre marquees still hold long lost fonts and synchronized flash bulbs ready to draw in the crowds, except that there are no shows, nothing save a sign that reads We Buy Gold. Compramos Oro. + +I don't know anything about architecture, the history of architecture or where architecture is today. But I, like you, can tell when someone cares and when someone is just looking to compramos oro. + +Old Wurlitzer building, Downtown LAEverything around us seems created for the sole purpose of showcasing what was possible. There is no reason to add the details in the concrete facades, save to show off, to say not just, I made this, but I made this beautiful. Not profitable. Beautiful. + +Bill used to work as a project manager for large, modern construction projects in the area. His employers bought gold. Tore it down and sold it for more gold. Bill doesn't work for them anymore. They went out of business. Compramos Oro. So it goes. + +He doesn't respond to my sweeping generalization about modern buildings right away. We stand in the sidewalk, stare the Wurlitzer building in silence for a while. *No. All the projects I've worked on started out with the attention to detail that you see in these buildings, but it was all cut out, too expensive, wasteful. A beautiful facade doesn't make the building worth any more to the companies that build it.* + +Detail, Eastern Columbia building, Downtown LAThat's when I realized that the problem is not simply that we have come to value money above all else, but that we have removed ourselves from the equation. Compramos oro all you want. Pero recuerde que el mundo quiere la belleza. + +The problem is not the money that's being made or not made, but that our buildings are created by companies. We are not men. We are not women. We are not Devo. We are no longer personal, we are no longer connected. + +We are companies. Companies are shells created to protect us, to help us. But there is always a cost. Companies have become little more than shells that funnel money from one shell to another, like the street hustler with seashells atop his cardboard box. We build boxes to shuffle money between shells. + +Yet it makes no sense to pine for the past. There is no retracing of steps. Build something Art Deco today and it will feel cheap, tawdry, sentimental. There is nothing to be gained in sentimentality. Wallace Stevens was right, sentimentality is a failure of feeling. It's not sentimental nostalgia you feel on the streets of downtown Los Angeles. It's loss. + +We do not pine for a return to the past, we pine for a reality that has the vitality of what we can see in the past. What has failed us is the reality we have created. It feels devoid of imagination. Reality and imagination, Steven once wrote, are not opposed. They are the same thing. Imagination "has the strength of reality or none at all." None at all. + +That's what hurts when you look at the modern buildings down here, not that they are not as beautiful as what came before, but that you can feel the loss of beauty, stripped away day by day, year after year until all that remained was the company's bottom line. The bottom line is not a firm foundation on which to build. We have created a reality where beauty and pride in one's work have been wrenched away and replaced with mere shells shuffled atop the cardboard remains of our imagination. + diff --git a/jrnl/2011-05-29-from-here-we-go-sublime.txt b/jrnl/2011-05-29-from-here-we-go-sublime.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f53f564 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2011-05-29-from-here-we-go-sublime.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 48.861291192122714,2.3879055928465687 +location: Paris,Ile-de-France,France +image: 2011/iceland.jpg +desc: It's a mad world. Just arrived Dulles-Reykjavik-Paris, 26-hour trip, no sleep. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Just arrived Dulles-Reykjavik-Paris, 26-hour trip, no sleep. I see things. I see a grizzly looking Spaniard selling old railway lanterns at the flea market, I see muslim men playing basketball in skull caps, I see a Michael Faraday experiment with bulbs and wires enclosed in glass that turns out to be just an elevator. I see a stout Frenchwoman closing the gates of Pere Lachaise, no more dead, we've had enough of you. +pub_date: 2011-05-29T02:35:00 +slug: from-here-we-go-sublime +title: From Here We Go Sublime +--- + +Just arrived Dullles-Reykjavik-Paris, just arrived, 26-hour trip, no sleep. I see things. I see a grizzly looking Spaniard selling old railway lanterns at the flea market, I see muslim men playing basketball in skull caps, I see a Michael Faraday experiment with glowing orange bulbs and copper wires enclosed in glass that turns out to be just an elevator. I see a stout Frenchwoman closing the gates of Pere Lachaise, no more dead, we've had enough of you. + +I see the cars on boulevard de Ménilmontant, I see the people at the cafes, from the cafes, have a seat, have a beer, have a moment to think, we could have this moment whenever we stop caring, giving a little bit less of shit about the abstract, a little bit more about the actual. Trade your paper tickets for food and know that you came out ahead, know that that the food is the point. + + + +I smell fresh bread, the warm fecund of cheese, the acrid smell of cigarette smoke on the street. I hear the whine of mopeds, distinct and distant from the rushing wind of passing cars, or the roar of buses blasting by this park bench. + +I feel the subway rumble the bench beneath me, I feel the tremble of the aircraft in pockets of turbulence, the tremor of the wing jolts you out of sleep. I feel the flutter of pigeon wings looking for a roost. I feel the present, I feel the past, I don't feel the future. I feel better. + +[1]: http://luxagraf.net/2005/oct/24/living-railway-car/ + diff --git a/jrnl/2011-06-04-language-cities.txt b/jrnl/2011-06-04-language-cities.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c8a8cb9 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2011-06-04-language-cities.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +--- +template: single-dark +point: 48.85846248575372,2.3375712584730377 +location: Paris,Ile-de-France,France +image: 2011/stchappelle.jpg +desc: Paris is angry. That happens sometimes. Cities get angry at you. Right now, Paris wants me out. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Paris is angry. Cities can get angry. This isn't the first time it's happened to me. New York threw me out once. Los Angeles and I left on mutually hostile terms, though we've since made up. Cities have personalities just like people, and to really be part of a city your personalities have to mesh, you have to find each other on your own terms everyday. +pub_date: 2011-06-04T00:05:00 +slug: language-cities +title: The Language of Cities +--- + +Paris wants me out. It knows I didn't come here for it, I came here to see some friends, none of them even from Paris, and to show my wife a world I knew before we were married. I never came for Paris itself and the city knows it. And it's angry. + +Cities can get angry at you. This isn't the first time it's happened to me. New York threw me out once. Los Angeles and I left on mutually hostile terms, though we've since made up. Cities have personalities just like people, and to really be part of a city your personalities have to mesh, you have to find each other on your own terms everyday[^1]. + +Paris is jealous and possessive, wants you all to itself. This time around I set out to see all the things I had seen before, [St. Chapelle][1], my favorite cafes in the Marais, the Louvre, Pere Lachaise. There was very little new ground broken. Which is not to say [you can't go back again][2]. You can if you do it right, so long as you realize that while a place may be familiar, it is always something new. Sometimes it's even just like the last time, but the danger is that your agenda gets in the way of what the place is trying to say. What you hear today is not what you heard yesterday, not what you might hear tomorrow. When you repeat too much you fail to give more of yourself, you're asking the city to perform for you like a trained seal. + +Stained glass, St. Chapelle, Paris, France + +When you fail to give them everything, cities bite back. In Paris it started with stomach sickness, a day alternating between the bed and toilet. Then it moved on to headaches, but it wasn't until a cop kicked us off the Pont Des Arts bridge for drinking beer that I realized the problem wasn't me, it was that the city was unhappy with me. + +Sure there are probably causal explanations for the runs, something I ate perhaps, or the headaches -- allergies, a stiff mattress -- but if you think causality explains the sum total of the world, your life will never be very interesting. + +For me the truth is this: I went to Paris with my own agenda -- repeat what I had loved about it six years ago -- and that's just a recipe for personal disaster. Even though Paris did deliver everything I asked of it, it exacted a price on me. My most memorable moments of this visit will be the shower stall opposite the toilet in our (very lovely by the way) apartment, which I spent far too much time staring at. + +That's not how you want to travel the world. What you want is irrelevant to the world. You ask for greatest hits and the world will give you toilets to hug. Ask nothing and it will give you everything. Paris wanted me and my agenda disrupted, brought around to the larger agenda, the world's agenda. + +Unfortunately it took until nearly the last minute before I realized this essential truth. But the minute the plane to Rome tucked its landing gear into the fuselage I started to feel better. Too little, too late. Next time Paris, next time, I will remember what you have taught me. + +[1]: http://luxagraf.net/2005/oct/28/sainte-chapelle/ + +[2]: http://luxagraf.net/2008/jun/30/you-cant-go-home-again/ + +[^1]: If you've never seen The Cruise, go rent/netflix it. Tim Levich, odd though he made seem on film, knows about these things. + diff --git a/jrnl/2011-06-06-new-pollution.txt b/jrnl/2011-06-06-new-pollution.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9b9901b --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2011-06-06-new-pollution.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 40.84484016249223,14.255757801685794 +location: Napoli (Naples),Campania,Italy +image: 2011/naplesh.jpg +desc: Naples Italy is a place worth appreciating for what it is not, even if what is isn’t, perhaps, enough to ever bring you back. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Naples Italy is a big, crowded, graffiti-filled city. It's an intimidating place that is by turns a bit like Philadelphia, a bit Mumbai, a bit some post-apocalyptic video game and, in the end, something else entirely. Still, given the tourist epidemic that sweeps Italy every summer, Naples is a place worth appreciating for what it is not, even if what is isn't, perhaps, enough to ever bring you back. +pub_date: 2011-06-06T08:17:00 +slug: new-pollution +title: The New Pollution +--- + +Naples is a big, crowded, graffiti-filled city. It's an intimidating place that is by turns a bit like Philadelphia, a bit Mumbai, a bit some post-apocalyptic video game and, in the end, something else entirely. + +The rest of the world abandoned Naples long ago, left it to find its own way, fumbling through some darkness of its own making toward a light it can't yet see. + +The old Centro Storico area is a maze of narrow stone streets swarming with scooters dodging shoppers at the morning markets where fresh fruit and dried pasta hang alongside lanterns and trinkets, fishmongers crowd the sidewalks and the smell of pastries and coffee choke the air. + +Street, Naples, Italy + +The sun rarely makes it down through the five and six story facades to the streets below. The shadowy world of dark granite streets gives the impression that you're strolling through canyons of carefully cut stone blocks and marble doorways. There are no trees down here, hardly any plants at all. Higher up,, on the second and third stories, a few ferns, some moss and grasses grow on the balconies of abandoned buildings. + +Street, Naples, ItalyEven if there were light, there's no room for trees. There's hardly any room to move, save when a street opens up into a piazza, where in the evening crowds gather to drink beer or wine, or perhaps to eat in the restaurants that line the edges of the larger squares. + +Naples is it's own world. I sit outside the hotel watching as people on a balcony down the street lower a bucket down from the fifth story with a few euro inside. The man at the nearby tabac runs over, retrieves the euro and throws a pack of cigarettes inside. The bucket retreats back up into the heights of the buildings, disappearing into a tiny sliver of night sky. Naples, the city time forgot. + +Naples is not tourist friendly, it's not even pretty. It's just a city. Most of it is covered in graffiti, and, thanks to strikes and general city mismanagement (read: mob control), garbage. Or at least the city proper is, the old town area is largely trash-free, if only because the streets are so narrow there's simply no room for any trash. The graffiti though is universal, perhaps the one thing that links the old town and the newer portions together. + +graffiti on the street, Naples, Italy + +Pompeii, just thirty minutes away and 2600 years older, was also once covered in ancient Roman graffiti. It's just how they do things here apparently, it's in the blood, in the soil, in the wind. Speak your mind with spray cans -- or whatever might be the tool of the era -- out in the open, for everyone to see. + +The main reason any tourist, myself included, comes to Naples is its proximity to Pompeii. Beyond the quick and cheap train out to Pompeii, Naples doesn't have a lot to offer. That's part of it's appeal. Perhaps best appreciated in hindsight, but appeal nonetheless. Still, given the tourist epidemic that sweeps Italy every summer, Naples is a place worth appreciating for what it is not, even if what is isn't, perhaps, enough to ever bring you back. + diff --git a/jrnl/2011-06-07-forever-today.txt b/jrnl/2011-06-07-forever-today.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..422c36b --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2011-06-07-forever-today.txt @@ -0,0 +1,60 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 40.75211491821789,14.480285518306573 +location: Pompeii,Campania,Italy +image: 2011/pompeiih.jpg +desc: Pompeii feels both very old and timelessly human, not that different from the modern cities that surround it now. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Pompeii feels both very old and not that different from the modern cities that surround it now. The gap between then and now feels small because when you wander around places like Pompeii you realize that human beings have changed very little over vast expanses of time. Pompeii had the same elements of cities today, a central square, markets, temples, government offices, even fast food. Not much has changed over the years, though togas aren’t much in vogue these days. +pub_date: 2011-06-07T17:50:00 +slug: forever-today +title: Forever Today +--- + +There is something utterly amazing about walking down streets that are millennia old. Your feet are stepping on the same stones that someone more or less just like you stepped on thousands of years earlier, hurrying to work, or out for an evening stroll, perhaps stopping into some restaurant, some shop, some market, some temple. + +I've been fortunate enough to wander such streets in several places, [Angkor Wat][1] in Cambodia, Teotihuacán in Mexico City and now Pompeii here in Italy. What's remarkable about the experience is not the age, but the gap between then and now, which feels simultaneously immense and yet very small at the same time. + +It feels small because when you wander around places like Pompeii you realize that human beings have changed very little over what seems like, to us anyway, vast expanses of time. Pompeii had the same elements of cities today, a central square, markets, temples, government offices, even fast food. Not much has changed over the years, though togas aren't much in vogue these days. + +
+ +Fast food restaurant cric 79 AD, Pompeii, Italy + +Fast food, Pompeii style. + +
+ +At the same time you can't help but notice the chariot ruts in the stones, the smooth polish of well-worn streets that obviously saw centuries of use even before they were buried. + +Chariot ruts. That was a long time ago. So close, and yet so very far away. + +There are two remarkable things about Pompeii that make it different from the crumbling ruins of other civilizations I've been to. The first is that Pompeii was not some religious site, not a sacred place at all. It was just a town. Something of a resort town, but still a commercial center. People made and sold wine and garum. Government offices kept track of grain and fish and people frequented fast food joints and brothels. In a word, Pompeii was ordinary, and when it comes to archeological sites open to the public, that's unusual. + +The other reason Pompeii is different is of course that it was preserved by the very thing that destroyed it. Pompeii lay buried under ash for nearly 2000 years, preserved just as it was on the morning of August 24, 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius erupted. + +The vast majority of the some 20,000 people that once lived in the city were able to escape the blast. Around 2,000 people, for whatever reason, did not run away and were killed by poisonous gases from the eruption. When the ash descended it buried them where they lay, under twenty five feet of debris. + +plaster body cast, Pompeii, ItalyThanks to an ingenious idea by an Italian archaeologist in the mid 19th century, their final poses have been preserved in plaster. When the bodies at Pompeii were buried they decayed, eventually turning to mostly dust, as all of us will, but that left empty spaces in the hardening ash. Archaeologists found those empty spaces, poured in plaster, let it set, and then excavated around it -- a perfect mold of the dead body. + +The creepy thing about the plaster casts is how perfectly they capture the expressions of terror, horror, and sometimes, what looks like resignation, on people's faces. It's yet another bizarre way that Pompeii manages to both bridge time and remind you how vast that bridge between then and now really is. The casts are people, nearly 2000 year old people, but they could easily have been formed in some disaster today. + +Sadly, the perfectly perserved version of Pompeii that archeologists found in 1748 has been in steady decline ever since. The minute they began excavating it, Pompeii began to fall victim to the forces of time that it had so neatly avoided under all that ash. Weathering, erosion, light exposure, water damage, poor methods of excavation and reconstruction and introduced plants and animals have all taken their toll, to say nothing of tourism, vandalism and theft. + +Italy being Italy, Pompeii is in a steady state of decline. Just last year an entire house -- admittedly, not one open to the public -- collapsed thanks to water seeping under it. + +That's why, at this point, Pompeii is largely just walls, stone roads and a handful of marble structures. The frescos, statues and even most of the plaster death molds have long since been carted off to the archeological museum in Naples where you can see elaborate mosaics and the ever-popular "Gabinetto Segreto", otherwise known as the erotic art of Pompeii. + +plaster body cast, Pompeii, ItalySome of the erotic frescos and sculptures were pulled out of the brothels, while others were in private homes and baths. To say the ancient Romans were a sex-obsessed bunch would be to, as most guides at Pompeii seem to do, apply current sexual mores to ancient times. There were brothels in Pompeii, that much is indisputable. But beyond that, to suggest, as many guides I overheard did, that the more (currently) taboo frescos of gay and lesbian sex (or the sculpture of a man having sex with a goat) were jokes intended to make brothel patrons chuckle, seems a stretch -- pure conjecture really. Who knows what they were for? + +It's all guess work at this point. Even if you turn to writing from the time, well now you have one more opinion, one author's take on the times, but still no real sense of what the culture thought. It is a long way from here to there, there's just no getting around that. + +Yet, maybe it isn't. Beliefs change, morals change, but people, they seem to stay basically the same. Suppose [Charleston][2] or even New York were buried under ash tomorrow, left as they are today for an eternity. Would people 2000 years from now accurately reconstruct our way of life? + +They might get the gist of it -- we lived in buildings, we had other buildings for worshiping gods and still others for buying kebabs, but they would miss the finer points. Yet, even without the subtleties they would know one thing for sure: these were people, human beings, and they lived more or less like us. + +Whether you drive chariots or scooters doesn't matter, something is always marking our passing, something is always making ruts in the road. And sometimes that's all you need to know. + +[1]: http://luxagraf.net/2006/mar/21/angkor-wat/ + +[2]: http://luxagraf.net/2011/jan/18/charleston-a-z/ + diff --git a/jrnl/2011-06-10-natural-science.txt b/jrnl/2011-06-10-natural-science.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5e46efd --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2011-06-10-natural-science.txt @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +The America family road trip -- immortalized so well by [Chevy Chase](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHThGmVfE3A) -- a pretty miserable experience in my view. Pack the kids in the car to drive all day and half the night to Disney World? No thanks. + +Driving long distances is pretty awful. Our rule in the bus has always been no more than 200 miles a day. There are plenty of days when we don't even hit triple digit mileage. When you do this full time there's no reason to hurry anywhere. The only time we've ever hurried anywhere was because we were meeting someone. + +One reason we didn't immediately head west out of Texas for spots more to our liking was that we knew we'd be heading east to Georgia at the end of summer. Corrinne's parents came up from Mexico for a couple weeks and we wanted to see them. We knew we were going to drive and less driving the better. + +Visiting family and friends in Athens sounded like a whole lot more fun than Wally World or Disney World or any other fake world. We're awfully fond of the world we have, so why not try a good old fashioned road trip to Athens, GA? + +We left the bus in Texas, but there was still no way we were going to drive 12 hours straight through. Jackson Mississippi is roughly the halfway point, so we set about finding something fun to do in Jackson. Something better than [wrecking our health or making a big fool of ourselves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGhCsznO0S8). + +Corrine discovered that the natural history museum was hosting a dinosaur exhibit complete with huge animatronic dinosaurs. Sold. We set out early Saturday morning and made Jackson by afternoon. The dinosaurs were a hit and the crowds weren't too bad considering it was a weekend. + + + + +The rest of the museum wasn't quite a nice as the traveling exhibit. It had a semi-broken down feeling to it and many of the stuffed specimens were old and ratty, but not really in a charming or understandable way like [La Specula](/jrnl/2011/06/natural-science) in Italy. + + + + +When it doubt, more dinosaurs. + + + + +After we'd had our fill of animatronic dinosaurs we had a mediocre dinner and crashed out in a hotel room. + +You might think, after years on the road, that we'd be super-organized, super-efficient packers, but no, we're not. It's pretty much a chaotic sprawl of bags, clothes, and toys. + + + +The next day we drove the rest of the way into Athens. Overall not to bad. Are we there yet did not reach cliche road trip fever pitch and no one got too grumpy. + +Our AirBnB in Athens was a strange place. We found and unplugged 15 air fresheners. No joke. Who lives that way? I suspect that many air fresheners put out enough petro chemicals to shorten your life by a measurable amount. Even without them, the place still smelled like someone was trying to cover up something awful. + +At least the view across the street was good, some neighbor had a 1970ish Crown school bus at least partly converted to an RV. If we ever do the school bus conversion thing, the 60s and 70s Crown school buses would be high on my list. The mid-body diesel engine is awkward though, eats up all the room for your tanks. Not that I've put a lot of thought into this or anything. + + + +I first came to Athens in 1999, moved here on a whim. I've never really felt at home anywhere except the wilderness, but Athens is probably as close as I come to having a home town at this point. Whatever the case, it's always fun to come back for a visit. We wandered around, went to some of our old haunts, took the kids places they claim not to remember, ate some good food, even managed to put together a huge cousins sleepover party. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +Around the time we were getting ready to head back, an opportunity to stay presented itself. Well, not stay in Athens, but hang around the area for a few months. After thinking it over for about five minutes, we said sure, why not? The next day I got in the rental car, drove it back to Texas and returned it, grabbed our stuff out of the bus, threw it in the Volvo, said goodbye to the bus and headed back to Athens. diff --git a/jrnl/2011-06-14-cooking-rome.txt b/jrnl/2011-06-14-cooking-rome.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d3cef4b --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2011-06-14-cooking-rome.txt @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 41.865455693141165,12.461011283881284 +location: Rome,Lazio,Italy +image: 2011/rome-h.jpg +desc: Italy has some of the best produce and meat in the world. This is what food is supposed to be, simple, fresh and great. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: In the end Italy and I didn't really get along, but the food redeemed it for me. The restaurants are good, but if you really want to experience the glory of Italian food you need to head to the market, grab some utterly amazing raw ingredients and whip up something yourself. This is what food is supposed to be, simple, fresh and great. +pub_date: 2011-06-14T17:18:00 +slug: cooking-rome +title: Cooking in Rome +--- + +Rome exists on a scope that I've never encountered before in a city. It's big and massively spread out. There's really no downtown and everything you might want to see is miles from wherever you are. And it has all the attendant traffic, noise and confusion of humanity you would expect from a big city. It also spans several millennia of history with ancient Roman ruins butted up against Gucci and Armani stores. + +I'm pretty sure Rome is a great city. I'm pretty sure you could have an awesome time exploring Rome, but by the time I got there I was already done with Italy. Done with Europe. I was ready for the beaches of Bali, our next stop on this quick jaunt around the world. + +My exploratory motivation was low by the time I got to Rome. We went to the Colosseum and marveled for a moment before an ATM machine ate my card on a Sunday afternoon[1]. We didn't quite have the money to get in and even if we did there was no way we were going to wait in the line that wrapped nearly all the way around the Colosseum. Ancient sites are pretty amazing in my opinion, but that amazingness diminishes considerably when the line to get in is five hours long. If I'm going to wait in a five hour line (and I'm not, ever, but if I were) I want a new iPad at the end of the experience. + +Colosseum, Rome,s Italy + +When you're burned out on traveling the best thing to do is nothing. Which is what we did for three days. We explored a little, wandered the Trastevere area, ate some cacio e pepe (simple noodles with a sauce of pecorino and black pepper), a bit of pizza and even made it out to the Pantheon, which was an utterly disgusting experience. I know the Catholic Church is pretty much like the Borg in Star Trek, absorbing and destroying everything in its path, but to turn a place whose name literally translates as "many gods" into a catholic church is the sort of bullshit that just makes me despair about the future of humanity. + +Self portrait of cynicism, Pantheon Rome, Italy + +So instead of really getting into the sights of Rome we got into the food. Not the kind you get in restaurants, but the kind you find at the local market. Every afternoon we walked half a block down the street from our apartment to a small produce stand. It wasn't even a nice produce market, just an ordinary produce stand in a residential neighborhood with a mediocre selection. And it was the best damn produce I've ever purchased. + +Each afternoon we bought nearly 2 kilos worth of zucchini, eggplant, lemon and greens. For under 2 euro. At the worst exchange rates that's about $2.80 for 4 pounds of produce. You can hardly buy a dozen bananas for that price in the U.S. + +The only spices at the apartment where we stayed were salt and pepper. There was also some ordinary, cheap olive oil, which happens to be ten times better than the most expensive olive oil I've seen in the United States. But you don't need extensive spices and fancy oils when the ingredients you start with are high quality. I sauteed everything in a generous splash of olive oil with a bit of salt and pepper and it was the best zucchini, eggplant and beef I've ever made, or had for that matter. + +zuchinni, eggplant, greens, Rome, Italy + +And I'm far from a great cook. I learned a few things working under talented cooks like Hugh Acheson and Chuck Ramsey, but even if you barely know how to scramble eggs, you could make the same thing I made in Rome. Good ingredients are all you really need, and the raw cooking materials of Italy are the best I've seen in all my travels. + +In the end Italy and I didn't really get along, but the food redeemed it for me. The restaurants are good, but if you really want to experience the glory of Italian food you need to head to the market, grab some utterly amazing raw ingredients and whip up something yourself. This is what food is supposed to be, simple, fresh and great. + +Now hold my calls, I'm off to lie in a hammock somewhere in Indonesia. + +
    + +
  1. + +

    1. I know I know. Terrible. Never use your ATM card after hours. The lesson here is that even if you spend years wandering the globe, you're still, at the end of the day, an idiot. Luckily I got it back the next day without too much hassle.↩

    + +
    2. + +
+ diff --git a/jrnl/2011-06-16-motor-city-burning.txt b/jrnl/2011-06-16-motor-city-burning.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..59a1214 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2011-06-16-motor-city-burning.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +--- +template: single +point: -8.512942106321157,115.26119323594054 +location: Ubud, Bali,Bali,Indonesia +image: 2011/ricepaddies-h.jpg +desc: Awesome as it was to be back on a motorbike, riding Bali wasn't quite as relaxing as I what did in Laos and elsewhere. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: Awesome as it was to be back on the Asian version of a motorbike, it wasn't quite the relaxing riding I did in Laos and elsewhere. You can never recapture the magic, and I wasn't trying.... Okay, maybe I was, but it didn't work. regrettably Honda seems to have phased out the Dream in the last five years, replacing it with something called the Nitro, which just doesn't have the same ring to it. But the bike is irrelevant, was always irrelevant. I missed my friends. It just wasn't the same by myself. Debi, Matt, where are you? There are roads to be ridden, locals with ten people on a bike to be humbled by. Six fingered men to be seen, by some. +pub_date: 2011-06-16T20:05:00 +slug: motor-city-burning +title: Motor City is Burning +--- + +I’ve been out all afternoon on a motorbike. Now I'm sitting on a marble balcony, sipping lukewarm beer, listening to the gregarious chatter of various European languages, all of which could only mean one thing -- I've finally made it back to Southeast Asia. + +It was a 36-hour plane flight to get from Rome to here. Or rather a 36-hour series of plane flights and layovers, including considerable time spent in the lovely Qatar airport, all of which meant that, thanks to the wonder of layovers and planetary rotation, we got to see the sun rise and set twice in one day. It'll do a number to your head, that. + +We arrived in Bali in a jet-lagged daze and promptly hired a cab for Ubud the so-called cultural center of Bali, halfway up into the hills that fall away from Mt. Agung, the volcano that dominates the southern half of Bali, down to the seaside somewhere south of Ubud. + +Rice paddies outside of Ubud, Bali, Indonesia + +Ubud was probably once a small village in the hills, but these days its more of a tourist mecca, thanks to some really awful western travel books that shall not be named. Ubud now sprawls out from the central crossroads up into neighboring villages pretty much erasing any discernible difference between Ubud and the dozen or so villages that surround it. + +I won't lie to you. Ubud is crowded, in fact, all of Bali is crowded, with traffic like I've never seen anywhere else in Asia. Snarled roads mean incessant horns and shouts are the primary sounds of Bali. Interestingly, Ubud isn't nearly as crowded with tourists as I had expected, at least it wasn't while we were there. During the days the streets would fill up with tourists on day trips from the resorts down south in Kuta and Seminyak, both about 20-30km from Ubud (if you want some idea of the traffic in Bali consider that a 20-30km distance will take anywhere from one to two hours by car or motorbike), but in the evening, after the resort goers were safely back beach-side, Ubud seemed nearly empty. + +The traffic and congestion of Bali isn't something you can blame on tourists, it's mainly just the Balinese going about their lives. It made for hectic bike riding, at least until you could get out of the center of Ubud. There was a lot of choking on diesel fumes and waiting or weaving through, traffic. + +Once I got through the two main intersections of Ubud the traffic mostly gave way and I had the road to myself, save other motorbikes and heavily loaded down trucks. The countryside around Ubud is well worth riding through, beautiful terraced rice paddies that spill down the mountain sides, glowing a verdant green in the evening light. Over the course of four days I think I rode about 120K, in one case halfway up the side of Mt. Agung. + +Rice paddies outside of Ubud, Bali, Indonesia + +The smoky wind alternates between choking and enticing as it whips about my helmet. But any choking is offset by the gorgeous soft twilight of the tropics, which kept me riding through village after village, each with it's own craft theme. One village would be all stone work, concrete fountains, sculptures of Buddha and countless pots and urns. The next might be wood carving, intricate masks, totem pole-like sculptures and ornate arched doors. The best were the weaving villages, brilliantly colored fabrics flowing out of a dozen small stone buildings, all of them eventually making their way down to Ubud for sale. + +But awesome as it was to be back on the Asian version of a motorbike, it wasn't quite the relaxing riding I did in Laos and elsewhere. You can never recapture the magic, and I wasn't trying.... Okay, maybe I was, but it didn't work. regrettably Honda seems to have phased out the Dream in the last five years, replacing it with something called the Nitro, which just doesn't have the same ring to it. But the bike is irrelevant, was always irrelevant. I missed my friends, especially because I just saw Debi in Paris. It just wasn't the same riding by myself. Debi, Matt, where are you? There are roads to be ridden, locals with ten people on a bike to be humbled by. Six fingered men to be seen, by some. + +It wasn't the same. It never is. But you know what, it's amazing anyway. + diff --git a/jrnl/2011-06-19-temple-ceremony-ubud.txt b/jrnl/2011-06-19-temple-ceremony-ubud.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8db2e43 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2011-06-19-temple-ceremony-ubud.txt @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +Everything in Bali is two hundred meters from here. The island itself may in fact only be two hundred meters wide and two hundred meters long. To get from here to wherever we are staying? Two hundred meters. To get from here to the temple ceremony we were supposed to be at twenty minutes ago? Just two hundred meters more. The Balinese are either really bad at judging distance or unclear on the English words for numbers larger than two hundred. + +We've been walking up this hill for at least 2km and we still haven't caught sight of the temple, though now we can hear the drums, which is encouraging. One last local walks by, "Excuse me, it this the road to Tegallantang? Yes. How much farther is it? "Just up the road. Maybe two hundred meters." + +As it turns out, he's the only one to say two hundred meters and literally be right about it. + + + +Two days earlier we were out wandering the streets when it started to rain. We ducked into the nearest restaurant for lunch. Toward the end of the meal, as the rain was dying down and we were getting ready to leave, the owner came over and started talking to us about Ubud. We ordered another beer and in the end he invited us out to his temple to see the temple's anniversary ceremony and procession through the city. + +At the time we were thinking of leaving for the islands east of Bali, but we decided to stick around for a couple of extra days to see the temple ceremony. + +Ubud grows on you. Sure, it has a lot of traffic and touristy elements and most of the shops sell things at prices roughly equal to what you'd expect in the States, but despite all that there's something about the place. Maybe it's the way every morning the streets are littered with tiny offerings, small banana leaf trays filled with flowers, bits of rice and other food, along with a few sticks of burning incense. Maybe it's the immaculate, constantly tended gardens that grace the courtyards of every restaurant and guesthouse you enter. Maybe it's the really awful, overpriced beer. No. Probably not that, but it does grow on you. Ubud that is, not the beer. + +With a few extra days on our hands we ended up just wandering the city. We walked around the temples of the sacred monkey forest where we saw one of the namesake gray-haired Macaques (small monkeys) re-enact the opening scene of 2001 with a battered old aerosol can. Eventually it stopped banging the can on the ground and just turned it around, upside down, shook it, bit it, threw it and otherwise seemed to be saying, [how do you work this thing](http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/05/051106.html)? + + + +I'll admit I wasn't expecting much when we walked a couple of kilometers out of Ubud to the village of Tegallantang where we, along with a couple friends we met a few days earlier, met up with our friend from the restaurant. + +I've been to [a lot of Hindu temples](/jrnl/2005/nov/30/around-udaipur). Enough in fact that I don't feel the need to see any more, but Balinese temples are considerably different from the Hindu temples of India. While Balinese temples look partly like Hindu temples in India, there are other elements that come from older religions. Bali is what happens when Hindu beliefs collide with animism. The Balinese seem to embrace the basic tenants of traditional Hinduism, but then add plenty of their own animist flourishes to the mix -- like frequent and elaborate temple ceremonies. + +Boys waiting for ceremony procession, Tegallantang, Bali + +By the time we arrived the temple portion of the ceremony was already over, which is just as well because it felt vaguely intrusive to be the only white people standing outside the temple, and would have felt even more so if they had invited us in. And I have no doubt they would have, as we seemed to be the only people uneasy with our presence. But I'm always wary of being the obnoxious tourist thrusting a camera in everyone's face. + +However, despite the fact that the ceremony was not a public spectacle by any means, the procession most definitely was, since it was headed for the heart of Ubud, down to the meeting of the two rivers which is both a sacred sight for the locals and tourist central for the city. Perhaps that's why no one seemed to mind us standing around the temple. + +Effigies, ceremony procession, Tegallantang, BaliWhen we arrived only the men were at the temple. Most of them were turned out in immaculate white sarongs crisply tied without a fold out of place, topped with white shirts. Boys as young as five or six on up to teenagers were lined up to carry giant umbrellas, flags and various silk emblems which towered high above their heads on bamboo poles. The brigade of youngsters and the fluttering banners made up the front of the procession back to Ubud. The umbrellas and banners were used to shade the effigies of gods and demons that made up the middle of the procession. + +The older men came next split into two groups, those warming up on drums, flutes and other musical instruments, and those still inside the temple, loading up the various offerings and even stone shrines, all of which they carried in groups, the weight slung between two long bamboo poles that rested on the shoulders of eight and sometimes ten men. + +Once the men had all taken their places, as if on cue (though more likely via the walkie talkies some of the elders carried), the women arrived dressed in elaborate sarongs of rich gold and red silk. Most of the women, even the very young girls, wore thick coats of makeup on their faces, giving them a doll-like appearance reminiscent of Japanese geishas, though I'm pretty sure that wasn't the image they had in mind. + +Temple ceremony procession, Tegallantang, Bali + +Then, as with any parade you've ever seen, the band struck up a song. The children moved out in front, the older women placed their baskets on their heads, the men picked up their offerings and shrines and the whole affair began the slow walking march through the hills down into Ubud. We brought up the rear, the token tourists trailing the procession through the rice paddies and down the hill, past shops and restaurants, houses and even a resort or two until the street widened and eventually reached the main road through Ubud. + +At that point we broke off and went up to a second story restaurant to have a beer and a bit of a snack, content to watch from a distance. As we sat upstairs in the fading light we watched as the river of white shirts hit the main road and flowed right, turning toward the city center, gradually growing smaller until the last white shirts disappeared down the hill. + +Temple ceremony procession, Tegallantang, Bali diff --git a/jrnl/2011-06-23-best-snorkeling-world.txt b/jrnl/2011-06-23-best-snorkeling-world.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..649cae8 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2011-06-23-best-snorkeling-world.txt @@ -0,0 +1,57 @@ +Nusa Lembongan is only a few miles off the southwestern coast of Bali, but it might as well be another universe. Here there are few people and no cars, only a few motorbikes that navigate the narrow dirt roads, none more than two meters wide, and your own feet are the dominant way to get around. There's still tourism, but there's also a local fishing and seaweed industry. + + + + +From Ubud we caught a bus south to Sanur, a beachside town where we thought we might spend a night or two. Unimpressed by the trash strewn beaches and overpriced resorts we went ahead and caught the afternoon boat out to Nusa Lembongan, one of three small islands off the coast of southwest Bali. + +The pace here is more my speed. Little seems to happen. People work. People fly kites. People eat. People sit in the shade. + +Most of Lembongan's inhabitants are seaweed farmers. At low tide dozens of farmers make their way down to the shoreline where they load their partially dried seaweed in small outriggers and flat-bottomed boats which they pole out through the shallows to the seaweed fields that line the inland the edge of the reef half a mile from shore. At low tide the seaweed plots are often above the waterline, and even at high tide the expanse of water between the shore and reef is rarely more than a meter deep. + + + + +While the farmers are out planting and harvesting seaweed (most of which I'm told ends up in Japan, used as a binding agent in various cosmetics), old women walk the shallows gathering up dropped bits of seaweed or prowl the shoreline plucking worms -- which are sold as fish bait back on Bali -- from the wet sand. + +In the evenings, when the sun dips into the clouds and the air begins to cool, the villagers come down to the beach to fly kites in the evening breeze. Kites are something of an obsession for the Balinese, nearly everyone has a kite and you see dozens littering the sky from any vantage point on the island. There are fewer kites here on Lembongan, but only because there are fewer people here. + +These are not the kites you grew up with, small triangular affairs with a bit of ribbon on the tail and a few meters of string. Balinese kites are massive, some with tails hundreds of meters long and they fly them so high the government had to ban them around the Denpasar airport for fear they would clog the engines of 747s. The Balinese are serious about their kites. + +Flying kites is fun too, but there's also a religious aspect stemming from the belief that the Indian god Indra was a kite flying aficionado. Legend holds that Indra taught local farmers how to fly kites and today the Balinese believe the kites to be whispered prayers to the gods, which explains why they fly them so high (well, that and the fact that actually getting a kite 200-300 meters in the air is just cool). + +While Lembongan is a relaxing place to pass a few days, or even weeks, the main appeal of the island for most visitors is either the surfing or the snorkeling (and diving, but I've never had the patience or desire to learn how to dive, the vast majority of what I find interesting in the ocean is in the first 3 meters of water anyway). I went on two snorkeling trips out of Lembongan, neither of which spent much time at Lembongan's reefs, opting for the far superior reefs around the two neighboring islands, tiny Nusa Ceningan and the much larger Nusa Penida. + +The first stop was a mediocre reef off the dense mangrove forests of Nusa Lembongan. The reef was okay, but the water was murky and crowded with a dozen other boats also dropping snorkelers. After maybe ten minutes in the water the two Australians also on the trip and I asked the boatman if there was anything better to be found. He kept saying drift snorkel, which left us scratching our heads, but we agreed and set off for another ten minute boat ride to the eastern coast of Nusa Penida. + + + +The backside of Nusa Penida is separated from its much smaller neighbor, Nusa Ceningan by a narrow swath of water maybe a kilometer across at its widest. To the south is the open ocean, to the north is the Lombok straight, a very strong current that moves between Bali and Lombok at speeds of up to eight knots. The shallow reef-covered shelfs just off Nusa Penida, have similar currents where the water is suddenly forced through the narrow channel between islands. + +Drift snorkeling is a bit like snorkeling in a river. The boat drops you off at one end of the current and you drift for a couple of kilometers down to the end of the current, where the island swings to the west and there's a small beach where the boat can pick you up again. + + + +In the mean time you drift, like tubing down a river. The shoreline is a limestone cliff, carved inward by the sea. Underwater a shelf slopes off sharply. The first tier is maybe two meters, the second more like four and then finally the shelf drops off into the unknown deep, a rich turquoise blue that is alive with fish. Fish I have previously seen perhaps two or three at a time are swimming in massive schools. Dozens of Moorish Idols, schools of deep purple tangs, so dark they look black until you get up close, parrotfish in clusters, munching on the coral, bright, powder blue tangs, yellow-masked angelfish, countless butterfly fish, wrasses, triggerfish, pufferfish and even bright blue starfish that crawl slowly over the reef. The deep blue depths are filled with myriad triggerfish, angelfish, clownfish and hundreds of others swimming slowly along in the current. There are huge schools of fish that I have only previously seen in books or aquariums back in the States. In fact there are so many fish that just last month a survey done not far from here [discovered eight new species of fish](https://phys.org/news/2011-05-reef-fish-indonesia-bali.htm://phys.org/news/2011-05-reef-fish-indonesia-bali.html). + + + +And I just drift along, occasionally kicking to slow down. Drift snorkeling is like watching fish float by the window of an underwater train. When something catches my eye, like a massive, meter-long lobster tucked back in a small cave of jagged limestone and red brown coral, I kick as hard as I can simply to stay in place and watch. + +All too soon it is over. I am too amazed by what is without a doubt the best snorkeling I've ever done to even ask if we can do it again. Only some time later, as the boat rounds the corner of Lembongan and begins the treacherous journey back through the seaweed farm shallows, does it occur to me that perhaps we could have asked for another drift. But by then it is too late, and perhaps it would be too greedy, too much all at once, to do it twice in a row. + +I am, however, a greedy person, so the next day I signed on to another snorkeling trip, this time out to Manta Point to see the namesake Manta Rays. This time it's a much longer boat ride all the way around to the southern shores of Nusa Penida. Contrary to what you might think, the waters of Indonesia are not particularly warm, so long boat rides mean a lot of chilly salt spray, and, despite the name, I was not optimistic about our chances of seeing any Manta Rays. But I was wrong. + +When we arrive there are a half a dozen of the huge creatures, with their massive rippling wings, circling around a cove, surrounded by shear limestone cliffs. The water is rough, three foot swells blow in from the south, breaking against the cliffs, but in spite of the slight murkiness, it's impossible to miss the Manta Rays. Mantas are massive things, more than a meter across and at least as long, they don't so much swim as fly, slowly flapping their wings through the water with a sense of timing and grace that few animals possess. There is something hypnotic about their movements. + +Once again I simply floated, bobbing about on the surface of the sea, beaten around a bit by the swell, while the mantas rather gracefully swam through, under and around us, like some proud eagles investigating these curious new onlookers. The rays themselves are so massive, so foreign in shape that it takes some time to come to terms with them. You think at first that they have no eyes. Or no eyes where you might think there should be eyes. Their bodies are black and it is difficult to make out the eyes -- which are also black -- amidst the darkness of their skin, but then some ray of sunlight breaks through the choppy water and you see the unmistakable glint of a dark eyeball, not at all where you thought it might be and then it dawns on you that they have been watching you all this time, never doubting for a moment where your eyes are. And then the way they have been swimming, the curious pattern of back and forth, becomes clear and you realize these are not simply fish, but something else, something very curious, inquisitive even. They swim at you head on, slowing as they approach, as if they are perhaps near sighted and need a closer look at your floating form, and then they dive about three feet down and slide under you. Once they are clear of you they turn around and repeat the process. Sometimes I dive under them, watching from below as their vast white bellies move overhead, white wings beating slowly, rhythmically through the water. + + + +Mantas are creatures of great grace, they move with poise, like underwater dancers, slowly flapping their way through the depths. If you ever have opportunity to swim with mantas don't pass it up there is little else in the world like it. + +After a half hour or so with the Mantas we head back, stopping off at Crystal Bay, which doesn't have as many fish as the drift snorkeling area, but has never been fished using dynamite or cyanide -- two coral-destroying problems that have ruined many a reef in Asia -- and has more coral and intact reef than anywhere else I've been. + +We spent a mere four days on Lembongan, but in hindsight it was worth much more. In fact, we should probably still be there, since where we went afterward was truly awful, but that's traveling, you never know what's up around the corner -- sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, you never know until you arrive. I feel lucky to have enjoyed Nusa Lembongan and its neighbors while I had the chance. + +

Note: Sadly, I don't have a waterproof camera, so all the underwater images above were taken by others and are credited beneath the image. Many thanks to those who share their images under a creative commons license.

diff --git a/jrnl/2011-10-17-worst-place-on-earth.txt b/jrnl/2011-10-17-worst-place-on-earth.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b2de5f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2011-10-17-worst-place-on-earth.txt @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +--- +template: single +point: -8.348272379374615,116.0405144294601 +location: Gili Trawangan,Lombok,Indonesia +image: 2011/gilitrawangan.jpg +desc: The Gili Islands. Don't go there. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: They aren't really the worst place on Earth (everyone knows that's Yuma, AZ), but the Gili Islands would top my list of places you should never go to. In the end they're not even a real place, just a collection of paradise fantasies culled from decades of hippie travelers, scuba divers, honeymooners, and the rich, lost children of the West. +pub_date: 2011-10-17T22:33:00 +slug: worst-place-on-earth +title: The Worst Place on Earth +--- + +It was nearly two in the morning. It was hot, but I had been jumping in the salt water shower every half hour or so and that, combined with the oscillating fan on the floor at the foot of the bed, made the heat tolerable. + +I lay on the bed, legs sticking to sheets. I had been lying there for several hours, with my tiny laptop on the bed next to me, trying to figure out why the Gili Islands disturbed me so much, trying to put my finger on what about this place made me so uncomfortable. I never came up with a precise answer, which is why I've never written anything about Gili Trawangan. + +I tried writing about everything I thought was wrong with the Gilis, but in the end it wasn't the hordes of hippie tourists, the Australians behaving badly, the ridiculously overpriced food and lodging or even the cats -- the only thing I'm really allergic to -- everywhere on the island, nor was it even all of those things combined that bothered me. + +On the face of it Gili Trawangan is quite nice. It's small enough to walk around in a day and is surrounded by crystal clear water with a reef that could, with a bit of conservation effort, be quite remarkable. Sadly, it isn't remarkable[1], but the few moments I did enjoy on Gili Trawangan were all moments when my head was underwater and I could willfully ignore everything on the beach behind me. + +Lombok as Viewed from Gili Trawangan, Indonesia + +It's taken me months to realize what bothered me, but in the end it was clear. The problem with the Gili Islands is that they don't really exist. + +What I mean by that is that the Gilis are not islands you go to and experience, rather they are ideas about what islands ought to be brought to life. The Gili Islands exist as a backdrop on which tourists can act out their fantasies about what "paradise" ought to be. + +It's tempting to say there's nothing wrong with that, and maybe there isn't, but it isn't what I look for when I travel. Don't get me wrong, I didn't mind the crowds of the Gilis. The Gilis certainly aren't off the beaten path, but that's also something I've never been too interested in. + +What interests me when I travel is the normal. It's been my experience that while the world is huge, it happens in very small, ordinary moments. I'm interested in seeing how things are done in all nooks and crooks of the planet. I enjoy seeing the daily life that happens on every street everywhere around the world. It's been my experience that every street, every park, every square has it's own form of ordinary and that any of it exists at all is extraordinary. + +Looking for the ordinary has shaped the way I travel over the years. It's taught me to avoid the guesthouse when possible, to rent apartments where I can and to try to get to know blocks rather than neighborhoods, neighborhoods rather than cities. It's taught me that guidebooks are generally wrong and what you'll remember afterward are usually not things you'd planned to do. + +I have no problem with popular tourist destinations, some of them are quite amazing -- there's a reason Pompeii and Angkor Wat are popular, because they're amazing places -- but they aren't what motivate me to leave home. + +I realized months after I'd left the Gilis that I've never really been interested in the quest to find paradise. I own a house in what I consider a paradise. Athens GA is not perfect, but it's pretty near to paradise for me. If I were looking for paradise I wouldn't leave town much[2] + +And that in the end is what the Gili Islands have to offer, a collective idea of what paradise looks like. The Gilis are a collection of paradise fantasies culled from decades of hippie travelers, scuba divers, honeymooners, and the rich, lost children of the West. + +I eventually realized that the thing that made me uncomfortable, the thing that kept me up on what turned out to be our last night on Gili Trawangan, was the realization that *this exists because I am here. I am, however much against my will, now responsible for this. My money has now helped perpetuate this place.* I would not want to deny any paradise seeker the opportunity to act out their fantasy on the Gilis, but I prefer to be left out of it. Places like the Gilis can get along just fine without me. + +
    + +
  1. + +

    Constantly dropping anchors on coral destroys reefs and, despite no shortage of mooring, nearly every boat that I saw pull into Gili Trawangan dropped anchor.↩

    + +
    2. + +
  2. + +

    By the same token if there comes a day when I no longer think Athens is a paradise I will pick up and leave.↩

    + +
    3. + +
+ diff --git a/jrnl/2012-03-31-street-food-athens-georgia.txt b/jrnl/2012-03-31-street-food-athens-georgia.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1e4475b --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2012-03-31-street-food-athens-georgia.txt @@ -0,0 +1,62 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.959861666904274,-83.37601195713451 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2012/foodcart1.jpg +desc: If you want to get to know someone, eat with them. It’s the universal social language. +dek: Cheap food, made fresh, in front of you. Served hot, wrapped in newspaper. Street food is the people's food, it removes the mystery of the kitchen, lays the process bare. It's also the staple diet of people around the world. +pub_date: 2012-03-31T21:56:00 +slug: street-food-athens-georgia +title: Street Food in Athens Georgia +--- + +We went downtown today to the first (so far as I know) [Athens Food Cart Festival][4]. Athens is not a huge place. It's not what I'd call a small town either, though the downtown area manages to retain, for now, that feel. That, combined with the U.S. Government's seeming dislike for street vendors in general means that there are, to the best of my knowledge only two or three street vendors in town and none of them have anything like a regular presence anywhere. + +It used to be different. There used to at least be JB, who had a sausage cart that could be counted on to be outside the 40 Watt every Friday and Saturday night. Sometimes JB would even follow the crowds to house parties, slinging sausage, beans and "comeback" sauce into the wee hours of the morning. I miss JB. I [wrote about my experience with JB][3] for Longshot Magazine a while back. + +JB was irreplaceable. He left a vacuum that's never been properly filled. There is a 24 hour diner downtown, but there's something about eating on the street at night. It draws you out, makes you part of the city. It's a shared experience, street food. More communal and more intimate at the same time. + +Cheap food, made fresh, in front of you. Served hot, wrapped in newspaper. Street food is the people's food, it removes the mystery of the kitchen, lays the process bare. It's the staple diet of people around the world. + +Fish tacos, street food, athens GA + +I've had everything from fish and chips to deep fried water beetles from street vendors and it was all good. Yes, even the beetles. Part of the beauty of street food is you can see it all before you commit, so if it looks bad, well, on to the next cart. + +For me places often come to be defined in large part by the food I ate. Especially looking back. Sites rarely stand out in my memory, but that delicious mystery meat I ate on the banks of the Mekong? Clear as day. When I think of India now I think of trains and chai. I think of little red clay cups piled beside the tracks, slowly dissolving in an afternoon thundershower. I think of little push carts clattering by, selling samosas and Chaats. + +In Bangkok I lived for a month eating almost exclusively skewered meat grilled in a tiny cart with only a handful of glowing charcoal, tended by an old woman who spoke no English, but knew my order after two nights1. Six pork, six beef, spicy sauce, one bag of sticky rice. + +In Paris I ate oysters from street vendors. In London fish and chips. In Laos noodle bowls. In Nicaragua empanadas and plantains. At home in Athens there used to be JB. Now there’s pretty much nothing. + +In Athens this weekend that changed, if only for a meal or two. The deep friend Korean Hot Dog from [Streets Café][1] was amazing. As was the sausage from [La Fonda][2]. Several of the Atlanta-based trucks were great as well. But none of it will be there tomorrow. In fact it probably won't be there ever again. That's what was sad about the experience, it was great big tease. It was a reminder: you could have this. But you don't. + +On some level my love of street food isn't really even about the food. The food is just the catalyst for something more. It's the common tether that brings us all to the same table in the end. There are huge gulfs between cultures, beliefs differ in ways that you’re never going to move beyond, but everyone understands food. + +If you want to get to know someone, eat with them. It’s the universal social language. + +And that's what makes a community, people coming together in collective spaces -- owned by no one -- and setting aside whatever might divide them for long enough to share a table, a taco, a noodle bowl, some rice. + +People and food come together, athens GA + +In order for people to come together, in order to establish the kind of commons that form the basis of a healthy community, you need some kind of anchor. You need something to tether the whole thing to the ground. Street food carts and trucks offer that anchor, that basis for bringing people together in a communal space. + +That’s missing in Athens and it has been ever since JB stopped pulling into the 40 Watt parking lot. Athens has world class restaurants. Athens has world famous music venues and more bars than many cities twice its size. That's all great, but none of it brings us together the way street food could if we let it. + +[1]: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Streets-Cafe/145003412180488 + +[2]: http://www.lafondadawgs.com/ + +[3]: http://one.longshotmag.com/article/going-for-seconds + +[4]: http://athensfoodcartfest.wordpress.com/ + +
    + +
  1. + +

    According to a friend who was in Bangkok last week she's still there, plying her trade.↩

    + +
    2. + +
+ diff --git a/jrnl/2012-05-20-things-behind-sun.txt b/jrnl/2012-05-20-things-behind-sun.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6434a55 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2012-05-20-things-behind-sun.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.95674257719642,-83.37592612645985 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2012/tucsonblur.jpg +desc: Everything else is in your mind. Even if you didn't think to remember it until the memories were all you had. by Scott Gilbertson +dek: My grandparents left the home they lived in for 60 years today. I don't know how much of my life was spent in that house, probably well over a year if you added up all the holidays and family gatherings. And now I'm thousands of miles away and someone is clearing out the house. +pub_date: 2012-05-20T22:47:00 +slug: things-behind-sun +title: Things Behind the Sun +--- + +twilight, Tucson, image modified from one by kevin dooley, Flickr. + +My grandparents left the home they lived in for 60 years today. They can no longer afford to live at home with the level of care they now require. + +I don't know how much of my life was spent in that house, probably well over a year if you added up all the holidays and family gatherings. + +I can smell the house, I can see the bedrooms though I haven't actually walked down the hall in many, many years. I remember trying to fall asleep in the front room to the red glow of the candle bulbs my grandmother put up at Christmas. I remember listening to Neil Diamond 8 tracks in the same room. I remember my cousin walking around the kitchen with the fantastically long, coiled phone cord trailing behind her (still the longest phone cord I've ever seen). + +And now I'm thousands of miles away and someone is clearing out the house. Moving out the furniture, dividing up a few possessions among children and grandchildren and all I can think about is that I've never even taken a picture of the house. + +I'd like to stand in the street one last time and look at the low, brick house, the curved curb and the perpetually dead lawn, to take a picture, not to remember it, I'll never forget it anyway, but simply to have done it. To have taken the time to do it because I recognized it meant something to me; but I didn't. + +I'd like it to be evening when I take the picture, the sort of desert evening that is pure relief, when the sky sighs a light grey-blue glow at twilight and the temperature finally falls below a hundred. The dry air is still, the clouds silent in the distance, behind the mountains. I'd like to frame the photo on the left with the junipers that aren't there any more, but were when I was younger. In the center I'd like to see the old brown Datsun truck (long since sold) that used to meet us in Utah, Arizona, Colorado to go camping for a week each spring. Zion National Park, Canyonlands, Arches, Natural Bridges, the wild southwest desert. The small brown truck with its white camper shell, tent and stove tucked in the back, fishing poles in long tubes hanging from the roof inside the shell, the silver washpan my grandfather poured scalding water into every morning to shave, a little mirror hanging from the camper shell hinge. My grandparents slept in cots in a tent. They were well into their sixties by then. + +I'd like to get Pepper in the picture. I only saw him a few weeks of the year, but he was the closest thing I ever had to a dog when I was young. And perhaps Honcho, the ornery cat I never really liked, but he was tough and I always respected him. + +I can see this image in my mind, see it quite clearly, but I'll never be able to take it. It's just a house, a structure made of brick and wood. Nothing more. Everything else is your mind, where you can keep it forever. I'm not sure if I keep saying that to myself because I believe it or because I want to. It's true either way. Everything else is in your mind. Even if you didn't think to remember it until the memories were all you had. + +Image adapted from [Dusk][1] by Kevin Dooley, Flickr + +[1]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/5174263185/ + diff --git a/jrnl/2013-05-22-consider-the-apalachicola-oyster.txt b/jrnl/2013-05-22-consider-the-apalachicola-oyster.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9e510e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2013-05-22-consider-the-apalachicola-oyster.txt @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 29.728672056480878,-84.9837897312466 +location: Apalachicola,Florida,United States +image: 2013/considertheoyster.jpg +desc: If you know the name Apalachicola at all it’s likely because of its eponymous oysters. +dek: If you know the name Apalachicola at all it’s likely because of its eponymous oysters. Very few things, let alone culinary things, are as attached to place as oysters. In fact, once you get beyond the Rockefeller, ordering “oysters” is akin to walking in a bar and ordering “a beer.” But unlike beer, oysters don’t have brands, they have places — Pemaquid, Wellfleet, Blue Point, Apalachicola. +pub_date: 2013-05-22T19:43:23 +slug: consider-the-apalachicola-oyster +title: Consider the Apalachicola Oyster +--- + +Apalachicola Oyster, raw, on the half shell. + +Just below the rough, wooden bar currently holding up my beer are four boat slips, one of which holds a 28-foot boat I could actually afford to buy. Technically. Provided I didn't also need food and shelter for my family. Beyond the boat is the junction of river and bay, where the bay narrows back into a river channel which, based on my hour or so of observing, is used mainly by shrimping vessels headed somewhere further upstream. Downstream the reeds thicken and marsh proper begins and beyond that the water broadens out to form Apalachicola Bay with its endless shallows and oysterbeds. + +The slightly dilapidated boat down on the docks below looks like a better and better deal with every passing beer. So far though the half dozen raw Apalachicola oysters I've downed have provided enough sustenance to prevent me from emptying my savings. I am not yet the new owner, but should the oyster fields run dry, who knows? + +If there is a simultaneously gluttonous and yet clean, light food to match the oyster I have not found it. One part light sweetness, one part salty smoothness, oysters are a just about perfect food for those who've acquired the taste. Not cooked, though cooked, especially an oyster roast done over an open fire with some sheet metal and damp burlap, can be an amazing thing. But no, not cooked. Embrace gluttony and slurp them down raw. In front of me are half a dozen empty shells, calcified evidence of a flagrantly gluttonous afternoon. + +Out across the water, just beyond where the reeds of the estuary give way to the shallow, oyster-laden expanses of the Apalachicola Bay, a blue-hulled, single-masted boat is anchored, two people lounge in the cockpit, shirtless, lazing in the sun, reminding me that I too ought to have a boat. Not a big boat. Certainly not a ship. Just something for coastal cruising that can still stand up to the occasional ocean crossing. A boat. My gaze drifts down to the docks in front of me, the for sale sign still threaded through the mainmast rigging of what really is a not all that bad looking boat... But first, more oysters. + +Shrimp boat headed upstream; Apalachicola River and Marsh. + +If you know the name Apalachicola at all it's likely because of its eponymous oysters. Very few things, let alone culinary things, are as attached to place as oysters. In fact, once you get beyond the Rockefeller, ordering "oysters" is akin to walking in a bar and ordering "a beer." But unlike beer, oysters don't have brands, they have places -- Pemaquid, Wellfleet, Blue Point, Apalachicola. + +One gallon can of Apalachicola Oysters.Ask a marine biologist and they will point out that there are really only a handful of oyster species in the world and many of them, like those that produce pearls, aren't part of our culinary repertoire. In fact, in the U.S. there are really only three species of oysters consumed -- Pacific (Crassostrea gigas), Kumamoto (Crassostrea sikamea) and Eastern, sometimes called Atlantic or Gulf oysters (Crassostrea virginica). It's the difference in place and environment -- water temperature, sea floor conditions, available nutrients and so on -- not species that produce the different sizes and shapes of oysters you see. That's why, with a handful of exceptions, almost every variety of oyster you've ever seen in a restaurant is named after its point of origin and is not actually a separate species or even subspecies. + +An oyster's point of origin is not just the determining factor in how it tastes, it's also the best place to eat one. Oysters are sometimes treated as a fine dining item, but I've always thought of them more of the street food of wharves and marinas, or, as in Paris, actual street food. Oysters are simple -- there's not even any cooking involved -- eating them should be simple too. + +My favorite way to eat oysters is at an open air raw bar, preferably on the docks somewhere and preferably within view of the oyster boats and the waters they ply. Oysters are best served on a tray with some crackers on the side, which are best politely handed back to your server or, if you're doing it right, tossed in the water for the fish to consume. If you must put something on them, try a little of the local hot sauce (in Apalachicola that would be Ed's Red). + +Docks in Pemaquid, Maine, waiting on an oyster boat. + +My best oyster experience was in Pemaquid, Maine where I actually got to watch an oysterman tie up the boat, exchange a few hand gestures with the bartender and bring up two buckets of fresh oysters pulled straight out of the hold all while I sat sipping a beer, waiting on another dozen. In Wellfleet there were no boats in, but there was still plenty of salt air, rough pine tables and a good view of the oyster flats just beyond the harbor. In Paris I just stood there and slurped before walking on again. + +If Apalachicola has such a setup it's hidden well enough that I never found it. + +Instead we settled for a raw bar/restaurant which I would never have entered under normal circumstances. The sort of purposefully tacky place designed to entice tourists with deliberate misspellings and references to parrotheads painted on the stairs. It was almost enough to send me retreating back to the car, but the sign promised views of the marsh, and, frankly, I'd already driven the wharf area once and this place was, as best I could tell, our only hope. As it turned out the covered upstairs deck had a lovely view of the marshes and the staff was friendly enough. + +Half a dozen oysters later I'd changed my tune a bit on Apalachicola oysters. Apalachicola oysters have something of a lowly status among your oyster connoisseurs. Here the waters are warmer and the oysters therefore larger and somewhat more risky to eat than colder water varieties. Of course bigger is relative. In his book [The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell][1], Mark Kurlansky describes how the once mighty oyster trade of New York used to bring in oysters the size of dinner plates. Quite frankly, though I love oysters, that sounds repulsive. + +Oysters are good things, but dinner plate sized oysters would most definitely be too much of a good thing. And while I enjoyed my Apalachicola oysters I do still think there are better oysters out there -- Beausoleils remain my personal favorite (and are one of the few varieties I know of not named after their place of origin -- New Brunswick). That said, I regret waiting until my third trip to the area to sample the local bivalves. Only a fool would pass on the chance to eat an oyster plucked from waters you can watch while eating it and thankfully, I am no longer that fool. + +Sadly I am also not yet the owner of a boat. Not the one down on the docks in front of me nor any other. But one day I will be. I don't know where I'll go exactly, don't know what I'll do, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there will be some harbors, most likely some marinas, some wharves where the oyster boats might also tie up in the evenings and where I might find a cold beer or two and some lovely, gluttonous, yet so light and clean, little oysters to make sure the beer doesn't send everything cockeyed, to make sure the world stays nicely on keel even without a boat. + +[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Oyster:_History_on_the_Half_Shell + diff --git a/jrnl/2013-05-26-all-the-pretty-beaches.txt b/jrnl/2013-05-26-all-the-pretty-beaches.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..92120da --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2013-05-26-all-the-pretty-beaches.txt @@ -0,0 +1,70 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 29.65981806259068,-84.87047444700387 +location: St. George Island,Florida,United States +image: 2013/stgeorgeisland_1.jpg +desc: St. George Island Florida offers some of the best white sand beaches in the world. By Scott Gilbertson +dek: St. George is just off the Gulf Coast of northwest Florida, only about 7 hours from where I live. There are better places if you're looking to dive or snorkel. Ditto if it's nightlife you're after. But if you're looking for a seemingly endless amount of gorgeous white sand beaches you'll share with only a few migratory birds, St. George is the place to be. +pub_date: 2013-05-26T22:43:23 +slug: all-the-pretty-beaches +title: All the Pretty Beaches +--- + +Beach, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson + +I was lucky; I grew up by the ocean. Surprisingly, or at least surprising to me, I never reached that point where I took it for granted. When something is right there for so long sometimes it blends into the background noise and you stop noticing it. Familiarity breeds contempt. Or at least complacency. But I've never felt complacent about my proximity to the sea. It's the one thing I miss living in Athens. How could you not? It's too big a thing to take for granted; it's were we came from. And it remains the one of the last true boundaries between the known and the unknown. + +Boundary lands are always the most interesting places -- the seashore, the edge of timberline, where the city starts to give way to the country. These are the fringes of our world, the peripheral edges of our collective vision where everything is less certain, but more possible, more inviting. Boundaries are the gray areas where life feels most real, most truly momentary because the boundaries themselves are ever in flux. + +The seashore is also just plain fun. Lounging in a hammock strung between two palm trees, sipping cocktails and enjoying the sunshine seems to be high on most people's list of things they think they would do if they won the lottery. + +I've spent a good bit of my time traveling either at or around the seashore, from [Thailand][1] to [India][2], to [Nicaragua][3] and [Indonesia][4]. The ocean may well be the only constant there is when you're traveling. I've been to plenty of places simply to see what the beaches were like -- [Goa, India][8]; [Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia][9]; [Little Corn Island, Nicaragua][10] and plenty more I haven't written about. + +These days though I'm less inclined to travel somewhere solely for the promise of nice beaches because I found St. George Island. + +Beach, St George Island, Florida. By Scott GilbertsonI stumbled upon St. George Island a couple years ago. St. George is just off the Gulf Coast of northwest Florida, only about 7 hours from where I live (9 with babies). There are better places if you're looking to dive or snorkel. Ditto if it's nightlife you're after. But if you're looking for a seemingly endless amount of gorgeous white sand beaches you'll share with only a few migratory birds, St. George is among the best boundary land in the world. + +I first arrived here largely by accident. My wife and I tagged along on an invitation to share a cheap beach house someone else had rented. We came back a year later. And again six months after that. And we hope to be back for a fourth visit before the year is over. + +St. George is more than just a nice beach though, it's a little backwater in time. It's a little slice of the world as it used to be, the world I grew up in, before the proliferation of mega-resorts and all-inclusive vacation package extravaganzas. St. George doesn't offer anything like that. There's little more to St. George than a store, a gas station and a couple of seafood trailers offering up fresh shrimp, snapper and scallops from nearby Apalachicola. There are some condos, but the two motels are rundown affairs that look like backwater holdouts from the early 1980s. There's nothing about this place that even hints at the world of resorts and all-inclusive packages. And that's the way I like it. + +It's entirely possible that by the time the mid-summer tourism peak rolls around at Independence Day St. George Island is unbearably crowded with north Florida rednecks, but, having only been here in the shoulder months of May, September and October, I have trouble picturing it. For the most part there's rarely been another person on the beach, let alone a crowd, when we're here. The surprising thing though is that by all rights it *should* be crowded, even in the off season, but it's not. + +St. George is long and narrow, some thirty miles from one end to the other, but rarely more than a half mile across. It's part of a barrier island chain, along with Dog Island and St Vincent Island, that provide shelter from the Gulf seas and help create the Apalachicola Bay. + +Beach, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson + +Roughly a third of the island, the entire western end, is closed off to a private, gated community. To karmically balance that the entire eastern half of the island is protected from development by the [Dr. Julian Bruce St. George Island State Park][5]. If we weren't fortunate enough to know someone willing to rent us a beach house on the cheap, we'd be [camping here][7]. Even if you're not camping the park is worth a visit. Hardly anyone seems to stray much beyond the beach parking lots so if you walk for a bit you'll easily find miles of beach you'll only have to share with a few plovers, sandpipers and the occasional Great Blue Heron standing atop the dunes behind you. + +One day I rented a crappy bike and rode out through the state park to the very eastern tip of the island where a small channel of water separates St. George from the uninhabited Dog Island. Aside from a few fishermen clustered around the leeward side of the channel, there was no one around. + +St. George was once little more than rolling sand dunes covered in sea oats and tall grasses. Dunes still occupy the central portion of the island, particularly here in the state park where the dunes have been spared development. On the windward side the dunes turn to beaches which look out on the Gulf of Mexico. St. George acts as a barrier island for Apalachicola Bay, but most of the time there's little to protect against. The Gulf is typically about as calm of waters as you could hope for. Of course when the storms come, they really come. Hurricanes have been rearranging St George ever since it was created, even splitting it into two islands and then bringing it back together again. The fishermen ended up liking that extra entrance to the bay. What was originally the doing of a hurricane is now a properly dredged channel, though it's certainly within a storm's power to change that again. + +Great Blue Heron, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson + +I spent some time exploring the dunes along the east end, watching the herons standing tall and silent while Laughing Gulls cried in the air overhead. A pair of ospreys made lazy circles above the cluster of fishermen and pelicans occasionally dive bombed into the sea to pluck out an unlucky fish. After a while it got hot in the wind-sheltered, sun-baked sand dunes so I walked back to the shore for a swim before making the questionable decision to ride back along the beach. Florida sand is sugary fine stuff, not particularly supportive when you put a fair amount of weight on it. There were stretches where I could ride, but I ended up walking a good few miles as well, stopping for a swim whenever I got tired. + +Back at the state park entrance I briefly detoured across the island to the leeward shore. The back side of the island is a totally different beast. Here the dunes give way to actual soil which supports a band of pine and palmetto forest that eventually opens up to wide, reed-filled tidal marshes. The marshlands are interspersed with what is locally known as hammocks -- slightly raised bits of porous humus capable of sustaining of Live Oaks, Cedars and the occasional Cypress tree, small deciduous islands is a sea of reeds. The marshes overlook the [oyster fields of the Apalachicola Bay][6] and, on a clear day, the mainland of Florida two or three miles away. Apalachicola Bay is so shallow it's tempting to think you could walk back to the mainland, though I've no idea why you would want to do that. + +There's not much to St. George, but it's all I need. Were it not for the need to earn the bio-survival tickets necessary for obtaining food and shelter in this country I would rarely leave this place. A house with a view of the water, perhaps a boat for fishing and getting around the bay, and, to my mind anyway, you'd be well set for life. In the mean time, I'll take what I can get of St. George. + +[1]: /writing/thailand/ + +[2]: /writing/india/ + +[3]: /writing/nicaragua/ + +[4]: /writing/indonesia/ + +[5]: http://www.floridastateparks.org/stgeorgeisland/ + +[6]: /2013/may/22/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster/ + +[7]: http://www.floridastateparks.org/stgeorgeisland/activities.cfm#12 + +[8]: /2005/nov/20/fish-story/ + +[9]: /2011/jun/23/best-snorkeling-world/ + +[10]: /2008/apr/05/little-island-sun/ + diff --git a/jrnl/2013-05-29-oysterman-wanted.txt b/jrnl/2013-05-29-oysterman-wanted.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c263eac --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2013-05-29-oysterman-wanted.txt @@ -0,0 +1,60 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 29.66409472490678,-84.86566792845446 +location: St. George Island,Florida,United States +image: 2013/abandonedboat.jpg +desc: Tourism does not create a demand for useful things. Oysters are useful things. Shrimp are useful things. Colorful buoys and boardwalks are not. +dek: The world of oystermen and local fishing industry is doomed. Even the people resisting the transition know they’re no longer fighting for their way of life. They’re just fighting to keep the thinnest resemblance of what they’ve always known around until they leave this world. They’re fighting to keep from having to watch the death of everything they know. +pub_date: 2013-05-29T19:43:23 +slug: oysterman-wanted +title: Oysterman Wanted +--- + +Old, rotting oyster boat, Apalachicola FL. + +Doug's Seafood trailer is just that, an unassuming yellow trailer with red trim and lettering that reads, appropriately, *Doug's Seafood*. Doug arrives on St. George Island every morning and parks in a vacant lot just west of the bridge. Come 5 P.M., Doug heads back to Eastpoint. In the mean time Doug and his trailer sit in the vacant lot, which is, like all vacant lots and driveways in the area, covered with the local version of gravel -- oyster shells. + +The shells give off a blinding white glare in the midday sun, driving you to the shade of the small awning Doug extends out to make the trailer more welcoming. As your eyes adjust to the shadows you'll notice Doug himself sitting on a red plastic folding chair, perched amongst half a dozen white plastic coolers stocked full of local shrimp, scallops, oysters, snapper, grouper and even local favorites like mullet, if you ask for it. + +I first met Doug while on a quest for shrimp. Not a lot was said, though I do remember Doug offering his thoughts on the weather, which were wrong. In fact Doug's thoughts on the weather have been wrong pretty much every time I've heard them. But there aren't a lot of locals found on St. George and even most of the permanent residents aren't originally from the area. So I started talking to Doug in hopes of learning about the island and Apalachicola. I've gleaned a few things, but mostly I know a lot about Doug's bypass surgery or the liver trouble that made him stop eating raw oysters. Whatever the case I've noticed my trips to Doug's Seafood have become progressively longer and longer the more time I spend on the island. + +Even if you never bother to talk to Doug you'll get to know a few of his thoughts just from standing there under the awning, reading what's scrawled across the side of the trailer. Thin permanent marker has been used to create a kind of unsolicited FAQ for potential customers -- "yes it's raw seafood", "yes you have to cook it first" and "no it's not ready to eat." There are probably half a dozen phrases altogether. None exactly rude, but all carrying a sense of exasperation and all pointed enough to make you stop and think about what you're about to ask before you ask it. + +These are necessary, according to Doug, to make sure no one gets sick. They also probably help discourage the sort of poorly thought out questions that might irritate the sole proprietor of Doug's Seafood. + +It seems to work. Doug manages to smile to nearly everyone and never so much as roles his eyes -- visibly anyway -- in the face of what I can only assume is a Herculean confrontation with *Tourist Americanus* that would leave many a lesser man indignantly scrawling even more magic marker across the side of the trailer. Or worse. + +Doug does, if you talk about something other than the weather or his heart, come rather quickly around to the problems of the local area, which are unsurprisingly, all a result of tourism. He's never exactly moaned about tourists, but he does very nearly spit when he says the word, something I recognize from [growing up in a seaside town][2] full of people who also simltaneously needed and disliked tourists. But of course here I'm a stranger here like the rest. I may know that I have to cook the shrimp, but otherwise I'm as much a part of Doug's problems as anyone else on St. George Island. + +Shrimp trawler, Apalachicola, FL + +The problem is we've all become tourists. None of us are shrimpers or oystermen anymore. + +That's why all coastal towns will eventually convert from real industries like fishing or shipping ports, to tourism-based economies. There's no stopping it. If your patch of coast hasn't done it yet, and this one is still holding out hope, it will. Best get your sarcastic FAQ boards painted now, before the tide of tourism washes the last of industry out to sea. + +There's another sign I think about, just over the bridge in Eastpoint, *Oysterman Wanted* it reads. Every time I drive by I find myself wondering, will anyone ever call that number? [I love oysters][1], especially fresh off the boat, but it seems like you might as well hang out a sign asking for cobblers or loom workers. + +Part of me thinks that the sign is just there to bolster the local spirit. Apalachicola is doing an admirable job of fighting tooth and nail to keep things as they once were, when the Bay was full of oystermen and the horizon at night lit up with trawlers dragging their nets. But even people like Doug seem to know that world is doomed. Even the people resisting the transition know they're no longer fighting for their way of life. Nor are they even fighting to give their children some small slice of the life they loved. They're just fighting to keep the thinnest resemblance of what they've always known around until they leave this world. They're fighting to keep from having to watch the death of everything they know. + +Storm over the docks, Apalachicola FL. + +The world of oystermen and local fishing industry will fade away though. How could it not? Once there were loom workers, now there are not. Once there was a seemingly endless shoreline to dock a boat beside, soon there will be nothing but condos. Economies change; people change. And so it goes. + +And yet, and yet. There's something that feels different about the way tourism grinds other things to dust. I think it's the finality of it. Once a place makes that transition, once the economy crosses that invisible threshold and goes full tourism there seems to be no coming back. So long as the tourists come everyone loves their new tourist economy. And then one day the tourists stop and the town dies. Ask the residents of the Salton Sea. Ask Mystic, Connecticut. Ask the Adirondacks. Coral Gables. Niagara Falls. + +Colorful buoys, Apalachicola, FL + +Tourism is a fickle thing, but that's not really the long term problem if you live in a tourist economy. The problem is that tourism does not create a demand for useful things. Oysters are useful things. Shrimp are useful things. Colorful buoys and a finely sanded boardwalk for strolling are only useful things so long as there are tourists to buy and occupy them. + +In the beginning there are always tourists, and in some places there seemingly always will be, but tourism is a marketing-driven economy and eventually someone else comes along with [better marketing and more money][3]. The hotels go vacant. Restaurant tables stand empty. Buildings fall into disrepair and soon all that's left are the facades, the boardwalks with faux pilings too weak to actually tie up a trawler and no one left who know how to sail one anyway. + +It's hard work fishing; even harder to be an oysterman. I wouldn't do it; I doubt I could do it. Far easier to open a bar, build a new hotel or maybe sell trinkets just across from that really nice and shiny new boardwalk. + +And so it goes. + +[1]: /2013/may/22/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster/ + +[2]: /2005/oct/20/twenty-more-minutes-go/ + +[3]: http://www.notesfromtheroad.com/dryworld/bahia-palace_05.html + diff --git a/jrnl/2013-05-30-king-birds.txt b/jrnl/2013-05-30-king-birds.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7da6427 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2013-05-30-king-birds.txt @@ -0,0 +1,64 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 29.65740132288772,-84.87336630151736 +location: St. George Island,Florida,United States +image: 2015/skimmers.jpg +desc: Watching birds teaches you to see the world a bit differently. You're always alert to flittering movements in your peripheral vision. +dek: Watching birds teaches you to see the world a bit differently. You're always alert to flittering movements in your peripheral vision. After a while you start to scan the tree line, the edges of the marsh, the place where the buildings meet the sky, the borderlands where movement begins. You quite literally see the world differently. +pub_date: 2013-05-30T21:42:28 +slug: king-birds +title: King of Birds +--- + +black skimmers flying along shoreline at sunrise, photo by Ed Yourdon, CC Flicker + +The sunset light is perfect, golden, the sort that photographers fantasize about, but the birds are still hard to see, moving far too fast to get a good look at any details on them. Some part of their heads is deep red color, near the eye and the rest of them is black and white. I have ideas, but I don't know for sure. + +My wife is searching Google images on her phone, but Google thinks that "tern" is a misspelling of "turn", which causes both of us to briefly contemplate how fast the world of Idiocracy is approaching. And still no positive identification of the three sleek black and white birds with splashes of vermilion across their faces, skimming the shoreline in tight formation, beaks open, *skimming the water from time to time*. + +I have a bird book. It's at home on the sideboard. It's been too long since I did this sort of thing, birdwatching. It didn't occur to me that I might want the book. The binoculars are automatic, they nearly alway make the trip even if they spend the majority of it tucked at the bottom or a bag or rattling around in an ammo can. + +I grew up birding. My father was a biologist. Birding was just one of many things we did on family hikes. There were plant pressings, lizards caught and sometimes kept. Snakes, snails, frogs, insects too. But I always liked watching the birds. + +There's something wonderfully ephemeral about watching birds. They're there, but then at any given moment they can flutter tiny wings and disappear into a thicket of trees, or swoop huge spans of wing that slowly and majestically lift their bodies up into the air until they become just a thin black line on the distant horizon. + +I may not have actually pursued identifications and list making much in my adult years, but I've never tired of watching birds just be birds. + +I started traveling on my feet. Hiking the Sierra Nevada, the Trinity Alps, the White Mountains, the deserts of Arizona, Utah and Colorado. I spent a lot of time out there on trails, resting on rocks, wondering, what is this thin wisp of plant clinging to life on the edge of a sandstone cliff? What is this hummingbird buzzing me like an angry hornet? Spend enough time outdoors and I think some level of naturalism finds you. + +That I remain, after all these years, drawn to birds could be old habits not dying, but it could also be the simple fact that birds are everywhere. Even in the densest examples of human population where the crush of people is often quite literal, like Ciudad de México or the entrance to a subway in New York at rush hour, there are still birds there. Sparrows, pigeons, starlings. Survivors. + +Watching birds teaches you to see the world a bit differently. You're always alert to flittering movements in your peripheral vision. After a while you start to scan the tree line, the edges of the marsh, the place where the buildings meet the sky, the borderlands where movement begins. You quite literally see the world differently. + +I've never really written about it here because it was something that seemed too idiosyncratic to share. Even I think it perhaps a bit odd to spend time watching birds. Or maybe not. + +The birds might lead you to look at the world differently, to be part of the world in ways that you are not the rest of the time. It requires that you be both in your self, mindful and aware of your surroundings (lest you trip and fall or worse), but also to be out of yourself, to be aware of the other and its movements, its awareness. It's a reminder that you are not just in the world, but an active part of it. + +Watching birds becomes a gateway to much more. You can't spend much time watching birds without starting to think about insects and sticks, bushes, trees, water, habitats, ecology, geography, weather, architecture. Everything on earth is intrinsically linked. Most of it much more closely linked than we generally realize. + +Now that I have two young children I've decided to get back into the world of birding, identification, lists and all. In part because it's a good way to get out in nature, and there's nothing that teaches so readily or excites children so much as nature. Also in part because it was part of my own childhood, but also because I want to be able to teach the art of bird watching to my children. They're less than a year old right now, far too young to use binoculars or even pay attention to anything for more than a minute or two, but they already enjoy watching the robins and blue jays that prance on our deck at home. But I'm not trying to get them bird watching right now, I'm relearning the art myself. Relearning how to identify, how to observe birds and their world. + +You can't teach your children something if you aren't already well versed in it yourself. Moreover you can't hope to instill any sense of enthusiasm if you don't have it yourself. Even babies have powerfully accurate bullshit detectors. + +I don't necessarily care if my children get into birding or not. It's not the birds I'd like them to care about; it's the sense of curiosity about the world around them that I'd like to pass on. It's that sense of curiosity and wonder that makes bird watching worth doing and that curiosity carries will beyond the binocular lens. Bird watching is part of the lost art of paying attention to not just the world around you, but the details within that world, to stop, to watch, to make something else the center of your world for a few minutes and to consider its world, to see how it lives, what it does, what it wants, how it lives. To observe, to really watch. To record what you saw when it makes sense to do so and to just watch and enjoy when it doesn't. That's bird watching. At least that's what it means to me. + +I was brought up in nature -- birding, hiking, camping, backpacking, fishing, climbing, kayaking. These were the things my family did for fun. I want to create similar experiences for my kids, to take them out into nature to watch and identify wildlife, to cook on camp stoves, to smell wood fires warming coffee in the morning, to cozy up in a sleeping bag, to watch the stars from inside a tent, to hit the trails at dawn and head for the high country of the mountains because the high country is where human beings are meant to go, to push yourself, your knowledge of the world, your understanding and feeling of being alive beyond where it is today. To never stop exploring, as my former employer emblazons on all its advertising. Disingenuous though it may be on a North Face tag, the words are nevertheless perhaps the best advice there is. + +More than just teaching my kids about birds I want to teach them to have insatiable curiosity, to look at the world as ever-changing and always new, always with something enticing just around the next bend. I don't want them to say, "look daddy, a bird", but "daddy, what kind of bird is that, what is it doing, where is it going why is it doing that where does it sleep what does it eat?" and the thousands of other questions a curious child will think of -- questions I can't even imagine. + +I'm not 100 percent sure yet what I think the role of a good parent is, but I lean toward this: that you point them in the right direction and get the hell out of the way. To answer the easy questions so that they have enough of a start, the confidence to start asking the really hard questions, the ones even I can't answer. + +And I think one of the best ways to get them started on the curiosity road is to get them out exploring the natural world and exploring it in detail, watching birds, hiking trails, climbing mountains and watching the pines sway in the wind while you eat lunch, seen the starts through the screen of the tent and all the other things I did and wished I had done as a child. + +But you can't teach your children these things if you don't do them yourself. If you don't have a curiosity about the world you won't be able to pass it along. You can't fake it. So I'm getting back into the natural world, into bird watching down here on the shores of the Gulf coast because I want to relearn everything I once knew, still do know, buried somewhere deep down, and pull it back up to the surface both so I can pass it on, but also so I can enjoy it again. I can remember a time when my whole world could momentarily be forgotten and everything about the world suddenly wrapped up in the skittish flitter of a warbler or a Sanderling darting the shoreline or a Black Skimmer, ahem, *skimming the shoreline*, its partly-red bill strikingly red against the blue of sea and sky, its mouth open as if trying to swallow the ocean whole. + +[In addition to forgetting the bird book, I did not have my camera on me when we down at the shoreline. the image at the top of the post is by Ed Yourdon, who posted something that looked [eerily similar](https://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/16733423838) to our experience on Flickr with a CC license that allow me to use it here. Thanks Ed.] + diff --git a/jrnl/2014-11-01-halloween.txt b/jrnl/2014-11-01-halloween.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eaf3bf1 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2014-11-01-halloween.txt @@ -0,0 +1,68 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.95550744251432,-83.37426895446605 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_086.jpg +desc: Celebrating Halloween in Athens, GA +dek: Halloween with three owls, a Theremin-wielding ghost band and a zoo full of ghouls. +pub_date: 2014-11-01T13:52:22 +slug: halloween +title: Halloween +--- + +Me: What do you want to be for Halloween? + +O: A bird? + +L: A bird. + +C: What kind of bird? + +O: uh, um, an owl? + +L: An owl. + +C: An owl? Okay. + +Ten hours of sewing later, C has created two owls: + +owl costume + +owl costume + +owl costume + +A couple days before Halloween, [Bear Hollow Zoo][1] always puts together a thing called "Boo in the Zoo" for kids. It's mostly older kid stuff, learning about the animals and so on, but the girls love running around the zoo so we went. L is getting new molars, so she mostly chewed her hands, but as luck would have it the animal they had out for the kids when we were there was... an owl. + +bear hollow halloween + +bear hollow halloween + +bear hollow halloween + +bear hollow halloween + +For Halloween we went over to the Boulevard area where a few of our friends live. We stopped in at a kids party and then walked the neighborhood. L and O quickly discovered that encountering strangers is easier to overcome when they give you candy. Halloween, delivering the life lessons. + +halloween in blvd + +halloween in blvd + +halloween in blvd + +halloween in blvd + +halloween in blvd + +halloween in blvd + +halloween in blvd + +Down the street from our friends there's a "ghost" band, the Ghosties, that plays every year. It just wouldn't be Halloween music without a Theremin. Pretty sure there are some well-known Athens musicians under those sheets. + +halloween in blvd + +
+ +[1]: http://www.athensclarkecounty.com/Facilities/Facility/Details/1 + diff --git a/jrnl/2014-11-09-memorial-park.txt b/jrnl/2014-11-09-memorial-park.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a49b9e6 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2014-11-09-memorial-park.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.926604399603534,-83.3854269439668 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2014/baxter-maine.jpg +desc: Loons, Maine, Memorial Park +dek: Loons, Maine, Memorial Park. *What that sound is?* +pub_date: 2014-11-09T20:30:48 +slug: memorial-park +title: Memorial Park +--- + +The first time I ever heard a loon was canoe camping beside a pond in Baxter State Park, Maine. When you have no idea what *that sound* is (*what that sound is?* -L and O), a loon call in the dark is terrifying. + +It's a been a long time since then, but I'll never forget that sound. I think about it every time we walk around the pond at Memorial Park. + +Pond in Baxter State Park Maine + +The pond at Memorial Park looks nothing like this one, which is the one I camped by in Maine, but memory is a funny thing. For whatever reason the little pond at Memorial Park reminds me of that one in Maine. There is no physical resemblance at all. Baxter is a wild place with few people around. The pond at Memorial Park is the opposite. There's even a fountain in the middle. Still, something about it. + +L and O have never heard a loon, never been to Baxter State Park. Yet. + +They're happy with the swings and the slides and the ducks. + + + + + + + + + + + + + +Geese they are not such big fans of, but last week the geese weren't around. Just ducks. + + + +And climbing, you can never climb atop too many rocks. + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2014-11-16-muffins.txt b/jrnl/2014-11-16-muffins.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..772dbfb --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2014-11-16-muffins.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.96380115264605,-83.40128416365957 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2014/muffins.jpg +desc: When you're two years old everything in the world is new every day. Even things you saw yesterday look different, feel different, *are*, inexplicably, different today. +dek: When you're two years old everything in the world is new every day. Even things you saw yesterday look different, feel different, *are*, inexplicably, different today. +pub_date: 2014-11-16T14:45:03 +slug: muffins +title: Muffins +--- + +When you're two years old everything in the world is new every day. Even things you saw yesterday look different, feel different, *are*, inexplicably, different today. + +mischievous muffin eater + +The world is chaos. The patterns we live our lives by are things we have discovered for ourselves, created for ourselves -- sometimes consciously, sometimes not. + +When you're two years old you have far fewer of these self-made patterns in your world. Each one you discover, each one that is imposed on you has far more importance and power than than any one will when you're twenty, forty, sixty, eighty. + +Current patterns. Tuesdays we go to Gymnastics. Sunday mornings we hike Sandy Creek Nature Center. Saturdays we eat muffins. Because muffins are awesome (awesome enough that Captain Beefheart has [a song about muffins](//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptoN-5QE0Lw)). + +O eating muffins + +O insisted that I take pictures of her and L eating muffins. I snapped a few shots and put the camera away, but she complained. Eventually I was made to understand that for her, *take pictures of eating muffins* was a literal statement. I had foolishly just taken picture of her *with* muffins. So... + +O eating muffins, mouth open + +L eating muffins, mouth open + +I also caused great distress when I forgot to photograph my coffee, so I let O do it. Okay, I held the camera, but she pushed the shutter and said cheese. Authorship is always a little fuzzy. + +espresso + diff --git a/jrnl/2014-11-22-colors.txt b/jrnl/2014-11-22-colors.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b791ed1 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2014-11-22-colors.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.96668418436029,-83.4123777801458 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2014/leaf.jpg +desc: Autumn in the South is never as spectacular as is in New England. But still, it is our autumn, our season, our reminder... +dek: Autumn in the South is never as spectacular as is in New England. The colors here are neither as intense nor as long lasting. But still, it is our autumn, our season, our reminder. And this is by far the most colorful year of leaves that we’ve seen in 15 years. +pub_date: 2014-11-22T20:47:06 +slug: colors +title: Colors +--- + +The best thing to do after [eating some muffins][1] is head to the park. + +swings + +Here in the South autumn is never as spectacular as is in New England. The colors here are neither as intense nor as long lasting. But still, it is our autumn, our season, our reminder. And this is by far the most colorful year of leaves that I've seen in 15 years. + +I've spent a good deal of time watching this particular tree next to the swing sets. I've watched it progress from just a faint hint of red at the outer fringes, to something more, as it the red borderline crept toward the center, eventually swallowing the whole tree. The green is pushed inward, back down into the trunk where it will lie waiting through the cold of winter. + +swings + +The day I took these pictures I noticed that this red progression inward also happens on the individual leaves, which start with a bit of red at edge and slowly get swallowed up into redness before they fall. + +swings + +swings + +swings + +These images are a couple of weeks old though. We braved the cold and wind again this morning. The tree was bare. Winter. + +And so it goes. + +[1]: /jrnl/2014/11/muffins + diff --git a/jrnl/2014-11-27-creamed-corn.txt b/jrnl/2014-11-27-creamed-corn.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b74ab97 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2014-11-27-creamed-corn.txt @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.95322920033558,-83.40053314513801 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2014/creamed-corn-sm.jpg +desc: Creamed corn doesn't lend itself to showy food photography, but then neither do most Thanksgiving dishes. Strange holiday that one. +dek: Creamed corn doesn't lend itself to showy food photography, but then neither do most Thanksgiving dishes. Strange holiday that one. +pub_date: 2014-11-27T09:36:46 +slug: creamed-corn +title: Creamed Corn +--- + +I am thankful for my family, for electricity, clean water, vaccines and everything else that keeps me and my family alive, that allowed us to evolve out of the tree canopy, walk out in to the tall grass and keep walking, slowly on, for millennia. And who will hopefully keep walking slowly, long after I am gone. + +cousins + +I'm also thankful for the web. This right here. The best form of communication and non-local connection that we've come up with since the beginning of time. I am very grateful to have my health and thankful for the privilege of being born into a life that allows me the free time and opportunity to partake in the web. I am thankful for the wealth of human knowledge, understanding and connection that that exists out here between the 1s and 0s and corporate owned routers that log it all for, ahem, *backup purposes*. + +Most of all I'm thankful for being alive. + +creamed corn + +And for creamed corn, which doesn't look like much in a pot, but it is, trust me. + +And for William Burroughs, who [summed it up best][1]. + +[1]: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/modlang/carasi/thanksgivingprayer.htm + diff --git a/jrnl/2014-12-18-bourbon-bacon-bark.txt b/jrnl/2014-12-18-bourbon-bacon-bark.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f30351f --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2014-12-18-bourbon-bacon-bark.txt @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.94981172269912,-83.37375397033351 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2014/bbbark.jpg +desc: Searching for what the Danes call Hygge in the sugar deliciousness that is Bourbon Bacon Bark. Because you rarely go wrong with alliteration. +dek: Searching for what the Danes call Hygge in the sugar deliciousness that is Bourbon Bacon Bark. Because you rarely go wrong with alliteration. +pub_date: 2014-12-18T20:40:31 +slug: bourbon-bacon-bark +title: Bourbon Bacon Bark +--- + +[Hygge][1] is a Danish word. There is no real English translation. Approximations apparently include "togetherness", "well-being" and something like "coziness" if coziness were a word we applied not to physical things, but mental ones. + +It is in other words, more or less impossible to pin down in English, but here's what's easy to understand -- the feeling the word is meant to describe. Abandon words and picture your ideal day spent with your favorite people, eating the best food you've ever had and so on. Notice the feeling that produces in you. That, as I understand it, is more or less Hygge. + +It's a hard thing to come by most of the time in our culture. Most people work all day and most people do not have Hygge-inducing jobs. It also seem to be pretty near impossible to manufacture Hygge out of thin air. + +The only way I know how to manufacture something like Hygge out of thin air is to take a few of my favorite people and make something wonderful like Bourbon Bacon Bark. + +bourbon bacon toffee bark + +I am a pretty good cook, but a terrible baker. The rest of the year I avoid baking. The precision necessary for good results just doesn't appeal to me most of the time. But this time of year is all about sugar so I give it shot anyway. Besides, my wife makes a fantastic fudge which can pick up the slack when my efforts fall short. + +I stick with simpler things I'm not likely to screw up, like sugar cookies. Or my more recent addition, Bourbon Bacon Bark. + +It started last year when I ran across this [amazing recipe over at NWEdible](http://www.nwedible.com/2013/12/bourbon-pecan-toffee-bark.html). As good as that recipe is I'm completely unable to follow a recipe without injecting my own ideas in there somewhere. About half a second after I saw the title of that recipe I knew it was missing just one small, alliterative ingredient -- bacon. + +Bourbon Bacon Bark. The words just feel right -- there's a rhythm there that almost guarantees the results will be great. This is what happens when writers cook. + +If you'd like to make my version, follow NWEdible's recipe, but when you're melting the butter, toss in a tablespoon or two of bacon fat. + +Then, when you stir in the pecans at the end, go ahead and add in a couple nice thick slices of bacon cooked up extra crispy and crumbled. Without the chocolate it isn't all that pretty. + +bourbon bacon toffee bark unchocolated + +The point of course is get everyone involved. I finished off dozens of crème brûlées a night in my time at the [5 & 10][2] dessert station, so I know very well how badly melted sugar burns. Suffice to say kids would not enjoy it, so I kept the girls back a bit, which earned me this look. + +fake scorn + +Chocolate on the other hand is pretty harmless. And the girls are big on stirring things. Even things that don't need to be stirred. + +chocolate stir + +chocolate face + +Until of course the chocolate is gone. You're making more right? What? + +chocolate face + +Plenty of Bourbon Bacon Bark left though. + +[1]: http://www.visitdenmark.com/en-us/denmark/culture/art-danish-hygge + +[2]: http://fiveandten.com/ + diff --git a/jrnl/2014-12-19-night-before.txt b/jrnl/2014-12-19-night-before.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..684e4de --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2014-12-19-night-before.txt @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.947319725402615,-83.40491051024922 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2014/night-before.jpg +desc: Every voyage has a night before. We tend to remember the excitement of the next morning, when our senses are on edge, hyper-aware and it's easy to be anchored in the now. But me, I like that night before. +dek: Every voyage has a night before. We tend to remember the excitement of the next morning, when our senses are on edge, hyper-aware and it's easy to be anchored in the now. But me, I like that night before. I like when you're still imagining what it might be like. Still trying to picture it all in your head, fit yourself into your own imagination. +pub_date: 2014-12-19T19:02:23 +slug: night-before +title: The Night Before +--- + +Every voyage has a night before. These quiet hours of darkness before the journey begins. + +Milky Way, by John Fowler, flickr cc licensed + +We tend to remember the excitement of the next morning, when our senses are on edge, hyper-aware and it's easy to be anchored in the now. This is why we remember so clearly the smell of salt on the air, the soft pad of bare feet on the deck, the sound of water slapping the hull. Or maybe it's clatter of wheels on the rails, the soft sway of sleeper cars in the early morning light, the hum of jet engine, the first light as you pop up above the clouds. + +All of these things mark beginnings. + +Me, I like that night before. I like when you're still imagining what it might be like. Still trying to picture it all in your head, fit yourself into your own imagination. You're still the one at the helm. Tomorrow life will take over, steer you where it will, but that night before everything is possible. + +The hardest voyage for me to imagine is my children. My son will come forth out of the world tomorrow. I try to picture what he looks like. It's marginally easier than it was with my daughters, since I can imagine he might look like they did. But he won't. Not really. Because it's impossible to conceive of what someone will look like before you meet them. Impossible, but fun to try. + +It's likewise impossible to imagine what your life with them will be like, beyond knowing that it will be inconceivably great. + +That's why there are these nights before, to reflect, to imagine, to remember that we are here to go. Forward. Onward. Always. + +[Milky Way image by [John Fowler, Flickr CC][1]] + +[1]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/snowpeak/14351894398/ + diff --git a/jrnl/2014-12-19_night-before.txt b/jrnl/2014-12-19_night-before.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0eba09a --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2014-12-19_night-before.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13 @@ +Every voyage has a night before. These quiet hours of darkness before the journey begins. + +We tend to remember the excitement of the next morning. Then our senses are on edge, hyper-aware, anchored in the now. This is why we remember so clearly the smell of salt on the air, the soft pad of bare feet on the deck, the sound of water slapping the hull. Or maybe it's clatter of wheels on the rails, the soft sway of sleeper cars in the early morning light, the hum of jet engine, the first light as you pop up above the clouds. + +All of these things mark beginnings. + +Me, I like that night before. I like when you're still imagining what it might be like. Still trying to picture it all in your head, fit yourself into your own imagination. You're still the one at the helm. Tomorrow life will take over, steer you where it will, but that night before everything is possible. + +The hardest voyage for me to imagine is my children. My son will come forth out of the world tomorrow. I try to picture what he looks like. It's marginally easier than it was with my daughters, since I can imagine he might look like they did. But he won't. Not really. Because it's impossible to conceive of what someone will look like before you meet them. Impossible, but fun to try. + +It's likewise impossible to imagine what your life with them will be like, beyond knowing that it will be inconceivably great. + +That's why there are these nights before, to reflect, to imagine, to remember that we are here to go. Forward. Onward. Always. diff --git a/jrnl/2014-12-29-1969-yellowstone-trailer.txt b/jrnl/2014-12-29-1969-yellowstone-trailer.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..877cf42 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2014-12-29-1969-yellowstone-trailer.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.955507442515085,-83.39298004455148 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2014/yellowstone-trailer-1969-tn.jpg +desc: There are no real blank parts of the map anymore, to misquote Conrad, but there sure are a lot of empty spaces left. We intend to see some of them in our new (to us anyway) 1969 Yellowstone travel trailer. +dek: There are no real blank parts of the map anymore, to misquote Conrad, but there sure are a lot of empty spaces left. We intend to see some of them in our new (to us anyway) 1969 Yellowstone travel trailer. +pub_date: 2014-12-29T13:29:19 +slug: 1969-yellowstone-trailer +title: Our New 1969 Yellowstone Trailer +--- + +There was very little under our Christmas tree this year. Of course the girls got some gifts (balance bikes from us, plus the grandparents' gifts), but my wife and I didn't exchange gifts. Or rather we gave ourselves some things that didn't belong under the Christmas tree. The big one was our son, who was born a few days before. + +The other was a new (well, new to us) 1969 Yellowstone travel trailer. + +our new 1969 yellowstone travel trailer + +It's 16ft long, single axle and in desperate need of some restoration. Still, thanks to some friends, we managed to tow it home without too much trouble. It's currently at my in-laws' house since we need to sell off our 1969 truck before we have room at the side of our house. + +1969 yellowstone travel trailer unrestored interior + +The plan is to gut the trailer, reframe, re-wire and re-plumb everything. I plan to keep the stove, the light fixtures and the drawer and cabinet handles. That's about it from what I've seen so far. It would be cool to try building it back as close to the original as possible, but I've yet to find another like this model, which has a rear door. I'm also not so concerned with authenticity as practicality and comfort. + +Plus I plan to get rid of the extraneous unnecessaries like the air conditioning and heater and instead install some solar panels and batteries so we don't need shore power. We like to avoid campgrounds full of RVs and trailers packed like sardines in a tin. We're more drawn to BLM and National Forest land where the camping is (often) free, the amenities few and the people fewer. + +That's the plan anyway. I'd be lying if I didn't admit it seems a little overwhelming at times. I saw a quote somewhere, I think it was on one of the Dodge Travco forums, but it was something to the effect of, there's no camper more expensive than the one you get for free. This one wasn't free, but it wasn't much either. + +I've never restored anything before, but I know I'll figure out. I also have a lot of very skilled friends who have already volunteered to help with some of the stuff I'm not as knowledgable about, like 12V wiring. And yes, I know what I'm getting into, thanks. That doesn't make it any less daunting though. + +1969 yellowstone travel trailer and my daughter + +Still, it's like any long journey, you just put one foot in front of the other. Unscrew the drawer handles one day, rip out the carpet another, pry out the interior paneling, gut the cabinets and so on until next thing you know the bones of the thing are there in front of you. Then you slowly put it all back together again, one foot in front of the other, back up the mountain. + +In the mean time, in the evenings, after the kids are in bed, I cover the kitchen table in old maps and plot routes through the cities and into the dark expanses of green, brown and white unknowns. There are no real blank parts of the map anymore, to misquote Joseph Conrad, but there sure are a lot of empty spaces left. And miles to go before I sleep. + +[If there's interest, I'll post up some restoration photos once we get rolling on the project.] + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-01-02-hoppin-john.txt b/jrnl/2015-01-02-hoppin-john.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..52debb4 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-01-02-hoppin-john.txt @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.93927363608245,-83.38577026672033 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2015/hoppinjohn-tn.jpg +desc: New Year's cynics are boring. What they miss is that, sure, the only meaning in New Years is what you bring to the table, but that’s true of every day you exist on this planet. So bring something to the table damn it. +dek: New Year's cynics are boring. What they miss is that, sure, the only meaning in New Years is what you bring to the table, but that’s true of every day you exist on this planet. So bring something to the table damn it. +pub_date: 2015-01-02T13:49:46 +slug: hoppin-john +title: Hoppin' John +--- + +I used to be a cynic about New Year's Day. It's kind of asking for it really. It's an arbitrary day after all, no different than the one before or after it. Nothing really changes on New Year's Day. + +It's not even a day recognized universally throughout the world. As with everything, when you declare the end of one year and the start of another is entirely dependent on your culture and its calendar. The whole notion of picking a day in the middle winter, calling it the start of a new year and making some half-hearted attempt to become the person we dream we are for a few weeks after, is, well, pretty laughable really. + +Still, it's what we've got. Cynics are boring anyway. What they miss is that, sure, the only meaning in New Year's is what you bring to the table, *but that's true of every day you exist on this planet*. + +Bring something to the table damn it. + +For New Year's Day might I suggest, in addition to anything personal you want to bring to the table, that you bring a bit of black eyed peas and collard greens. The superstition here in the South is that eating the former will bring you good luck while the latter will bring wealth. I don't always go in for the local superstitions, but when they involve food, why not? + +Hoppin John with Salsa + +So Hoppin' John and greens it is, but naturally I couldn't just serve up Hoppin' John as is, that would be following a recipe, which [I just can't do](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2014/12/bourbon-bacon-bark), so I put a little tomato, onion and cilantro salsa on top for a bit of color and spice. Everything is better with salsa. + +Before I deviate from norms though, I like to know what those norms are. It turns out the history of Hoppin' John and its association with New Year's luck is murky, but over at Serious Eats they dug deep into the [history](http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/12/southern-hoppin-john-new-years-tradition.html). Apparently Hoppin' John started out with a red bean and a very different, much toothier version of rice. Today's black eyed peas and white rice is, like American culture at large, just a watered down version. + +On the plus side, it appears that you can actually track down those [beans](http://ansonmills.com/products/41) and [rice](http://www.ansonmills.com/products) through the farmers at Anson Mills in South Carolina, which I just might do for next year, if I can remember. + +In the mean time, black eyed peas, collard greens and fried chicken seems -- authentic or not -- like a pretty good way to start the new year. I'll let you know how the superstitions hold up. + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-01-17-sunrise.txt b/jrnl/2015-01-17-sunrise.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9ab8e2e --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-01-17-sunrise.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.94724852440723,-83.37856048888914 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2015/sunrise_tn.jpg +desc: Watching the sun rise, coffee on the stove, light in the world. +dek: Watching the sun rise, coffee on the stove, light in the world. +pub_date: 2015-01-17T22:03:27 +slug: sunrise +title: Sunrise +--- + +My daughter woke me up this morning, as she usually does, yelling, "*Come see, come see. Daddy comes see, come see the sunrise... so orange and blue. comes see. Daddy look, daddy look...*" She chants *come see come see* until I finally throw off the warm blankets and brave the morning chill, sloshing my feet through the cold drafts of air that lie like puddles on the creaking wood floor. + +Sunrise + +It's still dark outside so I trip and stumble on half a dozen toys the girls did not put away last night, but eventually I make it to the back door where they're both now standing, looking out at the sunrise, pointing so I don't miss it. We all three stand there, staring at the coming sun for a few minutes. + +At some point I usually take a break to make coffee. We take turns cranking the hand grinder. Sometimes the girls wander off and start to play, but once I get the moka pot on the stove and start Corrinne's drip brewer, we go back to the table by the back door and sit down in a small, but thus far sturdy, wooden chair and my daughters climb up into my lap, one straddling each leg, and we watch the sky turn pink and then fade to yellow as the first rays of actual sun break through the skeletal trees. + +Sunrise + +By then the coffee is ready, but there's no way to get to it without disrupting the balance of things. So we listen to it bubbling away on the stove and watch the light come into the world. + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-01-22-purcell-wooden-toys.txt b/jrnl/2015-01-22-purcell-wooden-toys.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ea53730 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-01-22-purcell-wooden-toys.txt @@ -0,0 +1,58 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.950381311835336,-83.37821716613469 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2015/purcelltoys-tn.jpg +desc: The evolution of toys in my opinion starts with what is still the greatest of all toys -- the stick. After that, I suggest my friend Chris's handcrafted wooden toys. +dek: The evolution of toys in my opinion starts with what is still the greatest of all toys -- the stick. After that, I suggest my friend Chris's handcrafted wooden toys. +pub_date: 2015-01-22T21:20:10 +slug: purcell-wooden-toys +title: Purcell Wooden Toys +--- + +The temperature outside was barely above freezing. The girls' cheeks flushed pink in the cold, their faces fogged in clouds of breath. Our fingers went numb; our noses ran and we didn't even feel it. I held the baby, leaching warmth from him. Corrinne and Chris kick the balls with the girls. + +Later the gray sky turned darker. A monochrome sunset quickly faded to black. + +Our friend Chris was in town. Once upon a time Chris was always around. Then he went north. It happens sometimes, even to me. + +Chris is a toy maker, a craftsman of the sort of toys that simply do not exist much anymore. + +He brought some gifts for the girls (and the baby). Genuine [Purcell Toys handcrafted wooden cars and trucks][1]. + +Purcell Toys + +The girls think they're the best toys ever. Even I play with these things. I mean come on, the dump truck has moving parts. + +Purcell Toys + +Purcell Toys + +I think the evolution of toys starts with what is still the greatest of all toys -- the stick. Then the stick gets refined, carved into more fixed forms. Suddenly there is no longer the endless possibilities of the stick, but a kind of craftsmanship begins to emerge. Fast-forward and you have the beautiful craftsmanship you see in these images. + +Purcell Toys + +These toys are at the apex of a toy family tree that goes back literally to the roots. + +Because without roots you have nothing. + +Stainless steel, plastic and glass get all the attention these days, especially glass that glows. Everything these days feel either cheap like the crap at the big box store or slick and cold like the crap at the Apple store. Then again, when pressed, even the most gadget obsessed among us turn out to still love wood, [the humble stick][2]. + +Wood has warmth. Wood lends itself to the kind of heirloom things like these trucks and cars. I've always been fascinated by wood. The textures, grains, colors. Every piece of wood is a map of history. The rings, the width of the grain, the spacing of the knots, all the records of a tree, but also the world around it. Every piece of wood is its own story. + +A short memory of wood: Great wood has a way of sticking out. To me anyway. I remember very few details about the Southwest Research Station in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona which my father's friend Wade ran for many years. I don't remember what the nearby campground looked like, have only the dimmest recollection of the mess hall where we occasionally had dinner with Wade and all the visiting scientists doing research there... I do, however, have a crystal clear memory of the coffee table in Wade's house. + +The coffee table was an overturned stump of black walnut whose roots spread out like dark, obsidian eels beneath the glass table surface. The tallest of the roots held the glass up. What really blew me away though was that each individual root had been sanded to a glassy smoothness. Some of the roots were as thick as my arm and several feet long, others were no bigger than my pinky. It didn't matter, all of them had been sanded smooth as glass. + +I remember being somewhat spellbound, trying to wrap my head around the skill, craftsmanship and effort it must have take to create that table. + +Purcell Toys + +I feel the same way about Chris's toys. I feel that way because I've watched him make them, but I think anyone who see one or handles one will feel the same way. These are stories in wood. The beginnings of stories. You get to write the rest. + +Get one for your kids and they'll give it to their kids and their kids will give it to theirs and so on, like roots spreading out across the soil. + +[1]: https://www.etsy.com/shop/PurcellToys + +[2]: http://archive.wired.com/geekdad/2011/01/the-5-best-toys-of-all-time/ + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-02-16-walking-in-the-woods.txt b/jrnl/2015-02-16-walking-in-the-woods.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..45a86eb --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-02-16-walking-in-the-woods.txt @@ -0,0 +1,112 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.984367309819,-83.38138753719177 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2015/hiking.jpg +desc: It’s always struck me as strange that we have a separate word for walking in nature, hiking, as opposed to just walking. Is walking too mundane? +dek: It’s always struck me as strange that we have a separate word for walking in nature, hiking, as opposed to just walking. Is walking just too mundane? +pub_date: 2015-02-16T22:20:04 +slug: walking-in-the-woods +title: Walking in the Woods +--- + +It's always struck me as strange that we have a separate word for walking in nature, *hiking*, as opposed to just walking. Is walking too mundane? Maybe. + +I was hoping Rebecca Solnit's excellent book [Wanderlust](http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1419449-wanderlust-a-history-of-walking) might have an answer, but in fact it never comes up. + +So why "hike"? My 1913 Webster's offers "tramp" and "march" as alternatives, but certainly at this point tramp feels colloquial. And unless you're in the military you aren't marching. Which leaves hiking. The word is curiously absent from my 1972 copy of the OED. An online etymology dictionary traces the usage to 1809: "hyke 'to walk vigorously', an English dialectal word of unknown origin". + +Hyke. Hike. So be it. Or not. I think I'll stick with walking, it's in the tag line of this site after all. + +I was thinking about that tag line on a recent walk in the woods. The *Walk Slowly* bit up there in the masthead is there as a personal admonishment. I tend to rush things. I eat too fast. I talk too fast. I used to drive too fast. About the only thing I have never rushed is walking. As anyone who's walked with me will tell you, my walk is more of a leisurely saunter. At best. That's not to say I can't cover ground if I have to, but I prefer to walk slowly. The tag line is there to remind me to apply that same slowness to everything else. + +branches in the sky + +That said, I do not by nature walk quite as slowly as a two-year-old. Now I do though. Of necessity. I don't know if it's from observing me or just some innate thing I handed down, but the girls take after me in that respect. Hands thrust in pockets because of the chilly air, they "hike" like I do, sauntering along, taking their time. + +They look much cuter than I do doing it though. + +girls walking + +We recently went on our first hike of the season. I think hiking in the balmy 68 of February may be akin to burying our heads in the sand -- we should really be shopping Arctic Circle real estate while the demand is still low. The poles are the future. + +It's always disconcerting to return to a familiar place having skipped a season. We had not been hiking at Sandy Creek Nature Center since summer. We missed the long slow transition from lush wetlands to bare woods. I had forgotten how much quieter every thing is in Winter. No cicadas, no crickets, no frogs. With no foliage to dampen it and no insects to drown it out, the roar of the nearby highway is more noticeable. Winter makes our little patch of nature feel smaller and more hemmed in. + +Trees + +It's what we have though. Plunge your head in the sand and walk. Slowly. Along the ridge then to the left down into the wooded plain that precedes the wetlands that spill out from the pond. Down here Cardinals shadow us along the trail, flitting though the otherwise silent, bare trees. Red streaks of feather followed by the familiar short, thin *chip* song fading into the deeper recesses of the woods. In winter the bright red stands out easily among the tans, browns and grays of wilted foliage. + +As always there is no one out at the nice birding blind donated by the Audubon society. There never is. In fact, despite hiking dozens of Sunday mornings out here, we have only once encountered anyone else beyond the first 50 meters of trail. + +pond + +The blind is at the east edge of the pond, which is where Winter makes itself even more starkly felt. There are no dragonflies or skimmers darting among the lily pads. There are no lily pads. The pond is bare, quiet. The wind ripples the surface and Olivia says the water is coming toward us. And of course it is, the tiny waves begin to lap the shore, tossing a lone water strider deeper into the recess of moss and twigs. A orange and yellow Weaver Spider scampers out of the low hanging bowl of its web, seeking shelter higher up where web is attached to a reed. + +We eat trail mix, not because we are particularly hungry, but because, *hiking!* Later we walk along the pond to the wooden staircase that leads back up to the pine covered ridge and home. + + + +The next Saturday I get up just before dawn and check the temperature. 22 degrees F. That's the sort of cold, calorie burning weather that calls for a plate of [doughnuts](http://ikeandjane.com/). + + + +By the time we hit the trail it's above freezing and not bad at all when you're out of the wind, which we are in the woods. We're late though and for the first time there are other people out and about. There's even someone in the blind despite the fact that there aren't many birds out this morning -- not a Cardinal to be heard. We see a Ruby-Crowned Kinglet or something similarly small and greenish, but otherwise the woods are devoid of life. It's amazing what difference an hour and a few people makes to wildlife even here, in the only marginally wild. + +canadian goose + +As we near the pond Corrinne spots a Canadian Goose cruising the wetlands just before the pond. We stop and watch a while as it ducks its head to strain the silty mud along the opposite shore. + +When we get to the pond there are two more Canadian Geese. We pick our way slowly through a maze of roots to the bench where we usually take a break. The geese swim right by, headed for the other end of the pond. I pull out the trail mix, because, well, *hiking!* But I swear the minute the sound of the ziplock bag opening breaks the relative silence, the geese whip their heads around and do an about face, heading back out way. + + + +They take their time, eyeing us the whole way, but it's pretty clear they're hoping for handouts. Not the strangest animal I've had beg for food (that would be [an alligator](/jrnl/2010/03/so-far-i-have-not-found-science). Seriously.), but it certainly isn't what I expected when we first spotted them. They get so close I have to take the zoom lens off my camera. + +Lilah of course wants to hug them. They seemed okay with idea even if we aren't. + + + +The geese make sure to keep an eye on the bag of trail mix, but we never give them anything. They seem content to just hang out and dig in the mud for algae and whatever else they're finding. + + + +Soon the trail mix is gone and the girls want to climb the stairs again, take the shortcut back up to the Pine Ridge trail that leads back to the car. Because they love stairs. + + + +Of course when you get to the top of anything you have to shout *I did it* and give some kind of victory salute. + +pond + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-02-26-ice-storm.txt b/jrnl/2015-02-26-ice-storm.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..377fcb2 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-02-26-ice-storm.txt @@ -0,0 +1,54 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.94511246686547,-83.37615722961178 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2015/ice.jpg +desc: I love storms, preferably summer storms with plenty of warm humid wind, lightning and the attendant thunder, but winter storms are nice too. +dek: I love storms, preferably summer storms with plenty of warm humid wind, lightning and the attendant thunder, but winter storms are nice too. +pub_date: 2015-02-26T11:13:55 +slug: ice-storm +title: Ice Storm +--- + +I love storms, preferably summer storms with plenty of warm humid wind, lightning and the attendant thunder, though I love winter storms too. One of the best things about this area is that we get our share of storms. Spectacular thunderstorms roll in on lazy summer afternoons and winter has its share of cold rainy days. There's even the occasional snow storm every few years. This week we had my favorite kind of southern winter storm -- an ice storm. + +Icicles on branches + +Snow storms get all the glory when it comes to winter storms. I didn't even know what an ice storm was when I first came to town in 1999. That winter produced one of the biggest ice storms on record. + +Ice storms turn the world to glass. You don't want to drive in them if you can help it, even walking in treacherous, not just because the ground is slick, but because everything starts to collapse under the extra weight of frozen water. + +When we moved in six years ago (yeah, long stopover) there were roughly double the number of trees in our neighborhood. Six years of storms, ice, wind, snow, have taken their toll on the aging water oaks that shade our street. Trees don't go quietly, but like everything else, they do go. Usually it's wind, though the weight of snow has been responsible for some of the biggest coming down. + +Icicles on branches + +As with nearly all things that have modicum of danger involved, ice storms are beautiful. This was a small storm, but it's a amazing how such a small thing can utterly transform the ordinary into extraordinary. Even something you see everyday, like the sun rising out the back window, looks otherworldly when everything is coated in a thin layer of glittering ice. + +And true to form, the water oaks continue to shed their branches. We spent the morning enjoying the ice and listening to tree limbs falling around the neighborhood. Trees never go quietly, but they do keep going. + +Icicles on branches + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-02-26_ice-storm.txt b/jrnl/2015-02-26_ice-storm.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..82c13dc --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-02-26_ice-storm.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +I love storms, preferably summer storms with plenty of warm humid wind, lightning and the attendant thunder, though I love winter storms as well. One of the things I love about around here is that we get our share of storms. Thunderstorms in the summer, plenty of rain and the occasional snow storm in the winter. + +When we moved in six years ago (six years now, long stopover!) there were roughly double the number of trees in our neighborhood. Six years of storms have taken their toll on the aging water oaks. Trees don't go quietly, but like everything else, they do go. Usually wind, though the weight of snow has been responsible for some of the biggest coming down. + +This week we had my favorite kind of southern winter storm -- an ice storm. Snow storms get all the glory, but ice storms are actually more usual. I didn't even know what an ice storm was when I first came to town in 1999. That winter produced one of the biggest ice storms on record. + +Ice storms turn the world to glass. You don't want to drive in them if you can help it, even walking in treacherous, not just because the ground is slick, but because of everything falling. But as with all things that have modicum of danger involved, ice storms are beautiful. This was a small one, but it's a amazing how such a small thing can utterly transform the ordinary into extraordinary. Even something you see everyday, like the sun rising out the back window, looks otherworldly when everything is coated in a thin layer of glittering ice. + +True to form, the water oaks continue to shed their branches. We spent the morning enjoying the ice and listen to tree limbs falling around the neighborhood. Trees never go quietly. diff --git a/jrnl/2015-03-15-schoolhouse.txt b/jrnl/2015-03-15-schoolhouse.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bd12903 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-03-15-schoolhouse.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.76306639858435,-83.43694681471746 +location: Oconee County,Georgia,United States +image: 2015/school.jpg +desc: +dek: Something called touch-a-truck that rolls through town, or just south of town at a place call Heritage Park, every year. It turns out to be pretty much what it sounds like: a place where kids can touch trucks — semi-trucks, fire engines, ambulances and more. +pub_date: 2015-03-15T13:38:34 +slug: schoolhouse +title: Schoolhouse +--- + +There's something called Touch-a-Truck that rolls through town, or just south of town, at a place called Heritage Park, every year. It turns out to be pretty much what it sounds like: a place where kids can touch trucks. Semi-trucks, fire engines, ambulances even a bomb squad truck with the world's most boring robot. Seriously bomb squad guy, kids don't care about how slowly and delicately your robot can pick up an empty piece of PVC pipe. Next time bring a real bomb and detonate it or at least make the robot *do* something. + +The girls loved the fire engine and the ambulance, but were not so crazy about the semi and its horn. + +Touch a truck ambulance + +The far and away favorite though was the tractor ride. Because who wants to touch a truck when you can ride on one? + +Touch a truck tractor ride + +We hopped off the ride at the halfway point to check out the old schoolhouse that we see every time we head out of town for points south, but had never been inside before. The schoolhouse, particularly the old upstairs auditorium and stage, complete with original, tattered curtains, trumped Touch-a-Truck I think. + +Heritage Park Schoolhouse, image by www.barrelmanproductions.com + +Heritage Park Schoolhouse upstairs + +Heritage Park Schoolhouse + +This is about as close to school as our kids will ever get. Actually, school might not be so bad if it consisted of letting children run around and play in abandoned buildings. + +Heritage Park Schoolhouse + +Heritage Park Schoolhouse + +The bouncy house was also popular, if somewhat less photogenic. + +Touch a truck ambulance + +[Note, the aerial image above was taken by [custom aerial photography experts](http://www.barrelmanproductions.com/), Barrelman Productions.] + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-03-22-pig-roast.txt b/jrnl/2015-03-22-pig-roast.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1d732ea --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-03-22-pig-roast.txt @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.95240599235981,-83.39672977275296 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2015/pig-roast.jpg +desc: I was headed downtown about a week ago when I noticed a sign that said, 'free pig roast'. There are two types of people in this world, those who go to free pig roasts and fools. Sign me up. +dek: I was headed downtown about a week ago when I noticed a sign that said, "free pig roast". There are two types of people in this world, those who go to free pig roasts and vegans fools. Sign me up. +pub_date: 2015-03-22T09:58:14 +slug: pig-roast +title: Pig Roast +--- + +I was headed downtown about a week ago when I noticed a sign outside a local community garden that said, "free pig roast". Now there are two types of people in this world, those who go to free pig roasts and vegans[^1] fools. Sign me up. + +As it turned out I was already signed up. Twice in fact. Corrinne, who is generally aware of things weeks before me, was already planning for us to attend, and my business partner had already volunteered our [photography services][1] to cover the event for Athens Community Connection. + + + +Here's a good question, how do you get people to fill out a survey? This is the south, if you want to get people to come together, start cooking -- maybe roast 200lb locally raised pig? It's as good an idea as any. + +The conspiracy minded, of which there are more than a few around these parts, would not have liked the pig roast, since it was was not technically free. In order to get your pig roast you had to fill out a health survey of non-invasive, non-personally identifying questions about your general health and access to health care. + +The free pig roast was, you see, a con by the big bad local government community services group. And yes, there was the survey; something mandated by the Affordable Care Act, which did not, as I understand it specify that a pig be roasted. Athens Community Connection was simply erring on the safe side with the pig. + +Plus cookies. Don't forget the cookies. + + + + + +I found some of the survey questions a little tricky. For example, "do you have access to dental care?" Well, I have access to the ATL airport, and a quick flight to Mexico City would put me around some top quality dentists I could afford and the whole thing, trip and all, would come out to less than a local dentist, plus, *tacos*... so... yes? + +The pig roast turned out to be so popular that it ran out of pig by 5pm. Fortunately we just barely made it and were able to get all the pig we wanted. And a damn fine pig it was, roasted up by Noah Brendel of (now defunct) [Four Coursemen][2] fame. There were also some awesome collard greens, baked beans and macaroni and cheese from the Northeast Georgia Food Bank. The local Daily Groceries Co-op even donated some halfway decent vegan sides. We're an inclusive community like that. + +[^1]: Vegan friends, I love you. And you have the moral high ground. Whereas I have the tasty, tasty animal flesh. Let us both go in peace. + +[1]: http://www.barrelmanproductions.com/ + +[2]: http://www.southernliving.com/travel/south-east/athens-ga-the-four-coursemen + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-04-13-down-the-river.txt b/jrnl/2015-04-13-down-the-river.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ef40521 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-04-13-down-the-river.txt @@ -0,0 +1,108 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.95799920005253,-83.4382557327161 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2015/down-the-river2.jpg +desc: Rivers make the familiar foreign in an instant. I floated through an area that I have lived in and explored off and on for almost 20 years now and yet all it takes to make it utterly unknown is looking at it from a waterway rather than the land. +dek: Rivers make the familiar foreign in an instant. For the entirety of this trip I almost no idea where I was in Athens. I floated through an area that I have lived in and explored off and on for almost 20 years now and yet all it takes to make it utterly unknown is looking at it from a waterway rather than the land. +pub_date: 2015-04-13T12:29:10 +slug: down-the-river +title: Down The River +--- + +> "We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown... We have an unknown distance yet to run; an unknown river yet to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not." –John Wesley Powell, August 13, 1869 + +It was late on a Wednesday afternoon when I got a text from Mike that said, "going down the river tomorrow, you want to go?" + +There will never be a time when I don't want to go down the river. + +These days getting on to one of nature's great highways requires a little more logistical effort on my part. It's not as simple as it used to be, climb in the truck, drive half way across the country and head [down the river][1] or out [into the swamp][2]. + +It'll be that simple again one day, when everyone can go, but right now there are infants to care for and toddlers that would require another canoe. Sadly there wasn't a canoe to spare. But my wife is awesome, so she said go for it, even though, deep down, we both knew I'd be hours later than I said. That's how river trips are. And so it goes. At least my children found this time lapse video Mike made to be just about the funniest thing they'd ever seen: + +
+ + + + + +

+ +Download: MP4 | WebM | Ogg + +

+ +
+ +I've been wanting to float through Athens for years, but I never have. For some reason I manage to get myself halfway around the world with relative ease compared to how long it takes me to float down a river that's less than two miles from my front door. In the past ten years I've been to 19 countries and not once down the Middle Oconee river. Yet I know quite well that there's no need to go around the world to see something exotic, just hop in a canoe. + +Rivers make the familiar foreign in an instant. For the entirety of this trip I almost no idea where I was in Athens. I floated through an area that I have lived in and explored off and on for almost 20 years now and yet all it takes to make it utterly unknown is looking at it from a waterway rather than the land. + +Powell certainly faced more challenges and life threatening hazards floating the Grand Canyon for the first time in wooden boats in 1869, but his celebration of the unknown that lies downstream captures that secret thrill that always accompanies every launch onto the water. What is down there? "We know not". + +For Powell "we know not" was literal. It is less so for me since I'm going with people who have already floated this stretch many times. Still, rivers have a way of pulling you out of your usual reality tunnel, of changing how you've come to see a place. I don't usually think of Athens as a wilderness, as even having wild places really. When I think of Athens I think of what I see day in day out -- houses, streets, parking lots, downtown, sidewalks, highways, shopping centers. But there's wilderness all around that, perhaps even in that. + +Paddling the Middle Oconee River + +To be fair, this is not the wilderness that I grew up with out west. I'll never camp along the Middle Oconee and see the northern lights dancing dramatically above thousands of feet of red sandstone. Nor will I hit rapids that crush my precious barrel of whiskey, as Powell did. + +Yet as I get older I've found I have less need for that sort of dramatic nature and more appreciation for the small pockets that continue to exist in spite of what's around them. Growing up out west there were vast open tracts of wilderness in which you could go (and I have indeed gone) days and even weeks without running into another soul (at least in the 80s and 90s, who knows what's like now). It would just be me and the mountains or me and the desert. Nature out west operates on a different and very untamed scale. It's also a thing very separate from the cities and towns that have chipped away at it. + +This separateness, combined with the huge scale and awe-inducing grandeur of the west sometimes engenders a kind of snobbery about nature in me. Anything not that amazingly isolated and dramatic starts to feel somehow inferior and perhaps even not worth seeing. Similar things happen if you start to only eat in fancy restaurants and forget how great a can of tuna dumped in mac and cheese can be when you're hungry and cold and the sun is setting fast. + +I try to fight against this tendency in myself, especially with regard to "wilderness", but it's still there. I might write that I do not believe that humans are separate from nature, that even our worst Walmart parking lots are really no different than anything else in the world, but it can be hard to remember that when you're staring at a map planning a trip. Chances are your route is going to avoid the Walmart parking lots. I can't say my wouldn't, but it might be worth thinking about why that is at least. + +For this trip we put in at Ben Burton park, just a couple blocks from my house. We were, predictably, two hours late getting on the river, shuttle car mix ups and whatnot, but I had sliced open my toe with a box cutter earlier in the day and had decided not to get stitches because, well, river trip damn it. I used the extra time to fashion an entirely waterproof bandage system which, when combined with a rubber boot did in fact keep my foot dry the entire trip. + +Eventually though a dozen of us put in and started, as you may have noticed in the footage above, a rather lazy river trip. The rest of the people were mostly scouting for an upcoming [Georgia River Network][3] trip, but there were a few other like me, just along for the ride. + +Canoe on the Middle Oconee river Athens GA + +River rats are a different bunch, even back here on lazy rivers like the Oconee. Where else will you meet a motocross photographer turned invasive species hunter who spends his days looking for ways to eradicate Chinese Privet? Or an organic farmer touring the south who had just arrived in Athens 5 hours before launch? + +For most of the trip we were the lead boat. With nothing in front of us it was easy to forget that the rest of the world is out there. At one point we startled a green heron that took wing off the downed tree it had been standing on, fishing. It was close enough that I could hear its wings flexing against the air as it disappeared up the bank. Someone in the boat behind us said "heron" and then I heard someone behind that say where? And then someone else say, "up there, up the bank, it flew up into the Hobby Lobby parking lot." + +Hrm, what? Oh right, that's a parking lot up there where the bank stops and all I can see is sky. This is not the west, this is Athens. The scale is smaller, but there's still nature here. The green heron doesn't care that there aren't dramatic cliffs or peaks. The Hobby Lobby parking lot is just another thing to fly over. Maybe it too prefers the unbroken forest canopy and river bottoms, it seems to since it was down here until we scared it off, but at the same time it doesn't fly straight off to some eco lodge in Belize just to see a forest. The world is what it is, the heron just flies over it. If you really want to see you have drop your preconceptions of what *should* be and see what is. And by "you" I mean "me". + +We paddled on, stopping from time to time to scout put-ins or take-outs or lunch spots or to gather some Morchella, better know as morels, one of the few mushrooms distinctive enough, with their unusual honeycomb-like structure, that even someone as ignorant of mushrooms as me can feel pretty safe gathering them wild. + +Morel mushrooms growing on the banks of the middle Oconee river + +We pass nature and history telling their stories together, stone walls and the remnants of bridges, their spanning portions long since collapsed, now somewhere under the water, downstream and perhaps even out to sea. Only the edges remain, stone covered in moss, with gnarled trees working their roots into gaps in the masonry, inevitable chinks in the armor of history. + +Crumbing stone bridge on the banks of the middle Oconee river + +There are people too. Children playing in yards that line the banks. Cars roaring past on overpasses. Coeds having sex in a red and black hammock swinging from a tree out over the water. They stop, we pass by. It's all nature. + +The river goes on, we go with it. The coeds join the herons and houses and the cars and the stone walls. The river goes on. + +Until eventually it blends with the sea. We get out long before that though and make our way slowly home, late as usual. But somewhere back there on the river those molecules of water that held us afloat for the afternoon are still going, headed out to sea where they'll mingle, end up who knows where, perhaps swept up in a storm brought up into the clouds and back over the land only to be dumped again into another river, over and over again. Every river is everywhere and it all goes on and on and on. + +[1]: https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2010/08/dinosaur-national-monument-part-two-down-river + +[2]: https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2010/03/so-far-i-have-not-found-science + +[3]: http://garivers.org/ + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-04-18-the-poison-youve-been-dreaming-of.txt b/jrnl/2015-04-18-the-poison-youve-been-dreaming-of.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7be9463 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-04-18-the-poison-youve-been-dreaming-of.txt @@ -0,0 +1,66 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.95273082672748,-83.40319389647894 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2015/fucked.jpg +desc: Everyday we go to the store and blithely buy things without ever thinking about how they got here or what the cost of these items might be. We trade our time (all we have) for money to buy things that are killing us and the people we love. And we consider +dek: Everyday we go to the store and blithely buy things without ever thinking about how they got here or what the cost of these items might be. We trade our time (all we have) for money to buy things that are killing us and the people we love. And we consider this totally sane. +pub_date: 2015-04-18T22:05:41 +slug: the-poison-youve-been-dreaming-of +title: The Poison You’ve Been Dreaming Of +--- + +> You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. – Jane Goodall + +
+ + + +
Mark Rothko New Forms
+ +
+ +The other day Corrinne's friend was over and I happened to come out of my office to the kitchen to get a bit more tea when I overheard her saying, "you're a real downer with your off-gassing rugs and your crazy diet." + +For context, we've been trying to buy a rug. Yes, [something that really ties the room together](https://youtu.be/_vGK008c_rA), but also that isn't made with, more or less, poison. This turns out to be hard; more on that in a minute. Also, my wife is on a very restrictive diet for personal health reasons. Yes it is working and no, with any luck, she won't be on it forever. But. + +Here's the thing. Corrinne's friend is right, suddenly starting to pay attention to where things comes from and what they're made of, how they're made, who makes them and so on down the production chain very quickly turns you into a mildly-paranoid downer of sorts. The thing is though, it's not just rugs and the antibiotics in your meat -- it's everything. And it's happening whether you're paying attention to it or not. + +I really don't care what you want to look at in your everyday life, could be your food, your house, your clothes, your shoes, your car... it doesn't really matter, below the surface I can almost guarantee something is deeply, deeply fucked up about it. There's toxic chemicals everywhere, I think on some level most of us know that by now, but of course it's worse than that when you start digging. Get a little below the surface and you'll find that [slave labor](http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/04/03/fishermen-rush-be-rescued-amid-indonesian-slavery-probe.html) keeps the price of fish reasonable and hey, how about chocolate? You like chocolate? I do too, but the [slave children who picked it for us](http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/19/child-slavery-and-chocolate-all-too-easy-to-find/) probably have different feelings. + +Everyday we go to the store and blithely buy things without ever thinking about how they got here or what the cost of these items beyond the obvious -- money we have to spend -- might be. And the problem isn't just Walmart or Target or whoever you want to boycott this week. It's not limited to the U.S. or the west either. Exploitation is a universal problem that looks exactly the same in every country I've set foot in. It's a pervasive within a capitalist system. In fact it might be the *basis* of the capitalist system. + +But that's a huge chunk to chew on. Keep it simple. Just look at one thing. Let's stick with rugs and personal health since that's something you might be able to control to a degree. + +You probably would not think your rug needs to be coated in flame retardant toxins and held together with 10 different toxic glues. Yet it is and you inhale them every time you walk in the room. I am presumably, inhaling them right now as I type this. Is that worst thing in the world? You didn't click on those links to the child slavery stories above did you? No, toxic rugs are most definitely not the worst thing in the world. + +Yet toxins in rugs and furniture seems like a really easy thing to fix. After all 100 years ago rugs were considerably less toxic, if they were toxic at all. So why are those toxins there now? Why does you rug need to be toxic at all? Does flame retardant really save that many lives? Is it worth saving a handful of lives at the possibility of shortening all the rest? + +What's most troubling to me is the brutal economics of toxicology. Here's the hard reality of it: if you want a non-toxic rug you will pay at least 3x times as much as you would for a rug with misc gene-altering petrochemicals deeply embedded in it. + +In other words, if you're either poor and the cheap rug is your only choice or you just don't want to spend too much of your life energy on a rug, you will either have to increase the number of petrochemicals in your blood on a daily basis or not have a rug. And while no one seems to know how bad these things are for you, everyone agrees they're not good. Particularly if you're very young like all of my children. + +According to even the conservative estimates from groups like the EPA, all of these chemicals have long term repercussions. It would, as I understand it, not be wholly inaccurate to say you will die sooner because of them. Might only be a month sooner, might only be a week sooner, but you lose a little life. Because you bought the cheaper rug. + +This gets more depressing when you apply it across a broad spectrum and realize that the same economics of toxicology apply to food, where you live, how you move through the world, the shoes you wear, the things you apply to your skin, your hair, your kid's hair. + +Sure there are worse problems in the world, there are far worse problems in the world. I just find this one interesting because it's an entirely consumer culture created problem. The need to produce cheaper goods drives manufacturing methods and materials down until you get the rug equivalent of Soylent Green. It's not people (as far as I know) but it will kill them, both as they make it and as it sits in your house. That's consumerism. + +But what is consumerism? Or better, why is consumerism? The socio-biology answer is perhaps the most illuminating in this context: modern consumerism provides domesticated primates like ourselves with a means of attaining and identifying one's social status within a group. The one with the coolest rug is the *homo sapiens sapiens* equivalent of the gorilla with the biggest chest thump. + +Ah Culture. In order to attain a higher position in the group (and of course really tie the room together) we are willing to inhale poison on a daily basis. We trade our lives for stuff to illustrate the state of our lives to other people and increase our status in their eyes. + +As Tim Jackson puts it in a [talk](https://youtu.be/NZsp_EdO2Xk) called "an economic reality check", "*We spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last to people we don't care about*." + +We literally trade our time (all we have) for money to buy things that are killing us and the people we love. And we consider this totally sane. But it's not. If someone walked up off the street and offered to spray the same chemicals around out house for free we would call them insane. + +Why do we do it to ourselves? Because we've come to expect that our houses have rugs, that we can eat chocolate, that we can eat seafood. Because a lot of those things have nothing wrong with them. It's not *all* awful. Sometimes a fish is just a fish. Sometimes a rug is just a rug. But sometimes it isn't. Sometimes the bare floor ends up being more comfortable. + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-04-19-coming-home.txt b/jrnl/2015-04-19-coming-home.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cec77d0 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-04-19-coming-home.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.95742966190523,-83.40147728270863 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2015/Yellowstone.jpg +desc: I am happy to report that, despite a sketchy tow hookup that doesn't lock to the ball, some last-minute wiring snafus, a considerable amount of dry rot on one tire and of course the fact that it still isn't registered, I did nevertheless succeed in getting +dek: I am happy to report that, despite a sketchy tow hookup that doesn't lock to the ball, some last-minute wiring snafus, a considerable amount of dry rot on one tire and of course the fact that it still isn't registered, I did nevertheless succeed in getting our 1969 Yellowstone back to our house. +pub_date: 2015-04-19T21:53:23 +slug: coming-home +title: Coming Home +--- + +I finally brought the 1969 Yellowstone trailer to the house. Many thanks to my in-laws for storing it at their place for the last six months. + +1969 Yellowstone travel trailer + +I am happy to report that, despite a sketchy tow hookup that doesn't lock to the ball, some last-minute wiring snafus, a considerable amount of dry rot on the tire and of course the fact that it still isn't registered, I did nevertheless succeed in getting it to the house. + +I need to get the tire off and replaced, but so far the lug nuts, they just won't budge. + +Instead I decided to pull out the oven and some cabinet hardware and few other things I plan to keep. I bought a respirator, some goggles (pretty sure there's a good amount of black mold in the insulation, I get a bad headache without the respirator) and was all set to tear it apart only to discover... the Clutch Head. + +Clutch head screw diagramThe Clutch Head is a peculiar screw head that was -- according to [Wikipedia][1] -- popular with automobile manufacturers in the 1940s, and, wait for it, "mobile homes and recreational vehicles." + +So... it's home, but I still haven't gotten to tear anything out yet. I ordered a [clutch head bit][2] set from Vintage Trailer Supply and it arrived a couple of days ago, which means soon I can get started. Soon, always soon. + +[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives#Clutch + +[2]: http://www.vintagetrailersupply.com/Clutch_Head_Screw_Bits_p/vts-578.htm + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-05-07-were-here.txt b/jrnl/2015-05-07-were-here.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6a71b12 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-05-07-were-here.txt @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 30.841040782644317,-83.98170346556772 +location: Thomasville,Georgia,United States +image: 2015/bigoak.jpg +desc: On the drive down here to St. George Island they would ask "are we here yet?" To which Corrinne and I would answer, "yes, we are here." They're young enough that they let us get away with that. +dek: Right now the girls call everywhere "here". This greatly simplifies the whole "are we there yet" dilemma of driving with children. That's not the question. On the drive down here to St. George Island they would ask "are we here yet?" To which Corrinne and I would answer, "yes, we are here." They're young enough that they let us get away with that. +pub_date: 2015-05-07T20:55:59 +slug: were-here +title: We're Here +--- + +Lilah and Olivia are young enough that pretty much everywhere is called "here". This greatly simplifies the whole "are we there yet" dilemma of driving with children. That's not the question. On the drive down here to St. George Island they would ask little Buddhists, "are we *here* yet?" To which Corrinne and I would answer, "yes, we are here." They're young enough that they let us get away with that. + +And we are *here*. + +Sunrise through clouds over the beach, St George Island, FL + +What the girls won't let us get away with is car seats. A car seat would make even Paul Theroux want to get off the train. So we were looking for a place to stop and feed the baby, change a few diapers and let the girls get out of their car seats and stretch their legs, which is how we found ourselves in downtown Thomasville, GA. Are we here? Yes we are. + +If you're planning an American road trip here's my best suggestion: avoid the bypass. Go straight on through. Downtown. + +The bypass will just give you gas stations and the same 30 stores arrayed in stucco boxes that you saw 30 minutes ago in the last town. Go straight through. Go downtown. Unless it's Tallahassee, screw that place, take the bypass. The smaller towns though, straight on through is like time travel, straight back to the last moment in time before everything in urban planning went to shit. Or maybe just the last moment there was any urban planning. It feels a bit like going back to the last moment that people actually liked each other, though I know that's an illusion too. + +The Big Oak, Thomasville GA + +The best thing about small towns is the strange little moments you discover. If time is, as the Greeks would have it, a river, it's possible to find the strangest things whirling around in the little eddies of small town centers. Once, somewhere in Indiana or so, in the middle of the night, I went straight through and stumbled on a giant statue of superman in the middle of a downtown square. In Thomasville we went straight on through and stumbled on The Big Oak. + +Look, we're here. + +The only reason I know the name of Thomasville is that it's home to Sweetgrass dairies, which makes a pretty good chevre. There wasn't much in the way of parks though. Damn you urban planners of 1930. But I did see a little tiny tiny plaque out of the corner of my eye that said 'Big Oak' and had an arrow to the right. I turned. There were no further signs. I just kept driving until at one point I actually said, *hey, that's a big oak tree*, and sure enough there was sign that also said that. + +The Big Oak, Thomasville GA + +And both of us were right, it's a really big oak. The trunk is almost 27 feet in diameter and I have no idea how they purport to know, but the sign claims the tree has been around since 1680. These days it takes a mess of cables and wired and posts to prop it up, but it's still growing. It's still here. + +The Girls, Thomasville GA + +It's even got its own camera or something like that. If you stand by the oak and look up at something your picture gets posted on the internet I believe. We skipped that and had races across the grass to the gazebo instead. + +Later we counted boats along the coast. There's a boat. There's a boat. There's a boat. *I want to see another boat*. There's a boat. There's a boat. Never boring, always here. And then you arrive. Here again. + +Later at night, the sound of the sea. The waves and wind dying down. The fishing boats lit up on the horizon. The salt in the air. The cloud of the Milky Way. We are right here. + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-05-15-tates-hell.txt b/jrnl/2015-05-15-tates-hell.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ae8d82b --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-05-15-tates-hell.txt @@ -0,0 +1,86 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 29.854238614588233,-84.8141645841502 +location: Tate's Hell,Florida,United States +image: 2015/tates-hell.jpg +desc: If you're like me you're not going to take the legend of Tate's Hell very seriously. You're going to think, pshaw, swamps are fun, how bad can this one be? As it happens, if you're not prepared, it can be pretty bad. Especially in Yellow Fly season. +dek: Tate supposedly wandered out of his eponymous hell swamp and managed to say "my name is Cebe Tate, and I just came from Hell!" before promptly dropping dead. If you're like me you're not going to take this legend very seriously. You're going to think, pshaw, swamps are fun, how bad can this one be? As it happens, if you're not prepared, it can be pretty bad. Especially in Yellow Fly season. +pub_date: 2015-05-15T09:55:27 +slug: tates-hell +title: Tate's Hell +--- + +Storm clouds over the beach, St George Island, FL + +After about of a week of perfect sunshine and a nice little routine that went something like beach-nap-beach, the wind kicked up one evening and blew in a dark line of storm clouds that would hang around all morning for the next few days. The afternoons were still plenty sunny, but we started exploring other things in the morning. + +One morning I convinced everyone we should go take a look at the Apalachicola River and see some of the marsh area. I'd read about a nice boardwalk where the kids could see the marsh and river without too much of a hike. It's also supposed to be a good spot to [see some birds][2], especially with the storm blowing in who knows what from the tropics. + +We never actually made it to the Apalachicola River overlook though. We got sidetracked by a place called Tate's Hell. + +Tate's Hell has an arresting name. It pretty much demands that you learn more. We'd seen the signs for it over the years we've been coming down here, and it's hard to miss the vast expanse of green on the map that makes up the present day state park, but we'd never ventured in. I mean, it's called Tate's Hell. Doesn't really make you want to go in. + +Here's a synopsis of the [legend behind the name][3]: + +> Local legend has it that a farmer by the name of Cebe Tate, armed with only a shotgun and accompanied by his hunting dogs, journeyed into the swamp in search of a panther that was killing his livestock. Although there are several versions of this story, the most common describes Tate as being lost in the swamp for seven days and nights, bitten by a snake, and drinking from the murky waters to curb his thirst. Finally he came to a clearing near Carrabelle, living only long enough to murmur the words, "My name is Cebe Tate, and I just came from Hell!" + +If you're like me you're not going to take this legend very seriously. You're going to think, pshaw, [swamps are fun][4], how bad can this one be? And about this Tate, what kind of pansy can't handle a swamp? + +This is where I clear my throat and add that now that I've actually been in Tate's Hell for a grand total of about 30 minutes, uh, well, turn out, it can be bad. Really bad in fact. + +It would be an exaggeration to say we were lost, but I do, in hindsight, find it interesting that Tate's Hell managed to get us off course, sidetracked in search of dwarf cypress, before we'd even really entered it. There might be something to that legend. + +Whatever the case, after four miles of increasingly bad dirt/sand roads in a minivan under overcast skies -- with me absently wondering what would sort of impassible mud swamp the road would turn into should the deluge open up -- we made it to the lengthily-named Ralph G. Kendrick Dwarf Cypress Boardwalk Overlook which had inspired us to abandon our original plans of peaceful marshes and rivers. + +This is where it gets really interesting. This is where we "[get out of the damned contraptions and walk][5]." Sort of anyway. From parking lot to end of the boardwalk overlook was about a quarter of a mile. Maybe a half mile tops. Yet in that short distance we encountered one very small alligator, one very large (albeit harmless) black water snake, swarms of mosquitoes, a fire ant mound and hordes of a vicious little yellow flies that packed a nasty bite. + +And that was just half of mile of not really even entering the swamp. Lilah seems to find it all some sort of grand adventure. Olivia got bit by a yellow fly at about the same moment I discovered I was standing on a fire ant mound. She's screaming and tugging on my shirt for me to pick her up and I'm trying to strip off my Chacos and smash ants as fast as I can. I'm sure if there were video it would have been hilarious. In hindsight. + +
+ +Alligator eyes in water, Tate's Hell, Florida + +
While I was taking this photo I was standing on a red ant hill, which I realized, painfully, about one millisecond after pressing the shutter.
+ +
+ +Eventually we made it to the actual boardwalk and headed out over the dwarf cypress, which were + +fascinating if only because no one has ever been able to explain them. Despite being, in many cases, over 150 years old, they're no higher than 15 feet. The same cypress at other places in the park grow to normal height, but here, for some reason, they stay short. + + + +We got a slight break from the unrelenting insect onslaught when it started to rain while we were out on the platform. The rain queued up a chorus of frogs that went silent a few minutes later when the rain stopped. Olivia might have even smiled. + + + +Sufficiently traumatized by swamp, we headed back to the car and, after spending a few minutes killing all the biting flies that had followed us in the door, we managed to get out of Tate's Hell. On the way home Olivia fell asleep in the car so I ended up back on the road to the marsh area, which soon had us down more dirt roads. We didn't get out to walk the boardwalk but we did run into a few locals on ATVs who assured us it was lovely and that we should return at some point to check it out. + +While they were talking I could help noticing that, aside from their faces, not one of them had a bit of exposed skin, pants were tucked in to boots, long sleeves into gloves. Tate's Hell is only hell if you wonder in doubting that it's hell. Come prepared and it's like anywhere else -- beautiful. + +[1]: + +[2]: /jrnl/2013/05/king-birds + +[3]: http://www.freshfromflorida.com/Divisions-Offices/Florida-Forest-Service/Our-Forests/State-Forests/Tate-s-Hell-State-Forest + +[4]: /jrnl/2010/03/so-far-i-have-not-found-science + +[5]: https://luxagraf.net/photos/galleries/dinosaur-national-monument/#image-5 + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-05-18-big-long-week.txt b/jrnl/2015-05-18-big-long-week.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..84b7001 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-05-18-big-long-week.txt @@ -0,0 +1,88 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 29.660095736315927,-84.86705774591675 +location: St. George Island,Florida,United States +image: 2015/bigweek.jpg +desc: Whenever Lilah and Olivia want to convey long lengths of time they use the phrase "in a big long week". As in, "we have not had any cookies in a big long week." A big long week could be anywhere from two days to over a year. +dek: Whenever Lilah and Olivia want to convey long lengths of time they use the phrase "in a big long week". As in, "we have not had any cookies in a big long week." A big long week could be anywhere from two days to over a year. In this case we had two big long weeks on the island. +pub_date: 2015-05-18T12:36:06 +slug: big-long-week +title: A Big Long Week +--- + +Whenever Lilah and Olivia want to convey long lengths of time they use the phrase "in a big long week". As in, "we have not had any cookies in a big long week." A big long week could be anywhere from two days to over a year. In this case we had two big long weeks on the island. + + + +One of the many great things about having children is I get to see a lot [more sunrises](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2015/01/sunrise). + +It's strange how quickly you develop habits and patterns. We would usually wake up, watch the sunrise, have breakfast and then get down to the beach. + + + + + + + +St. George is teeming with creatures for kids to play with, including some that defend themselves. + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + + + +
+ +After trying various water toys, pool noodles, boogie boards, etc, none of which convinced the girls to come out in the ocean with me, I finally tried a good old pool float, which was a huge hit. + +
+ + + + + +
+ + + +The great tragedy of being a twin is that sometimes you have to take turns. + + + + + + + + + + + +A couple of times we made the trek to Apalachicola for cookies and other supplies. + + + + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-05-20-ode-outdoor-shower.txt b/jrnl/2015-05-20-ode-outdoor-shower.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..926cd6c --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-05-20-ode-outdoor-shower.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 29.660804289800733,-84.86735815332483 +location: St. George Island,Florida,United States +image: 2015/outdoor-shower.jpg +desc: The outdoor shower may be one of life's greatest joys. Certainly it makes for memorable showers. In fact, really, other than the fact that I know I shower every other day or so, I have no distinct memory of any of my showers save those that were outdoors. +dek: The outdoor shower may be one of life's greatest joys. Certainly it makes for memorable showers. I have fond memories of sunshowers hung from the mast of a sailboat, the slick mossy wood of an outdoor shower in Laos, the cold marble of bucket showers in India, the sandy tile of the beach showers where I grew up. + +pub_date: 2015-05-20T22:13:19 +slug: ode-outdoor-shower +title: Ode to the Outdoor Shower +--- + +The outdoor shower may be one of life's greatest joys. Certainly it makes for memorable showers. In fact, really, other than the fact that I know I shower every other day or so, I have no distinct memory of any of my showers save those that were outdoors. + +I remember sunshowers hung from the [mast of a sailboat][1], the slick mossy wood of an outdoor [shower in Laos][2], the cold marble of bucket showers in India, the sandy tile of the beach showers where I grew up. + +Down here I almost exclusively shower in the outdoor shower. This is partly practical, you're coming up from the beach, you need to wash the sand off before you go inside. Also, at the place we stay the indoor shower lacks a water pressure regulator and so is a bit like standing in front of a fire hose. After a long day in the sun the last thing your skin needs is a pressure washing. + +The practicalities of the outdoor shower are really just a cover though. The truth is I prefer to shower out of doors. + +There's a wonderful freedom to showering outside. It's the same sort of freedom, or feeling of freedom that I get when I know I there are no constraints on my time, that feeling of freedom at the outset of an extended trip, that feeling that anything is possible. With the outdoor shower I think some of that might be the nakedness. My body is rarely naked to the elements (however peaceful they may be) and there's certainly an exhilaration in that. When was the last time you were naked in the afternoon sun? + +There's also the novelty of it. I happen to think we should all do more things outdoors and to me the best way to do that is not to go somewhere exotic and commune with nature, but to just to do the things you do now indoors, out of doors. Simple. Can't beat the view either. + +view of clouds from an outdoor shower, St. George Florida. + +[1]: /jrnl/2007/07/other-ocean + +[2]: /jrnl/2006/02/lovely-universe + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-06-10-big-blue-bus.txt b/jrnl/2015-06-10-big-blue-bus.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c21b33a --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-06-10-big-blue-bus.txt @@ -0,0 +1,57 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 35.82050050961864,-82.54565948803042 +location: Asheville Area,North Carolina,United States +image: 2015/bluebus.jpg +desc: Bought a 1969 Dodge Travco, the coolest vehicle ever made. The first few corners were nerve-wracking, the kind of white knuckled terror-inducing driving I haven't done since the very first time I sat down behind a wheel. Or the time I claimed I could ride +dek: Change of plans, sold the trailer, bought a 1969 Dodge Travco, the coolest vehicle ever made. The first few corners were nerve-wracking, the kind of white knuckled terror-inducing driving I haven't done since the very first time I sat down behind a wheel. Or the time I claimed I could ride a motorcycle when I actually had no clue. It all works out in the end. + +pub_date: 2015-06-10T12:52:36 +slug: big-blue-bus +title: The Big Blue Bus +--- + +A blue 1969 Dodge Travco + +The first few corners are nerve-wracking, the kind of white knuckled terror-inducing driving I haven't done since the very first time I sat down behind the wheel. Or the time in Thailand that I [claimed I could ride a motorcycle](/jrnl/2006/01/king-carrot-flowers) when I actually had no clue. It always works out in the end. So far[^1]. + +I have driven somewhere in the neighborhood of 250,000 miles, but this is the first time I've strapped myself to a 27 foot long monstrosity in unknown condition and promptly set off, barreling down a mountain on narrow streets through a town I just arrived in 2 hours ago. The prudent man would have done some sort of test drive I suppose. Meh, screw it, let's go. + +There's one big hairpin turn at the bottom of the hill that I noted on the way up and it's the main thing that has my palms sweating. It turns out to be nothing. I pump the brakes a bit, take it nice and slow and slice around the corner like it's not even there. After that the road straightens out as it heads through downtown Mars Hill. + +At the first stop light I pull up close enough to the car in front of me that the entire facade of the Travco is visible in the back window. I start laughing because it is quite simply the coolest thing I've ever seen. + +Over the course of the next 180 or so miles home this will happen over and over again whenever I stop and catch a glimpse of this thing in some window or mirror. It's not me either, it seems to happen to just about everyone. I get 180 miles of smiles and waves. The first time I stop a man is up at the window asking if he can take a picture before I've even taken off my seatbelt. + +I get smiles and waves from hoodlum kids lounging on skateboards behind a gas station, a couple coming out of an antique store in Fletcher, NC. An old man walking through Anderson, SC tips a baseball cap to me and everyone I see looking my way it smiling. I pull into a gas station, but it proves too small (the tank is in rear and these pumps were not 27 feet from the door of the building) so I leave. My parents, who are in town and graciously agreed to following me back, stop and go inside and later report that the entire gas station is talking about the Travco, speculating on the year. + +Pulling into Athens I stop at a light downtown and everyone waves. A man making a left comes around the corner and I watch his eyes widen as he takes in the Dodge grill and then he breaks into a smile and starts laughing. I completely relate to him. + +Usually wanting is better than having. We call this buyers remorse, but it's basic evolutionary biology -- wanting, that is, imagining having, releases more dopamine than having. So you have all this dopamine associated with the thing you want, but then when you actually get the thing, well, no more dopamine. + +Unless it's a Travco apparently, because I get a huge hit of dopamine every time I see this thing. It's been in the driveway for nearly a week and I still smile every time I walk out the door. Yesterday my wife and I stood in the front yard just staring at it and giggling like children. + +To call it an RV is to say a Stradivarius is a violin. The Travco is not an RV; it's a 27 foot long fiberglass container full of magic and joy. I have no idea what it is about it, but it's clearly not just me that feels it. It'll make you giddy. + +I can't wait to get it in top traveling shape. + + + + + + + +Work on the interior is underway. I'll post more pics later. + + + +[^1]: I hope it goes without saying that my kids were not with me for this trip. + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-07-02-elvis-has-left-building.txt b/jrnl/2015-07-02-elvis-has-left-building.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cbf787a --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-07-02-elvis-has-left-building.txt @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.963774457452075,-83.40132707900412 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2015/elvis-gone.jpg +desc: It's not that I have anything against the king, it's that I don't have anything at all, no feelings one way or the other on Elvis, so he came out and won't be going back in. The walls, ceiling and floor of the Travco are also coming out. +dek: It's not that I have anything against the king, it's that I don't have anything at all, no feelings one way or the other on Elvis, so he came out and won't be going back in. The walls, ceiling and floor of the Travco are also coming out. +pub_date: 2015-07-02T10:06:48 +slug: elvis-has-left-building +title: Elvis Has Left the Building +--- + +Elvis is currently in my office, peering over my shoulder as I type. And sorry, but the lovely velvet rendition of the king that came with our Travco has already been claimed by friend. It's not that I have anything against the king, it's that I don't have anything at all, no feelings one way or the other on Elvis. So he came out and will be going to someone who does have some feelings about the king. + +Stripped interior of 1969 Dodge Travco + +Here's an early image of the bus the way we got it (more or less) for reference: + +Interior of Dodge Travco before with Velvet Elvis painting + +The walls, ceiling and floor of the Travco are also coming out. Stripping them all has been a slow process in part because of the weather -- it's been murderously hot here for a couple of weeks. One day I came out of the bus dripping sweat and thought the outside temperature actually felt pretty pleasant. When I checked the thermometer it turned out to be 97 degrees F. Inside the bus is at least 15-20 degrees warmer. + +It's also been slow going because I'm trying to remove the walls relatively intact so I can use the pieces as templates for the new paneling. I still don't know what to do for the ceiling, but a fellow Travco owner got in touch and offered up a bench seat and bunk system, which solves the thing I was dreading the most -- building that from scratch without measurements to work from. One headache solved. Thanks Paul. + +I also started cleaning up the exterior. With help of course. + +Washing a blue 1969 Travco + +Detailing a 27ft long 11ft tall vehicle is as time consuming as you'd think, but I think the results are worth it. The finish on this thing isn't perfect, but it's still pretty good, good enough that I doubt I'll do anything beyond patching a few soft spots I found on the roof. + +What's impressed me the most about all this tear down is just how well this thing has held up. + +With the exception of the furnace area beneath the sink there is almost no rotted wood. One piece by the door needs to be replaced, but that's it. That's pretty amazing for a 46-year-old vehicle. Of course there is a gaping hole in the floor under my sink due to a very poorly installed furnace that lacked any sealing and was obviously still leaking. + +water rot and floor damage 1969 Travco + +So I get to do a little subflooring and an interesting curved cut to match the contour of the side right next to the door. + +Once that's done the next step is to rework the wiring and install a solar setup. Then I can re-insulate and start the fun part -- putting it all back together. + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-09-22-progress.txt b/jrnl/2015-09-22-progress.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2391cff --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-09-22-progress.txt @@ -0,0 +1,66 @@ +--- +template: single +point: 33.957904369989365,-83.4083437377863 +location: Athens,Georgia,United States +image: 2015/progress.jpg +desc: I'm not crazy anti-tech, I just think the good, sustainable technologies are rare. But I'm not a delusional lunatic who thinks I'm living in the Victorian era or anything. I just don't really like air conditioning. Or heaters. Or generators. Hmm. +dek: I'm not crazy anti-tech, I just think the good, sustainable technologies are rare. I'm not a delusional lunatic who thinks I'm living in the Victorian era or anything. I just don't really like air conditioning. Or heaters. Or generators. And I prefer a good fire to electric light. +pub_date: 2015-09-22T16:12:48 +slug: progress +title: Progress +--- + +Girls playing beside a blue 1969 Dodge Travco motorhome + +Restoring artifacts from the past is a slow, painstaking and sometimes tedious process. + +I've never participated in an archaeological dig, but sometimes restoring the bus feels like one. I may not be digging million year old dinosaur bones out of the ground -- I imagine it takes a bit more skill to extract dinosaur bones and reconstruct the skeleton of an actual creature from them than it does to peel the paneling, insulation, wiring and plumbing out of a 1969 Travco -- but the aim is the same: bring the past back to life. + +The problems is you never quite know what the past was *really* like. Is that a bone a finger joint or a toe? Should this be attached to that or was it always flopping here? Do I need this random bit of 12V wire tucked behind the under the sink? And, most ominously, the moments you find yourself thinking, "what in the world is that?" + +I've also diagnosed a potentially serious disease in restoration projects that primarily manifests itself like this: "Well, as long as I'm in here, I might as well check the ______". + +Next thing you know, instead of just fixing some rotting wood behind the kitchen counter you've completely re-done the entire plumbing. + +It's all fun though. Especially getting all the crap out. Tearing out the ugly roof wart air conditioning unit and kicking it down to the ground where is shattered was especially satisfying (see [a picture](/jrnl/2015/06/big-blue-bus) of said wart). Falling through the rotting floor under the hot water heater and almost punching my foot through the black water tank, less so. Fortunately I've mostly been working barefoot. I'm pretty sure a shoe would have had just enough extra weight to have cracked the tank. + +The rotted wood under the water heater and water tank + +The air conditioning is gone though and that's all that really matters. I hate air conditioning. I have it in my home because when air conditioning came along we promptly threw out all the things that made it possible to live without air conditioning. So now we build houses in the worst possible way and then pay a ton of money to keep them cool. Progress. Never mind that humanity somehow managed to do for 60,000 or so years, give or take, with, gasp, no air conditioning at all. To hear most people these days those first 60,000 years had to have been one long miserable existence. + +I disagree. I think life without air conditioning is grand, if a bit sweatier here in the south. But we don't intend to spend much time here in the south. And yes, I have spent several summers here in the south without air conditioning. I survived. I even enjoyed it. + +I did install a fan in its place. I'm not an animal. I even went in for the fancy reversible fan with temperature controlled shutoff, which should be more than sufficient to keep things from getting too bad. The thing is -- forget for a moment that I reject the notion that life should be constantly comfortable and climate controlled -- let's stick to the more universal idea that not being too hot is generally more pleasant than being too hot... it's an RV, if it's too hot where we are, we will fire up the magnificent Dodge engine and go somewhere cooler. I really need to tear out the rear A/C too, but for now it stays. + +It should go without saying that the heater has likewise long since departed via graceless and shattering fall to the concrete. Nothing replaces the heater. Instead we now have enough storage space under the stove for more useful items like a slow cooker, a cast iron dutch oven or two, a few jars of fermenting veggies and maybe even a sauerkraut crock. + +Next on a chopping block is the two way refrigerator which will replaced by an icebox and the Onan generator which will be replaced by nothing. The ice box move freaks everyone out, "oh my god, how will you live without a refrigerator?!" Technically, we'll still have one, it's just going to be in the form of a 12V freezer, which will allow us to freeze things we need to freeze (ice blocks, bulk purchase meat, huge batches of camp beans from aforementioned dutch ovens) and then turn it off when we don't need it. The other things we need kept refrigerated will do just fine in an icebox. + +Almost nothing in the average refrigerator actually needs to be there for any health reasons. If you'd like to learn more, read up on how long distance sailors store food. + +The generator will be replaced by couple solar panels on the roof which don't take up 10 cubic feet, are silent and don't belch smoke. Looking forward to the storage space that will buy us in the back, under the bed. + +
+ +Travco t-shirts + +Travco t-shirts + +
Travco t-shirts (printed by a band called The Swell Season -- no idea what the music sounds like, but I bought some shirts for the girls).
+ +
+ +Slowly but surely progress happens. Or what I call progress, which this case means reverting to technology of roughly 1955, around the time technology slips into solipsism. Well, except solar, that, along with incremental improvements in energy efficiency are about the only decent tech inventions since 1955. And those are few and far between. My 1969 Ford F250 gets as good or better gas mileage than the current line of Ford trucks. + +Which is not to say I hate technology, just that most of it serves itself or its makers, not its users. + +Solar is a notable exception -- possibly the best idea/tech we've ever invented. I mean, I'm not crazy anti-tech, I just think the good, sustainable ideas are few and far between. But I'm not a delusional lunatic who thinks I'm [living in the Victorian era by playing dress up](http://www.vox.com/2015/9/9/9275611/victorian-era-life) or anything. I just don't really like air conditioning. Or heaters. Or generators. And I prefer a good fire to electric light. Hmm. + diff --git a/jrnl/2015-12-18_tools.txt b/jrnl/2015-12-18_tools.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9d915cd --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2015-12-18_tools.txt @@ -0,0 +1,53 @@ +The bag has been sitting on the table in the front room for weeks before I ever carry it out to the bus. It's canvas. Or a nylon made to look like canvas perhaps. It's heavy duty though, looks like it will weather some use and abuse. It hasn't yet. Not much. By the looks of it anyway. + +There is a long and complicated story about how it came to be here on the table in the front room. I don't really understand, but I do know it belongs in the bus now. + +screw drivers, files and other tools + +There are a few screwdrivers inside, some wrenches, files, and a plastic jar of the sort men my grandfather's age seemed inordinately fond of keeping things in, their wives having doled out all the Skippy or Jif the container once held on sandwiches, or in cookies baked in ovens surrounded by Formica counters and build atop linoleum floors, surfaces of the golden age of petroleum, surfaces of the postwar three bedroom brick ranches of the West, well stocked with sugary sweet and creamy peanut butter jars destined ultimately not for the recycling bin but the tool shed behind the carport. + +My cousins and I might have eaten the contents of this jar at some point, though it looks perhaps too new for that. Our children maybe. My cousin's children. Mine have never seen a three bedroom brick ranch house in the desert. Never will. Not that one anyway. + +Inside the jar is an impressive collection of jeweler's screwdrivers, tiny files, a loupe, a wire brush and a tool whose use is a mystery to me, labeled simply ATT. Not the Bell Telephone Corporation he worked fifty some odd years for, but ATT. Tools demand brevity. + +The rest of the bag is filled with larger equivalents of the same tools in the jar. The red and clear lucite handled Craftsman screwdrivers I remember hanging from the magnetic strip on the front of the shelf. The larger flathead with the wooden handle was always sticking too far out of another Jif jar, precariously leaning against the back wall of the workbench. + +The shed was metal, unbearable in the midday Tucson summer. It was a mornings and evenings place to work. The bookends of the day. + +It's late now. Another day. A long day of tools. There's much to be done on a warm December day. Glue that can't cure in December cold suddenly can cure on a day like today. Now the bus smells of acetone, Sticky Stuff and old carpet. Low voltage wires hang down from the ceiling, scraps of polyiso insulation board scatter the floor. The light is yellow. That yellow light isn't as common as it used to be when he would go out to the shed at night after dinner to tinker with radios and television sets. The light from the warmest LED bulbs I can get isn't nearly as warm as these old incandescents. + +Why were they called ranches, those postwar dwellings America scattered across the landscape? They're nothing like ranches. A house is not the ranch. The land is the ranch. + +Most of these tools I recognize. Or imagine that I do. I know I remember the screwdrivers. I don't know if they were really there, but I believe my memory of them. I know I don't remember the bag. I can tell by the lack of wear that it's too new, it came along long after I stopped coming around the tool shed. Or Tucson for that matter. + +Alan Watts once [said](https://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/watts_alan/watts_alan_article3.shtml), "every one of us is a whirlpool in the tide of existence." The context, or his point actually, is that everything passes through us, we are whirlpools, the water moves through us. Take away the water and there's nothing left. These tools have passed through one whirlpool and into another. + +We are not things, Watts was fond of saying, we are happenings. But we are happenings with things. Specifically with tools, many of which help us happen in one way or another. What to make of these tools then? + +"The coming and going of things in the world is marvelous," says Watts. "They go. Where do they go? Don't answer, because that would spoil the mystery. They vanish into the mystery." + +For now they're mine, my mystery to hold on to. I don't work on TVs or radios and don't have much use for many of them, still, everyone needs screwdrivers. Even the files have come in handy to shaving down the burrs in a few holes I needed to drill in the metal windows channels. Down the road which ones will I need? Don't answer. + +I've often wondered what my grandfather would have thought of the bus. It's not his style really. Too big, too comfortable. When we went camping he always slept in a tent. With a cot. A setup I imagine was something like what he spent WWII living in. + +Otto in New Guinea, 1943 + + +I was always in a camper with my parents. My grandparents were in the tent. A tent was good enough for New Guinea it was good enough for Zion, Arches, Bryce, Canyonlands and the rest of the red rock desert we explored for years. It was always good enough for me too. + +The darker it gets the more apparent it is that these LED bulbs will never do. The light in here with them on is too blue. I'd rather lose the energy, lose a day of boondocking than light the world with the harsh blue of police stations. + +The funniest thing about the bus is how much disdain I've always had for RV dwellers. What's the point, there's nothing about living in an RV that's any "closer to nature" than the average house. Why not just stay at home? Those beliefs were predicated on there being a home. I don't know that it ever occurred to me as a kid that for some of those RV owners that was home. LED lights and all. + +My beliefs were in some respect his. He never had any respect for people who needed comfort or modern convenience. He never said as much, but it wasn't hard to absorb that lesson being around him. That's not to say he did not *like* comfort, he just didn't need it. He grew up the son of alcoholics, his family owned a wood lot in the desert. It was bad enough that he ran away at fourteen. Not that he told me that, not that I even knew that back then. That came later, like the tool bag. + +Every day when we were out camping, no matter the weather or temperature outside, he washed his face every morning in the same silver bowl filled with half boiling water and half cold from the water bottle that had spent the night in the cold desert air of the tent. He used the hot water, but even as he did you couldn't help suspect that he didn't need it, that he appreciated it for what it was, but was not at loss without it, that he'd have scrubbed his face with a block of ice if he had to. + +Or maybe Freud was right; maybe he was just washing his face. Perhaps it's all just a case of the imagination projecting the image it wants to recall on the scenes of the past that it has access too. But then does it matter one way or the other? Memory is a construct, built with the tools your imagination has on hand. I have these scenes from camping trips, these screw drivers in plastic jars, this warm yellow light to sit beneath. Does it matter which light we choose to see by? I like this yellow light, the weaker light, the warmer light. I like the way it glows. And I like this bag of tools, even if I don't need all of them right now. diff --git a/jrnl/2016-01-01_pilgrim-happiness.txt b/jrnl/2016-01-01_pilgrim-happiness.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b051265 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-01-01_pilgrim-happiness.txt @@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ +I've been thinking about this little mantra ever since I saw it six or seven years ago. I don't think I've ever seen what I consider the secret to happiness so succinctly and completely captured. + +I'm reprinting it here because I've been putting into action lately. And the author of this little guide happiness, Mark Pilgrim, removed his entire online presence back in 2011. When he originally published it in '09 or so he said he was on step 4. I assume he eventually made it to step 8. + +>1. Stop buying stuff you don't need +>2. Pay off all your credit cards +>3. Get rid of all the stuff that doesn't fit in your house/apartment storage lockers, etc. +>4. Get rid of all the stuff that doesn't fit on the first floor of your house attic, garage, etc. +>5. Get rid of all the stuff that doesn't fit in one room of your house +>6. Get rid of all the stuff that doesn't fit in a suitcase +>7. Get rid of all the stuff that doesn't fit in a backpack +>8. Get rid of the backpack + +I would say I am simultaneously on steps 2 and 4, with 5 in sight. + +For the record, while I understand wandering monks and the like, right now I personally have no desire to go beyond step 7. diff --git a/jrnl/2016-02-08_8-track-gorilla.txt b/jrnl/2016-02-08_8-track-gorilla.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9137619 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-02-08_8-track-gorilla.txt @@ -0,0 +1,69 @@ +I just sold an old Oldsmobile 8-track cassette player on eBay for $86. Yes, I sold an antiquated music player that takes a format no one has manufactured in over three decades for $86. + +I pulled it out of the bus. It's a stock item for a Cutlass Supreme from the late 1960s through early 1970s. I have no idea how it came to be in a 1969 Dodge Travco. What I do have an idea about is why I just sold it, as-is, could-be-working, could not be working, for $86. + +8-track from 70s era Oldsmobile + +In purely practical terms the current value of the 8-track is bewildering and when you first encounter it, you are thinking in practical terms. + +Practical would be the brand new, reasonably high end car stereo that will replace the 8-track, which set me back a mere $45 on Amazon. It will play every digital music format you've ever heard of and dozens more you haven't. It's a knock off of a fancier name-brand model most likely made by the same slave laborers in the same factory. Capitalism[^1]. + +But even I would be the first to admit it's also a complete piece of crap, made of cheap plastic and designed to be chucked in a rubbish bin the minute it starts to malfunction. In fact the advent of the car stereo wiring "harness" -- which eliminates any need to understand soldering and reduces the installation process to clicking little plastic pieces into place -- was designed to facilitated this kind disposability. Consumer capitalism. + +The 8-track player on the other hand is not disposable in the same way. Nor is it installation-friendly. Whoever installs it will be soldering it in, or perhaps twisting and taping some wires, but either way there will most definitely not be any snapping of plastic. It will take time. Even after all the time it takes to repair it, it will take time to install it. + +But there's the thing. If it does turn out to not be working, it can can be repaired by anyone with the patience to sit down, take it apart and figure out how it works. + +This is the first part of why I think the 8-track still has so much value to this day. The world is increasingly disposable, not just by design, but by inherent complexity vs price. The cheap stereo is fixable too -- as anyone who's tinkered with a Raspberry Pi can tell you, it's not that hard to solder, though it does take some practice -- but it requires more specialized knowledge and (often) a circuit diagram of some sort. And because a new one is only $45 it's tough to come up with a convincing argument for fixing it. + +schematic of 8 trackPurely mechanical devices like the 8-track, which consists of some machined bearings, a capstan, a solenoid coil and a couple other elements, are much easier to figure out on your own, without a schematic. It's also made of things that are fixable, which adds a new dimension to ownership. This is not just a thing you traded for some tickets, which you traded hours of your life to get, but a thing you can fix should you need to. There is an element of self-reliance present that it is not present in the Amazon plastic crap. + +There is a kind of satisfaction in taking something apart, wrapping your head around how it works and then putting it back together better than it was before. Sure, at this point you might have to fabricate some parts if they turn out the be broken, but with 3D printers that's well within the realm of possibility (and, should 3D printers not be around there are still plenty of lathes in metal shops all over the place). + +What's more, no matter what the things is -- a clock, a wood burning stove, a vehicle, a radio, a turntable, even a house -- I guarantee there are people out there devoting their free time and energy to fixing it. These people have created forums and share knowledge, tips and tricks all over the internet, often you find people joining in who used to work in factories making the thing in question. + +In the 8-track's case there is [8trackheaven.com](http://8trackheaven.com/), which does not appear to be maintained, but has another clue as to why [people find value in older stuff](http://8trackheaven.com/archive/why.html): + +> When you say yes to 8-track you're generally saying no to the accepted wisdom of our hallowed consumer culture, decrying this religion of consumption as the worship of hollow, deceptive idols.... Commit an act of consumer disobedience with us and reject the unjust laws of a marketplace ruled by greed. Follow the way of the 8-track and reap the spiritual rewards that come with renewing and recycling instead of stepping in line with the cattle so captivated with the consumerist culture that ultimately benefits only landfill brokers. + +I think this little manifesto-style rejection hints at something else in the appeal of restoration, something beyond the ability to repair things. I think that buying and restoring mechanical devices from earlier eras is also a way of traveling through time back to a world we may well have never personally known. There's an element of nostalgia, but nostalgia for something never experienced. + +1969 Dodge Travco. No TVs present + +I have no memory of 1969 Dodge Travcos, but in recreating one I'm connecting back to an era I never got to experience. It's not nostalgia for that time, not really romanticism of it either. It's something different, tangibly different. That time is gone, but echoes of it remain in the objects that come down to us. And I think that the world's response to the Travco, [the endless smiles and waves](/jrnl//2015/06/big-blue-bus) reflect that connection, that echo of the age that gave us the Travco. + +That age had ideas about itself, about the objects that surrounded it, grew out of it. There is nothing like the Travco on the road now and that says as much about us now as it does about Travcos then. This often brings with it an implicit, or as in the 8-track manifesto, an explicit rejection of the perceived values of today in favor of either the values of the past or simply the value of stasis. The 8-track manifesto isn't nostalgic for 8-tracks necessarily, it's simply that 8-tracks become the stopping point of technological progression. They are good enough. + +This is a big part of why I have the Travco. Not that it is the best RV ever built, but that it is good enough. It does not provide every comfort of home and in that sense it becomes a kind of critique of our modern conception of comfort. Do you really need two TVs in your RV? + +More to the point the restoration is the embodiment of that rejection -- by existing it says, look, here is an era when no one thought it necessary to have two TVs in their RV. It becomes a kind of nostalgia for a set of values -- though you need to be careful about this since there are some really shitty values lurking back in the age of the Travco and 8-track -- but I don't know that nostalgia is quite the word. I'm not sure we have a word to describe the rejection and embracing. + +Antoine de Saint-Exupéry writes in Wind, Sand and Stars, "To grasp the meaning of the world of today we use a language created to express the world of yesterday." + +I thought of this line when I was struggling to find a word in the last paragraph, but then I thought that perhaps we do the same thing with object. That is, you could easily change it read: to grasp the meaning of the world of today we use objects that are expressions of the world of yesterday. + +Perhaps this is me getting old, but the Travco makes more sense to me than any vehicle being made now. And I don't mean the technical, the engine complexity of now versus then, though that is certainly part of it, but there are less technical things too. + +The way the engineers of the Travco looked at the world is reflected in what they built. The way the engineers who built the Honda maxivan I also currently own look at the world is reflected in their choices as well. And these are very markedly different ways of looking at the world. The engineers of the Honda assume me an idiot. They won't let me open the side doors when the vehicle is in drive. They made it howl with beeping should I shift out of park while the door is still open. They decided not to tell me what the oil pressure is, but instead angrily flash an inscrutable light when the oil pressure getting low. + +These are minor things that irritate me not because of their actual function but because of what they say about how the designers of the Honda think about me and the rest of the world. It doesn't stop there either. The engineers of the Honda take a dim view of professional mechanics as well. Honda's own workers are not mechanics, they're certified technicians. The world of the Honda is exclusive, stratified, and specialized. It has no place for the mechanic of old and certainly now place for you and I[^2]. + +I cannot make sense of a world where designers believe they are better at knowing what I am capable of than I am. + +This is true of the disposable stereo as well. It has stickers all over it and warnings on the box about voiding the warranty if you unscrew a certain screw to access the inside (as if not having a warranty were some horrible thing). All technology has moved in this direction, much of it to the point of using obscure torx screws and other deliberate attempts to stymie tinkering. + +Why? What is so horrible that could happen if I take a think apart? That I might break it? Well then I would have broken it. And learned something. + +This is a world that I cannot make sense of, nor can, I suspect, the buyer of my 8-track. + +I can make sense of the design world the creators of the Travco came from. It feels more like home to me. It is built to empower the owner, not stymie them. There are access panels everywhere. A lengthy guide tells me how to disassemble most of the core components in the vehicle. Even ones you can't reach without tearing out the walls -- the 12V electrical system is shown complete with schematics. The designers of the Travco felt I might want to -- indeed they knew I would have to -- get to the engine, so the built a massive, awkward access hatch that's half as large as the seats on either side of it. + +It is, like all vehicles of its era, designed to be tinkered with. Because tinkering is the thing that makes us human. Or at least that's the message I get when I sit in the Travco tinkering with things. I notice how there's not just a vent at the back of the fridge, but a panel that opens to give access to the entire 2-way fridge internals. I also notice that in the original sales brochures the ease of repair is a central selling point. Not so long ago we liked to fix things ourselves. + +The next line in Saint-Exupéry's book is, "The life of the past seems to us nearer our true natures, but only for the reason that it is nearer our language." Is the same true of objects? Are objects of the past nearer to us because they are nearer to our natures. Perhaps. + +I don't know who bought the 8-track, but I do suspect that she's a bit like me -- she's looking for something to tinker with, something to take back in time to its original state, back in time to a world perhaps she never knew, but misses nonetheless. We are like Saint-Exupéry writes, "emigrants who have not founded our homeland", and I wish her the best of luck in trying to create it. + +[^1]: In an ideal capitalist system anyway. In fact we don't live in a system like that. We live in a system where price of the new stereo is artificially low because we in the west have decided we're okay with exploiting people in other parts of the world for the sole purpose of making sure we have $45 stereos. + +[^2]: This is not to say you can't work on a Honda. You can and I have, but it's certainly not encouraged. diff --git a/jrnl/2016-02-24-up-in-the-air.txt b/jrnl/2016-02-24-up-in-the-air.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..79e31da --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-02-24-up-in-the-air.txt @@ -0,0 +1,73 @@ +I tore the rear air conditioning unit off the back of the bus today. It [joins the front unit](/jrnl/2015/09/progress) in the growing pile of bus trash at the side of our house. + +The big Blue bus sans air conditioner roof wart + +Afterward I stood back and looked at the Travco. All the clean lines and curves joined together again, no more air conditioning warts to interrupt the sliding smooth and unbroken swoop of white and blue. The big blue bus looked sleek and whole again. + +I'll admit it gave me no small measure of satisfaction, thinking that perhaps, amidst the exponentially increasing insanity, I'd made some tiny thing right in the world. It was that same sort joy that comes from eating really dark chocolate. The aesthetic perfection of hundred percent dark chocolate. + +I didn't really get a chance to savor this feeling because the universe hates smugness and soon after I had another thought, hmm, maybe I should check and see if it's going to rain any time soon... Oh, well, yes it is. For three days straight. Starting tomorrow. And I just opened a fourteen inch square hole in the roof of the bus. Genius. + +I got a trash bag, some painter's tape, some duct tape, a dictionary of German swear words, and got to work. + +I had some time up there on the roof of the bus to reflect on what I had done. More or less an incredibly impractical thing. In the service of what I think is my offbeat, but at times deeply felt sense of aesthetics, I had ripped out two at least partly functioning air conditioners. + +Actually I should probably look up aesthetics in the dictionary and make sure that's what I'm acting in the service of. Or I should read Kant. But then it all gets very technical and is predicated on the belief that there is an absolute sense of "good" and "bad" to beauty and I don't know if it matters that much. Maybe dark chocolate metaphors are good enough. If the dark chocolate is good enough. Screw Kant. + +Somewhere in a tangle of duct tape and torn plastic trash bags, I tk curious what Kant would have made of a 1969 Travco. Obviously the engine thing would be new. But Kant was probably familiar with Gypsies at least. The mobile home concept would be familiar. Probably frowned on, but familiar. But what would he make of tearing out an object of convenience and comfort because I think aesthetic integrity and beauty trump personal comfort? + +I decided there was a high probability he would think I was an idiot to forego the comfort of air conditioning, which, from his point of view, would be like magic. The problem is I've never been able to get through more than a few pages of Critique of Judgment without being overcome with a desire to reach back through time and give the man a hug[^1] and say, relax, it's all going to be okay. + +Aesthetics have always seemed pretty simple to me. There is stuff in the world that makes you feel delight. So when you discover this beauty and delight in the world around you, you embrace it and do what you can in service of it[^2]. Like removing ugly air conditioners. + +The designers of the Travco, to my mind, felt the same way, though they were doubtless bound by certain economic and marketplace constraints I don't have. Hence, warts on the roof if you must. But no one who's of a purely practical bent would ever have designed the large front sliding windows the way they are designed. They're wildly impractical, worse, they leak. But there they are. Pure aesthetics. They look like the person who designed them had discovered delight in their beauty. Little water coming in? Get a towel. + +The marketplace does not value aesthetics though. The wonderful sweeping curves of the Travco's windows leaked badly enough that at some point (early '70s) the idea was abandoned altogether. + +Aesthetics are a learning experience, a feedback loop of sorts, though the experience is better when it creates change in other direction -- adding *in* wildly impractical, but aesthetically delightful, sliding windows as it were. + +Consider dark chocolate. I'd never really had any until I started dating my wife. I thought chocolate was something that skins a cheap candy bar full of nougat and indecipherable ingredients. The first time my wife gave me a bit of real chocolate was revelatory. The possibilities of life expanded, I had discovered more joy and beauty. Aesthetic progress you might say. + +Aesthetics are a life long process, always in flux, that's part of what drives us all to want to know what's around the next corner, over the next hill. As naturalist and herbalist Juliette de Bairacli Levy writes, "I believe that this endless search for beauty in surroundings, in people and one's personal life, is the headstone of travel." + +My own aesthetics are like yours I imagine, complicated and often contradictory, nothing so firmly delineated as to please Kant. But one thing I have figured out is that comfort is transitory and moreover, relative. Aesthetics are neither[^3]. + +Which is to say, removing the air conditioner might mean that I end up hot, sweating and unable to sleep, but this too, as they say, shall pass. I won't *always* be hot sweaty and unable to sleep. I will always have to look at the air conditioning wart that used to be on top of the bus. Comfort must be chased; beauty exists. + +This is what I kept telling myself the next morning as I mopped up the floor where all the water had come pouring in after my duct tape and trash bag covering collapsed under the weight of accumulated rain water. Comfort is relative. Beauty just is. + +For those of us from the relative north, one of the stranger sights in the tropics is the way everyone grabs a jacket the minute the temperature drops below 80 degrees. Even though I have been on the other side of it; living through a succession of New England winters with less and less pain each time. Still, I'll never forget the first night I spent in Goa. The sun went down, the temperature dropped to about 80 and the jackets came out. One person's balmy evening is another person's winter. + +By the time I got to [Seam Reap](/jrnl/2006/03/angkor-wat) several months later I thought I had adjusted a bit. I had not. It was hot, hotter than anything I have experienced before or since. Hotter than [Death Valley](/jrnl/2010/04/death-valley). I was traveling with Matt and Debi at the time and somehow we convinced ourselves that we didn't need air conditioning. To be honest I think it was Matt that convinced Debi and I. But he was right. + +During the day we spent our time outside exploring Angkor Wat in the heat of the day, when the rest of the tourists were passing the time in air conditioned cafés). We went out in the heat of the day precisely because it was hot, because hardly any other tourists did. We had Angkor Wat to ourselves. + +We could have returned home to a nice air conditioned room. But if you do that you never adapt. Our bodies are fantastically adaptable machines over the long run. You get used to the heat. This never happens if you retreat to air conditioning at every opportunity. + +At night we would crank the ceiling fan to 11 and then, one after the other, take the coldest shower we could get, which was just below scalding because the water tank was in the sun all day, and then dive in our respective beds in hopes that we'd would fall asleep before the real sweating started. + +What does this slightly masochistic experiment have to do with aesthetics? Nothing directly, but I came away with from that experience knowing that comfort is relative, both psychologically and physiologically. Seam Reap set my relative quite a few notches above where it had been previously and ever since then I have never really been hot. Sure, it gets moderately unpleasant to be out working in the heat of the day in the Georgia summer, but every time I catch myself about to complain I think, well, at least it's not as hot as Seam Reap. + +If you're going to be spending a lot of time in the heat it makes more sense to push through a bit of discomfort until you start to adapt to it than it does to hide out in air conditioning all the time. Eventually, after a few years I suspect, you'll be pulling out the jacket when the thermometer dips below 80. + +Adaptation may well be our greatest talent as a species. Air conditioning undercuts that. + +So in the end it makes more sense to tear out aesthetically unpleasant air conditioning units than it does to keep them. Comfort is relative and transitory, aesthetics are not. + +That said, up until now I've been making it sound like a binary choice -- air conditioning wart atop the bus or nothing. I am not the only one living in the Travco. And the one thing I put higher than aesthetics is never impose your will on someone else. Plus, I do like to have my dark chocolate and eat it too. + +I would never subject my kids to Seam Reap without air conditioning. Not at their age anyway. Children are physiologically different, their bodies aren't as good at cooling themselves as adults are. + +That's why I took the now useless 110V wire from the roof air conditioner, extended it with some new wire and rerouted it behind the closet and down to where the refrigerator used to be, where there is now plenty of room for a window air unit, which will serve as our new air conditioner and heater. + +I can hear Kant breathing a sigh of relief. The magic is there if we need it. The beauty is there as well. Granted, I ripped out the generator, which means we'll never be able to run the air for long, but we should be able to run it enough to cool things off in the evening before bed (and we can run it as much as we like if there's shore power around). + +If it does get so hot that no one in my family is happy, or god forbid, our dark chocolate starts to melt, we'll do what people with movable homes have done for millennia -- go somewhere else. + +[^1]: And Schopenhauer, that man really needed a hug. Actually most white male philosophers in European history seem like they would have benefited from more hugs. +[^2]: If you don't embrace your own aesthetics, capitalism is always there to provide simpler, numeric terms by which to define value. Choose wisely. +[^3]: There is of course fleeting beauty, e.g. sunsets. The shortness of some beautiful natural phenomena do not, however, affect our judgment of them as beautiful. It just means we only have a limited amount of time to enjoy them. diff --git a/jrnl/2016-03-27_another-spring.txt b/jrnl/2016-03-27_another-spring.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..efea7fb --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-03-27_another-spring.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +This becomes a day like any other that is somehow different. Then another and another. Little things. The air feels brighter. The river is lower. Less practical footwear appears on the feet around you. + +The mornings are crisp and the pollen hasn't started yet. The trees still bare though the smaller shrubs turn purple and white. Everything feels fragile but possible again. + + + +It might not last. It's possible another snow storm is yet to come, but you have to cast your lot with some version of the future. + +And then the pollen does start. The world coalesces out of its dream state into great lime green clouds of oak and pecan pollen. A world of runny eyes and burning lungs. It's awful for a week to ten days. Then the catkins fall in great heaps that mat in the corners of the deck, choke the gutters and require a rake to get out of the yard. + +Then the clouds of pollen disappear and you know summer heat is only a week or two away. This is how it goes around here, year after year. It typically starts a bit before calendar spring. I'm not good with dates though. I'm not good with time actually. Unless I have a deadline. + +Human are the only ones with deadlines. Spring comes when it comes. + +There is the spring equinox. The plane of Earth's equator passes through the center of the Sun with admirable regularity. It might not mark spring precisely, but from here on out there's more light in the day than darkness. + +If you whip out your stopwatch you'll notice that the length of day and night aren't *exactly* the same, but then if you're the sort to whip out a stopwatch for holidays probably no one is going to invite your to their equinox party anyway. It's close enough. It's something to mark, somehow. + +One of the unfortunate side effects of not being religious or subscribing to any particular religion[^1] is that you have little to mark. Days and months slide by. Changes proceed largely without us or without our marking them in any way. Secularists don't have potlucks. + + + +One of the wonderful things about the internet though is that it makes communities possible that would otherwise not be possible. No church to attend every Sunday with the same people? No problem, start a Facebook group[^2]. Profit. Or at least potluck. + +Which is the world's longest intro to we went to an equinox party and easter egg hunt with a bunch of fellow secularists. And it was great. There was even old school climbing equipment of the sort children could take real risks on. I'd like to attribute that to the lack of religion present, but that would be stretching it. I think it was just some playground equipment that time forgot. + + + + + +There was an egg hunt as well, though my children are a bit young to get too into it. They are far more enthralled by the own anticipation of a thing than any thing itself. Actually maybe that's not something you grow out of, I think I'm the same way. The potluck was good. It had chicken. It marked a thing, a change, or the symbol of a change, that the weather sometimes aligns with, sometimes does not. But it lacked a certain gravitas. + + + +Not that spring has much gravitas. But there is a certain violence to change, even seasonal change, that seems like it's worth a pause, however brief, to reflect. The snow melts, the rain falls, it all goes somewhere. Water cuts through red Georgia mud. Trees are washed from banks. Rocks tumble down to sand, slow canyons carved a bit more every year as the silt and sand rolls down from the Appalachia to the sea. The mountains themselves are changing, getting smaller, their sides steeper. All this change destroys what came before. + +We like to paint spring a something that emerges out of winter, something that grows up from some blankness, and it does from one perspective, but we overlook that it destroys what came before. There is no change without destruction and decay. It's possible to recast that destruction in pretty words, but it is always destruction, especially from the point of view of what came before. It would be interesting to hear what the caterpillar thinks of the butterfly. + +I'm never going to get the collective solemnity of ceremony without religion though. I know that. That sort of gravity comes from larger groups of like minded people than I will ever find, even on Facebook. For now I'll settle for potlucks. + +[^1]: The sun god religions obsess over rules, power and control when we all know potlucks are what matters. + +[^2]: It'd be a whole lot cooler if Facebook wasn't the mediator of anyone's community, but for now that's where the people are so that's where the communities are. Just remember that the [people behind Facebook](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/) are true [Burroughsian shits](http://deoxy.org/wiki/The_Johnson_Family) and act accordingly. + diff --git a/jrnl/2016-05-15_root-down.txt b/jrnl/2016-05-15_root-down.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3f6f31a --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-05-15_root-down.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +One of the interesting things about moving is the archeology it requires, digging through layers of accumulation to reveal yourself. The longer you've been in one location the more stuff that's accumulated. As far as I can tell there is no real way to combat the detritus of the world seeping into your space, save cutting off all contact with the outside world. I imagine monasteries are generally immaculate; the rest of us get out the pick axes and clear the rubble. + +At first I spent a lot time thinking how hard it is to move, but then I realized it's probably no harder to move out than it was to move in. Moving out just happens to severely compress time. You acquire over the span of 10 years. You un-acquire in a matter of weeks. + +But in between the crap, the dirt as it were, there are the occasional shards of pottery and other things of interest. + +Many moons ago I was down in Laguna Beach, CA at the now long gone Tippecanoe's clothing store when I ran across a relatively innocuous dark olive green shirt. Probably handmade, it looked a bit like an old-style baseball jersey, with an iron-on number three in red on the front pocket. On the back it had a cheery serif script that read "Fuck Our Society", flanked on either side by anarchy A's in padlocks. You bet your ass I bought it. + + + +I was in a band back then and I played quite a few shows in it. I'm pretty sure my friend Ruben asked me to play with his band on the side just because he wanted the shirt on stage with him. + +This was Orange County CA in the mid to late 1990s, deviations from the norm simply didn't happen. The shirt stood out. I didn't wear it much. Wearing it was a kind of performance. And this site notwithstanding, I don't generally live my life as a public performance. I haven't worn the shirt since I moved back east in 1999. + +Once, on the way to a show, we stopped at Trader Joe's to grab a snack for the road and while we were standing in line I felt a tap on the shoulder. I had been conscious of wearing the shirt since I got out of the car so I turned around expecting some kind of confrontation, but it was a tiny older woman, not much over five feet tall, a grandmotherly figure who I had no doubt was about to express some offense at my shirt. But instead she looked me up and down and then smiled and said, "I like your shirt." + +I felt like that was probably the shirt's high water mark. I don't think I've worn it since. Why do I still have it? Fuck our society's obsession with keeping things. I fired off an email to a friend I knew would want it and it's gone. + +This particular purge is probably the biggest I've ever done, both because we've been in this house the longest and because I've made the most money. Money, no matter how frugal you might be, seems to breed stuff. It's not the purchases or the money that bother me though. Not even the dumb things like the $1300 TV that's now worth essentially nothing. It's the little things I did not stop myself from getting. It's the lack of personal awareness they demonstrate. The old banjo that caught my eye at a junk shop outside of Nashville, the old mailing label and postage box set, the antique cards, the mediocre books that could have been checked out and returned and the coffee mugs. How many coffee mugs do I actually need? How many books am I reading right now? + +All these little things are symptoms of my failure to appreciate things without possessing them. + +I sold what I could on eBay. I took the books to a friend's yard sale and looked at them on the ground there in a cardboard box before I finally realized there was nothing special about them at all. + +The rest of the accumulation I pitched into boxes and dumped at my favorite local charity thrift store. + +Not everything goes though. I'm not a minimalist counting up my possessions. Not yet anyway. The bus may not be huge, but it's downright roomy compared to traveling with only a pack. We also have a storage unit for now. There are things I don't want to throw away, but which also don't belong in the bus. Like old photographs, which are probably the most exciting artifacts to stumble across in a moving dig. + +It worries me sometimes that it's always the same photographs I discover whenever I undertake these excavations. The photographs I have are a reasonable catalogue of my life from roughly when I dropped out of college until about 2001 when I switched to a digital camera. There are no physical artifacts documenting anything in my life for the last 15 years, save a handful of prints from our wedding. + +On the plus side this keeps the entirety of my photo collection to single shoe box. But I wonder. I wonder how much fun it will be to dig through your parent's hard drive in search of your youth. Will the hard drive even spin 50 years from now? Will there be an operating system and image viewers capable of reading all those zeros and ones? Do you have anything that could read the tape archives of 50 years ago? + +I don't normally advocate for buying stuff, but a [Fuji Instax printer](http://instax.com/products/printer/) is on our short list of trip purchases. I want to leave my kids a record of their childhood that exists outside these digital walls. + +That's always the hard part of these excavations, figuring out what actually has personal value and what doesn't. I find I'm often wrong. I thought the banjo and the books had value to me, but they don't. Five years ago I almost threw out the photos. Now they're the only thing I keep around. diff --git a/jrnl/2016-05-24_back-from-somewhere.txt b/jrnl/2016-05-24_back-from-somewhere.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2bf380e --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-05-24_back-from-somewhere.txt @@ -0,0 +1,49 @@ +My kids love to do new things. At least they think they do. They're really good at getting excited about things. Like most kids (I imagine), they get excited about things even when I know they have only a dim inkling of what those things might actually entail. The idea, the anticipation, is often more exciting in fact than the actual thing. + + + +I went to get some coffee the other morning and noticed that the Jittery Joe's roaster was hosting a [skate contest](https://www.facebook.com/events/1126780367373997/) the following Saturday. Skating and surfing more or less defined my existence (along with punk rock) from junior high through, well, now. + +I try not to steer my kids in any particular direction. I try to expose them to as many different things as possible and see where they're drawn. But secretly I really hope they end up liking a few of the things I did when I was a kid, like skate boarding. So I mentioned the skate contest the night before and showed them a bit of the old Bones Brigade video. They were entertained for a few minutes and then they wanted to move on to something else. + +I figured the actual skate contest would be the same way: take it in for an hour or so and then slowly interest would wane and we'd all head home. That's about how it generally goes when we take them to any sort of organized event. + +This time, however, I was wrong. They could not get enough of the skating. Neither the intense afternoon sun beating down on the concrete slab of parking lot nor the humidity left over from morning rains deterred them. We were there all afternoon, over four hours of skating, pulled pork and the occasional train rolling by. They never stopped loving it. + + + +And neither did I. I haven't skated in years. Over a decade. And even before that most I did was use my old board to go get cigarettes from the gas station down the street. But skating culture, along with surfing culture and punk culture are things that were a huge part of me and that has never never gone away, even if I mostly watch from afar these days. + +I still feel more at home among skaters, surfers and punks than anywhere else. + + + +Since having kids though I've accidentally drifted away from that culture. There are practical considerations. It's hard to get out to shows, the beach is a really long way away and I no longer have a skateboard. Instead I find myself at the sort of "kid friendly" affairs I swore I would never go to. And you know what, I was right, those things suck. And they aren't very kid friendly either. But we're remarkably adaptable creatures. Do something enough and it starts to feel normal, no matter how uncomfortable it might be. + +I spent so much time not fitting in at kids birthday parties and "kid friendly" events around town I forgot that there was actually people with whom I did fit in. I'd forgotten that I had a people. + +The Shredder Joes contest was a nice reminder that there are still sane, friendly, open people out there in the world among whom I feel at home. + +On the drive home Corrinne turned to me and said "I know it's been 18 years, but I felt more at home there than I do at any of these hipster family bullshit events we go to." I'd been thinking a similar thing, but I'd been wondering why. + +Why did the kids want to spend four hours watching skaters and can't be bothered with a petting zoo for more than five minutes? + +I have a few theories, but the one that's most appealing is pretty simple: because the world of skating doesn't have rules. There are the basics rules of taking turns and accommodating the people around you, but for the most part you are expected to do whatever you want to do. The petting zoos and the kid friendly events are full of waiting in line and doing as you're told. + +Another part of it is the welcoming nature of people in skate/surf/punk scene. That's not to say there aren't assholes in any group of people. There absolutely are, especially surfers who can be real territorial, but [exceptions aside](http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-surfer-gang-enforcement-20160211-story.html), generally, if you have the humility to start at the bottom, you'll be accepted eventually. It's even easier if you're a kid, I've seen some of the scariest looking heavily tattooed Hawaiian surfers move aside with a smile for some kid just learning[^1]. The thing about learning a skill like surfing or skating is that you never forget that it is *learned*, and that tends to create sympathy for those who are just starting out. + + + +Another thing that I think makes the skate/surf/punk scene different is that it's built around practice and failure. Watching skating is watching failure after failure until that time when you stick it and suddenly all that failure is gone. People comfortable with failure typically have less to prove. It was always my experience that skaters, surfers and punks were really only trying to prove something when they're skating, surfing or playing. Hipster parent events are one big gathering of uptight people with something to prove and nowhere to prove it. The difference between the two is palpable. + +It could also be that those scenes are full of people who, by necessity, have mastered their fears. To a degree anyway. You can only get so far in skating if you're afraid of getting hurt. I know this because I was always too afraid of getting hurt to be any good[^2]. Anyone willing to drop in on a backyard ramp or empty pool has necessarily mastered at least some of their fear. Fear closes you up, it feeds on itself. + +Whatever it is that makes these things different my kids seem to pick up on it. + +The skate show was also the single most diverse event I've ever been to in Athens. With one exception, there was not a single woman skating. That was disappointing, but when we got home I pulled up some videos of [Vanessa Torres](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMocKem3N4c), [Elissa Steamer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91IgE_JXiBs) and [Peggy Oki](http://www.peggyoki.com/about-me/peggy-oki-dogtown-and-z-boys), along with some great home videos of girls skating on YouTube to balance things out. + +The best part of the day for me though was on the way home when Olivia asked if she could have a skateboard for her birthday. Absolutely. + + +[^1]: Whereas, while still friendly, they did not hesitate to cut me or my friend Andy out of any wave they wanted. +[^2]: Put me in the water and my fear disappears, but concrete? That shit hurts. And I could never get past that enough to get any better. diff --git a/jrnl/2016-06-06_engine.txt b/jrnl/2016-06-06_engine.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5188086 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-06-06_engine.txt @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +Everywhere I go I see it. + +I'd like to make a movie of it. Start with a cutaway diagram of the Travco that slowly rotates in my head as it zooms into the gas tank in the rear and then follows the gas down the line toward the front to the right of the engine, drawn up into the fuel pump, pushed out and up, under the alternator to the top of the engine, through the fuel filter and into the carburetor where it mixes with air and dives down until it ignites with a spark. + +This little movie runs on a loop in my head. It invades everything I do. I see it sitting at stoplights, a similar path of electricity out of the breaker, up the light pole and to the switch which sends it to the top lens which happens to be red[^1]. + +I see it doing the dishes. The water leaving the tower, flowing down increasingly narrower pipes, off the main street line and into my hot water tank where it sits until a flick of the faucet calls it up through more pipes and out onto my hands. + +Everything flows like this. Every system around us, when it works, does something similar. + +Right now the Travco does not work. I can see it in my head and yet I cannot make it work. It has to be the fuel pump. I have spark, I have compression, the missing ingredient in the basic trifecta of the internal combustion engines is fuel. + +But seeing it and understanding it are different than actually solving the problem, making it work. This is basic difference between architects and builders. Builders have to solve problems in the real world that architects will never encounter. + +Days pass. I continue to fail with the bus. The real world of by time constraints, pay checks that don't arrive, other commitments, weather. I work on other things. Hang wall panels, sand and apply finish. I do things I know I know how to do. More days pass. Still the bus doesn't start. I get sullen. My wife thinks I'm mad all the time. I'm not. I'm thinking about the engine, I can't get it out of my head. It reminds me of the first time I tried to write some code. It was fun, but it also was not. + +Problem solving seems fun after the problem is solved. During the actual solving it's less fun. Food, sleep, these things seem unimportant when I have a problem that needs solving stuck in my head. I tend to get obsessed about things. Even when I don't want to. It's one of the reasons I don't do much programming anymore. I never let things go until I solve the problem to my satisfaction. Of course breaking a web server doesn't cost much relative to damaging an engine, so with the bus the stakes are much higher, the sullen thinking phases I pass through is correspondingly more sullen and requires more concentration. + +I consult my friend Jimmy, double check with him that my plan is sane. He says it is and assures me that there's little chance I'll screw anything up. So I crawl back under the bus for another soaking of gasoline and somehow, after much swearing and muscle cramping, somehow manage to get the new fuel pump properly seated under the eccentric on the camshaft and anchored into place. Then I replace all the fuel lines and filter for good measure. Everything from the fuel pump to the carburetor is now my doing. + +I step back and get the gasoline soaked clothes off and take a shower. I want these ten minutes of thinking I fixed it to last, which turn out to be a good thing because when I get back in the bus and fire it up and... it still won't start. Damn It. + +The is the most demoralizing thing I know of for anyone trying to DIY something. That moment when it should work, but it doesn't. Damn it. I go back to the internet and do some more searching. I message Jimmy again. On a whim I decided maybe I didn't crank it enough to get all the air out of the new lines. So I go back and instead of starter fluid in the carb I go straight gasoline, which, predictably, starts the engine. And then it dies when that gas is consumed. God Damn It. + +I decide try one last time, with enough gasoline to possibly set the whole engine on fire. But that doesn't happen. Instead it starts and then it keeps running. This is when it would nice if life had a sound effects choir to ring out something triumphant. But there's nothing. Just me, sitting in the driver's seat enjoying the smell of gasoline and the roar of an engine that has neither exhaust manifolds nor muffler. And it's a damn fine roar. For now. + + +There's a lyric from an old [Grant Lee Buffalo song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6rD-chzrfs) that runs through my head when I'm working on the bus: "...I'm still not through with this ark". I am getting noticeably closer though. Close enough that I drove it down to Jittery Joe's Roaster so some friends could check it out. + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2016-07-12_what-are-you-going-to-do.txt b/jrnl/2016-07-12_what-are-you-going-to-do.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a6e70cf --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-07-12_what-are-you-going-to-do.txt @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +We've started telling people about our plans to live full time in the blue bus. + +
+ +
Home sweet home.
+
+ +After the eyebrows come down and the puzzled frowns flatten out, the questions come. Most of them revolve around some form of, but, but but... *what will you do without a house? What will you do when that thing breaks down? What will you do when...* + +Rather than answer everyone individually I thought I'd answer all those questions here, as best I can: + +***I don't know***. + +And I'm not particularly worried about it. I don't know what we'll do without a house, because we have a house. It's just somewhat smaller than the average American dwelling and comes with an engine. + +And when it breaks I suspect we'll stop by the side of the road and spend some time sweating, swearing, scratching our heads, failing, asking more experienced people questions, failing some more, sweating some more, maybe taking a near bath in gasoline. And then we might even have to walk somewhere and find someone smarter and more experienced to help us. Then, eventually, we'll probably get it running again. + +Then again it could totally break down into an unfixable hunk of fiberglass and metal that has to towed to the nearest scrapyard. It could burst into flames at a stoplight. It could drop a transmission trying to downshift its way up a hill. A million things could go wrong. + +But a million things can always go wrong, the only thing you get worrying about them is an anxiety attack. I find it more useful to carry a reasonable amount of tools and deal with things as they come. In my experience so far the future is seldom as grim as our fears[^1]. + +What if though? That's the action-killing nag at the back of all our minds. I have it too. You don't think I worry about these things? I do. I know of a Travco that really did burst into flames at a stoplight. It is what it is though. It's not going to stop me from going on this trip. Because you know what? I know of 328 Travcos that didn't burst into flames. That one is scary, but it's only one. + +A whole lot of houses burst into flames too, yet most of us don't sit around worrying about that. Instead we do what practical things we can, unplug appliances when we're not using them, install new breakers, keep an eye on the candles and so on, and get on with our lives. In the end we manage to ignore the fact that [seven people a day die in house fires](http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/news-and-media/press-room/news-releases/2013/seven-people-die-each-day-in-reported-us-home-fires) and just live. + +It all comes back to comfort, the ultimate comfort, the little lie we tell ourselves: if I just stay where I am, physically, metaphysically, metaphorically, then I will be safe. It's a nice fiction that helps get all that potential anxiety out of the way, but it's still a fiction. + +Clinging to a life of "security" at the expense of living the way you want will fail you twice. Not only are you missing out on the life you want to have, but even the security you think you're getting in exchange for foregoing that life turns out to be an illusion. The extra irony is that there's never been a safer time to be alive, yet we're all worried about the lion that might be lurking in the grass. Old habits die hard. + +Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild [quotes](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/511021-nothing-is-more-damaging-to-the-adventurous-spirit-within-a) a letter [Christopher McCandless](http://www.christophermccandless.info/) wrote to a friend in which he says, "nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun." + +Travel is certainly not the only way to have an endlessly changing horizon, at least metaphorically speaking. I'm not suggesting that everyone should sell their house and travel. But I am suggesting that it might be a good time to stop and take a close look at your life and make sure that you're really happy. Make sure that fear isn't holding you back from what you want. I was terrified to have kids. I probably never would have had them if it weren't for my wife assuring me that we could do it. And we did. And it was the best thing I've ever done. Not a single one of my fears turned out to be accurate. + +Traveling isn't the only way to live, but it is one way. And for us it's one that's the most immediate and exciting right now. We may not have a house, we may not have much stuff, we may break down, we may get stuck, we may be uncomfortable. That's okay. I believe we'll make it.Somewhere anyway. + +[^1]: There are exceptions. Global warming looks to be every bit as grim as we imagine. War, violence in general, also very grim. + diff --git a/jrnl/2016-08-20_change-of-ideas-the-worst.txt b/jrnl/2016-08-20_change-of-ideas-the-worst.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..05b342a --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-08-20_change-of-ideas-the-worst.txt @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +We've postponed our departure three times now. Our original plan was to leave town in March. Then when March sailed right by and the bus wasn't done yet, and the house was in no condition to sell. So we moved things back to June. Then June came and went. It's about to be September, which puts us probably into October. I'm tempted to say that this time I'm reasonably confident we'll do it, but I've said that before. + + + +Some of the delays are a result of things beyond my control, notably clients that didn't pay on time (a perpetual problem for anyone who works for themselves), which meant I couldn't buy things I needed to restore the bus. But there were plenty of things that were in my control. + +I have a very particular vision of how the bus is going to look. I want it to be perfect. I want it to be The Best. But that old saying that "perfect is the enemy of good enough" turns out to be very true. I started out needing to have everything perfect, but that's cost us at least a month of time on the road. + +I'm about done with perfect. I just want to go. + +I've been thinking about an old post on Moxie Marlinspike's blog about something he calls "[The Worst](https://moxie.org/blog/the-worst/)." To understand the rest of what I'm going to say you need to follow that link and read it, but here's a brief quote to illustrate the difference between The Best and The Worst: + +>The basic premise of the worst is that both ideas and material possessions should be tools that serve us, rather than things we live in service to. When that relationship with material possessions is inverted, such that we end up living in service to them, the result is consumerism. When that relationship with ideas is inverted, the result is ideology or religion. + +I'm not cutting corners on the bus. I still plan to adhere to my original vision. To me The Worst doesn't mean half-ass, it means being okay with incomplete, it means figuring it out as you go, perfecting things based on actual experience. I've started to incorporate that idea of having the bus be in service to us rather than me in service to it more. We're ready to go and the bus isn't done. And that's okay. We'll figure out the rest as we go. That's part of the adventure. + +Currently there's no floor, no water tank, no propane, no solar power, and all the seats still need to be recovered. Of those though only two will likely get done before we leave. We'll recover the seats and we'll put in a floor. Everything else can be done as we go. + +Everything has costs. In this case it's money and time. If you have to have a water tank before you leave it's going to cost you money, which in turn is going to cost you time. Or you could grab a huge water jug for $5 from Home Depot and make do until you can get a proper water tank. In some case not only does embracing "good enough for now" get you on the road faster, it can also save you money. + +A lot of the expense of a water tank is the shipping. The tank we want is only about $400, but it costs another $250 to ship it to us. If you're willing to hit the road without a water tank you can drive to the water tank production facility and pick it up yourself. This is also true of awnings, windows and paint jobs, all of which we long ago decided we'd do as we go. + +Because if you have to have everything perfect you're never going to go. + +And deep down I suspect that my need for perfect is a kind of excuse to not go. A way of avoiding all the fear that comes with leaving. Fear that if it's not perfect it won't work. Fear that something will go wrong. Whatever. Something will go wrong anyway. And you know what? A lot of times it's the things that go wrong that turn out to be the most fun. Maybe not at the time, but later. + +It's impossible to overcome that fear of discomfort. It's natural. You can't "get past it"; you have to learn to live with it. + +It helps that, at this point in the evolution of our culture, I think those of us in the privileged position of being able to do this in the first place could all use a bit of discomfort. Countless people all over the world are living in situations that make our worst moments seem like the petty, insignificant discomforts they are. It helps to put things in perspective, and no matter how you frame it, we're incredibly lucky to be in the position we're in. We didn't even earn most of the privilege we enjoy in this counttry. Our comfort and possibilities are largely accidents of birth. + +Even in comparison to our very recent ancestors we have it easy. My great grandmother raised eight children alone in a one bedroom 800 square foot house with no air condition in Tucson AZ. My wife's mother picked cotton from the time she was a little girl. + +We are soft. We don't even know what discomfort is, let alone the host of horrors visited upon innocent people all over the world every day. + +We are incredibly thankful to be able to embrace whatever discomfort we might encounter. To chose to be uncomfortable is a luxury, perhaps the greatest luxury. I'm pretty sure my great grandmother would have taken a 4000 ft home with central air if someone had given it to her, and I suspect my mother-in-law would just as soon have not spent her childhood picking cotton. They weren't choosing discomfort, it was just life. I'm less sure that either would have exchanged the experience though. + +There's a line in that piece I linked to earlier, "the best moments of my life, I never want to live again." I have feeling my great grandmother would agree. It goes on say: + +> The best means waiting, planning, researching, and saving until one can acquire the perfect equipment for a given task. Partisans of the best will probably never end up accidentally riding a freight train 1000 miles in the wrong direction, or making a new life-long friend while panhandling after losing everything in Transnistria, or surreptitiously living under a desk in an office long after their internship has run out — simply because optimizing for the best probably does not leave enough room for those mistakes. Even if the most stalwart advocates of the worst would never actually recommend choosing to put oneself in those situations intentionally, they probably wouldn't give them up either. + +If you have the luxury of being able to embrace discomfort, take it. Forget perfect and just go, even if "go" is purely metaphorical. You'll figure it out along the way. diff --git a/jrnl/2016-09-15_autumn-bus-update.txt b/jrnl/2016-09-15_autumn-bus-update.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0284a16 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-09-15_autumn-bus-update.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +Autumn comes in a series of hints and whispers. Darkness comes steadily earlier. The available time between putting the kids to bed and too-dark-to-work grows ever shorter. The loss of light would be worth it were the heat and humidity dropping a bit, but they haven't yet. For now I get by on the words of friends in more northerly climes, who have already started mentioning a crispness to the air. + +Here the heat remains constant, the humidity never leaves. The bus feels like an oven by mid afternoon. + + + +The good news is that the bus also gets closer to done in a series of hints and whispers. Bare walls disappear behind two layers of insulation, then finished birch panels. The ceiling is in and, to judge from bus visitors so far, it's the high water mark of what I've done. + + + +There are new cabinets as well, partly because additional storage is nice when you're cramming five people into less than 100 square feet of livable space, and partly because neither the ceiling panels nor the wood on the walls is capable of bending to the degree necessary to follow the original curve of the Travco. + + + +I'm not the only one to hide that curve behind a cabinet. Travcos up until 1968 had a plastic channel to hide it (which did double duty hiding some air conditioning ducting as well) and then in 1969 Travco started adding cabinets as well[^1]. I mimicked the latter as best I could. + +There is still much to do, even if we do plan to [leave before it's completely finished](/jrnl/2016/07/change-ideas-the-worst). We need a floor and couch at the bare minimum, though I'd like to have the propane and sewage system working as well. Oh and then there's a cab area, which I really haven't touched. + +Did I mention the brakes stopped working a couple weeks back? The Travco's brake fluid reservoir is incredibly inconvenient and difficult to access. There's a hole a few inches back from the accelerator pedal that's just wide enough for a four-year-old's hand. It's way to small for mine. Too small for my channel lock pliers too. I was lazy and posted something in the Travco Facebook group asking if anyone had any tricks for getting the reservoir open and someone responded that I wasn't trying hard enough. I mulled that over for a while. Then the day before I need to move it I felt like I wanted it pretty bad so I got a new pair of needle nose channel locks and sure enough, I hadn't been trying hard enough. + +Sometimes it's good to have internet strangers call you on your bullshit. The reservoir was, predictably, empty. So now we get to bleed the brakes, which is good. I like to know that things like brakes are properly done. + +The far more difficult project that I'd likewise been avoiding for some time was getting the generator out of the back compartment. Unlike the brake fluid reservoir, getting the generator out turned out to be much harder than I anticipated. + +Everyone wants to know why I want to get rid of a perfectly functional Onan[^2] generator. Here's a link to fellow nomad Randy Vining [reading a poem](https://vimeo.com/154906462) that nicely summarizes why I don't like generators. Suffice to say that most of my worst camping memories involve someone else's generator ruining the otherwise wonderful sounds of nature. In my view the advent of reasonably cheap solar completely eliminates any need for a generator. + +Still, the generator in the bus was perfectly good and I didn't want to just throw it away. There are plenty of people who want one. A few weeks ago I saw someone post in the aforementioned Travco Facebook group looking for a generator for a 1972 Travco. I noticed he was only about five or six hours away in North Carolina so I messaged him and told him he could have the generator if he helped me get it out. + +He agreed and a week later he drove down from NC with a neighbor to help out. After a quick run to get some tools I needed to finally get the last bolt off of the thing, the three of use tried lifting it out and quickly realized that there was no way that way happening. I called around to see if any local mechanics had an engine lift we could use, but no one did. This was somewhat complicated by the fact that the brakes had gone out earlier in the day and I didn't really want to drive further than I absolutely had to. Then I remembered that a local equipment rental place around the corner probably had some kind of lift. It was only three blocks a way and didn't involve any major hills. So I hopped in, fired her up and we took off just as a torrential rainstorm hit. + +Around block two the bus sputtered and died. Out of gas. Blocking a fairly major intersection. I rolled it back as far it would go. The rain was coming down in sheets. I had no choice but to leave it there at the side of the road. I hopped in Nathan's car and he gave me and the meager two gallon gas can a ride to the gas station and back. I stood in the pouring rain with a makeshift funnel fashioned from a plastic water bottle, pouring gasoline in the tank. I was soaked through with water and gasoline long before I finally got it running again. Like my 1969 Ford, 2 gallons of gas is not enough to get the Travco started. Note to self, get two real steel 5 gallon gas cans and mount them on the bumper. + +I finally made it to Barron's rentals and we somehow convinced the otherwise unoccupied warehouse employees to help us lift the generator out with a forklift. I took six of us in all, gently lifting, nudging and balancing the massive generator on a single forklift tine and slowly easing it out. In the end though it worked. We got it out of the bus and into the back of Nathan's Land Cruiser where it disappeared off to a new life in a 1972 Travco somewhere back in North Carolina. + +I cleaned out the 50 odd years worth of motor oil and fluids and cut some leftover marine grade plywood the fit the bottom of the generator compartment so it would be a little less exposed to the elements (the wood covers a few holes and with a coat of sealant should last several decades). With the generator gone and the compartment cleared up there's finally room to start moving some of the kids' toys out of the house, which helps get the house cleaned up and more presentable for sale. + +One things leads to another and it's all accelerating. It takes a long time to line up dominoes, but so far it's working and the few that we've managed to tip over have all fallen in place. + +In the mean time there is much work to be done and miles to go before we sleep. + +[^1]: Why didn't our have said cabinets originally? No idea. In fact ours is the only Travco that I've seen built this particular way. +[^2]: The makers of the Onan generator is a company called Cummings. So far as I can tell the name has nothing to do with the minor, but intriguing, biblical character and practitioner of the withdrawal method of birth control (or masturbator depending of which interpretation your favor). diff --git a/jrnl/2016-09-19_cloudland-canyon.txt b/jrnl/2016-09-19_cloudland-canyon.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bd0b4ff --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-09-19_cloudland-canyon.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +

I have a terrible habit of never going to obvious places that are right around me. For example I lived within 100 miles or so of Death Valley for 26 years and never once went. Then I moved thousands of miles across the country and finally arranged a trip to Death Valley. Same with Catalina Island, which was always a mere 26 miles away. Until it wasn't. And then I went.

+ +

I've been joking for some time that Savannah GA is going to be my new Death Valley, which I suppose would make Cloudland Canyon my new Catalina Island. Except that it appears I'm getting better about these things. Maybe. I wouldn't say I got myself to Cloudland Canyon, but events did conspire such that I ended up in Cloudland Canyon before we left Georgia. Progress.

+ + + +No, we didn't take the bus. It was a family reunion for some of Corrinne's family so cabins were rented and we were offered a room in one of them, which is just as well because the campground was a bit dismal -- little more than a gravel parking lot really. The canyon, however, is well worth going for, particularly if you get up before dawn and head down to the Bear Creek overlook to watch the sunrise. + + + +As is our usual pace we took the back roads, not hurrying, winding through the mountains, stopping for a picnic lunch at another state park that was mostly a shrine to the Army Corp of Engineers. I have mixed feelings about The Corp. They're largely responsible for the mess that is the Mississippi River Valley today and their hubris is possibly unmatched even today. Still. At least they didn't waste their time building gadgets. + +Could they have stopped for a minute to study the ecology of a place before they attempted to "improve" it? Sure, but at least they tried to make the world a better place (even if their vision differs from mine). At least they left behind a place my kids can eat turkey sandwiches and chocolate cookies. + + + +Oh, and a reservoir. The Corp did love them some dams. But not for lakes mind you. Lakes are frivolous. Reservoirs are eminently practical and serious. Like the Army Corp of Engineers. + + + +Eventually we made it to Cloudland Canyon. Not without things getting interesting though. To add modicum of adventure the air conditioning broke just after lunch. I turned on the WD50 air con, but because it's never-winter here in Georgia, we were all quite warm by the time we got there. Fortunately the solution was already there waiting for us -- hammocks. + + + + + +We didn't hike all the way down into the canyon, but we did manage to go a little ways. Apparently it just wasn't enough for Elliott who decided hiking up out of a canyon wasn't hard enough so he picked up a large rock and carried it all the way up. + + + +We've taken the girls camping before, but they were too young to remember. And I don't think we ever did the important stuff, like making campfires and roasting marshmellows for s'mores. That oversight has since been corrected. + + + + + + + +Now the question is, will I make it to Savannah before we leave or will I have to wait for a return visit to make it to the coast? diff --git a/jrnl/2016-09-22_equinox.txt b/jrnl/2016-09-22_equinox.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7dca287 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-09-22_equinox.txt @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ + + +One of our motivations for living in the bus is to spend more time outside -- outside in general, but even moreso, outside in nature. To become more aware of the rhythms and patterns of life that haven't had human will imposed on them. To be aware of the cycles around us. + + + +Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould writes about time having two components, time's arrow and time's cycle. + +Time's arrow is linear time, what we would call history, a way of looking at the past as a series of non-repeating events. Time's cycle on the other hand is circular time, "fundamental states... immanent in time, always present and never changing", as he puts it in Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle + +Time's arrow is all around us every day, it is the proverbial water to a fish, we exist so immersed in a world that views time as an arrow that we don't even realize that's something we think, however, subconsciously. + + + +Time's cycle though, that doesn't get much press in our world. If you want the space to exist in time's cycle for a while you'll have to carve it yourself. I'm convinced this is why our forefathers recognized and celebrated time's cycle where they saw it. It's easy to live in time's arrow, but it's only at certain points on the arrow can you see the cycle happening as well. This why there have always been harvest festivals, planting festivals, hunting festivals, lunar festivals, seasonal festivals and so on. Nearly every culture prior to ours had them, and in more of the world than not, they're still celebrated today. + +I have a thing for solar cycles I guess. I was born a few hours before the winter solstice. My wife and I were married on the summer solstice. My son was born a few hours before the winter solstice. None of that was planned. It's all synchronicity. Coincidence some would say. That's the word for the the curious cycle-denying component of our culture. Not only do we ignore the cycle, we seem to want to deny it entirely. + +Alternately, you could contemplate the possibility that synchronicities like that are not coincidence. That they have pattern to them, that the pattern might mean something or have something to say to you, even if it only turns out to be, "hey I exist too". + + + +Another pattern I've noticed in my existence so far is that whenever there's a proposed dualism there's also a third possibility half-hidden in the combination of the two. Time's looping arrow that repeats though cycles but is a bit different each time. + +There's an equinox every autumn, but it looks a bit different each time. diff --git a/jrnl/2016-10-15_useless-stuff.txt b/jrnl/2016-10-15_useless-stuff.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a04ee01 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-10-15_useless-stuff.txt @@ -0,0 +1,74 @@ +Work on the bus progresses. The cab area (helm? cockpit?) has walls now, which means there's no more steel ribs, fiberglass or bare wires showing. + + + +In fact, the only thing left to do is hook up the systems (water, propane), rebuild the bathroom door and lay the floor. Well, and recover the seats, but I won't be doing that so it doesn't really count from my point of view. + + + +Parallel to restoring the bus we've also been clearing out our house and getting it ready to sell. Thankfully we've taken good care of the house itself, all it really needed was some touch up paint and yard work. Clearing out our stuff though, that's been very, very challenging. + +Normally when you move you just shove all that stuff you don't really acknowledge that you've been dragging around for years without using into a box and truck it on to the next place you'll live where you can happily shove it in the back of a new closet. + +When you're moving into a 1969 Dodge Travco with four other people and less than 100 square feet of usable space that's not an option. + + + +In that case you have to actually dig in and deal with all that stuff that's always been easier not to deal with. You have to do something with it. You have to take a good hard look at it and you have to face the facts on the ground of your life so to speak, rather than the life you wish you had, which, for me anyway, is the source of most of my stuff. + +*"Well, I might learn to play the banjo one day."* + +*"You've had eight years and you haven't yet."* + +*"I did learn how to tune it though. Plus I'll have more time soon."* + +*"Probably not. Plus, you don't even really like banjo music."* + +*"That's not true. There's that Grant Lee Buffalo song with the banjo intro. And Don Chambers, he plays banjo a lot. Plus I loved waking up to Adam Musick playing the banjo downstairs back when we lived above Southern Bitch."* + +*"So... you have not one, but two banjos and a broken mandolin because they remind you of a few notes of music you like and some experiences you enjoyed seventeen years ago?"* + +*"Hmm. When you put it like that..."* + +*"Probably you can hang on to your love of the music and the experiences even without the banjos. You could even write it all down somewhere so that you have a copy of your memories. That way you can keep what you love, get the cruft out of your life and make room for something new."* + +And so it goes for hundreds of objects, almost none of which actually turned out have any real value to me. + +As George Carlin used to say in a bit about stuff, "have you ever noticed that other people's stuff is shit; and your shit is stuff?" When you strip away the "well I might need/use it someday" logic of accumulating useless stuff, you realize that your life is filled up with shit. + + + +Don't get me wrong. We do have a storage unit, but we deliberately got the smallest unit available. We have a few family heirlooms to store, some books that might be useful one day and a handful of other stuff (I may not have learned the banjo, but you'll have a hell of a time prying my guitars from my cold dead fingers), but for the most part the stuff has been shed. + +We have resold and donated 20 years worth of accumulated stuff over the last year or so. We've donated so much stuff that I know everyone at the local thrift shop by name, including the former mayor of Athens who started volunteering there the first day I made a major stuff drop off. Even now, months later she gets excited every time I show up with more stuff, which, now that we're getting near the end, happens at least once a week. Sometimes two or three times a day. + +It's not like we were hoarders or anything. Neither Corrinne nor I had ever, prior to buying our house, lived in any one location for much more than a year. That kind of constant movement tends to make you stay relatively light on stuff. We did spend seven years at this address though, and we do have three kids, but believe it or not, the kids' stuff isn't the bulk of what we've gotten rid of. It's our stuff. And for the life of me I can't figure out how it all got in my life. + +What I do know is that it has started to feel really good not to have it. Things are really clean. I almost never have to look for anything anymore because there's a) much less to lose b) much less stuff to hide the thing I'm looking for. + +I know there are whole books written about this subject, one in particular that's very popular right now, but until you actually start doing it, you really have no idea how transformative it can really be to free yourself of stuff. It can change the entire way you look at the world, but that's a topic for another day. + +One thing I dislike about all these books and websites about shedding stuff though is that that they treat the process as if you'll achieve some state of zen when you're done, which, uh, yeah, not so much. It's not that dramatic. I guess the zen angle is the best alternative is to admitting you made some mistakes since that's not a popular idea these days. Saying "no regrets" is so common it's a cliche. Our culture seems to think history, both personal and cultural, is a process of endless progress -- from cave to stuffless zen present -- which means regrets and mistakes need to swept under the proverbial rug. + +But looking at your past and saying you have no regrets is crazy. It means you're either, a) perfect or b) incapable of recognizing (and therefore learning) from your mistakes. Neither of which are good things. + +Admitting mistakes is admitting that not all forward movement in time is in fact progress, some of it might consist of dead ends and blind alleys full of unused banjos and broken mandolins. Some of it might even be regress. Some of our stuff might be shit. Still, getting rid of stuff is nothing so much as not just admitting, but directly confronting, your mistakes. And then dumping it all at the thrift store. + +Which is of course bullshit. All of it, the progress, the lack of mistakes, the stuff. The shit. All of it, bullshit. + +I got regrets; lordy do I have some regrets. Particularly when it comes to stuff I have purchased. I didn't buy the aforementioned banjos, but I did buy some dumb shit over the years. Books I could have checked out for free, electronic gadgets I never needed and barely used, kitchen crap no one needs. I really should have known better. I *do* know better. And still I succumbed. + +I make mistakes. I got regrets. I got too much stuff that turned out to be shit. But now it's all gone. Now I have catharsis and perhaps even a tad of personal insight, though that could just be more bullshit, hard to say for sure. + +At first it didn't bother me that much to get rid of my mistakes because hey, we have eBay and you can make some decent cash for the strangest stuff. Like [old 8 track players][2]. Or sleeping bags you never used. But at some point I stopped being amazed by how much money I was able to get on eBay and started thinking more about how much I had spent on shit in the first place. How much money I had spent on stuff which at the time seemed like a good idea, but turned out to mean next to nothing to me and was probably (deep down) motivated by some weird subconscious set of culturally handed down ideals I'm not about to try and parse out. + +What I do know if that all of it was a waste. It was all a bunch of shit. And I regret it. Not because I want the money back, but because I can never get the life energy that went into getting the money back. I'd like to have that back, or to have at least channeled it into something that would have paid more dividends in the future, which is to say now. + +Which is not to say that I'm not grateful that I can at least get something for it. Thanks eBay. Plenty of stuff though -- typically the most expensive, most digital stuff -- is pretty much worthless. The $1200 TV from 2009? Sold for $40. IPod I bought for almost $400 just before I went traveling in 2006? Selling for less than the price of shipping it it to the buyer. So yeah, I have regrets. I also have a new appreciation for buying last year's model used. + +I ended up keeping the iPod. It's my new talisman to protect me from myself. It also does a fine job of playing music. Oddly enough for an Apple product, it still works after all these years. Even the battery is still good, though I put an extra 12V plug in the cab area of the bus just in case. + + +It seems fitting to launch a new trip, just over ten years after the last one, with an artifact or two shared between them. And it sounds just as good as it ever did. Better even since I have some nicer headphones now. And yeah, I've played that Grant Lee Buffalo song with the banjo intro a time or two to reminisce. Every time I catch myself thinking, *I should really learn to play the banjo....* + +[2]: /jrnl/2015/10/8-track-gorilla diff --git a/jrnl/2016-11-16_halloween.txt b/jrnl/2016-11-16_halloween.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..92e84ca --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-11-16_halloween.txt @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +Every Halloween I complain about how hot it is. I don't actually recall this, but my wife does and reviewing some pictures from the last four years reveal that jackets have not been worn on Halloween in recent times. Photos from 2002, however, show plenty of jackets in evidence. Something to think about. This is why the kids carved pumpkins in their underwear. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +I suspect this mis-memory of cold Halloweens is because I grew up in the Los Angeles area and always desperately wanted it to be cold for Halloween, but of course it never was. I finally get somewhere that it does actually get cold sometimes and I project Halloween into that world. + +Unsurprisingly, for my wife anyway, it was hot on Halloween again this year. + +That did not stop our peacock, mouse and shirtless-peacock-owl-creature from taking the streets by storm. + + + + + + + + + +Two weeks later though it's dipping down to the mid 30s at night and I still haven't turned on the heat[^1]. Our house is so well insulated that as long as it hits 70 during the day we're fine without heat. We do some baking, make all day soups and roasts that heat the house while they cook. The way your grandmother used to. + +We won't have heat in the bus so we may as well toughen up a bit while we can. And we do, until the first cloudy day that doesn't crest the 60 degree mark. I give in and call the gas company, but it's five days before they can come out. We warm up using a borrowed space heater. + +Then a couple days later it's back to hot. The Salvation Army bell ringer is dripping sweating standing five feet from the air conditioned interior of Bells Grocery and I seriously consider calling the gas company to say, "forget it". Cold feels more like a novelty around here with every passing year. Sometimes I think we should revel in it, make sure we have strong memories of it. But of course we have [a house to sell](https://412holman.com/) and not everyone thinks the way I do -- so on it goes. + +[^1]: Since the only gas in our house is the heater it's cheaper to shut it down for the 9 months we don't need it then it is to pay the "base" charge and taxes for 9 months. diff --git a/jrnl/2016-11-19_nothing-finished-nothing-perfect.txt b/jrnl/2016-11-19_nothing-finished-nothing-perfect.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6a95888 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-11-19_nothing-finished-nothing-perfect.txt @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +If you zoom out far enough pretty much everything looks absurd. It's a handy way to reduce stress. Worried about the future? Think about how you would explain your worries to an alien visitor. You'd have to start the very beginning, explain the entire structure of life on earth and how you fit into it. By the end I'd be willing to bet you'll feel a little better. That maybe it isn't a big of a deal as you think. + +Perspective can be the salve to thy sores, to paraphrase Milton. + +I've been thinking about perspective and about what the Japanese call Wabi-Sabi a lot lately. Wabi-Sabi has a many different aspects to it, many of which are deeply entwined in Japanese culture in ways that an outsider like me is unlikely to ever fully appreciate, but the description I encountered, which has stuck with me is the idea that Wabi-Sabi means "nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect."[^1] + + + +A dozen years ago this week I was at an Iraqi restaurant in Paris. It was a tiny place near the cross roads of two very forgettable avenues, an unassuming door, a small menu board of the kind you see dozens of on nearly every block. I have no recollection of what drew us in, maybe just hunger. There were only four tables, a low ceiling, rock walls and heavy wooden chair and tables. The only people in it were the owner and his wife. To this day I would call it as the best meal of my life. The next morning I was due to get on a plain at Charles De Gaulle and disappear into the Indian subcontinent. I recorded nothing of the day in my journal, nothing of the meal even, though I remember every detail. There is an entry on this site that mentions it, but I haven't reread it because I have realized it doesn't matter what I thought. + +Whatever I might have thought about that night at the time -- and I did have the sense that it was an important moment in my life even at the time -- I lacked the perspective to understand it then. + +That was the beginning of the journey, that meal is where, for me anyway, a trajectory began that is still taking shape, there was something in that meal, something about eating such amazing food from a country that the country I came from was about to invade and attempt to destroy, something about stumbling through my terrible French, my even worse Arabic and somehow still managing to convey that the food was amazing, that the wine was the best I've ever had. + +That meal that night was not an awakening so much as a realization that it is possible to duck the politics of the world, to side step the divisions created by the power brokers, the would-be malignant overlords and connect as human beings do, as they always have, by eating together, by talking, by drinking, by walking together down the street, by being human, because life is joy and wonder and love and food and drink and walking. Everything else is just the static background noise of existence. + +All the beliefs, all that religions, all the politics, all the attempts to divide are doomed to fail because they fly in the face of the fundamental truth that everyone knows, no matter how hard we sometimes seek to avoid it -- that the universe is incalculably immense, goes on forever and we are so small in it as to hardly be of it at all and yet here we are, able to look around, to appreciate the lap of the sea on the shore, the clatter of palm fronds, the whistle of wind in pines, the soft rain, the driving storm, the inhospitable mountains that welcome us home anyway. I don't know why we're here and neither do you, let's have a meal, maybe a drink if you like and we'll be friends. + +[^1]: from Richard R. Powell's book Wabi Sabi Simple. diff --git a/jrnl/2016-12-19_waiting-sun.txt b/jrnl/2016-12-19_waiting-sun.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6114103 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-12-19_waiting-sun.txt @@ -0,0 +1,61 @@ +November came and went. The ginko down the street buried the still green grass in a blanket of brilliant yellow. The maples at the park had a banner year of blood red leaves. Even the oaks seemed brighter than usual. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +We cleaned the house for showings. I knocked little items off the bus to do list. We took a trip to Augusta, GA. I inadvertently taught my son to cook. + +We keep busy. + +I've never been a big fan of waiting. I should preface that by saying that idling is not waiting. Waiting is the opposite of living. Waiting never ends. You'll always be waiting. Waiting for things to change. Waiting for things to get better. Waiting for your proverbial ship to come in. Waiting is an alternative to living, a safe alternative that doesn't require any of the risk and uncertainty and pain of actually living. + +The secret to getting yourself out of this sort of deferred life thinking is realizing that there is nothing to wait for; there is only the living you're not paying attention to right now. I don't want to live like that, waiting for some imagined future. That's not living. I want to live. + +The days have turned cold and gray around these parts. Clouds settle in with a very Portland-esque determination about them. The world is moving into winter, you can see it, you can feel it. The blue birds are passing through, flashes of rusty red and blue feathers dart between the leafless branched of trees already settled into their long winter rest. Most other birds have gone to points south. Only the hardiest remain, the Carolina chickadees, the tufted titmouse, the occasional downy woodpecker. + + + +None of the birds are waiting. Neither are the squirrels constantly scurrying around the yard. I can't tell if they're already digging up nuts or still stashing more away. But it's clear they're not waiting. There is nothing to wait for, there's only today and the increasing need for food that the winter cold brings. Though I think that's a far bleaker way to put it than the birds would could they talk, at least judging by the playfulness they same to have in spite of the cold. Perhaps even because of it. After all, everything else is gone, which means less competition, fewer hawks in the sky. Perhaps winter is the best time to be a chickadee. + +
+ + + + +
+ +Winter is definitely not the best time to work on a 1969 Dodge Travco though. There's no heater, not in the dash, not in the cabin. There is, however, a couch now, and it converts to a bunk bed. Okay, I still need to order the foam for the couch cushion and get the whole thing recovered, but I finally have a place to sleep at least. I've also finished up the kitchen, installed an entirely new propane system and slowly, meticulously sanded down the dash in preparation for a fresh coat of paint (or possible gel coat, still undecided). + +
+ + + + + +
+ +The long winter nights mean less working time in the bus though. We seem to spend more time cooking in the winter. My daughters have been helping cook since they were around two. However, because they spend so much time in their own world, they don't always *want* to help cook. Elliott on the other hand is sometimes excluded from the world of his sisters and therefore spends more time in the kitchen than they do. + +One night he pulled a chair up to the stove and I let him help with some risotto. Now every meal he's in the kitchen, dragging his chair up to stove. "Me, cook." This morning he cooked the sausage. I put it in the pan and broke it up so it was easier to stir, but he did the rest and told me when it was done. I told him when it wasn't pink anymore it was done. Then he scoops a few bites sausage out of the pan and onto the cutting board to cool. + + +
+
+ +
+ + + + +
+ +Of course nothing pulls the girls out of their own little world like noticing that someone else has carved out their own little world, especially if that someone is their bother. So I end up starting a few pans of food and turning them over to the kids while I drink coffee and stare out the window at the chickadees, wondering when the warmer weather will arrive. diff --git a/jrnl/2016-12-21_happy-birthday-sun.txt b/jrnl/2016-12-21_happy-birthday-sun.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0970596 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2016-12-21_happy-birthday-sun.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +My son and I share a birthday, separated by 40 years. The next day, today, the sun has its own birthday of sorts. Death and rebirth in one. The sun is talented like that. + +As anyone with a birthday around now can tell you, the plethora of religious holidays nearby largely overshadow your own. Which is fine by me. As far as I can tell, Elliott doesn't have a strong opinion about it all yet, though he currently very much dislikes being the center of attention, which makes birthdays perhaps a bit unsettling. I can relate. + +Whatever the case our birthdays, combined with the Solstice the next day make for a nice little string of family celebrations. We hang decorations, enjoy a feast of sorts and celebrate the rekindling of light and hope at the depth of winter darkness. Or something like that. + + + +It worked out nicely this year that the morning of the Solstice ice rimmed the world and temperatures dipped will below freezing. Winter is here. + + + +Of course if you look closely at the photo above you'll notice we're not exactly traditionalists about our solstice celebration. Soy sauce and chili garlic paste are not your typical Celtic accompaniments. Yule pigs being in short supply in our yard just now, we went for Momofuko's Bo Ssam pork with some sticky rice and accompaniments. Next year I'll make some Wassail, this year I had to make do with some beer lao dark. Sorry any Celtic forebearers, I like my Alban Arthuan with a little Southeast Asian flavor. + +I've always found it a little curious that so many people, myself included, who don’t otherwise practice the Christian faith, choose to celebrate Christmas. Winter solstice makes far more sense as a holiday to latch onto if you want an excuse to celebrate this time of year. You don't need to be religious at all to recognize that the earth does indeed wobble a bit, which means that here in the northern hemisphere the longest night of the year happens to fall on, for simplicity's sake, December 21. Seems like as good a reason as any to celebrate. Naturally there's more to it if you want there to be, but that's up to you. + +A happy solstice to all. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-01-15_wilds-of-winder.txt b/jrnl/2017-01-15_wilds-of-winder.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d2be989 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-01-15_wilds-of-winder.txt @@ -0,0 +1,58 @@ +A couple weeks back we thought we had a buyer for the house but it fell through last minute. It was enough, however, to get everyone excited at the prospect of actually hitting the road. And then that hope was yanked away. + +To make up for that we decided it was time to do something of an exploratory trip, something to help us discover all the little things we needed to do to get everything livable in the bus. + +The house fiasco happened to coincide with a few days of warm weather so I packed up the bus and we hit the road for a short trip out to Fort Yargo State Park, a lake that sits, more or less, in downtown Winder, about 30 minutes from our house. + + + +Surprisingly though Fort Yargo ends up feeling like you're more out in nature than you really are. And it worked out well to camp ten minutes from a tasty Laotian restaurant since I haven't actually hooked up the propane system yet and cooking consists of balancing a Coleman stove atop the Travco's actual stove. It worked well enough for breakfast. On the whole it was a bit like tent camping in a 27ft fiberglass shell. The bus ran well, as well as I expected on the way out. Right as we pulled into the campground it started to hesitate when I accelerated, but I managed to get it parked reasonably level and pushed that out my mind for a couple of days. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +We pulled in around 2 in the afternoon and the ranger at the visitor center apologized for the fact that the lake was in the process of being drained. I didn't say anything but I was thinking, *you just created possibly the largest mud flat my kids are ever going to see and you're apologizing?* + + + +We found a spot that backed up along what would have been a little inlet, but was currently just a sandy, muddy ravine. About two minutes after the engine shut off everyone was in the mud. + +
+ + + + + + + + + + +
+ +We had intended to only stay one night, but Fort Yargo was running a two nights for the price of one special, so, why not? + +As a test run for full time living it was an interesting trip. There's plenty of practical things we need to do, figure out systems that help us live comfortably in a small space. But beyond that it's difficult to explain what it's like to wake up and go outside. This sounds incredibly mundane, but for me it's not. It's revelatory, a complete paradigm shift that I did not want to stop. Could I do it at home? Sure, but for whatever reason I don't. + +Not everything was wonderful though. The first night we were there we had a rough time getting everyone to bed. It's hard to fall asleep when everything is new and different and exciting. But by the second night it had all become the new (very wonderful) normal and the kids were asleep by their usual bed time. + +We sat up by the campfire for a while, but if you look closely at the breakfast images above, you'll noticed that it's still dark out. In the end we rarely stay up more than an hour or two later than the kids. + + + + + +Friday afternoon we realized it was a long weekend. The campground filled up in a hurry and we decided to pack it in and head home. + +The stalling while accelerating thing was forced out of the back of my mind and into the forefront again. Things started off well enough. A bit of sputtering as we headed out of the campground, but it could have been that the engine wasn't completely warm. Then headed through downtown Winder it died at a stoplight, then another. Then I pulled off into a nice big parking lot where I spent some quality time messing with the carburetor. + +Eventually I gave up and called Progressive road side assistance, which was a mistake. I gave up in part because I wanted to test Progressive and man did it fail. Catastrophically failed. **Do not under any circumstances buy Progressive roadside assistance**. Progressive refused to tow to the mechanic I wanted and instead wanted to tow me to a Ford dealership that didn't have the slightest idea how to work on a Dodge RV. I know because I called them[^1]. What a bucket of fail Progressive turned out to be. Really hope their insurance is better or we're screwed if anything ever happens. + +Eventually I managed to coax the bus into running and together the bus and I limped home. It turned out... well, you wouldn't believe me if I told you so I'll just say I'm not sure how I did it exactly, but I did. Now she's headed in for a new carb, exhaust work and a new muffler. After that, I think it'll be time to get back on the road, whether the house is sold or not. + +[^1]: Needless to say I have since cancelled Progressive roadside assistance. After asking around on some RV forums I decided to go with AAA Premier RV assistance. It ain't cheap, but it lets me pick the mechanic I want and that could potentially save thousands by stopping some idiot from messing up the bus. Seems worth the extra money. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-03-24_the-mooring-of-starting-out.txt b/jrnl/2017-03-24_the-mooring-of-starting-out.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b6059ad --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-03-24_the-mooring-of-starting-out.txt @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +Everything accelerates toward beginnings. But then there's that moment where things suspend there at the starting line, thin, ephemeral, balanced there with every decision waiting to propel you into the future. + +Or, to put in another way, starting out is like being in that weird moment where Wily E Coyote has merrily run past the edge of the cliff and managed to keep going out of sheer blissful ignorance -- until he looks down. Starting out is that moment when you look down and realize the edge of the cliff is well behind you now -- you're on your way down. + +When I did it by myself years ago it was an exhilarating thing I likened to [swinging as a child](/jrnl/2005/10/twenty-more-minutes-go), but I won't lie, throw three kids and a half still-broken bus in the mix and it's not really fun or exhilarating; it's a stressful nightmare. Nothing compared to what millions experience every day, but a long way from those dreams of carefree abandon you imagine you'll feel. Or, in my case, that you have felt before. + +For the better part of a week we bounced from hotel to in-laws to hotel to in-laws, all while the bus sat at the repair shop waiting on parts, some of which to this day have not arrived (do not get me started on this topic...). + + + +Still, we did it. The house sold. For the record, we got our full asking price. + +Some where in the middle of packing up ten years worth of accumulated stuff, selling off most of our possessions, negotiating with buyers, oh, and working full time, I managed to finish up the interior of the bus, laying the floor, refinishing the dash, all the trim and countless other little tasks. One day Corrinne called around to find someone to recover the seats and after a few people declined or couldn't make our deadline we found someone about an hour a way who had a week between two big jobs and was will to take it on. I packed up the seats, drove to Atlanta and worked out the details. A couple days later I dropped off the bus to get the carburetor replaced, electronic ignition and few other odds and ends. + +And then the house sold and we started falling. + +We were forced to confront a problem most of you have not --where do you put your stuff when your home is at the shop? Answer: boxes? We shoved everything in boxes and stuffed them in our minivan, at my in-law's house and in the storage unit we rented to hold a few items. The remainder we carted from hotel room to hotel room. + +But you know, I'd be lying if I said it was all work and moving. We took time out to have a few last rides in the truck (which we're selling). Crazy times are also good times to bend the rules a bit, to lighten things up. I'm not saying we did this, because I know what the internet parent police will say, but *if* we did all ride in the truck at once, using gasp, a single seat belt for three children, theoretically speaking, I bet it would have been fun. + + + +We also took a day off somewhere in there to visit a friend's farm so the kids could drive around in massive tractors. Heck, even Corrinne and I drove the tractors. How often do you get to drive something with a wheel that's taller than you are? + + + +Working farms, that is to say, real farms, not those little vegetable patches on ten acres that the hipsters have been buying up, are a healthy reminder that I've never really worked a day in my life. Not worked like a farmer does. It's humbling just to listen to someone tell you about their day to day work on a farm. There are things I dislike about the modern world, but I am frequently thankful that I don't have to farm. + +Really the worst thing I had to deal with was having a home in the shop. One day I sorta half snapped and had the mechanic just put the thing back together as best he could so we'd have a place to be. So the bus has electronic ignition now at least, still no carburetor though. It ran well enough to get to the tire shop and get new wheels put on, but of course that didn't go quite as well as planned, the new wheels are different enough that our spare didn't quite fit. I did get to learn how to use a floor lift though, so not total loss. But I still need to get some longer bolts and get the spare mounted up before we leave. + +But at least we had our home back, which meant we could get out town, stop hemorrhaging money at hotels and restaurants, which we promptly did, decamping to Watson Mill State Park for a week. We still didn't have working propane or water when we first arrived, but hey, who need luxuries like that when you've got camp stoves and water jugs? diff --git a/jrnl/2017-03-30_watson-mill.txt b/jrnl/2017-03-30_watson-mill.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6d2f327 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-03-30_watson-mill.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +While we did get the bus back after nearly two weeks of floating between various hotels and Corrinne's parents house, we still weren't quite ready to hit the road. The bus was running much better, but I still wanted to replace the carburetor and get new wheels and tires before we left. Both of those things involved ordering parts and -- my least favorite thing -- waiting. + +We tried to get back out to [Fort Yargo][1], but the campground was booked up the Friday night we were trying to leave, so we ended up on the other side of Athens at Watson Mill Bridge State Park. + + + + + + +It's a place we've been quite a few times for the day, but never overnight. But it has a river for the kids to play in and a small campground that no one seems to use -- we slid in around dinner time on a Friday and there were plenty of spots still available after we parked. + + + +The first night was a continuation of our "tent camping in an RV" routine. We still had no city water lines, no hot water tank and no propane inside the bus. I spent the next couple of days taking care of all that and quite a few other projects on the list. By the time we left a week later the bus was actually something like a real RV, with cushy features like running water (still just cold) and a working stove (the gas pressure is a bit low for my tastes, haven't fully figured that one out, love to hear ideas beyond mine -- that the regulator is a cheap piece of crap). + + + + + + +Not that all we did was work. There was a river to play in after all. And a massive covered bridge to walk through. There were not, unfortunately, any paddle boats though. They're apparently just too stuck in the mud for anyone to bother getting rid of them. + + + + +There is however, s stretch of rock to the far side of the river, about 50 yards down from the falls where you can, if your butt is up for it, slide down slick mossy granite at speed that, toward the end, becomes moderately alarming. The impact at the bottom is jarring, but it's a fun ride and jarring or no, I couldn't say no to the kids so up and down we went well past the point where my butt was sore. + +After a few days the wheels and tires were in and I drove into town and got rid of the split ring rims that have served the bus since 1969. I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I hate fixing things that aren't broken and the rims were technically not broken. However, it's nearly impossible to get tires for them in this country and our current plans don't have us in Mexico until at least a year from now, which is further than I wanted to go given the dry rot on the old tires. + + + +On the plus side, the 195 R19.5 tires I put on add about 2-3 inches of more tread to every wheel and I absolutely feel it. The ride is rougher with the radials, but much more solid with the bus feeling more like it's stuck the road and significantly less floaty. And that's with the horribly blown out shocks we've got, I can't wait to see how it rides with a nice fresh set of shocks too. + +The carburetor story is significantly shorter and less happy. I got sick of calling to see if it had come in. No one at the shop ever called me and so we just blew it off. The current carb, while after market and basically a piece of crap, does, technically, nevertheless work. Most of the time anyway. + +We were frustrated with the delays and tired of hanging around for empty false promises, so after a couple nights in a hotel in Athens, during one of which I nearly lost my mind stressing out about the condition of the engine and transmission, we decided to say screw it, let's hit the road and figure it out as we go. And so we did. + +[1]: /jrnl/2017/01/wilds-of-winder + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-04-01_april-fools.txt b/jrnl/2017-04-01_april-fools.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6d4ed52 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-04-01_april-fools.txt @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +Our original plan called for us to hit the road on the first day of spring. In reality we finally got going, fittingly enough, on April 1st. + + + +We spent the morning saying goodbye to friends and family and (briefly) stopping buy a classic car show that happens once a month at a local coffee shop. + + + +I wouldn't say we stole the show, but we certainly dominated when it came to size. And hey, we even have a pretty much finished +interior now. + + + + +We finally made it out of town at the crack of 2PM and drove a whooping 80 miles before pulling in to Raysville campground near the southern end of the massive lake that is the Savannah river. + + + +If was an uneventful drive, the bus ran smooth and everything just worked for a change. For posterity's sake I'd like to note that the person with the paper map drove straight there and the person with the GPS got lost twice. Relying on Google to navigate the back roads of the south is a recipe for disaster. There are now two paper maps and no GPS on our persons. + +Raysville was nice and quiet. Or at least absent human noise. The Canadian geese roosting on the island just off shore from our campsite had frequent loud and rather involved conversations all night long. Still, it was lovely spot so we stayed a second night. A couple friends who'd been out of town when we said goodbye made the trek out from Athens the second day and spent the afternoon with us. + +Mostly though we just played on the shore and got ourselves and all our clothes covered in good old red Georgia clay. + + + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-04-04_the-edge-of-the-continent.txt b/jrnl/2017-04-04_the-edge-of-the-continent.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3a8d236 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-04-04_the-edge-of-the-continent.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +We follow the river, more or less, down out of the red Georgia mud into the Carolina coastal plain. It's not always visible, but it is there, tracing a path down out of the hills and toward the sea. + +We avoid interstates, even divided highways, sticking instead to the county roads, the thin gray lines on the map, many known only by local names, no number at all. Jones Rd. Thompson Bridge Rd. Stoney Bluff Rd. One blurs into the next as we pass down out of the tall Georgia pines, to mixed farmland, ever larger oaks and the first cordgrass hints of marsh. + +In between are the occasional small towns, these days little more than scattered clusters of single wide trailers and abandoned downtown squares encircled by Popeye's and dollar stores. Life out here feels bleak and hopeless to me. Or at least life as it is right now. Layers of peeling advertisements still clinging to collapsed billboards hint at time when it wasn't like this. + +I don't know when it became like this out here, or even how widespread it is, but it feels widespread on this drive. We pass through several whole towns that quite simply aren't there anymore. Just broken buildings and empty houses remain. It's remarkable how fast the landscape reclaims what isn't maintained. + +The abandonment seems recent, within the last 20 years to judge by the advertisements still stuck inside windows here and there. But I imagine the decline started decades earlier. In fact there probably was no collapse at all. We always think things end suddenly, but with a few [dramatic exceptions][1] it seldom works out that way. Instead there's just less and less year after year until one day the last family walks slowly out of town and disappears into somewhere else. + +It's become fashionable in the last couple of years for the big city glossies to send reporters out to places like this to do a lot of hand-wringing about what happened, what it all means. Very few seem willing to accept that maybe this is just part of the cycle of things. That there is no perpetual progress, that things rise up and eventually fall back down. If you think that cycle is something that only happens elsewhere, to other people, you need to get off the interstate. + +The scene brightens a little as we pass into the Carolina lowcountry. The towns are older, they're at different point in the cycle, having already declined and rebuilt several times. This is a land where people have been around long enough to get a better idea of what works and what doesn't. What remains now is what has survived the cycles thus far, what has been pruned and honed. + +Finally we dip down into the intertidal plain and the road becomes covered by massive Live Oaks dripping Spanish Moss. Poking above them you can see the tufted tops of the Loblolly and Long Leaf Pines. They look like pineapples on sticks thrust up into the sky. + +It's overcast, but never actually rains, which is good because I have no windshield wipers at the moment. I have a single wiper arm on the driver's side[^1] and a blade I bought at a truck stop that I'm hoping I can somehow attach, but I'm waiting for a good downpour before I tackle that project. Fortunately for me the weather holds all the way to the Edisto State Park campground. + +We had been promising the kids that we'd be at the beach "soon" for about six months so we literally parked the bus in our campsite and headed straight out the beach. It was chilly, overcast and generally dismal, but no one cared. There was sand and sea and salt air and the weather really doesn't much matter when you're a kid and you have everything else. + +There were birds to chase, sandcastles to build, dead jellyfish to investigate, shark's teeth to gather, shells to collect and just barely enough daylight to even get started on it all before we had to head back and make dinner. Fortunately the next day was bright and sunny and apparently all you have to do if you want the shores of Edisto to yourself is show up before 11 AM. + + + + + + + + + + + +[^1]: I recently noticed there's actually a motor on the passenger's side, though it has no arm and I have no idea if it works. A new motor and arm assembly that was recommended to me by another Travco owner goes for a cool $200. Not in hurry to drop $200 on a windshield wiper. + +[1]: /jrnl/2011/06/forever-today diff --git a/jrnl/2017-04-06_storming.txt b/jrnl/2017-04-06_storming.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b295a1f --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-04-06_storming.txt @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +We woke up on our third day to cloudy skies and predictions of a massive storm. Seemed like a good day to head up to Charleston. + +One of the downsides to camping at Edisto is that there's no fresh water. The water table is too shallow, the sea gets in. There's potable salt water, which works fine for showers and dishes, but if you want drinking water you have to lug your jugs down to the fire station, which apparently has the only deep well around this part of the island. + +The only real problem this causes it that there's no laundry at the campground. And if you have three kids in the sand and mud all day, you need laundry access pretty regularly. The nearest proper laundromat is in Charleston, and since we wanted to see the city anyway, especially Corrinne, who lived in Charleston for five years, we headed up to do laundry and walk around downtown a bit before the storm hit. + +We managed to find a shopping center that had a laundromat, a hardware store, a pharmacy and a Thai restaurant, all our errands in one place, plus lunch. Then we headed downtown, took the kids over to see the rainbow houses and the battery park. + + + +Then we got some ice cream and walked over to the Circular Church, which seemed unchanged since [our last visit][1]. + + + + +We made it back to camp before the storm hit, but just barely. I gambled and threw some burgers on the grill and about two minutes later I lost, the deluge started. I had to race out and salvage what I could of the now soggy raw meat. We finished dinner on the stove and ate to the deafening downpour pounding on the fiberglass of the bus. There were predictions of golf ball size hail, but fortunately all we got was rain. And more rain. + +The rain didn't stop, nor did the more or less continuous thunder and lightning, for about 10 hours. It was a hell of a storm. Or so I'm told. I fell asleep amid the flashes and booms around 10. Corrinne was awake most of the night. + +Surprising even me, the bus hardly leaked at all. A little water came in through a window track that was simply overwhelmed by the sheets of rain coming down, but even the leaks I know about didn't seem to leak that night. Odd, but I'll take it. My last thought before falling asleep was man, it would really suck to be in a tent right now. + + + + + +[1]: /jrnl/2011/01/charleston-a-z diff --git a/jrnl/2017-04-12_swamped.txt b/jrnl/2017-04-12_swamped.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0d25ca0 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-04-12_swamped.txt @@ -0,0 +1,93 @@ +From Edisto we took a few back roads through the low country, headed south and west. + + + +The winds left over from the storm made it a less than fully relaxed drive, which is to say I had both feet on the floor and both hands on the wheel. As always with wind my greatest fear wasn't the wind, but my own accidental over-compensation for the wind. + +It was all fine in the end, except for the part of the drive we decided to do on the interstate -- passing through Savannah. What a boring thing driving on interstates. And American drivers these days... curious bunch, I'm somewhat surprised they all continue to live doing what they do every day. Maybe I'm just old, but I swear hardly anyone knows how to drive these days. And truckers are the only people who understand how things larger than a car move[^1]. + +There's actually a whole hidden communication system among truckers that I haven't fully deciphered yet, but I recognize it now. A headlight flash here, a brake there. Nods and hat tips. I don't pretend to know what it all means but it's out there, happening all around you, unseen because you're too low on the road. I get to see it, but I'm not sure I get to participate. The bus is big, but not that big. I'm twelve wheels short of that club. + +We were headed for the middle of nowhere, but it was further than we wanted to go in a day. We've thus far kept our max driving under 200 miles a day. And frankly anything over two hours feels long. Just because we're living in an RV doesn't mean we want to spend all our time driving it. There's no hurry to get anywhere after all. + +In fact our destination in the middle of nowhere was mainly to pass some time. We're not really reservations type of people, but sometimes you have to. And for Edisto we had to book way in advance. We also had to reserve the beach house we often rent in Florida ahead of time. The problem is that it worked out such that there were four days in between those two reservations. + +This is a problem because, well, there just isn't much in the South Georgia/North Florida region. Its swamp and farm land. Sometimes both, remarkably enough. In a casual conversation about this a while back we discovered that some friends of our family had a "cabin" down just west of the Okefenokee Swamp and said we were welcome to stay as long as we wanted. Sold. + +We spent an interim night in one of those parking lot style RV parks at the end of the Altamaha River, an experience I am not going to comment on, save to say that everyone we talked to was very nice. The kids quickly made friends and had fun anyway. + +We left early the next morning and drove north, around the top of the Okefenokee and down the west side. It was one of those drives where there wasn't much traffic to begin with and then there was less and finally we drove at least 30 miles without seeing another car. Then we turned off that road onto a private dirt road where the only other *allowed* traffic was logging trucks. Several miles down that road we turned on an even smaller road, just two tire tracks really, and finally arrived at the cabin. + +The middle of nowhere. Or the edge of the Okefenokee. Same thing really. + + + +The cabin sat in the middle of a pine farm, backed up against a pond that was about a mile long and half a mile wide. I killed the engine and opened the door and it was... totally and completely silent. Still and quiet in a way I haven't heard since I went snowshoeing in the Sierra Nevada in the dead of winter -- so quiet the silence really is deafening. Your ears sound like they're ringing even when they're not. + +Once your ears adjust it's not quite so quiet. There are sounds in the swamp. The occasional calls of birds, a few cicadas chirping and every now and then a pig frog's staccato, almost digital sounding croak. But if you've been sitting atop a 1969 Dodge 318 V8 for three hours the difference is a silence that's nearly overwhelming. And even after four days in the cabin, there were still moments when you heard absolutely nothing. + +It was glorious. + + + + +Except for the part where it was in a swamp. I find swamps interesting in the way I find stamp collecting interesting, which is to say I recognize that some people really enjoy it and I love to hear them talk about it for a while, but it's not really for me. I love to be in a swamp for a while, but by and large, I am not a swamp person. It is in fact the only ecosystem in which I find myself feeling distinctly ill at ease, out of place. Humans don't seem to fit in swamps and, for me, just being there at all feels like violating some fundamental law of nature. + +Fortunately the cabin came with a couple of canoes. I never feel quite so much at home as when I'm in a boat -- no matter how small -- and so the two things balanced each other out. I spent a couple hours a day on the water, just paddling the pond with the kids. Trying to sneak up and get a closer look at the alligators or trying to edge ever deeper into the thickets of cypress and water grass in search of herons, egrets, anhingas and the two very elusive wood ducks that would come all the way up to the patio/dock area so long as no one was around, but would flee deep into the inner sanctum of the pond the minute a door opened. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ + + +Despite by best efforts and stealthiest paddling we never got anywhere near a gator, but I did manage to grab a feather left behind by one of the wood ducks. + + + + + + +And there was no shortage of other animals around, sleek blue-tailed five-lined skinks, green anoles, carolina wrens, tiny pig frogs, great egrets, snowy egrets, great blue herons, and a sharp shinned hawk that screamed every time we went to the far side of the pond. There were supposed to be lots of snakes around too, we'd been warned to keep a close eye on the kids, but the only snake I saw was a tiny six-inch pigmy rattlesnake. Fortunately our close encounters with wildlife were limited to birds and mammals. + + +
+ + + + + + + + +
+ + +One morning the girls and I were out in the canoe, slowly drifting into the one of several narrow, thicket choked channels when we flushed some kind of large bird we couldn't quite make out. + +I set the paddle down and we just drifted in silence for a minute until we slid deeper into the channel and came face to face with a black-crowned night heron. It stayed put, yellow legs wrapped tight around one of the upper branches of a dead cypress tree. It was was no more than 10 feet from the canoe and it stood there, stalk still, studying us with its huge red eyes, black head cocked slightly to the side. We stared at each other for a good five minutes, no one moving, no one talking. Then I slowly lowered in a paddle and pushed us back out again. + +The birds weren't the only close encounters we had either. White tailed deer came around regularly every day we were there. There was a trashcan full of dried corn on the back porch that served as feed for deer, raccoons, squirrels and anything else that wanted it. But the deer especially came around regularly at meal times looking for corn, which we'd fling out for them. They'd come around every morning while we ate breakfast and again in the evening when we at dinner. We ate watching them, they ate watching us. Mutual admiration society perhaps. + +Later I got to thinking that maybe they weren't watching us though. The cabin was really a hunting lodge, the vast majority of the decor was once living things shot, stuff and mounted on a wall. + + + +I've nothing a against hunting for food, but the whole notion of hunting as sport has always struck me a morally dubious. The most common dead thing on the walls of the cabin were deer and later I started thinking, maybe the deer were out there staring in, not at us, but at the heads mounted on the chimney behind us. Whatever the case, it certainly didn't stop the deer from eating the corn. There is no moral code of the wild that includes passing up easy calories. + +Explaining guns, hunting, death and lots of related topics to the kids added a wrinkle I wasn't expecting to our time at the cabin, but we try not sugarcoat the world too much. The girls seemed mostly okay with the idea of hunting. They already know they're eating animals when we have meat for dinner, so it wasn't a great leap to explaining how that meat comes to be on your plate. I haven't yet told them how the current practices of industrial farming work, which of course makes hunting seem not just okay, but downright saintly, but we'll get there. Or we'll take up hunting. + +The other nice thing about having a cabin to stay in is that we could work on and organize the bus without upending our entire living area. And yes, we've already figured out enough about what works, what doesn't and what we need to change and rearrange to warrant more or less unpacking the entire thing and re-organizing. + + + +I also had time to finish up the plumbing so now the toilet flushes without needing to turn on the shower nozzle. And, much more exciting, we have, wait for it, hot water. Luxury living. The last bit of plumbing to do is tying the water tank we don't yet own and water pump into the city water system, but I won't be tackling that for a while. + +I also went ahead and made the wiper blade work with the wiper arm. As much as I was looking forward to doing that in a hurry, at the side of the road, in the rain, I decided, meh, what the heck, I'll do it ahead of time. This trip is turning me into a regular boy scout. Now if only I could find the source of the transmission fluid leak. + +[^1]: When you pass a truck and cut over right in front of them, it is only by the grace of whatever god you believe in that you continue to exist. There's no way the truck could stop in time if it had to; the way some people do it there wouldn't even be time to hit the brakes before the truck drove over you. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-04-18_coming-home.txt b/jrnl/2017-04-18_coming-home.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..935df1f --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-04-18_coming-home.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +I haven't accurately tallied it, but my guess is that we've spent nearly two months on St. George Island over the years. Enough time anyway, to make it feel a little like coming home when we get here. + + + +This also feels a bit like coming home, or at least returning to the beginning, because this is where we were when we decided to do this trip two years ago. It's also where we were when Corrinne found the bus on Craigslist. Yes, Corrinne found it. And yes, it took two years to get it restored. Tip for anyone reading this who's thinking, "man, I really want to restore an older RV/Trailer": make a budget for time and money and then double both. Then, just to be safe, double the money budget again. + +It took longer than we wanted, and there were some darker moments in those last two years when everything seemed impossible, but hey, we did it. We're here. Again. + + + +Ironically not in the bus though. Through all our visits to St. George Island we've always stayed in the same place, which is owned by some friends of the family. I tried to talk the girls into camping at the very lovely state park down at the east end of the island, but they wouldn't hear of it. It had to be the pink beach house. + + + +Fine with me actually. Gave me a chance to finish the last of the bus tasks I need to knock out to call it finished. I don't know why my wife just laughs now when I say I'm done. But really I am. The only thing left is getting a new water tank. Oh and the solar panels. And the house battery. And the ladder. And the roof rack. And the new awning. Cough. + + + +When we got here we were leaking transmission fluid pretty bad. I had my eye on a section of the transmission cooler hose that had been replaced with what looked like some cheap rubber hose. But I had promised the family I wouldn't spend the entire time on the island under the bus so I called around a bit and found a shop that was willing to take a look the following Monday. Good enough. I spent the next four days at the beach, hardly ever thinking about that hose, hardly ever having nightmares about failed gaskets that would require dropping the entire transmission. + +Instead we played in the surf, climbed the lighthouse, ate shrimp, fried up Grouper cheeks, cooled off with shaved ice and frozen lemonades, and tried to find a cool Piggly Wiggly t-shirt. In other words, we did what you do at the beach -- a whole lot of nothing. + + + + + + + + + + +One day I spent the better part of an hour with the kids, digging up tiny little clams out of the wet sand behind receding waves. The Seashells of North America guide back up at the house told me later that the slightly larger, rainbow colored clams were Florida Coquinas, while the smaller, white ones were Gulf Donax. Both pop themselves out of the sand when they feel the vibration of crashing waves so that they're carried up and down the beach, always remaining at the edge of the tidal zone where we were sitting, digging in the sand. + +We dug up the Coquinas and Donax and dumped them on the surface of the sand to watch them suck themselves back down into the wet depth. Over and over we dug, then they dug. We started to root for different clams, trying to guess which one would disappear first. There was something hypnotic about watching them, something of the same appeal perhaps of things like frog races. I started to wonder what the clams must think, the ocean gone mad, surf pounding the shore and digging them up over and over again. Or maybe they're more seasoned than that, maybe they knew exactly what it is, fucking tourists. Or maybe they didn't need a why at all, maybe they just sucked themselves back down without a thought. Because it is there. + +On Monday we drove the bus up to Port St. Joe, which had the only mechanic that had met my criteria: shop out of the way, huge bay doors in Google Street View and not fazed by my slow sell of, "I got a dodge 318, with a 727, that's leaking transmission fluid..." "Well, bring it in." "Okay. One thing, it's got a 27ft motorhome attached to it, is that okay?" "How many feet?" "27." Pause. "That should be alright." + +Turn out to be... wait for it... transmission cooler hose. Sigh. But hey, it's fixed and I didn't miss any time with the kids at the beach. + + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-04-24_gulf-islands-national-seashore.txt b/jrnl/2017-04-24_gulf-islands-national-seashore.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2b8faa3 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-04-24_gulf-islands-national-seashore.txt @@ -0,0 +1,69 @@ +I could spend all day floating in the Gulf of Mexico. Coming from the Pacific I sometimes sneer at places without waves. Waves humanize the ocean, they give it rhythm, maybe even rhyme and reason. Especially big waves. + +The Gulf though. It's not much for waves, a little chop that tries to be wave like. Still, there is something utterly tranquilly magic about just floating there on your back, staring up the occasional Brown Pelican or tern hunting for fish. + + + +Or at least it seems like it would be, unfortunately I don't float for more than about five seconds. I do enjoy sit-floating in the shallows, watching the birds drift by overhead, especially Ospreys, which are in abundance around here. Having spent considerable time watching Ospreys over the last few weeks I've decided that, should I get the chance to have another go on this planet, I'd like to do it as an Osprey. + +We ended up staying four extra days at the beach house in St. George Island. Some friends from Atlanta came down for the last couple of days and then we hit the road again, headed for the Fort Pickens area of Gulf Islands National Seashore. + +I am, and will continue to be, an advocate of taking the back roads. However, there are exceptions and Florida's 98 -- not really a back road, but the only option other than I10 -- is a horrid disaster of a road. It was so bad I'm not even going to describe it. I'll just say that if I had it to do over again I'd take I10. Although I don't know, Florida drivers are so consistently bad I'm not sure I'd want to see them going over 60. I've been to 45 states and Florida drivers are without question and by a very large margin consistently the worst drivers I've ever had the misfortune to drive among. I've also never seen so much garbage hurled from moving cars. Stay classy Florida. + + + + +Despite the horror of Florida roads and the drivers on them we did eventually though we made it to Gulf Islands National Seashore, which might be the prettiest beach I've been to in the U.S. It's downright stunning, if you plunked me here I might guess I was in Thailand though the dunes provide a clue, the dunes are unmistakably Gulf coast barrier island dunes. + +In some ways Gulf Islands is probably what St. George was like 60-70 years ago. Take away the houses and St George wouldn't be all that different. St. George is darker though, more stars. I've never been anywhere on the east coast with more stars visible than St. George. + +We ended up in a really nice partially shaded spot in the Fort Pickens campground, about a three minute walk from the shoreline. Not a mosquito to be found and steady breeze to keep things nice and cool. Approaching perfection. + + + + + + + +The weather largely held too, we had couple days of clouds here and there, but that just meant we got the beach to ourselves. If you're willing to put up with the occasional spit of rain, you can have an entire barrier island to yourself down here. Or at least it feels that way. I spent several hours on the beach one day with the girls and we didn't see another soul. + + + + + + + + +If all this sounds wonderfully Idyllic there is one, occasional, catch. This particular barrier island is right off the coast of Pensacola, home of a rather large naval air station, a rather large naval air station that happens to be home to the Blue Angels. Just down the road there's an air force base that's home to the Thunderbirds. Twice a week, two times a day, for the better part of two hours you get a free air show, whether you want it or not. We even got the see the Blue Angels flying in formation with the Thunderbirds, which I'm pretty sure doesn't happen at air shows. + + + +I have mixed feelings about watching 40 million dollar killing machines burn through millions more dollars in jet fuel for the sole purpose of entertainment, but the kids thought it was pretty cool. Or at least they were entertained until they noticed a Great Blue Heron that was going around to all the fishermen and women on the pier and trying to steal their fish. + +
+ + + + +
+ +I thought we had a close encounter with a Heron at the cabin the swamp, but that was nothing compared to this. This bird had no fear and seemed to barely care about our existence. It came within arms reach -- and Great Blue Herons are very big birds -- and just stared, craning its neck around, always keeping an eye on all the buckets of fish around the pier. + +
+ + + + +
+ +Fort Pickens itself is fairly uninteresting -- big cannons, brick walls, people fighting, same old tired story -- but the views from the top are nice. + + + + +We're living with just a starting battery. Buying an isolator and house deep cycle battery is on the short list of things to do, but for now we have start up the bus every so often to make sure the starting battery doesn't get too low. It gives me a chance to slowly acclimate the kids to riding in the bus. + + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-05-08_davis-bayou.txt b/jrnl/2017-05-08_davis-bayou.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ec43a40 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-05-08_davis-bayou.txt @@ -0,0 +1,70 @@ + + +One thing that we did like about Dauphin Island was the drive there. We're not fans of long drives -- too long for us is about four hours -- and getting to Dauphin Island was just a two hour drive. We decided that was about right so we opted not to drive straight from Dauphin Island to New Orleans. Instead we noticed a little slice of the Gulf Islands National Seashore sitting roughly midway between the two. + +We pulled into Davis Bayou around mid day and figured we'd spend a night or two and move on, but we wound up spending a week. + + + + +There is something very relaxing about marshes, or bayous as they call them down here. There's a rhythm to life that lulls and comforts. The tide goes out, the tide goes in. The periwinkles go up the cordgrass, they go back down. If it's sunny the alligators are on the log, if it's not they're in the water. You almost get the feeling that life is predictable. And then you watch a heron wading in the mud, like herons always do, when suddenly it trips and falls face first in the water and you remember that nothing is totally predictable, just rhythmic, one foot in front of the other. + + + + + +Some places are like that, they lull you and keep you longer than you think. It wasn't that there was much to do, there was a nice enough beach that the kids liked because this part of the Gulf is flat like a lake and has a long, shallow shelf so that you can walk out a hundred yards and only be in shin deep water. Annoying for people my size, perfect if you're two. + + + + + +There was also a playground that proved popular, more popular than the beach in fact. + + + + + + +Ocean Beach was pretty nice, but like most places these days it had tons of rules signs. Pretty sure if you combined all these rules all you'd be able to do is still perfectly still until you died. + +
+ + + + + +
+ + + +About half way through our stay we were chatting with the ranger who suggested we visit the children's museum down near Gulfport. It ended up being really fun for the kids, with a ton of stuff tucked away in a massive old schoolhouse, even some face painting. + + + + + + + + + + +A fair bit of the time we hung around the campground, I got some work done, the girls learned to ride bikes, explored the nature center, went on a hike and watched the random wildlife that stopped by our camp. All in all a pretty good week, but by the end we were ready to hit the road again. + + + + + + + +
+ + + + +
+ + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-05-11_dauphin-island.txt b/jrnl/2017-05-11_dauphin-island.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..59676e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-05-11_dauphin-island.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +I was not a fan of Dauphin Island. The beaches are nice enough, though nothing like what you'll on the other side of Mobile Bay, in Florida. The ocean is brown here, from the rivers I assume, but you can't help feeling that it might be, as my daughter put it, "because Alabama is dirty?" + +Left to our own devices we'd have stayed one night and moved on, but unfortunately we'd already made plans to meet up with some family who were nearby on trip of their own. So we stuck it out for four days and I couldn't help but notice a few things in those four days. + +If you need any firsthand insight into the advantages of turning land over to federal management -- currently very unpopular -- head to Dauphin Island. There is no federally managed land on Dauphin Islands. Observe and then head over to Gulf Islands National Seashore, which as the name suggests is managed by the National Park Service. + +Forget the part where the non-federal owned one is covered in houses and garbage while the federally owned one features relatively pristine beaches without a house in sight, all I want to contrast are the facilities and what you get for your money. For $28 in Gulf Islands you get a nice clean, level camp site with 50 AMP, 30 Amp and 20 Amp hookups, along with good fresh water and a spacious picnic table. Every day at 9 AM ranger comes and cleans the bathroom. This more or less the same as every other national park in the U.S. + +For $42 a night at Dauphin Island Park & Beach Board you get a tiny sliver of land that hasn't ever been leveled, will more than likely have giant roots you'll need to navigate and a picnic table so small my three children under five barely fit on one side of it. You'll be able to spit tobacco juice from your front door onto the side of your neighbor's RV. The electric service will max out at 30Amps and stop working at the first hint of rain. The last time the bathrooms were cleaned at Dauphin Island RV Park Jimmy Carter was president. The beach, which could be quite nice, will, inevitably, courtesy of your neighbors, almost every single one of whom will be from Alabama, be covered in trash, beer cans and whatever refuse happened to be used while said neighbors were at the beach. Because to an Alabaman Alabama is nothing so much as a giant trash can. + +This actually extends from top to bottom from what I can see. Not only is trash everywhere, it gets celebrated in exhibits. About 25 percent of the local aquarium is more or less a pro-oil propaganda exhibit that spends most of its time highlighting all the ways in which oil can be cleaned up without ever showing a single picture of what an oil spill of the size of the Deep Water Horizon disaster actually looks like when it rolls ashore, nor mentions the devastation it has done to the local fishing industry which as more or less gone belly up and had to sell out to multinational corps since the accident. It's so breath-taking one-side that you notice it. + +I could actually forgive all of that, but the icing on the cake is the locals. The locals are the tired locals you find at tourist destinations that have been used up, hollowed out and left to rot. I've seen places like this around world and the attitude of their residents is always the same, bitterness born of self loathing. Now, I met some of the people they have to deal with, I'm not saying the locals don't have their reasons, but if you live within a tourist-based economy and you resent, if not outright hate, tourists, you also essentially hate your world and that's no way to live. + +That's also Dauphin Island in a nutshell. It's a place that has been chewed up, spit out and left there on the beach to rot in the Alabama sun. + +Of course it's not like we sat around miserable the whole time. As you can probably tell from the pictures we had a pretty good time. It's not the worst place on earth after all, but there's certainly many better in this world and we couldn't wait to get to them. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-05-12_new-orleans-instrumental-number-1.txt b/jrnl/2017-05-12_new-orleans-instrumental-number-1.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..00e9d1c --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-05-12_new-orleans-instrumental-number-1.txt @@ -0,0 +1,80 @@ +New Orleans is the last living city in the United States. + +Every time I return here I am amazed that it is allowed to continue existing, that something so contrary to the rest of America has not been destroyed, locked up and disneyfied. But it hasn't. Somehow the people here manage to carry their unique way of life on day after day in this amazing place. The people here shame the rest of us with their vibrancy, their community, their music, their love. + +Must be hot as hell in August though. + + + +We came in from the east, on 90 which takes its time wandering through all the bayous the interstate passes right over. Highway 90 cuts out to the very edge where the last of the bayous gives way to the sea. The islands are thin little wafers out here, you feel exposed and vulnerable just driving them, as if at any given moment the sea is going rise up and take them back. But it doesn't. Hasn't yet. There are houses here that are obviously from at least 50 years ago. My favorite was the one with a message that felt aimed directly at today's AirBnBer: "It's a camp, not a condo." + +I didn't track which bridge finally brought us into the city, but I do know that the minute we were at the high point I was hit with a smell so strong for a minute I thought something was wrong with the bus, but no, it was just New Orleans and some curious melange of oyster poboys, truck brakes, shrimp boats, fried dough, flashy new taco trucks and Vietnamese restaurants, all trapped inside a couple bends of the Mississippi by some mysterious force of voodoo. It has it's own fragrance, unbottleable and only available here. + +Driving into the city in the bus was an experience I can't really do justice to with just words. People everywhere honk and wave and call out to me when I'm driving the bus. It happens half a dozen times every day I drive it, often more. But getting through New Orleans topped everything else before it and I suspect after it. The bus was especially a hit in the Treme, which I'll be honest, made me feel good. Because yeah, of course I drove right through the heart of the city. How else would you cross it? I even had one woman have a five minute conversation with me at a stop light about camping out west who ended it with a simple, 'okay, you ahright, you ahright son'. I hope so. + +We stayed at Bayou Segnette State Park on the west bank, which is nice enough, but forgettable save the fact that it's a 10 minute drive from the French Quarter. + +The first day we took the ferry in from Algiers in part to let the kids ride a ferry and in part because I've been curious to see Algiers ever since I heard the name in a Grant Lee Buffalo song decades ago. It lived up to my vision of it, complete with hundred year old bars possibly full of hundred year old sailors. I didn't want to spoil the image in my head so I didn't go in. + + + + + + +Instead we crossed the river to Vieux Carré which still amazes me because it is both itself and a parody of itself at the same time and somehow manages to do both very well. It's cheesy and full of tourists, but it's also a really part of the city and full of locals. It might be the strangest tourist destination I've ever been to and I love it. + + + + + + +I also love that I keep coming back here and finding a different New Orleans. All the old ones I've found are still there too, I even took a picture of the diner my friend Mike hung out at 20 years ago when we passed through. We had a huge fight about something or other and I left him in the French Quarter to stew for half a day or so. He ended up at the diner below. At least I like to think it's the same diner. Eventually I came back and found him hanging out here with the largest man I've ever met who was named Earl and rather sweet on Mike I believe. There was something about a toothless bum too. He got some good stories out of it, me, all I got was another tank of gas. This time around we got some tater tots and fries. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +This was my first time in New Orleans with kids, which changed things a little bit. I like to get a coffee or a drink and just watch the people drift by on the streets, which we did do a couple times, but never for more than about 10 minutes. Because kids. + + + + +While sitting in one place is not their thing, they had no trouble walking. They walked the streets of the French Quarter from one end to the other and back again almost daily. In the heat the of the day. They were enthralled the whole time. And they slept well after ward. I shake my head every time I see someone with a 3 or 4 year old in stroller, what a lost opportunity . There aren't many places in America with so much going on on the streets. New Orleans is vibrant and alive, like kids. + +I tried to get a little history in the kids, we stopped by the Jean Lafitte Museum and the kids got another stamp in their NPS passport books. The museum also has a small courtyard of the sort you find in New Orleans, something I'd been trying to explain for a while, but which is best understood by seeing one. + + + + +But mostly they just wanted to hang around Jackson Square, listen to the music and watch the living statues, which the girls developed a minor obsession with for a few days, playing living statue whenever we were back in camp. + + + + + + + +
+ + + + +
+ +The New Orleans we found this time was all over the map. Along with the French Quarter, City Park turned out to be a huge hit as was their trolley ride up there. There was something called Story Land, which, on our initial visit was closed, which caused much gnashing of teeth, but fortunately playgrounds never close so we were able to salvage the day. + + +
+ + + + +
+ + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-05-15_new-orleans-instrumental-number-2.txt b/jrnl/2017-05-15_new-orleans-instrumental-number-2.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bc4a9de --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-05-15_new-orleans-instrumental-number-2.txt @@ -0,0 +1,63 @@ +There are thin silvery white cracks in the clouds. They burn into the backs of your eyelids when you blink. Thunder arrives before you can count to three. It's the crisp, crackling thunder that happens when you're under a mile from lightning. + +The bus is a sauna, windows shut tight and fogged, air conditioner already shut off. But I like watching the beads of water run down the vastness of windshield. + +I have a bag packed and a rain jacket over it and I should probably go, but there's something very peaceful about the clattering roar of rain on the roof, the rivulets of water running down the windows. The storm feels closer when you're in here, you have to confront more of it when your walls are only two inches thick. Even more of it when your walls are made of nylon, which I know several people in this campground are doing right now. Compared to them, this is nothing. But then it is a cozy 105 degrees or so, which ruins the peacefulness. + + + +Eventually I go and find Corrinne and the kids in the bathroom with a few other people who had taken shelter, mostly because there was a tornado warning. I have my doubts about how much being in a bathroom would help you in a tornado -- have you ever seen what a tornado can do to human structures, even concrete structures? -- but I understand the basic human (animal?) need to huddle together in groups for some small sense of protection. + +I dislike the whole notion of tornadoes. I'm from earthquake country. I like my disasters to come suddenly without warning and generally be over before you even know what happened. If you die, you probably won't even know it. Tornadoes? I don't know the first thing about tornadoes other than you get warned about them ahead of time, which, to me, is like telling some who's afraid of flying that they're statistically more likely to die on the way to airport. Thanks, now I have two things to be afraid of. I'm happy in my ignorance of pending tornadoes. I've seen what they can do and I don't think I can outrun one, so why the hell are you "warning" me about them? Where am I possible going to go? + +To the bathroom apparently. Which worked out well because we met a bunch of nice people there, particularly Taylor and Beth, some fellow full time RVers who turned out to know the only other person I'm aware of that lives full time in a Travco. We chatted, decided to meet up in New Orleans at some point and then the storm was over and everyone went their separate ways. We headed into to New Orleans to wander the French Quarter some more. + + + +More importantly though, a couple days later, we finally made it to Storyland out in City Park. It apparently has the world's fastest carousel, according to my wife, and the world's fastest slide according to my kids. + + + +
+ + + + +
+ + + + + + + +We couldn't leave without doing something that's become a pilgrimage of sorts for me -- visiting Marie Laveau's grave. + + + +The so-called voodoo queen of New Orleans has been growing in popularity over the years, but she's still a little obscure. The facts in her story are few and far between, but sometimes facts aren't the most important part of a story. If you know your way around the occult scene at all you've probably heard of Marie Laveau. She's sort of the patron saint of female occult power, because, let's face it, male dominated religions rule our era. + +But Marie Laveau seems to laugh in the face of all that. Born in 1801, mixed blood creole, she became a hairdresser to the wealthy -- no small part of her power I'm sure -- and was the city's most famous practitioner of Voodoo. Even if you care nothing about Voodoo, and I don't really, beyond the mild respect I hold for all animist/naturalist religious systems, Marie Laveau is fascinating because she wielded power in a culture that wouldn't have otherwise given her any. But by all accounts she held considerable political power as a non-white woman in the early 19th century. Think what you will of the Vodun/Voodoo religion, it takes someone special to completely subvert their culture like that. And I have a fondness for cultural subversives. + +I had been reading some books on Voodoo the first time I came to New Orleans in 1996 and was captivated by what little is known of her story. I dragged my friend Mike out to visit her grave in St. Louis Cemetery Number 1. At the time the neighborhood around the cemetery was a bit sketchy, sketchy enough that we had the only working car parked on the street. We also had the entire cemetery to ourselves. Marie Laveau's grave was clearly visited, but not often, to judge by the flowers around it. + +Years later, around 2003 I came back and it was much the same, but when Corrinne and I came in 2010, things had changed. There was a new stop light down the street with a new Valero station just past it. People walked the streets and new buildings were going up. Things were looking, if not quite gentrified, certainly headed in that direction. And now, sadly, the gentrification is complete. St. Louis Cemetery Number 1 is hemmed in on three sides by new construction and, worst part, you can no longer get to Marie Laveau's grave. + +Technically you can, you just have to pay $20 and take a tour with a guide. I'd sooner chew my leg off. + +The money is a non-issue to me. Admittedly, it's a bit steep. I certainly would not have paid $100 to get a family of five in, but I understand that part, it's the "you must have a tour guide" bit the rubs me the wrong way. I hate tour guides. I hate having my experiences mediated through another person, especially someone who's a professional mediator. I'd rather walk away and not show the kids Marie Laveau's grave (despite building it up quite a bit) than have them experience it through someone else's words. So we did. Walk away that is. + +We did a bit of research and it turns out people were desecrating graves, pulling out bones and what not and the Catholic church decided that money and tour guides was the solution to that problem. The thing is, people have always done that. Depending on which occult text you trust Marie Laveau's bones may not have even been in that grave for more than a couple days before 19th century grave robbers came seeking her bones (or her family moved her, again depending on which shakily documented story you want to believe). I've also toured quite a few Catholic churches where the bones of the dead had been dug up and rearranged by the Catholic Church itself, but I guess that's out of fashion now, current hipster pope not withstanding. + +Whatever the case Marie Laveau's grave is a thing of the past for me. We opted to head to the New Orleans Voodoo Museum instead. Museum is something of a misnomer, it's really just a tiny two room building with some shrines that (I assume) are actively used by Voodoo practitioners. At least they looked fairly actively used, we let the kids add a wish to one. It wasn't quite as nice as visiting the grave would have been, but it gave them a sense of the flavor of Voodoo if you will. Or at least I like to think it did. + + + +
+ + + + +
+ +Back at camp we met up with Taylor and Beth for dinner. Living in campgrounds is a little odd because while you meet tons of really nice people, who are almost always in a good mood (they're on vacation after all), they never really want to hang out because, well, they're on vacation. But fellow fulltimers... we meet up for dinner. So many thanks to Taylor and Beth for having us over for some delicious food and teaching us about a million tricks we didn't know about living full time in an RV. Hopefully our paths will cross again soon. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-05-18_palmetto-island-state-park.txt b/jrnl/2017-05-18_palmetto-island-state-park.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e446753 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-05-18_palmetto-island-state-park.txt @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +From New Orleans we headed west through the bayou country, crossing from the Mississippi basin to the Atchafalaya river delta area where the Atchafalaya River meets the Gulf of Mexico. It's a land of wide open fields, rice paddies, blue crab traps, great flocks of snowy egrets wading patiently through marshes. There's hardly anyone living out here, the roads are thin strips of land barely above water level. + + + +Every now and then there are pockets of swamp, bald cypress trees in a lake of duckweed so thick it looks like you could walk across it. + + + +Palmetto Island State Park exists just inside one of these pockets of unfarmed land, though it is not full of bald cypress, but, as the name suggests, Saw Palmettos. It was the sort of place you can tell is going to be pretty nice just by the drive in, the road kep getting narrower and narrower, and rougher and rougher, sure signs of good things to come. + + + +We came here just looking for a nice place to get some work done, with little entertainment for the kids, but it turned out to be one of the nicest campgrounds we've stayed in. It had the newest, cleanest facilities we've seen, there was even a leave-one-take-one library full of kids books that we used to swap out a books. + + + +I got some writing done, the kids played around the campsite in the mornings and then after lunch, when the heat and humidity was becoming a bit much we all headed over to the splashpad to cool off. + + + + + + + + + +And just to liven things up a little, there were plenty of wild pigs running around. And bears. Supposedly, we did not see any. + + + + + +Traveling this way is unquestionably slow (that 35 mile stretch above was probably at least 15 miles, not exactly covering ground in a hurry), but the advantage is that you get to stumble unto things you'd overwise never even know about. Like the wonderful railroad museum in Dequincy Louisiana. A couple of train cars outside under an covering caught my eye from a distance, but it was late in the day and I wasn't sure if the kids would be up for it. A couple of red lights later I saw a sign that said "railroad museum" so I thought what the hell and turned off on a small street and parked the bus. + +I popped in the Iron Horse pub where what turned out to be a few off duty railroad workers were enjoying a drink, or ten, and asked if the bus was okay where it was. Now, the thing I know about the bus is that it's really hard to tow so it's not like I'm worried about it disappearing, but I dislike offending the local citizenry so I always like to ask. + + + +Of course one does not simply point to the bus, ask a question and walk away. So I spent ten minutes or so hanging out, fielding engine questions (Dodge 318, nope, not the 440, that comes along in '72) and learning a tiny bit about railroad work. Most of the people there were not just railroad workers, but second and even third generation railroad workers. I also noticed a sign that said all canned beer was just $1 when a train went by. This was the second time that having children forced me to a different itinerary than I would have naturally picked. Left to my own devices I'd have never made it to the museum, but I bet I'd know a lot more about railroad workers. + + + +Eventually I extracted myself and headed across the street to the museum. Corrinne and the kids were already inside what turned out to be the old station house. There were switches and time tables -- most people don't realize this but timezones, and accurate time keeping only exists because railroads needed it[^1] -- along with old typewriters, a telegraph, even a Burroughs adding machine. + + + + + + +The kids, particularly Elliott, were drawn to the back room with the model railroad set up. Humans have come up with a lot of different ways of moving themselves around, but trains seem to catch kids imagination in some way that most other do not. + + + +Eventually we started to head outside when the woman behind the counter intercepted us and gave us keys to the padlocks. "I have to go pick up my daughter from school," she said, "just make sure you lock up when you're done and put the keys in the mailbox." We had free run of the place, which was cool, but I was more impressed with the trusting of stranger, how often does that happen in America anymore? + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +We went in the railcar, poked around the engine a bit and looked in the cabooses as well. The kids seemed most enthralled by the mini train that gets used during the local "railroad days" festival. Sometimes you need something that's more your size. + + + +After looking around we locked up, dropped the key in the mailbox and headed on down the road. + +[^1]: Most of what I know about what we call "time" -- and just how downright strange and culturally-bound it turns out to be -- comes from reading the excellent, A Geography Of Time, by Robert Levine. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-05-23_keeps-on-arainin.txt b/jrnl/2017-05-23_keeps-on-arainin.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2ac80b4 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-05-23_keeps-on-arainin.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +We drove into Texas, still sticking to the back roads for the most part. I have some thoughts on driving in Texas, but I am not going to air them until I leave. + +A while back someone asked what we do when it rains. At the time I didn't know because, despite having some big storms come through in various places, it still hadn't really rained during the day. In Huntsville it rained most of the day so now I know. When it rains, we put on raincoats and play in the rain. + +
+ + + + + + + + +
+ + + +When that gets old we drive into the nearest town, have lunch, and check out the sights. + + + + + + +Then we do something I've been pondering ever since Taylor and Beth served us cornbread waffles -- would chocolate cake waffles work? Yes, yes it would[^1] + + + + + +Eventually the rain stops and then it's back to life as usual exploring the outdoors. + + + + + + + + + + + +[^1]: Our oven doesn't work, so actual chocolate cake or cupcakes or whatever aren't possible. I believe something is wrong with the thermostat, though I haven't really spent much time investigating it yet. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-05-30_austin-part-one.txt b/jrnl/2017-05-30_austin-part-one.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0792927 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-05-30_austin-part-one.txt @@ -0,0 +1,47 @@ +I grew up spending a lot of time outdoors. Camping, hiking, and later, backpacking, rock climbing, and mountaineering. The latter two activities ended up consuming more and more of my time as I got older. I chose the first college I went to chiefly because it got me closer to some of the best rock climbing and mountaineering around in Joshua Tree National Park, the San Jacinto mountains and, a bit further but still accessible, the high sierra. + +All I wanted to do was be in the mountains and, ideally, climb them. Since that wasn't financially viable for me I did what I considered the next best thing, I worked at the North Face and mostly sat around reading books on Reinhold Messner, Conrad Anker, Edmund Hillary, Alex Lowe, Galen Rowell and others. I even got to hang out with Ron Kauk when he gave a talk at our store. And of course I went climbing whenever I could. There was no "van life" crap back then, just dirt bag climbers sleeping in their cars out in Joshua Tree, the Buttermilks, Horseshoe Slabs, and Deadman's. + +Which is all just a little background on why, rather than writing about what we did for two weeks in the Austin Texas area, I'm writing about how absolutely mind blowing it is that Alex Honnold free soloed El Capitan. + +Just in case you're not familiar with what that means, it means that he climbed a 3000 foot rock face, alone with no ropes, no protection, no margin for error. He climbed it perfectly. You know that he did because if he hadn't he'd be a bloody smear somewhere up the face of El Capitan. + +While the sheer physicality of climbing for three hours and fifty-six minutes with no break is impressive, to me it's nothing next to the mental strength and absolute confidence it takes to even consider doing something like that, let alone doing it. If that doesn't blow your fucking mind then I have to say, I think you're probably not wired up quite right. + +Anyway, we drove across more of Texas. + + + + + + +The plan was to spend a while hanging around the Austin area, but we're not very good planners. We forgot about Memorial day and couldn't get a place to camp in Austin. We ended up just east of Austin, near Bastrop which had a space and was close enough to drive into town. We tried to take the kids to a children's museum, but it was so crowded it was no fun for anyone. + + + + +We bailed out of that and headed out to Pioneer Farm, an all-volunteer effort to preserve a little slice of Texas (and more broadly, American) history with historic buildings, re-enactments and a working farm and blacksmith shop. Much more to the kids' liking. + + + + + + + +The rest of the time we hung around camp and sweated. + + + + + +It finally got hot while we were in Bastrop. Really hot. One day the weather said it was 97 degrees and the "feels like" was at 116. What better day to go to a dinosaur park and walk around in the hot sun for a few hours? Made me miss Matt and Debi who would definitely have been up for some heat. Surprisingly though it wasn't empty, there were more than a few Texans just as crazy as us, which was impressive. + + + + + + + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-05-31_sprawl-austin-part-two.txt b/jrnl/2017-05-31_sprawl-austin-part-two.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4217fba --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-05-31_sprawl-austin-part-two.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +We eventually managed to book a campsite at McKinney Falls State Park, which is just a few miles from downtown Austin. It's a short drive into town, but it is a drive, and it is a drive through the massive sprawling suburbs that encircle Austin. + +Corrinne grew up here, before all the sprawl, or perhaps in the first round of sprawl. This round of sprawl has happened shockingly fast. The difference just in the six years since we were last here is astounding. One of the blacksmith's we spoke with at Pioneer Farm had a son in a high school where the freshman class is three times the size of the graduating class. + +Driving in we got an interesting tour of what's drawing people to town -- mostly high tech companys, particularly hardware makers -- and then the suburban sprawl where the employees live. It's easy to mock that sprawl, it's pretty ugly, but what other answer is there? Athens has had some pretty intense growth as well, and the city tried to combat sprawl by encouraging development downtown, but all that did was bring in a bunch of huge generic high rises that turned downtown into, well, it could be anywhere -- there's nothing left of the downtown Athens I knew and loved. So Austin has sprawl, but still have it's downtown. I think that's the way to do actually because downtown Austin feels and looks about the same as it did when I first drove through a decade ago. + +The traffic is crazy though. Our running joke was that nothing was less than a 25 minute drive away. Grocery is four miles? Twenty five minutes. Didn't matter what time of day it was, traffic was constant. In fact I passed on buying our house batteries because the shop was 15 miles away, but that 15 mile drive was never less than a 1 hour drive (according to Google Maps anyway). + +I do still like Austin though. It's a little hip for its own good, but it has some fabulous food, great camping close to town and tons of stuff to do. It's hard to beat in that regard. + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-06-07_dallas.txt b/jrnl/2017-06-07_dallas.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4ebe7fe --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-06-07_dallas.txt @@ -0,0 +1,58 @@ +From Austin we drifted north, toward Dallas, hitting a milestone along the way: + + + + +We pulled into Fort Parker State Park on a Thursday afternoon and spent the next day watching the campground fill up. This is more or less the pattern, even in summer, the weekends are jammed full, during the week we have the campgrounds to ourselves. + + + + + + +We passed a couple of days in Fort Parker State Park and then headed north to Plano, TX to visit Corrinne's sister and her family. Thanks to the bus we ended up spending an entire week in Plano. Let this be a lesson to those of you who have invited us to your homes, sometimes we way overstay to that point when the smell of rotten fish is upon us. We tried to get it off in the pool. + + + + + + + +Possibly worse we shipped a ton of parts, random purchases, laptops I'm reviewing and other stuff that piled up around the house. Seriously, think twice before you invite us over. It all starts out innocently enough. We show up for a couple days, make some vague plans and then. Then. + + + + + + +The engine was, yet again, running hot on the way into Plano. I figured since we had a couple days and there wasn't really room to park on the street anyway, I would take it to a repair shop and get the radiator fixed and have a place to park -- two birds one stone sort of thing. + +I found a tiny pinhole size leak in the back side of the radiator, but then the shop that I went to at first turned out to not be able to solder. Kids these days. But they didn't seem opposed to me leaving the bus there for a few days, so we pulled the radiator off and I drove it over to another shop that did solder (I had the first shop replace two belts, which was about the same price as paying for a week's worth of parking). + +The old guy at the radiator shop -- by the way, never trust a mechanic under 50 -- took one look at the radiator and said I can't patch that. When we first got it off and I saw the back my reaction was very similar. I believe what I said was, oh shit. The pinhole leak was small enough that you could only find it when it was pressurized, but it had obviously been going for some time. And the fins were bent in at the corners which means someone had probably been in there already. + +Long story short, for those that don't find engine adventures entertaining[^1], I gave him the go ahead to re-core it. Expensive, but we want to be able to get into the mountains and not worry about overheating. I even considered making it four core, but held off on that since clearance could have been an issue. + +Getting the new cores and having it all rebuilt added a weekend and some change to our stay. But it gave me time to install the water tank and get the solar panels on the roof. So I spent my morning in the alley behind a mechanic's wrestling a 65 gallon water tank under a bed and crimping pex. To do all that I had to empty out everything under the bed and pile it out in the alley with me. And then run back and forth to home depot ten times in two days. Oh who am I kidding, it was probably almost twice that many times. I actually didn't think much of the whole project, but then one day I just left everything outside the bus while I was at home depot and I came back around the corner and realized it looked like a small tornado had hit a dumpster and blown everything all over the alley. + +In the afternoons I would eventually start sweating so much my eyebrows would fail me and I couldn't see anymore. I'd give up and pack it up. Fortunately there was a pool back at the house and I could spend some time recovering in proper fashion -- floating it all away. The kids of course spent nearly all their time in the pool playing with their cousins. + +Eventually I got the water tank in and the radiator back in to. Started it up, drove home, everything seemed fine. Well. Maybe it was a tad hotter than I'd like, but it was 95 that evening so I dismissed it. + +We said our goodbyes and headed west, into the sunset. + + + + + +We weren't even out of the subdivision when the temperature gauge started to climb again. There was some creative swearing in the bus for a few miles. It's frustrating to fix something and realize you didn't have the right problem, but it's even more frustrating when you spent almost $1000 doing it. I stopped at an auto parts store and let the bus cool, while I contemplating trying to install a new thermostat in the parking lot. Me pulling out radiators at the side of the road, it could be a thing. The part store intervened and saved me from myself by not having the part I needed anyway. + +Eventually the engine cooled and I thought screw this, let's push on. Perhaps not the best choice, but I'm stubborn and I needed to get on the road. I also decided to test something hairbrained. Back when we first entered Texas I put some insulation around the engine doghouse, mostly just to cut down on the heat coming off the engine into the cabin, but also to cut down on the noise. It happened to coincide with the engine starting to run hot, so I thought well, let's crack the doghouse and see what happens, maybe that extra airflow was helping. + +Crazy, I know. But. *But*. Well, no that didn't help at all, but it did reveal something interesting -- a loud clattering sound that was previously muffled enough that I assumed it was just some pans in the oven rattling. But with the engine hood open it was very clearly louder and coming from the engine. The mechanically inclined could probably put those two clues together -- rattling metal sounds and overheating engine -- and figure out the problem. It took me about 20 miles but it slowly started to dawn on me, water pumps have ball bearings in them. + +We pushed it as far as Denton, which wasn't far and, very frustrated, called around looking for someone to take a look. About five different shops didn't want anything to do with it, one shop did, but couldn't get to it for another week. Finally on the advice of one of the other shops I called a place way outside of town that supposedly "did old engines". No one answered so I said screw it, let's drive out there and see. So I did and somehow convinced the shop owner, who was mainly a rat rod and custom car builder, to take a look at the bus. Well, I didn't really convince him, the bus did, the bus is cool like that. + +So he agreed to replace the water pump the next day. We grabbed a hotel room to wait it out. + +[^1]: If engine adventures bore this is not the blog for you. Until we get everything dialed in I expect to have more engine adventures. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-06-12_escaping-texas.txt b/jrnl/2017-06-12_escaping-texas.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8b3e895 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-06-12_escaping-texas.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +By the time we left Denton we'd put in a new radiator core, new water pump, new thermostat and new power steering hose that had cracked when I made too tight of turn in the hotel parking lot. In Texas we had in fact pretty much redone the entire cooling system of the bus. Ideally that would have solved the overheating issues, but it did not. I left ahead of Corrinne and kids, hitting the road by 6AM to avoid the forecasted 105 degree midday temps. + +The night before I purchased one of those nice digital thermometer guns in hopes that perhaps the problem was the temperature or sending unit. Armed with that I stopped frequently to crawl under the engine and take temp readings all over the place. What quickly became obvious was that most of the temp readings were well within ideal operating temps for the engine. The exception was right around the sending unit, which sits roughly on the first piston on the passenger's side of the engine. That area was notably hotter than everything else, though still not overheating hot. + +Despite the heat I made it Amarillo without overtaxing the engine. And just for fun, since I have the digital thermometer anyway, I started taking readings in cab of the bus... about 122 degrees on the dashboard (direct sun), about 108 on most other surfaces and 115 by my right foot where a bit of engine air still leaks out. Hot. Damn hot. + +That night I sat out sweating in the Amarillo night talking with my uncle Ron who serves as official bus mechanical repair consultant. He walked me through a few scenarios/possibilities, but in the end the most likely fix will probably involve flushing the engine block. In the mean time, the temp readings stayed pretty constant and within operating params for the engine so we decided to push on out of Texas, out of the heat wave and into the mountains where the bus, and we, would be much cooler and happier. + +That meant bypassing one of my favorite places in this region, [Comanche National Grassland](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2010/07/comanche-national-grasslands), but with a forecast temp in the mid 90s and not a hookup for three hundred miles, we were hesitant to push it. We still hadn't actually camped without hookups in the bus so we didn't know what sort of temperature would be comfortable and what would be miserable. 93 degrees sounded miserable so we decided to skip it (turns out it's not bad at all if you have a breeze, but oh well). + + + +I left Amarillo at 5AM, well ahead of Corrinne and kids, trying to push through to the mountains before the heat of the day kicked in. I was halfway out of Texas when the sun finally did start to glow on the eastern horizon of the vast nothingness that is the western Texas desert. This is part of Texas I know reasonably well and happen to really like, the wide open, barren land, parched badlands of windswept sand and nearly endless grass and creosote. But only crazy people come out here in June. Even if you're not crazy when you get here, you will be soon, the heat bakes you until you come unglued. The day we passed through the forecasted temp was 112. + + + +I was well into New Mexico long before the sun got high enough for those temps. + +When I stopped to take this photo: + + + +This train honked and I looked over to see the engineer waving and giving me the thumbs up: + + + +I've driven a lot of miles in this country, seen a lot of trains, but I've never seen or heard of train honking and waving at a car. The bus is like that though, it extracts the extraordinary from the ordinary. + + + + + +The bus struggled to get over Ratan pass, which is just shy of 8000 feet. It made it, the engine wasn't overheating even, but I didn't have much power. I was doing about 35 by the time the road finally started down again. From there I coasted on down to Trinidad Lake State Park, which has two campgrounds, one with full hookups and one totally dry with nothing save a communal water spigot and some pit toilets. We grabbed a site in the latter area, filled our new water tank and settled in to enjoy an afternoon at the lake. + +Unfortunately I made the mistake of asking the ranger if there were any good sandy, beach-like areas further down the road. I was prompted informed that there was no swimming in the lake. Say what? The ranger was unable to provide any reason for the no swimming, but I'd already blown it -- there's no plausible deniability after you ask. Never ask permission, just do and play dumb when you need to. Sometimes my mouth gets ahead of my brain. + + + +We ended up just sitting around the camp, which was nice enough, if a little warm. The heatwave was still too much on us, so we hatched a plan to head higher into the mountains the next day. + + + +That night was a first in the wide open big sky of the west. The sunset reflected on the clouds for hours. I let the fire burn down and watched the sky instead. Later on thunderheads rolled in over the peaks of the Sangre de Christo range. Arcing flashes of lightening bounced around the clouds like streaking silver pinballs. Just as the last light faded away coyotes began to bark and sing. Finally, the west. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-06-18_the-high-country.txt b/jrnl/2017-06-18_the-high-country.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d8ee8fb --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-06-18_the-high-country.txt @@ -0,0 +1,67 @@ +After one night at Trinidad State Park we had to leave. The weekend thing. Saturday night even the "walk up" dry camping sites were booked, because in Colorado state parks "walk up" means whatever hasn't been reserved online. It's a crazy, chaotic system that makes no sense at all. All I know is that we had leave on Saturday because there were no campsites. + +We decided, since it was still a little warm at bedtime for the kids, that we'd head higher into the mountains. There were a couple of National Forest campgrounds up higher in the mountains above Trinidad so we booked one and set out. + + + +Inside my head there are tons of voices, but one dominates the rest most of the time, it's the voice that always says, sure, let's try it, what's the worst that could happen? + +Most of the time the answer to that question is very tame. Once you get past your prejudices and irrational fears and give some serious thought to, well, what *is* the worst thing that could happen and how likely is it to occur, you find that it's really not that bad and it's pretty unlikely. The simple truth of life is that most of what you fear is very unlikely to occur. For example, could you fall to your death while hiking a mountain trail? Well, technically yes, but millions of people go hiking in mountains around the world everyday and don't fall to their death, so there's a very good chance you won't either. And so on. + +That's just to preface this adventure slightly, or rather to explain my thinking when I tell you that the campground we were headed to was at 10,500 feet. + +Did I really think the bus would make it to 10,500 ft? Honestly? No. But I was damn sure going to try. And so we did. + +As per our usual these days I left early, around seven, though once I got a few thousand feet I knew air temperature wasn't going to be the problem. The problem was even simpler -- air, or the lack thereof. Internal combustion engines need three basic things -- fuel, fire and compression. The higher you go the less compression. The less compression, the less power. The less power the less a roughly 8000lb 1969 Dodge Travco goes forward. + +The drive started well, the bus breezed on up to about 8500 ft like it was nothing, and it was, the grade was mild, the air cool and traffic almost non-existent. I stopped at a tiny store and let the engine rest a while. There were rocking chairs on a nice wooden porch lined with hummingbird feeders. I listen to two locals talk about how they spent the winter, and got the impression that, despite living less than 10 miles apart they hadn't seen each other in months thanks to the snow. As I keep telling Corrinne, it's beautiful here, but if you want to know the truth about Colorado mountain towns, check how far up the stovepipes extend. Now you know how much snow sits on your roof all winter. + +I enjoyed the country store porch so much I went back to the bus and pulled out a 100-300 zoom lens I bought off eBay back when we were in Dallas. Producing an decent image of a hummingbird while hand-holding a massive, heavy, manual focus 100-300 zoom from the early 1980s turns out to be as difficult as it sounds. + + + +But photography is a lot like fishing in that the fish aren't really that important sometimes, sometimes it's all in the trying. I discovered an interesting thing that happens with digital viewfinders -- the screen refresh rate is far slower than a hummingbird's wings beating, which means that through the viewfinder you get a live-action, slow motion movie of a hummingbird's wings beating. It's gorgeous, but it's only in the viewfinder. + +I was about to go dig out my tripod and get serious about taking a hummingbird picture when Corrinne and kids caught up and we all set out up the mountain again. The next 1500 vertical feet happened much faster than the first 1500. I didn't track the mileage, but I doubt it was more than ten. It was hard climbing. The bus just didn't have the power (I was also carrying about 35 gallons of water since it was unclear from our research whether there would be any water at the campground, that added about 300lbs, which I could definitely feel dragging in the rear). + + + +The final grade up to the pass was a long, winding, steady climb with no breaks. It was too much. I dropped to about ten miles an hour and then five and then I felt the transmission slip. Because I am an extremely lucky person, the only pull out on the entire grade was about 50 feet back from where I was and so I gave up. + +I cut the engine and rolled back down, backing into the turnout (a private dirt road really) and shut the bus down. I probably could have sat there, let the engine rest and cool for a while and then given it another try. But I knew from the maps that the pass wasn't the end of the climbing. After the pass the road went down about 1000 feet and then back up 1500 more to the campground. It just wasn't going to happen. + +Like Kenny Rogers' said, you got know when to fold 'em. + +I let the engine rest a bit, called Corrinne back and then we started back down. We made it down to a lower, larger pullout and parked the bus so we could scout around and maybe find somewhere to boondock for a few nights. We headed up into some National Forest land on a dirt road that eventually led to a campground, but had plenty of boondocking spots on the way. We know this because they were all full of happy looking van dwellers and RVers. Damn you Colorado in the summer time. + +Eventually we made it to all the way up to the lower campground, which was still at 9500 ft. It was beautiful, tucked in an aspen grove on the edge of an alpine meadow with crystalline, wildflower-lined streams cascading down the mountainside seemingly everywhere. There aren't many places where you can drive to scenery like that, usually you have to strap on boots and hump it over the mountains on foot to see alpine meadows. + +We sat there for a while and debated whether or not the bus could get up the road. I still don't know, it might have. But it turns out there are some consequences to driving, rather than walking, to an elevation like that. + +I've never really suffered much from altitude sickness, I get it a little bit, dizziness usually, but I've seen more acute symptoms in plenty of hiking companions -- dizziness, nausea, disorientation, confusion. It's rather difficult to describe if you haven't experienced it. Usually you can just sleep it off and be fine the next morning, but with everyone a little off, and the bus not running as well as I'd like, it was an easy call. We headed back down to Trinidad. If we want to camp in an alpine meadow we'll do it the right way -- by hiking to it. + +Getting down the mountain was nerve wracking for me, not because of the drive, but because I was unsure what kind of gas mileage I had been getting on the way up and I had calculated the gas such that we'd just make it to the gas station on the other side (I was trying to keep weight down). Going back the way we came meant adding 20 miles to the drive, which eliminated the 2-3 gallon cushion I'd calculated. I was sweating by the time we neared Trinidad, not entirely from the heat, but I did make it to a gas station. I paid mountain gas prices and was happy to do so. + +By then it was near dinner time and everyone was tired, frustrated, hangry and cranky. We grabbed one of the last hotel rooms in Trinidad, took some showers and headed out for burgers. Really good burgers as it turned out, bison burgers and fries at the What A Grind Cafe, which also served up a proper pour of Guinness, something that goes a long way to getting your tail out from between your legs at the end of a long frustrating day. + + + +The next morning we decided to go ahead and stay in the Trinidad area for a while. It was sunday so there were campsites available again. And it was warm, about the mid 90s during the day, but it wasn't too bad because there was a reliable breeze to keep things bearable. At night the temperature dropped quickly in the evenings so putting the kids to bed was fine and we could always use the van to head up into the mountains if we really needed to get away from the heat. + +We managed to get a campsite with a view at the far end of the campground. We went hiking, I made a few repairs to the bus, I got some work done and spent plenty of time relaxing. + + + + + + + +The water pump that came with the bus -- which sounded a bit like a jet engine when it was running -- gave out one day and so we drove out to an RV supply shop to get another one and discovered an abandoned mining town on the way. + + + + +Our friend Mike was headed from Paonia, CO to Texas and since Trinidad wasn't far out of the way he stopped by and camped with us for a night. He happened to have some Elk antlers, which entertained the kids for a good solid 6 hours or so. + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-06-21_happy-solstice.txt b/jrnl/2017-06-21_happy-solstice.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6979d7f --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-06-21_happy-solstice.txt @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +The fire exhales in soft gasps and whispers, occassionally snapping a shot of sparks into the air. It's the longest day of the year, well past 9pm and the last reddish glow of twilight is still clinging to the high mountains of the Spanish Peaks wilderness, a good thirty miles from our camp here at Trinidad Lake. + +We celebrated the Solstice by heading back up into the Sangre de Christo Mountains, to Bear Lake. We had to see it, even if we couldn't get the bus to it. It turned out to be a wonderful little glacial lake at the base of tk Peak, with a good view of the Culebra Range. + +A mostly spruce forest, with glades of aspen here and there surround the Bear Lake. + +The name comes from a large black bear that was causing a lot of havoc back in the early 1900s. An early forest ranger set a trap for it and the next day he went to retrieve the trap but it was gone. He tracked the bear and trap to the middle of the lake. The bear was so big that it had dragged the trap cross-country several miles before dying in the lake. A story that serves as a remider that the pre-Aldo Leopold forest service was not noted for it's ecological outlook. + +A tributary of the Cuchara River runs down the hill and into Bear Lake. The water is cold. Too cold for any of us to give it a try. The kids contented themselves with throwing rocks in the shallow water. + + + + + + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-06-28_arc-of-time.txt b/jrnl/2017-06-28_arc-of-time.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..53688c8 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-06-28_arc-of-time.txt @@ -0,0 +1,125 @@ +I have only one note from Chaco Canyon[^1]: the wind gusts, a light whistling sound through the thin curled leaves of creosote; in the interludes the stillness is filled with raven calls reverberating across the canyon, a conversation bouncing around sandstone, echoing in arroyos until, like everything else here, they fade into the darkness of the past. + + + + +There is only so much one can say for sure here. Try to cling to some idea and it will slip through your fingers as another contradictory one arises. That something happened here once upon a time at Chaco is really all I or anyone else can say about this place. + +There are ruins to prove that something happened. Great stone structures that have stood for over a thousand years in many cases. Once there were people, now there are stones. And ravens. + + + +
+ + + + +
+ + +Craig Childs, whose book House of Rain I highly recommend[^2], recounts the various theories on what happened here. In the end there are nearly as many theories as archaeologists. + +> The evidence gathered from a century of digging and mapping can support nearly any speculation thrown at Chaco Canyon: religious center, military center, government center, economic center, ceremonials center -- the list is extensive. The place is thought by some to have been a colony of churches, its numerous great houses exhibiting certain recurring features thought to be religious. The repetition of specific architectural designs could also be interpreted as a form imposed by a ruling elites, the abundance of goods as tithing. The outrageously copious artifacts found inside these great houses look like ritual paraphernalia: feathers and bones representing nearly every bird species found with a thousand mile radius; a large number of wooden staffs like shepherds crooks, their handles inlaid with fines stones; and many rooms filled precious, expertly crafted mementos, may of which were found positioned as if on alters. + +> Other people take the abundance to mean that Chaco was a commercial center, a pre-Colombian shopping mall built to redistributes good in the Southwests notoriously unstable environment. In that sense the buildings are seen as store houses with some rooms tacked nearly to the ceiling. + + + + + + +Probably all these theories are wrong. The first things to do at Chaco is accept that you cannot know. + +The question that most nagged me in Chaco seemed simpler, but perhaps was not -- why here? What was that lured so many people here, inspired them to some of the finest construction in North America in this otherwise rather unremarkable wash, one of about a dozen that come off the San Juan river in it's path down off the Colorado Plateau. + +That's the question I pondered on the trails, walking through the dusty flatlands, up the rough, rocky climbs to the mesa tops where the sun is hot and relentless. + + + + +Standing in thousand year old buildings tends to fill you with awe, it doesn't matter if it's Cambodia, Austria or New Mexico. As fragile, impermanent beings we're drawn to permanence, we are inspired by by what we lack -- sturdiness and longevity. Even today, when we could build with anything, we choose steel girders, concrete, and asphalt, imitations of stone. Because laying in and fitting stone like the builders of Chaco is labor intensive and time consuming, time we don't seem to have. But they did. + + + + + +The Chacoans had time. Not just for these buildings, but for even more labor intensive projects, like a network of roads running absolutely straight and true across the desert, possibly for thousands of miles. Raised stone road beds thirty to forty feet wide running for thousands of miles -- even with modern technology that would likely take decades. How the Chocans did it remains a mystery, but the faint outlines of them can still be seen from space. + +Similar head-scratching feats of design and building surround the builders of Angkor Wat, Machu Pichu, Teotihuacan and elsewhere. But there is something different about here, something extra about this place. You hear it in the murmur of the wind through creosote, you see it in the stone work of the greathouses. Something happened here, something happened in a way it never has again. Whatever these people saw, whatever they had access to, it was more than we do today. Their world was unutterably alien to ours and you feel it every second you are here. + +You should come here. You should sit here and consider it. Don't worry about the heat, it is everywhere. You will make peace with it. Or you will die in it, either way there is no need to worry about it. It will be here. You must come when it is here. You will not know the core of this place if you do not come in the heat. + +Some archaeologists think these citadels may have been painted white. Gleaming white beacons rising out of the shimmering mirage of heat. It must have been something to arrive here having walked from Mexico, California, The Gulf Coast and all the other places for which there is evidence that people came. + + + +We hiked in the mornings, climbing up the canyon walls, while there was still some shade to be had, and up on to the mesa where there was none. Or so it seems at first glance. But then you look closer, you start to think differently, you realize you could crawl up under that juniper tree and get a break from the sun, you see ledges in the rocks where you could wedge yourself flat against what might still be cool sandstone. There are escapes here, but you will have to work for them. + +Chaco remains largely off the grid. The road in from the north is rough enough that it takes nearly an hour to drive 13 miles. And the first two miles are paved, so really it takes about 50 minutes to drive 11 miles. That's part of the remoteness, but there is more. There's something about this wash that once you are in it it consumes your past in some way, you are no longer just you, you are you in Chaco. + +This is one of those places that can influence things. It seems to have a will about it, whether it's the place or some echo of the people who were here I could not say, but if you come here you will feel it. + +You might see some things you're pretty sure aren't there. They are there. Everything is here. + +The first day we left early to stay out of the heat, we headed up the eastern wall of the main wash, no real destination in mind, simply following that ancient human need to get to high point and survey the land, wrap your head about where you are. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ + + +We stuck to the trail for a good while, then we deviated. Chaco is the most tightly controlled national parkish area I've ever been in. In my experience National Parks typically have a tightly controlled area, generally around whatever the feature of the park is -- Yosemite valley, Sequoia trees, the grand canyon, etc -- and then the backcountry is more or less unregulated, at least in terms of where you can go. Not enough people venture beyond the first mile of trail to bother regulating the backcountry too much. + +Not true here. + +It's still true that no ventures beyond that first mile, but here the backcountry is regulated just like the rest. There's not even overnight camping allowed in the backcountry. It's a little bit like being a kid again (not in a good way), you have to be home by sunset and you're not to detour from the trail. Ever. + +We might have gotten lost you could say. There was a tiny wash, up near the end of it I spied an overhang that promised at least shade, perhaps more. I could not say, we did not make it. The kids are kids after all. They tuckered out in the heat and the soft sand of the wash, which was just wide enough to look trail-like, plausible deniability should we have run into a ranger. I can do a mean dumb tourist when I need to. But no ranger came for us, just the heat and the exhaustion it brings. We ate a snack, rested on some rocks. Every now and then a breeze would puff our sweaty clothes like air conditioning. It was wonderful. Then we gathered up our things and walked back. + + + + + + +The campground is tucked back in a tributary wash, up against a short sandstone bluff, wedge between the road and some 900-odd-year-old buildings tucked back under an overhang. About 30 feet up the wall to the right of the buildings are some petroglyphs, some ancient, some recent. + +In another of Craig Child's books, Finder's Keepers, about the rather outrageous world of archaeology, artifacts and the people obsessed with them, Childs recounts a story he heard from a flamboyant and occasionally flagrantly law breaking Santa Fe antiquities dealer who invited over a bunch of archaeologists and local pueblo tribal leaders for a barbecue party. Half way through the party the host announced that food everyone was eating was grilled over a fire built with charcoal from a dig on private land -- 1000 year old charcoal used to grill up some burgers in a backyard in Santa Fe. The archaeologists all went pale and started to toss their food in outrage. The tribal leaders just smiled and shook their heads. + +What does that mean? I don't know. I wonder though, was that charcoal made 1000 years ago perhaps as part of a backyard barbecue? Would that charcoal maker by mortified or satisfied to know that 1000 years later it finally seared some meat? + +In America we experience the past mainly as a roped off thing, something carefully catalogued and carted off to museums where only a fraction of it ever visible to people like you and I. In Chaco the past is right here, all around you, you step into it, you are part of it. The big artifacts are gone, that's true. The rooms are bare, the pots, baskets and mysterious staffs, to say nothing of the bones, have been carted off to the Peabody and elsewhere. The walls of the ruins by the road are reinforced with modern concrete, the kivas roped off, but it's surprisingly easy to leave that behind and get out to the real ruins. + +The second day we climbed the south mesa. It was slightly more accessible, though still pretty much straight up the side of mesa. We went a couple of miles on the mesa until we spied an overhang with just enough shade for all of us to eat lunch out of the sun. Corrinne wandered off for a while, down the hillside, until she found some potsherds. + + + + +
+ + + + + +
+ + +They are everywhere here, if you have an eye for them. I do not, but she does. That is some of what makes Chaco special, it has not all be catalogued and carted off, most of it perhaps, but there is still plenty here all around you. We held the potsherds and then put them back where they had been so you can come and find them too. + +If Chaco Canyon has a disappointment it's the visitor center, or rather it's the official line the visitor center takes on the demise of the Chaco culture. There's a movie in which someone actually says "it's amazing that they could just walk away from all this, think of the strength it would take to just walk away." It's amazing because that's utter bullshit. No one has ever just walked away from any civilization. Like everything else civilizations rise, hit an apex and then decline. They follow the same pattern over and over again. The Greeks, the Romans, India, China, Mesoamerica, every civilization for which have even the faintest historical records has followed a nearly identical trajectory. If you don't believe me set aside a couple of months and tackle Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History. + +Chaco's decline was likely as bumpy, violent and unpleasant as that of the rest of humanity's experiments in civilization. No one just walks away, and to pretend otherwise says far more about our culture and its stubborn insistence that it will not, cannot decline, even in the face of increasingly difficult to ignore signs of its decline, than it does about Chacoan culture. Skip the visitor center. + +Stay outside instead. The truth of this place is not behind glass, not in books, it is out here in the wind, in the heat. Go to the stones that remain, step inside, find the cool of the shade, feel the breeze that comes through doorways even on the stillest afternoon, the temperature difference between outside and the rooms deepest within creates a breeze to this day, the way I assume its builders intended. + +Walk the mesas if you can, look for shade and you will probably find you are not the first to spy whatever shady spot you spy. You may find ruins, you may only find rodent droppings and the impressions of something larger that lay in the sand, a deer perhaps, a mountain lion possibly. Whatever you find, know that you are not the first to walk here or anywhere else. Like those who passed before you step softly, walk quietly, and remember to listen. + +Note: If Chaco sounds at all interesting to you, I highly recommend first reading House of Rain. + +[^1]: luxagraf is created by piecing together half-legible thought fragments scribbled in tattered notebook that lives in my pocket. +[^2]: Rather conspicuously absent from the Chaco bookstore, despite stocking Finder's Keepers. I suspect because Childs does not sugar coat the archaeological evidence that suggests that late Chacoan history was marked by violence and decline, which is very much not part of the narrative the visitor center presents. But then I could be wrong, maybe they were just sold out. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-07-06_junction-creek.txt b/jrnl/2017-07-06_junction-creek.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..468a184 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-07-06_junction-creek.txt @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +If you hang your head back over the edge of the chair you can stare straight up at the pine needles overhead, which form a great canopy of thin black fingers reaching into the soft glow of the new moon, which just rose up from behind the western ridge. + + + +That was what I was doing when Corrinne and I decided that Junction Creek would be a good place to pass the month of July. The campground was nice and spread out, with relatively secluded sites tucked in among a forest of towering Ponderosa pines with a few gambel oaks in the understory. across the dirt road from our site was an open field, something of the meadow that was home to endless flutter of flycatchers and vireos snatching up insects and retreating back to their trees. + +Back down the road, which starts paved and ends up dirt here in the National Forest, is Durango. While tourist-filled and mountain-kitschy to some degree, it nevertheless has some cool stuff to do -- a wonderful public library where the kids got to see the U.S. National Yoyo champion (yes, really), a really cool indoor water park masquerading as a rec center, complete with a three story water slide, a science museum, and a host of other fun stuff -- as one of the camp hosts we befriended put it, in Durango they really know how to do it. + + + + +We also needed to have a semi-plan for the near future because my parents were coming to visit us, somewhere in Colorado (thanks for being flexible), and to be honest we were all feeling like we'd been moving a bit faster than we like. It's always enticing to see what's around the next bend, as it were, but sometimes you want to stop somewhere and just sink into the soil a bit. Junction Creek seemed like a good place to do that. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +A good part of the reason it seemed that way was because we met some really great people camped next to us. You meet a lot of people traveling, especially if you have a vintage motorhome that draws people to your door on a daily basis (just last night we had dinner with a really great couple who first stopped to admire the bus). Every so often though you run across fellow travelers whom you immediately click with and we were fortunate enough to have that happened at Junction Creek. + +What I enjoy about these friendships is that long term travel[^1] acts as a kind of crucible in which the mundane is quickly melted away, you can skip past that and get straight to the really fun part where you're all sharing a room with a bathroom that has no door and everyone has dysentery. Wait, no. That's not it. Or it is, but not this time. That was last time. + +I can say though that if Kate and Josh and their family and ours ever find ourselves in say, El Salvador, and we all have some sort of intestinal parasite it will just make for a lot of laughter. Because that's how it goes when you're traveling. Travelers above all seem to just not care about the proprieties of life and get straight to what Thoreau, dramatic man that we was, called the marrow. Still, it's an apt metaphor though. It helps that our kids were fast friends almost instantly. Kids know what's what. + + + +There's something more grounded in the here and now about these friendships born of the road. We're all a little more like children perhaps, exploring the world and knowing a little bit more what's what. It's rare to have a conversation like you have when you meet strangers in your home town. There's very little of the "what do you do?" sort of thing because out here no one cares what you do. We tend to talk about that things around us right now. The forest, for instance. The dead pine full of fledgling pygmy chickadees. Our plans for the next few weeks, what we're doing for dinner, should we hike to the swimming hole, should we check out the rec center, could we live here, for a year, for two, forever, not at all. + +I have a few of these friendships nurtured over the years and I feel lucky to have them, I want more, but these things, you cannot seek them. Maybe they come, maybe they do not. It is not for us to say. But when you find them, stop what you're doing, even if you're in Vang Vieng, and enjoy them. + +So we did, for two weeks, which is the longest you can stay in any one campsite in America's national forests (or anywhere really). We went to the rec center, we rode the water slide, we drove up and down the mountain, we watched birds, we swam in the ice cold creek for a bath and we had a blast, doing nothing and everything. + +[^1]: To me long term travel is really more a mindset of "I don't know when I'm going 'home'" than any length of time. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-07-17_mancos-and-mesa-verde.txt b/jrnl/2017-07-17_mancos-and-mesa-verde.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5847690 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-07-17_mancos-and-mesa-verde.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +Stay anywhere to long and things start to settle in too much. The bus was made to move, its fluids pool, metal rusts, wood decays, the windows smear with dirt and rain, as Chinua Achebe put it, things fall apart. Everything. All the time. Stay too long and the world will settle down on you. The tires will lose air, the chipmunks will come for the avocados. I'm from California, messing with my avocados is messing with my emotions, I don't care if you're cute and striped. + +So we shook off the cobwebs, pulled out of Junction Creek for a few days, and headed up over the pass to the west, to Mancos and points beyond. + + + +We found a nice enough campground, nearly deserted. The only downside was a little road noise -- it was up on a hill above the highway and the sound of truck engine brakes was at times annoying. Aside from that though it was much better than Junction Creek. Fewer people and Mancos was much more my speed than Durango. + +Mancos consists of one stop light and two paved roads. Or partly paved roads. The rest is dirt and hardly even a stop sign to be found. Still, there's a decent grocery store, a pretty good sandwich shop and a coffee roaster with the best double espresso I've had since we left Athens. There's also a library with passable internet speeds that I could work at. + +Mancos is also only about 20 minutes from the entrance to Mesa Verde National Park. + +I knew that after Chaco Canyon Mesa Verde was going to be a let down. You just can't have crowds and retain the stillness and mystery that Chaco has. I feel strange criticizing a place for it's crowds because on the one hand if no one is going to our National Parks no one is going to fight for them to continue existing. Still, I did not enjoy Mesa Verde. I am glad that it draws crowds, glad that people are out there visiting natinal parks and I'm glad they aren't going to Chaco. + + + + +If you know me you know I'd sooner chew my leg off than go on a guided tour. And Mesa Verde is all guided tours, you don't go into the big ruins by yourself anymore. You get a nanny. That's not for us really so we skipped that part and went to the one smaller ruin you can still explore (somewhat) on your own. + + + + +It was a nice stroll. It was funny to hear the rangers questioning whether our kids could do it, it was less than a mile and only 300 feet elevation change. The trail was paved. It's sad that we've created a world where it's considered amazing for five year olds to walk a mile on asphalt. + +We left after lunch. + +Just hanging around camp was more to our liking. The kids built obstacle courses, made bees out of pine cones and looked up whenever the thunder rumbled up above, somewhere high in the San Juans because after a month here they've learned that the storms come out of the high country. + + + + + + + + +In the evenings we sat around the fire and listened to the nighthawks darting after food between the pines overhead. This is the Western slope of the Rockies, less water, fewer pines, more oaks, more stars to backlight the silhouettes of Ponderosa needles scratching at the wind. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-07-24_time-and-placement.txt b/jrnl/2017-07-24_time-and-placement.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..07bae0d --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-07-24_time-and-placement.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +Every evening around 5 the thunder starts in. You could set your watch by it. Except that there's no need for a watch up here. + + + +The way it cracks high and seems to cascade down the mountains reminds me of Greek or Norse stories, the sound feels thrown by some unseen thing. This evening those thunder gods, whomever they may be, have conspired to produce something a little extra. Thor is pounding a little harder, Zeus throwing a little more than usual. A flash and then seconds later a rolling peel of sound the echoes off to the east, down the mountain side. + +Around here they call this the start of the monsoon season[^1]. The rain comes soft and steady, the kind that leaves no puddles here in the forest, much to my children's disappointment. Here all the water is captured by something, held in a bed of rotting needles, leaves, and the roots of rice grass, false oats and mountain parsley. What little makes it lower ends up in the roots of gambel oak and snow willows, and finally somewhere deeper still, up to 12 meters down, the ponderosa pine roots and their attendant webs of fungi get what's left. + +Nothing remains on the surface of things. + +It is easy here to sink into the soil and disappear for a while, everything here is doing it, you are too. + + + +The valley wall opposite our camp has disappeared in a rainy mist of blue gray nothingness. The light is fading prematurely, leaving a shadowless forest where darkness fades in rather than falling as it does when the sun ducks behind the ridge. + +It is silence save the soft pelting of rain and the call and response of two hardy wood peewees, seemingly unfazed by the storm. And then some storm god throws another bolt and the silence is blasted apart. + +I am sitting here listening to the rain, feeling the pace of my chair sinking into the soil. It is a slow but steady rain, a slow but steady sinking. + +I am listening to the rain because that is what you do when it rains. + +In every place the rain sounds different. + +Here the rain has a soft and spread out sound. The rain that reaches down here does not do so directly, not much of it anyway. Most of it has hit at least one, probably hundreds, of pine needles on its way to the earth. These drops are small and soft because they have been broken up on their way down. By the time they hit the ground they are more alike than different, every drop having been similarly, but differently bounced through the pine canopy. The result is a steady even sound, occassionally broken up by the rougher splatter of rain coming through a gap in the canopy to land on oak leaves, or the split wood of the picnic table, or the roof of the bus. + +Somewhere out there is a forest. It's too dark now to see more than a few feet in front of me. There are two trees at the edge of what faint light the rising moon offers tonight, locked away as it is, somewhere behind a veil of cloud. There's just enough glow that I can still make out the roughness of the tree bark. The curve of their trunks hint at the vastness of space behind them. Despite the rain it is dry here next to the trunks of the pines, whatever water has made it through the canopy is already down below the surface of the needles I'm lying on, staring up, trying to see the branches coming together above me. + +One of the more remarkable things about lying on your back in the forest is that you can stare up at the trees running together up into the vastness of space and you can feel the planet spinning through the heavens, but at the same time you can smell the warm fecundity of the soil, all the billions of microbes you're lying on churning their way through the seemingly endless supply of organic material of the forest, one day you. You can feel for fleeting moments the vastness of existence and the minute intimacy of existence at the same time. You find yourself in a web of life and energy that is flowing all around and through you. + +It is impossible to tease apart all the links between everything micro and macro, do not even try. In one way you are you, the you you experience, in another you are the joining together of cells of that found it advantageous to become parts of a whole rather than go it alone -- which one is you? That's the wrong question. Know that all of this is you. All those solitary cells within you are now too specialized to survive without the rest of you, they gave up their individuality to all you to exist. As has already been pointed out, hundreds if not thousands of years before we had the language of microbes and devil of the details by the tail, the wiser among realized that the biggest thing is in the smallest thing. + +John Muir, who spent his fair share of time lying on his back in pine forests, captures this feeling better than I can when he wrote, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." + +I think this is one of the principle realizations travel unpacks for you -- that there is no other. You are a part of a whole, interconnected system and joined far more intimately to everything around you than you could ever hope to understand, though attempting to understand it is worth the effort, even if it's impossible. Travel doesn't make it any easier to understand it, but sometimes when you travel you can *feel* it all around you, moving and flowing through you like an invisible wind. + + + + + + +[^1]: I can only assume no one around here has ever been in a real monsoon, because while it does rain a little more, it's hardly what most of the world would call a monsoon. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-07-30_mancos-days.txt b/jrnl/2017-07-30_mancos-days.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..268a305 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-07-30_mancos-days.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +After my parents headed home we said goodbye to Durango -- for good this time -- and headed back over the pass to Mancos. + +Our plan was to spend the weekend there and then head on, but one day I drove down to the coffee shop and instead of the quiet little town I'd been expecting streets were shut down, and there were cars and people everywhere. It turned out to be something called Mancos Days. Naturally we couldn't miss that, so we ended up staying a week longer than we intended and we got to see the Mancos days Parade. + + + + + + +One day I trekked up past Mancos to Cortez to do some laundry and discovered a really good Thai restuarant. The next day we all went for Thai food and on the way back we noticed that the Montezuma County Fair started that weekend. This is how we end up spending weeks in the same place, things slowly unfold and there's always more to see and do. + +You can't miss the fair. I love the fair, especially fairs that aren't all rides and entertainment, which this one was definitely not. Most of it was devoted to the display and sale of livestock. + + + + + +The fair also had a corn shucking contest which I really think we should have entered. Next time. + + + + + +The girls were really excited about something that I admit did sound fun: the chicken chase. After about 10 seconds in a ring with a bunch of chickens though it was painfully obvious that our kids had no idea what to do with a chicken when the chicken chase turned to the chicken caught. + + + +Just to make sure they girls weren't the only ones with a moment of awkwardness at the fair, I got picked to join in the Ute tribe's Bear Dance. I thought I held it together okay, but when I was done Corrinne was shaking her head. "You look nothing like a bear," she said. + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-08-01_canyon-ancients.txt b/jrnl/2017-08-01_canyon-ancients.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..481879f --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-08-01_canyon-ancients.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +I spend more time than is strictly necessary staring at maps. I have since I was a kid. I used to drag my dad to a map store just to buy 7.5 topo sheets of the High Sierras and desert around southern California. + +I like maps, especially blank spots on maps and in the United States there are very few places with as many blank spots as the four corners region of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. One of the relative blank spots I kept staring at was something called Canyon of the Ancients. After our disappoint experience with Mesa Verde we were anxious to get back to some ruins that were less crowded and I felt like Canyon of the Ancients was a good place to start. Looking up reviews on the web got me tons of negative reviews from people complaining about the lack of signage, getting lost and never seeing anything but private farmland. Perfect. + +We started at a museum up in Dolores CO, which exists mostly because in the mid 1980s this area decided it need a reservoir. The problem with filling in a canyon around here is that you're filling in 2000 years of archaeological treasures. They found so much pottery here that (according to some locals we talked to) the museum put most of it in burlap sacks and smashed them to fit in drawers. Keep that in mind next time you think archaeologists are the best preservers of the past. Personally I'd rather have those pots on someone's mantel than smashed in a drawer. The rest of us will never see it either way, might as well let at least one person enjoy it. + +I didn't actually know this tidbit when we were at the museum so I was able to enjoy it. It had a good bit of interactive stuff. The kids got to grind some corn, which made me incredibly happy we don't have to do that these days. Though of course, at the rate we're going I would not at all be surprised if we're back to grinding corn before my grandchildren grow old. + + + +The main purpose of stopping at the museum though was to get some better maps of the area, which we did. We decided to go to the best preserved ruin first, which was nice enough, but metal reinforcements and the rest of the modern structural work necessary to stabilize an excavated ruin are, to my mind, distracting (but necessary, I get it). + + + +After that the kids were tired of driving around so we headed back to Mancos. + + + +But then Corrinne and I changed our minds and decided we'd go see one other pueblo, known as Sand Canyon. + +After winding through a bizarre patchwork of private and public lands we finally found a tiny turnout with an even tinier sign. We tucked some water in our packs and hit the short trail. Unlike most ruins we'd been to, Sand Canyon was reburied after it was excavated back in the 1960s (if you want something to last out here, you don't leave it exposed to the elements, you rebury it and leave it like you found it). Instead of walking through buildings and rooms as we did in Chaco, in Sand Canyon you step over vaguely defined walls and crumbs of stones, a bit like my favorite ruin in southeast asia -- Beng Melea, which is about two hours north of the rest of Angkor Wat and still mostly just a bunch of stone in the jungle. There's no jungle in Sand Canyon, but the juniper, prickly pear and rice grass -- all of which the kids pointed out, unprompted, as we hiked, so perhaps Mesa Verde was not a total loss -- fill the same roll. + +Sand Canyon sits on the edge of a juniper strewn mesa with a short trail that winds through it and eventually down that canyon. The pueblo itself was one of the largest in the area, bigger than anything in Mesa Verde. Just about 800 years ago roughly 725 people lived on the edge of this mesa in a singular walled structure. There were 420 rooms, 90 kivas and 14 towers. A spring used to run right through the middle of it, though it didn't have any water when we were there. There were roofed plazas, kivas connected to towers and some other oddities. Although it doesn't fit with the park service narrative and therefore wasn't on any of the signs, in 1290 41 women men and children were massacred here and if anyone survived they moved on. No one has lived here since. + + + +We wandered around, trying to piece together the structure of things based on the shape of rocks piled here in there in might have been patterns. It's tough to trust your brain when it comes to patterns though, it'll see patterns where there are none. Or perhaps patters that aren't the ones you're looking for. Still, we picked out a few kivas and what a sign said was the outer wall. We found potsherds. And then we put them back in the ground. + +Unlike Chaco this location made sense -- there was a commanding view of the canyon and a spring running right through the middle of what became the city. Anyone passing through the area would want to stay here. And a lot of people did pass through here. Over 6,000 sites have been recorded in the area Canyon of the Ancients covers and the best guess is that there are plenty more out there waiting to be found. + +Even if you don't head off into the desert in search of some new ruin -- it's worth bearing in mind that not officially recorded is very different than undiscovered -- there's plenty to find here. All the kids found their own potsherds, including the biggest piece we've found yet. + + + + +Eventually the heat and the stillness got to us and we headed back to the car for more water. One the way we detoured up to the high point of the mesa overlooking the canyon. We made a stab at a group picture, but mostly we just sat there awhile, listening to the silence of the desert and ruins. + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-08-10_dolores-river.txt b/jrnl/2017-08-10_dolores-river.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9d09c41 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-08-10_dolores-river.txt @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +After two weeks in the Mancos area we decided it was time to move on, to see what's over the next hill -- where hill means 9,000 ft pass. + +We set out early from the campground and stopped in Mancos to get some gas and grab a last couple of espressos from Fahrenheit coffee roasters. But, when I walked out of the gas station after paying, I noticed a puddle of liquid under the bus. Crap. There are only two liquids in the back of the bus, water and gas. I crawled under the bus and unfortunately, this was not water. + +In fact I could see the gas dripping out of a T-valve that would send gas up to the generator, if we had one. Leaking gas is always bad, but this was leaking gas that was dripping down about four inches from the tailpipe. I have no idea how hot the tail pipe is 20 feet from the engine, but I'd guess it's hot enough to ignite gasoline vapors. + +The gas station had a repair shop attached, though it seemed to mainly do tires. I wandered over and started talking to a couple of the kids that worked there and got their permission to pull the bus over, off to the side so I work under it. They even gave me a couple rags. I got under and decided to start with the rubber hose, which I figured was the most likely candidate to have cracked. Certainly the easiest fix, which is my own personal version of Occam's razor -- start with the easiest possible fix. + +I clamped the rubber hose coming out of the tank and cut it lose from the joint, trimmed a couple of inches and stuck it back on with two new hose clamps. The dripping stopped. I went up and started the engine and went back to have a look. Still dripping. Damn. I turned it off and crawled back under to take apart the joint and get some pipe dope in there. I put a good amount of pipe dope on all three pieces, but as I was tightening it I was causing gas to come dripping out. I spun around a connector piece that seemed weak and realized it was cracked, bingo. Bought a new piece from the shop, which had some brass fittings, for $3, doped it all out and tightened everything back up. Started the engine and no leaks. A little over an hour and only $3 -- if only all the bus problems were that easily solved. + +I took the long way out of Mancos, but we were back on the road by noon. + + + + +Needless to say hitting the road at the crack of noon, while pretty good considering, was not good when we had about four hours to go. We've adopted what some fulltimers call the 2, 2, 2 policy (never drive more than two hours, never get there later than 2 o'clock and never stay less than two days). There was no way we were going to make it by two and in this case it was more than arbitrary, we knew a big storm was supposed to roll in to where we were headed that evening. And let's just say that spending my morning under rather than in the bus took some of my enthusiasm for further struggles away. + +By two o'clock we were well on our way to Naturita, but it was hard to tell where Naturita was because a massive and very nasty looking storm had swallowed the horizon. We stopped at the side of the road to regroup and rethink our options. We talked over a couple different plans and ended up deciding to backtrack a few miles to a sign we'd both noticed that said national forest access. Signs like that are all over the place around here, sometimes the national forest ends up being a couple miles, sometimes it's twenty or thirty. It's always a gamble, but gambling beats a certain storm so we headed off down a dirt road that, as they tend to do, got progressively worse until it practically dove off a cliff down to the banks of the Dolores river. + + + +At the bottom of the canyon was the most decayed, ramshackle national campground I've ever encountered. Perfect. Even the signs were falling apart. + + + + + +We found a site way off by itself -- not that there was anyone around, in all our time down by the river we only had two other people in the campground -- about 30 feet from the water and headed down to the river for a swim. + +
+ + + + + + + +
+ +Hot days, cold water. Just about perfect. There was even a field of sunflowers next to our campsite. + + + +We liked it so much in fact that we stayed four days. We might have stayed longer, but one afternoon a couple of women foraging for herbs stopped by and we got to talking about the area and eventually we ended up talking archeology sites and potsherds. These were the women who told the story about the museum smashing pots to fit them in a drawer. But they told us about a place they said we'd have to ourselves that was full of pictographs and houses built into a rock, both new and old. Naturally we had to go so we packed up and left the next day. + +I'll write about that adventure next time, but I've been thinking ever since about how if it weren't for the bus's fuel line cracking we'd have never seen the Dolores river, and never made it to one of the best canyons we've explored in this area. Some people call this coincidence, but those people lack perception. Coincidence only exists when you're not paying attention. There are no coicidences, just massively complicated intricate patterns we can't begin to comprehend. At best you can feel them moving around you, moving through you, you can reach out and touch them, bounce from node to node for a while. It's a bit like lying in a river, everything flowing around, over and through you. + +One of the things about living on the road is that the highs tend to be higher and the lows correspondingly lower, which produces an odd kind of balance and has a lot to teach about the center, but you also learn that the highs and lows are not separate things, they're interrelated and connected in all kinds of interesting and malleable ways. There are not hard and fast lines between high and low moments like our brains would have us pretend there are. Each point in the pattern, each node in the network gets information from all the other. Everything needs everything else. Everything feeds back through to everything else. No broken fuel line, no Dolores river. It just wouldn't be as fun any other way. + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-08-24_ridgway-state-park.txt b/jrnl/2017-08-24_ridgway-state-park.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..674aa5e --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-08-24_ridgway-state-park.txt @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +After our [adventures in the canyon country][1] we headed north, through the hordes of Moab and back east toward Grand Junction, where we did a bit of resupplying. Around these parts Grand Junction qualifies as a big city and it had some things we needed so we stopped off and ran errands for a day. + + + +After that we headed up the valley toward Montrose with the vague idea that we'd spend a night at Ridgway State Park and then find some boondocking spot after that. + +As sometimes happens with us, one night turned into a week and then nearly two. It wasn't that Ridgway State Park was phenomenally nice or anything, it wasn't at all. Like most Colorado state parks it packs a ton of people in a small space, but it did have a lake with a nice swimming beach beach for the kids and quick access to the town of Ridgway where some people we knew from our old neighborhood had moved last year. The kids hit it off and the adults too so we ended up hanging around almost two weeks. + +And one thing Ridgway State Park did have was some amazing views of the Cimmarron Range and the back side of the San Juans (if we didn't have an ancient, somewhat underpowered Dodge Travco we could have just driven here from Durango in about five hours instead of three weeks, but where's the fun in that? + + + + +One day we attempted the drive up to Owl Creek Pass. We didn't make it all the way, but the kids did have one of their rare, please take our picture, moments. + + + + + +I spent the mornings working, sometimes on the kind of work that pays the bills, sometimes on the bus, which has been plagued by a string of small, but irritating problems that were no fun at all. Like a leaking black tank. Happy to say that that one seems solved. The others will rear their head in the next post. + +The afternoons were spent by the lake, swimming, digging in the sand, catching strange stomach viruses, all the good things you get from reservoirs. + + + +I took one afternoon off to scout the road to Dallas divide. The car did fine, the views of the San Juans were beautiful, but the bus... probably not. + + + +The high point of the area for us -- aside from visiting with friends -- was the town of Ridgway. It's small, about 1100 I believe, but has a surprisingly diverse collection of people and views packed into it. It's the sort of place we could pass a few years I suspect. + +Just north of it is Ouray, which, while admittedly very pretty and a bit higher in the mountains, was a little touristy for our tastes. We had a fun afternoon, ate some ice cream, people watched and bought some fuses for a bus project, but were never compelled to return. + + + + + + + + +[1]: /jrnl/2017/08/canyoneering diff --git a/jrnl/2017-09-06_aspens.txt b/jrnl/2017-09-06_aspens.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d8e429f --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-09-06_aspens.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +Our forest has eyes. + +All forests have eyes, really, but this one shows them off more than most. + + + + + +Aspens have always fascinated me. I'm not alone in that. The Greeks obsessed over them as well, probably because they used Aspen to make shields. The tree owes its name to them, *Aspis* translates roughly as "shield." Shields that watch you. Watch over you perhaps. There are three species of shields left in the North America. Around us are Quaking Aspen. The distinctive eyes are places where branches have dropped from the trunk. + +These days Aspen grow mainly in the north -- Montana, Idaho, Colorado and especially as one of the early succession species in the north arboreal forests of Canada. Some, like the stand we're camped in here, still manage to succeed as far south as Southern Utah. Aspens have suffered over the last century or so, as humans have greatly decreased the number and size of forest fires. Aspens thrive after a burn and are later crowded out by pines, spruce and fir, which all outstretch the Aspens and steal their light. Aspens have only one real requirement -- sunlight, lots of sunlight. + + + +Aspens are part of the forest succession cycle, not the beginning or the end, but somewhere in the middle. Interestingly though, Aspens don't really go away even after they've been crowded out by the taller species like spruce and fir. They just stop existing above the soil. + +A stand of Aspen is considerably different than most trees in a forest. Aspens are rarely individual trees. Instead they grow like rhizomes, like giant white asparagus. Aspens are not really trees, the trunks we see are not the soul of the plant. The truth of Aspens is under the ground. They are massive root systems, some as large as twenty acres, that send up white trunks, which then sprout leaves. But even the leaves aren't necessary. Beneath the striking white bark is a there's a thin photosynthetic green layer that allows the plant to continue synthesizing sugars even without leaves. Winter means little to an Aspen grove. + + + + +All of this means that some Aspen groves have been around a very long time. I have no idea how long this one has been here, clinging to a remaining belt of land in the Abajo Mountains above Monticello Utah, but I do know that a few hundred miles west of here there is a stand of Aspens known as "Pando" in the Fishlake National Forest, just north of Bryce National Park that's said to be 80,000 years old. This stand, being at the southern edge of the current range of Aspens, likely very old as well, Probably in the 10-20,000 thousand year old range. Possibly older. Either way that's older than Sequoias, older than Bristlecone Pines, possibly older even than Creosote Bushes, which grow in a similar manner. + +These eyes have been watching the world for longer than recorded human history, which is why I spent most of our days up in the Abajo mountains watching them back. I don't know what Aspens are saying exactly, but I know that they talk in the wind. I know their song is different than most trees, their leaves move more, shimmering and quivering in breezes so slight you wouldn't otherwise notice them. And I know that they stare in the night, in the day. I know that I have never felt an affinity of any plant like what I feel for the Aspen grove. + + + + +We passed the better part of a week up here, watching the aspens, playing in the forest and getting a little work done. There was no bus to mess with, which, I'll be honest, was a bit of a relief. The kids loved being a tent for a while and having some time to play in a forest wonderland. + + + + + + + +
+ + + + + + +
diff --git a/jrnl/2017-09-06_breakdown.txt b/jrnl/2017-09-06_breakdown.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e87fda2 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-09-06_breakdown.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +We planned to leave Ridgway and head back to Utah by going over the Dallas Divide, which, while somewhat high, was within what the bus had done previously. Alas it was one of those days that did not start well and then got worse from there. I was feeling a bit dizzy all morning, not bad really, just slightly off. Corrinne wanted to stay and leave the next day but I really wanted to go. I should have listened to her, but when I get it in my head to go I tend to plow forward like a tank, come hell or high water. + +Things started to really go south when I got the dump station. I was emptying the tanks when I noticed fluid leaking out the front of the bus. Quite a lot of fluid. I crawled under to investigate. Transmission fluid. Lots of transmission fluid. Leaking. Again. I had noticed a bit a transmission fluid leaking over the last few weeks, but it wasn't leaking enough to even hit the ground, just a bit would dribble out on the suspension from time to time. + +I finished up dumping and pulled over to the day use area to get a closer look. After a bit of digging around I found the problem -- a flared compression fitting had cracked. It's worth here noting that someone had already done a considerable amount of surgery and patching to the transmission cooler lines, which were not single tubes but several connected together, three different diameters and types of hose in fact, all cobbled together. It was a crap job, but it was working. Until now. + +It so happens that I installed our propane system on the road, so I have flaring tools. What I needed was 5/8 copper tubing, but of course that's pretty much impossible to find outside an auto supply store, which Ridgway lacks. So I rigged up a standard fuel hose with overtightened clamps that seemed like it would hold about five miles into town. And it did. Sort of. I managed to get to the one mechanic shop in town and the mechanic was nice enough to just give me. + +Corrinne took the kids to the playground in the center of Ridgway and I sat down on the curb outside the shop and got to work with the flaring tools. About half an hour later I had it sealed up again. By now it was well past noon and I was hungry and the dizziness, which I attributed to not eating, was much worse. I decided to limp back to Ridgway State Park and try again the next day. Corrinne being right. + +I made it back, found a site and parked. I wanted to see how my handiwork was holding up so I crawled under and goddamn it there was transmission fluid pouring out of the hose behind where I had fixed, which was some kind of bizarre flexible hose with a flare at one end and screw fitting at the other. I kicked the tailpipe in anger, while wearing flipflops, which as you can imagine was not a good idea. I instinctively tried to grab my foot where it was burned and sat up, hitting my head on the floor of the bus above me. This would probably have all been hilarious to watch. + +Finally I rolled out from under the bus, staggered inside for some water, staggered back outside and lay down on the concrete around the picnic table. I was pretty much over it. I lay there waiting for Corrinne and the kids to be done at the park scheming ways to sell the bus, use the money to by plane tickets and just disappear into the far east somewhere to hide from my failure and shame. Eventually I fell asleep and that's where I was when Corrinne and kids finally found me. + +That's when Corrinne took my temperature and I realized I was quite sick, with a fever of 103. I stumbled back in the bus, put up my bunk and was pretty much incoherent for the next 18 hours or so. + + + +
+ + + + +
+ + +When I finally felt up to it -- two days later -- I did a bit of research and discovered that the only place with the transmission cooler lines I needed was Summit Racing[^1], which I needed to have shipped somewhere, which is one of the challenges of living on the road[^2]. I've also been wanting to put on shocks for about, oh, five thousand miles now. + +A while back the speedometer and odometer broke and I tried putting in a new cable but that promptly got chewed up just like the first one. I pulled the speedometer and took it to a shop down in Montrose that was recommended by some friends. They weren't able to tell me much, other than recommended a speedometer shop in Denver, but I liked the two mechanics I talked to so when the fever broke and I decided I was tried of spending my days under the bus I called the shop to see about fixing the transmission cooler lines, new shocks, and some other odds and ends I'd been wanting to do, but hadn't had the time. + +Unlike a lot of places I've called on this trip, Diamond G repair in Montrose was unfazed by the size of the bus and could start in on it the next day. The only question was -- should I tow it or could I rig something up to get it twenty miles down the road? + +I'd spent some time patching the black tank a week prior and had discovered this interesting a pretty cool stuff that starts as a flexible tap type material but dries hard as a rock. It's gets sold to fix everything from leaky pipes to broken rake handles and in my experience it actually works pretty well. I went back to the hardware store in Ridgway. Again. And grabbed another roll to see what would happen on a flexible hose. I put it on and let it harden for a while. I fired it up and check underneath, no leaks. + +I drove down to the dump station, still no leaks. I hit the road. I stopped to check the engine temps -- no leaks doesn't mean tightly sealed vacuum -- but, while hot, nothing was over 200 degrees. I kept going and eventually made it to Diamond G without further incident. + +We grabbed what we needed for a week's worth of tent camping, somehow packed it all in the minivan and hit the road. We had mail waiting in Monticello, UT and wanted to get up in the high mountains, to some places the bus couldn't go. I left a laundry list of fixes for the mechanic and we hit the road, Beverly hillbilly style in a packed-to-the-gills van. + + + +[^1]: Could I have used some brake lines instead? Probably. A couple people on Facebook suggested that, but honestly I was tired of rigging things, I wanted the right parts and I wanted them installed properly. More than that, think less of my mechanical abilities if you will, but I wanted to spend time with my family, get some *paying* work done and not spend my days under the bus. +[^2]: Some companies are fine with what's called General Delivery, but far more online companies can't make heads or tails of it. I never wrote about it, but getting our Engle fridge was a two week long exercise in frustration. Amazon is hit or miss, really depends on what you're ordering. If it's Amazon fulfillment you're usually fine, if it's not, anybody's guess. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-09-08_canyonlands.txt b/jrnl/2017-09-08_canyonlands.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ac29a91 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-09-08_canyonlands.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +Our camp in the [Aspen trees](/jrnl/2017/09/aspen) was not far from one of my favorite national parks, Canyonlands. The portion near us is known as the Needles District is home to, among other things, Newspaper Rock, a huge collection of Petrogylphs. The somewhat better name is the direct translation of the Navajo name -- rock that tells a story. It's not a story that I understand exactly, but if you stare at it long enough you can get some it. + + + + +From there it was a couple miles further into the Needles district. It was hot, in the mid 90s I believe, but not unbearable so we decided to do a short hike out to see some springs, because nothing is quite so satisfying as walking through to hot dry sand and coming on a nice cool, shaded overhang with actual water running out of the rock. + + + + + + +There were quite a few pictographs back near the springs as well, especially hand prints which the kids were big fans of. + + + + + + + +Olivia is still a little disturbed that we only hike in the desert, but she came around at the memtion of ladders. + +
+ + + + + + + + +
+ +The other best part of hiking through the hot dry desert all day is driving half and hour and ending up back, high in the cool depths on an Aspen grove. + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-09-16_on-the-road-again.txt b/jrnl/2017-09-16_on-the-road-again.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1d22110 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-09-16_on-the-road-again.txt @@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ +From the Abajo Mountains we headed back across the high desert plateau, up into the mountains, over Dallas divide and down the canyon to Montrose where the bus was nearly ready. We got back a day before it was done and stopped by to drop a few things off and... the car died on us in the parking lot. And from the minute it happened I knew exactly what was wrong -- the transmission was dead. I knew this because the Honda's transmission had died two years earlier and we put a new one in. + +The techs were less convinced and I can't say I blame them -- what kind of transmission doesn't last two years? I'll tell you want kind the [piece of crap transmissions they sell at James' transmission in Athens GA][1]. You know what else you won't get with [the worst transmission you can buy, at James's transmission in Athens GA][1]? A warranty that works anywhere outside of Athens. He actually said to me on the phone after I told him I was in Colorado, "well, even if you got it here, warranty is only a two years." + +So yeah, me being cheap and going with [the worst transmission you can buy (at James's transmission in Athens GA)][1] eventually came back to haunt me. And yes, in addition to those inbound links, I left some reviews on Google. + + + +Since the techs weren't convinced it was actually the transmission we decided to hang around for the weekend so they could give it through going over the following Monday. We rented a car to run some errands and moved everything into the bus because I already knew and, come Monday, I was right. We left the van in Montrose to donate to a charity and hit the road with everyone and everything in the bus, which was running better than it had in a long time and, get ready for this head scratcher -- the new transmission cooler lines have largely solved our overheating problems. Yeah I don't really get it either. + +Once we hit the road we put in some serious miles, much more than we normally do. Towns flew by, Grand Junction, Fruita, Green River and finally, our only two night stop in a place called Castle Rock that's really just a little canyon off I-70, but was nice enough that we stayed to check out the nearby state park's petrogylphs. + + + + + + +Castle Rock was also where I got to meet and talk to the Lonesome Hillbilly, a motorcycle traveler who wrote a book on it, called, naturally, [The Book On Motorcycle Camping][2]. And yes, he goes by Lonesome Hillbilly. Before I knew who he was, when we were talking, he left and I told him my name was Scott and he said his was Lone. Which made sense after a little Googling. Unfortunately, while I wanted to chat more with Lone I never got a chance to, but we did take one piece of advice from him that has already, and will more so in the future, work out well for us. + +The next day we did a little hiking, saw some petrogylphs, learned how to roast pine nuts from some Paiute volunteers and the kids got to play in a little pithouse. Not bad for a random, let's stop here, destination. + + + + + +[1]: http://jamestransmission.com/ +[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Book-Motorcycle-Camping-Lonesome-Hillbilly/dp/1545062897 diff --git a/jrnl/2017-09-19_zion.txt b/jrnl/2017-09-19_zion.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..debe43b --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-09-19_zion.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +After moving pretty fast for a few days we were ready for a break. While it's not exactly secluded, quiet or anything of things we generally like, the logical place to stop in this area is Zion National Park. I have some history in Zion, my family spent many a spring break camping here, hiking up the canyon walls. It, along with Canyonlands and Sequoia, are among the places I remember best. + +The Zion of today is so different from the Zion I grew up with they may as well be entirely different places. + + + + + +When my family came here in the 1980s few other people did. We'd leave Los Angeles around noon on the Friday before spring break, drive all afternoon (in a 1969 truck and camper by the way) show up at Zion late in the evening and get a campsite no problem. No one went to Zion. + +Today, everyone goes to Zion. Well, actually Americans don't from what I could tell, but everyone else does, especially impossibly hip European couples in rental vans. These days not only can you not just show up on a Friday and get a campsite, you'll need to get in line at about 5:00 AM even in the off season to even think about getting a campsite. Which, after spending a night in the nearby hotel, I did. The longer I sat in line, the more irritated I got. About what I'm not sure -- too many people? That's sort of a strange thing to be irritated about. + + + +Perhaps it was the lines I thought. Lines are degrading to the human spirit, they ask that we do something totally counter to all of biology, which freely mingles, exchanges information and materials. Lines are a purely economic performance, an adherence to an outdated idea of how the world works, an idea that no longer matches the facts on the ground, so to speak. This is perhaps why the entire concept of waiting in line, or queueing as the British would have it, is a purely western phenomena. Travel anywhere in Asia and you find that things get done, tickets are sold, events entered into, all without anyone lining up. + +Still, that's probably not what was irritating me. In the end I decided that what was irritating to me was that the Zion of my childhood is gone and no one can get it back. It's just gone. Forever. So for that matter are the bluffs along the bay where I grew up, the hills along the coast and myriad other things that don't really bother me, for whatever reason Zion does. + + + +The last day we were there I took the bus up to the end of the canyon and speed hiked to the entrance to the narrows (3 miles round trip in 45 minutes, not bad for an old man). On the way back it finally hit me what irritates me about Zion -- my kids will never get to experience the place as I did. + + + + + +It's too late for my kids to see the Zion I saw. That was then. That is gone. That is past. They will never get to hear the silences up on the rim of the canyon, listen to the strafing whines of Rufus hummingbirds, the wind in the junipers, the quiet thunk of boot soles on sandstone.. Silence in Zion is a thing of the past. + +As Kurt Vonnegut would say, *and so it goes*. + + + +One afternoon Lilah and Elliott and I hiked part way up the Hidden Valley trail. I would guess that, in the mile and half or so that we hiked, we saw probably 80 people. A steady stream of people in fact, most of them seemingly startled to see a man in flipflops with a boy on his shoulders and girl holding his hand attempting the same trail none of them embarked on without half of REI adorning their persons. The looks made me laugh. As politely and discreetly as I could. I have never seen so much hiking gear in my life. All for people hiking on paved trails. Irony doesn't even begin to cover it. Several times in Zion I considered buying some stock in REI, before remembering that, as a co-op member, in effect, I already own it. + +It's too bad Zion isn't a co-op. But alas, I do not own Zion. I have no more claim to it -- or every bit as much depending on how you want to look at it -- than anyone else. It's too bad it has become what it is, and let's face we're dancing around the real issue -- overpopulation, but whew is that whole other post -- but at this point Zion is what it is and it will probably continue to be that for my lifetime. Maybe in my next life, after the oil is used up and things settle back down I can follow some strange, half-remembered dream of red rock canyons and end up here again, alone, in silence and stillness. + +The second day Corrinne's parents joined us and, despite what the above might sound like, we enjoyed the park. Crowded though it may be, Zion is still a beautiful place. After three nights though, we were definitely ready to move on. + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-09-25_valley-of-fire.txt b/jrnl/2017-09-25_valley-of-fire.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7b32a86 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-09-25_valley-of-fire.txt @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +The forecast for Zion turned cold about half way through Corrinne's parents visit. Since our guest room is a tent, and since Zion wasn't to our taste anyway, we decamped for Valley of Fire, a strange collection of red rock piles an hour outside of Las Vegas. A few thousand feet lower Valley of Fire was warmer and, as it turned out, a whole lot more fun. + +Valley of Fire is basically the largest playground we've been to. Wind and occasional water have combined forces with time to produce piles of red orange rock pocked with holes perfect for climbing. We found a great couple of sites tucked back in the rocks and made ourselves at home. + + + +
+ + + + + + + + + +
+ + + + + +Valley of Fire is perhaps best known for something called the wave, or the wave or fire, something like that. It looks far better in postcards than it does in person, but the hike out to it was nice and in keeping with our running joke -- we only hike in deserts. + + + + +John is up on that rock trying to find the desert bighorn sheep we thought we'd seen. Eventually he did find them in the maze of rock, shrub and canyons. + +The next day we saw them again right next to the road (naturally we saw them the day I decided, the 300mm zoom is too heavy, not bringing it). I've spent a lot of time in the desert and never caught much more than a glimpse of these creatures, which are far smaller and more secretive than their mountain cousins. + + + +A couple of days later we did another hike down a canyon filled with petroglyphs that eventually led to one of the most important things in the desert -- a natural water tank. I had a renewed interest in petroglyphs thanks to a book I'd been reading which suggests they might be mnemonic devices used as part of what Australian Aborigine tribes call songlines and what Giordano Bruno famously called *Ars Memorative*. + +If you don't have writing to store data, your memory has to be much better. That's why, for instance, many oral cultures can sing songs that race genealogical lines through centuries, sometimes millennia. + +It's not just oral cultures though, both the Greeks and Roman schools taught some forms of it. The most common techniques in western traditions is to memorize the insides of large buildings according to certain rules, dividing the space into specific loci or "places" and then using those as triggers for whatever information you want to remember. Then you take a mental tour of the place and recall whatever information you need. First nations tend to use outdoor spaces rather than indoor and may in fact be some of the driving force behind many of the roads that used to criss cross the Americas. + +In the case of petroglyphs one theory is that they are markers of both the physical -- water tank this way, ten people live down that canyon, and so on -- and those directions or stories (or song, or dance) have another layer that encodes some very important knowledge that helps cultures survive in environments like this, for example, where the bighorn go to feed in the evenings. In other words, petroglyphs probably have several layers of function and meaning, most of which -- without knowing the story or song -- is gone forever. Whatever the case the canyon in Valley of Fire was filled with petroglyphs, far more than we've seen anywhere else. + + + + + + + + + + +We also spent plenty of time just climbing and exploring the rocks around the campground. I'm pretty sure you could spend your entire life in this campground and not explore all the gulleys, holes and side canyons in these rocks. It really was a kind of wonderland for kids, young and older. + + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-09-30_ghost-town.txt b/jrnl/2017-09-30_ghost-town.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..110f066 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-09-30_ghost-town.txt @@ -0,0 +1,54 @@ +We were a wreck by the time we reached Las Vegas. And not in a good Hunter S. Thompson sort of way. + +We'd somehow become a bus full of snot, Olivia and I being the primary sources, but Lilah and Elliott were contributing as well. At one point I don't think we went more than five minutes without a sneeze. Except for Corrinne who somehow managed to avoid the head cold we all acquired, I think, on the trams of Zion. Our immune systems have been isolated for quite a while, going from that to international public transportation did not work out well. + +In the end we went right through Vegas, spending one night in the city to say goodbye to Corrinne's parents before moving on to Red Rock Canyon where we stopped to contemplate our next move and maybe try to drain our noses. We had talked about heading out to Death Valley, but temperatures there were in the triple digits and neither of us were that moved by Death Valley in the first place. Instead, for the first time in a long time, we decided to just drift for a while. North was about the most detailed plan we could commit to. + + + +We took 95 north, out of Las Vegas and up through the Great Basin Desert. While we did not have any specific destination in mind, we did have some things we wanted to do in the desert. Like spend a night in a ghost town. Back at Valley Fire the ranger had given me a little map of Nevada and a couple brochures about stuff to do. Several things jumped out at us, like the [creepy clown motel](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/clown-motel) located right next to a graveyard in Tonopah, NV. Fun for the whole family. But the thing that really stuck with us, especially my wife, was the idea of camping in an abandoned town. + +We hit the road on a Tuesday, not to early, not too late, heads still stuffed full of snot, pushing our way through a howling head wind, with no particular destination in mind other than North. + +The Great Basin is an empty, desolate place just north of Vegas. I was driving through a fog of a cold and boredom and honestly I spent a good portion of the drive dreaming of trading the bus for the sunny beaches of Thailand. Or Mexico. Or really anywhere my head wasn't full of snot. Corrinne on the other hand was researching ghost towns via the occasional pockets of 4G connection we'd pass through. One of the other things I noticed in the Nevada promotion brochure was that the Nevada State promo app for your phone works offline -- this is telling you something about the area it covers. The Great Basic Desert is big and wild and empty, so empty telecom companies can't be bothered to build towers. + +It's my kind of place really. + + + +Somewhere on the drive Corrinne started talking about some place called Gold Point, which was a ghost town but somehow also had a campground. Ordinarily we're fine dry camping, boondocking, whatever you want to call it, but we had not filled our water tank in nearly a week so the campground part was compelling. The drive in was compelling too, the roads kept getting narrower and rougher, always a good sign, and they appeared to lead off into nothing but sagebrush and rabbit bush as far at the eye could see. And around here it can see quite a ways. But then you climb a little rise and next thing you know you're in the middle of the ramshackle, broken down, mostly abandoned town of Gold Point, Nevada. + +While not actually a ghost town in the traditional sense of the word -- a dozen or some people do live somewhere around here -- it's sufficiently abandoned to make you feel like you're in the ruins of the past century. We parked the bus amidst a wreckage of old cars and old fire engines (a couple of which were working and really used for fire fighting). + + + + + +Probably the best part of Gold Point is that it's not "protected" so the kids could climb on things, explore and pick up stuff without fear of someone telling them to stop. That said, it was slightly confusing at times which building were occupied and which were abandoned. We saw some clueless people abuse the hospitality of the residents to the point that it would not surprise me to find quite a few more restriction a few years from now. For now though we had the run of the place. + + +We spent the afternoon wandering the abandoned streets, exploring the riding bikes and generally enjoying the absolute silence of the desert. + +Gold Point has been through quite a few boom and bust cycles, since it was first settled in the 1880s. The initial round only last a couple years and it was abandoned for the better part of a decade. Then in 1908 there was a second round that saw it grow to house some 800 residents, which necessitated 11 saloons. but only lasted two years after which the silver was gone, or rather there wasn't enough left to sustain 11 saloons. There was a third round in the 1930s that lasted a bit longer and even saw the Post Office show up. That lasted until 1968 after which the town was more or less abandoned for good until stabilization and restoration began in the 1980s. + + + + + + + +The result is a mishmash of artifacts spanning decades, building styles and what I would call differing views on just how permanent various structures were intended to be. We found glass in varying degrees of purple, most clearly from the more recent 1930s settlement, but a few pieces that were deep enough purple to probably date from the original 1880s settlement (for a while glass was made with manganese which causes the glass to turn a lavender color when exposed sunlight.) We also found quite a few bits of rock with various fossils in them. + + +
+ + + + + + + + + + +
diff --git a/jrnl/2017-10-06_trains-hot-springs-and-broken-buses.txt b/jrnl/2017-10-06_trains-hot-springs-and-broken-buses.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0310286 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-10-06_trains-hot-springs-and-broken-buses.txt @@ -0,0 +1,65 @@ +After a night in the middle of Gold Point we hit the road, continuing our somewhat random plan. I came up with something I thought was pretty good: take highway 266 west from Gold Point, grab highway 168, go over the White Mountains, drop down into Big Pine and follow 395 up to my aunt and uncle's house up in Wellington. It seems simple when you type it out. I bet it made the gods chuckle anyway. + + + +Highway 266 was uneventful, a little climb up into the White Mountains, through a ghost town and down into a small town called Oasis. It was when we turned on 168 that we got some hints of what was to come. The signs read steep, winding roads ahead. Okay, no biggie, probably. Then there was a sign that said one lane road ahead, trucks not recommended. But we're on a two digit state highway in California, those don't narrow down to one lane. I thought maybe it meant there was no passing lane. It did not mean that. + +Up and over the second pass was not too bad either, though it was the windiest road we've been on. Down the back side despite my best efforts at downshifting the brakes started to smell. We took a break to let them rest and enjoy the view. Of absolute nothing. Excepting perhaps some portions of route 50 (the so-called loneliest highway) route 168 is the most remote road I've ever been on. There's no civilization for its entire run over the White Mountains. Just empty desert and one lone building set way back from the road with a huge sign that says "no telephone available." The only other vehicles we saw were a few empty hay trucks driving way too fast for the road. + +We had snack and a road work crew we'd passed up the mountain came down and pulled into the same turnout we were in. I took the opportunity to ask them about the next pass. They seemed to think we'd be fine, though one of them did say, "there's one part we call the narrows, it's only one lane through there." I just stared at him for a minute. "Seriously?" "Seriously." "Don't tell my wife that." + +We said goodbye and hit the road again. Climbing the third pass I started to smell that sweet smell of radiator fluid and pulled into the next turn out. The bus sat boiling over for a bit, maybe a quart, and then it stopped. We climbed out to sit for a while and consider our options. Except that there weren't any really. With no cell reception to call a tow truck, no real way to turn around, and no where else to go even if we did, we had to get over the pass. At one point an older gentleman on a Harley stopped at see if we were okay. We chatted for a bit and he told us the top of the pass was only about four or five miles ahead, which was encouraging. + + + +After an hour or so the bus, and I, had cooled enough to tackle the pass again. And the Harley guy turned out to be right. It wasn't that bad and we didn't overheat again. Shortly after the top of Westguard Pass though with very little warning the road did indeed become one lane. It turned out to be less than half a mile, just a stretch where they simply couldn't blast the cut any wider. Fortunately we didn't meet any hay trucks going through. + +The downhill grade on the other side of the pass was 10 percent all the way down which had us stopping to rest the brakes four or five times, but eventually, around dinner time, we finally made it to Big Pine. + + + +We grabbed some gas and found a small county park with no one in it. Perfect way to end a long day. We parked for the night in the shadow of the High Sierra and ate dinner looking up at the mountains. + + + + +Our plan for the next day was to check out the Laws Railroad Museum and then head to a local hot spring. Every morning while the bus warms up I walk around it and check things out, make sure all windows and vents are closed, no fluids are leaking and so on. This morning the rear wheel well caught my eye. It seemed someone closer to the wheels than I'd ever noticed. But that's virtually impossible, how often do axles move? Has to be my imagination. I walked around the other side. Not my imagination. I crawled under and saw this: + + + +That's when I called my uncle. He's already helped me fix a few thing via the phone. I sent over some pictures and he told me what to do, but I had neither tools nor jack to do it so he offered to come down and help. A couple hours later had some bolts, some beer and something like a plan. Or at least he did. I had hope. + +And the next day we did it. Or my uncle did anyway. We lifted the bus with a grossly underpowered jack, pounded on the spring joint until it slowly slid back into place and then we put new bolts in. It was a long day, but we got it done. Thanks again Ron. + +The kids, generally oblivious to our breakdowns, found plenty of mud to get them through the day. + + +
+ + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + +After that adventure we finally made it to the Laws Railroad Museum, which turned out to be a lot of fun for the kids, plenty of stuff to climb on, in and round and no one to tell them not to. Well, except for one old crone volunteering in the station house who proceeded to chastise the children before they were hardly in the door. I turned around and walked out because if I'd stayed I'd have involuntarily backhanded her. I sat on the porch listening to her tell visitors a completely false story about the origin of the Murphy bed. Some people I don't know, they won't leave you alone. + + + + + + + + + +That afternoon we trekked over to Keough Hot Springs. There are a lot of hot springs in this part of the country, but not many of them have a really cool old pool. We ended up spending the night and the kids and I spent all afternoon in the pool. + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-10-21_dialed-in.txt b/jrnl/2017-10-21_dialed-in.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a7d3f49 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-10-21_dialed-in.txt @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +We headed north from Bishop, up the Owens River Valley, over Montgomery Pass and back into Nevada. We stopped off to briefly see my cousin in Hawthorne before spending a very cold night out at Walker Lake. Walker Lake is one of those places that's probably not very nice in the high season, but it's really nice when you have it to yourself. It also has fun conspiracy theories about it which we accidentally discovered why searching for which campground had water (answer to our question: none of them). + + + + +We still don't have a heater in the bus so whatever the outside temp, the inside temp is about the same, maybe five or ten degrees warmer. One of my goals for this trip was for that to never be an issue because we would follow the weather. For the most part that's been true, but around here, this time of year, warmth is a rapidly fading thought. I even had to put on shoes. + + + +We're up here to see my aunt and uncle for the first time in years and for my uncle to help me understand and dial in this engine. + +And that's exactly what we did for nearly three weeks. He and I pulled out the carburetor and reset the float where it should be. That alone solved about 70 percent of our problems. We were ready to leave with that, but then we got to talking and decided to do a few other things as well. The problem was that my uncle had already planned a trip to the California coast with a friend. So we ordered some parts, said goodbye and he headed west to California and we went north for a week. + + + +The first night we stopped in Carson City. We spent the night in a Casino parking lot and walked around downtown. Carson City actually has one of those that's still functional and nice, with parks and business and such, unlike most American cities of its size these days. + + + +The next day we headed north with the vague goal of seeing Reno and maybe checking out Pyramid Lake. That morning we met up with another cousin of mine and took all our kids to the children's museum in Carson City. After catching up for a couple hours, letting the kids play, we hit the road. But then we were hungry so we stopped at a really good Vietnamese restaurant. And then I spied a Harbor Freight and spent some time replenishing my toolkit with the cheapest, crappiest steel China has to offer. + +By the time we actually made it out of Carson City it was mid afternoon and none of us felt like going far. We made it about ten miles up over the hill to Washoe Lake State Park. It was a nice enough place and it had pretty good cell coverage, which is hard to come by in these parts. We ended up staying all week. + + + + +With temps forecast down in the mid 20s we decided to pick up a little propane heater, which helps take the edge off mornings. + +Washoe Lake was host to some of the least appealing neighbors we've had -- someone stole my hatchet one night, along with beer, a chair and some other stuff from another person. Itried to tell the kids that whomever took it probably needed it more than we did and they seemed okay with that. I also tried to explain methamphetamines and what they do to you, but I don't think that sunk in as much. + +Despite that we enjoyed Washoe Lake. I got some work done, the kids played and we went for the occasional walk/bike ride to explore the park. Once we were walking over to another side of the lake when we spotted a sign that said, "Beach and Maze" with an arrow point to the shoreline. Maze? Really? Really. + + + + + + + + + + +After a week at Washoe we went back to my uncle's house and we got to work on the bus. We replaced the spark plugs, the plug wires and the exhaust manifold gaskets. Then we greased the suspension and I knocked a few interior fixes off my list. I installed an inverter, rehung some molding that had nearly come apart thanks to all the bumpy roads we've driven. I even finally got serious about fixing the oven. Unfortunately it does seem to be the thermocoupler and it's a serious pain to even get to it. I shelved that one again. You can't do it all. + +One night the sunset looked like this: + + + +The next morning the mountains were covered in snow, though nothing stayed on the ground where we were. + + + +When we drove out of my uncle's house a week later the bus sounded and ran better than it has since I bought it and probably better than it has in decades. It's not perfect and something will still probably break soon -- since I'm writing from the future as it were, I can assure you something will break soon :) -- but for now it's driving better than I ever thought it would. Thanks Ron. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-10-26_shadow-lassen.txt b/jrnl/2017-10-26_shadow-lassen.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7c9e1a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-10-26_shadow-lassen.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +We headed out early but somehow still ended up spending most of the day running errands in Carson City, again. Something about this town seems to suck us in. At least there's really good tacos at a Mexican market on the north east side of the city, we stopped there again for lunch. By the time we were done eating tacos and stocking up on essentials no one had the will to go past Washoe Lake. We pulled in and relaxed for the remainder of the day. + +The next day we managed to get on the road reasonably early, heading north on 395, bundled up against the increasingly severe cold in these parts. By noon we had made it to Susanville where we left 395 and headed up into the forests surrounding Mount Lassen. + + + + +There's tons of boondocking spots in this area, all you really need to do is turn on a dirt road and you'll end up somewhere with some rocks piled in fire rings in the woods. We were actually on our way to a legitimate campground by a lake, but the road was rough enough that we ended up just pulling off at the first flat area we saw. + + + + +It was a nice spot n the woods, next to a meadow of sorts with plenty of forest for the kids to explore. It was nice enough that we ended up staying two nights. Why not? It's not like we have anywhere to be. + + + + + + + + +At some point during our stay here a fuse holder that sits between our charge controller and our battery bank broke. At the time I was blissfully unaware anything was wrong. It wasn't until the second morning when we got up to leave and the inverter started beeping (which it does when the batteries are too low) that I realized something was wrong. I lifted up the couch and discovered our charge controller was dead. That pissed me off since I bought the expensive charger. But then we were about to drive anyway and could charge off the inverter so at least we'd get our batteries back up. Doesn't that sound simple? Ha. + + + +We drive down out of the forests and into the hot hellhole of Redding, which the rest of my family didn't find nearly as terrible as I did. I've never liked Redding. This time through we got stuck in traffic, then we had to climb a good size hill just out of town and ended up overheating. We stopped for bit, let the engine cool and went on without an issue, but it was just one more strike against Redding in my book. + +It was getting late in the day and we spied a sign for a campground off the highway, though it didn't say how far of the highway. We went for it because we were all sick of being on the road. We ended up driving what seemed like ten miles on a road that kept getting narrower and narrower, weaving through tiny communities until we just about gave up hope of finding anything and then there it was, a really lovely little campground tucked in the woods of the Trinity Alps, right beside the first river we've seen that made me really wish I had a fly rod. + + + + +Long days of driving, sitting at the side of the road, trying to fix electrical problems, all these things take their toll. The best morale booster is good food. One thing I will say for Redding, it had a damn good Thai/Lao restaurant with portions big enough that the kids could have Pad Thai in the middle of the forest, as forest fairies do. + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-10-28_pacific-sense.txt b/jrnl/2017-10-28_pacific-sense.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2cc5f7a --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-10-28_pacific-sense.txt @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +I smelled the Pacific way before it was actually possible to have smelled the Pacific. We were climbing one of the five hundred ridges[^1] we had to climb to get through the Trinity Alps when I swear the air changed, suddenly it was wetter, salty and with a slight hint of fish. Or it was my imagination looking for something other than the endless loop then running through my head: are the house batteries really going to get us there (the alternator was was still dead). + + + +Whatever the case, eventually we made it over the last ridge and then we really could smell the ocean and the Pacific in this region has a very different smell than say, the Atlantic we left eight months ago. + +I didn't really have any goals or lists of things to do on this trip, but, that said, making it all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific does have a certain feeling of accomplishment to it. + +Here's some meaningless stats: + +* Miles driven: 5866 (give or take 50 miles[^2]) +* Day on the road: 209 +* Gallons of gas: I have no idea[^3] + +The anticlimatic part was that we made it all the way to the Pacific, but when we arrived we couldn't see it. As is typical up this way, the ocean was wrapped in a blanket of thick fog. After setting up camp we hiked down into the gloom of fog and spent the evening on the beach. The one place that will always feel like home to me. + + + + + + + + + + + +[^1]: It's possible there were not that many. +[^2]: our odometer is currently broken so this is an estimate based on Google Maps, hence the possible variation. +[^3]: I had this in a spreadsheet for a while so I could calculate our MPG, but I haven't kept up with it. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-10-29_through.txt b/jrnl/2017-10-29_through.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c31a3da --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-10-29_through.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +Patrick's Point is a beautiful place. When you can see it. One evening the setting sun conspired with the fog to let a few rays of light through. + + + +Most of the time though, it's enveloped in cloud. + + + + +Having driven in on a broken alternator (draining our starting battery to dead and our house batteries way down) we really needed sun. Instead we got not just overcast skies but swirling mists of fog that create an artificial night around the entire point. It was like living in a cloud. Every morning I got up, and, while stowing our bedding under the couch, stared at the ever-dropping voltage readings on our batteries. + +After three days it became apparent that I either had to do something today or we were going to be stuck. The nearest auto parts store with a new alternator in stock was about 35 miles away in Eureka. The nearest bus stop was six miles away but assuming it was even remotely on time I'd be gone about 16 hours round trip. Maybe. U.S. bus systems tables are completely inscrutable[^1] so it was also possible there was no bus running at all. I could risk driving, but if the battery died the whole family would be stuck. + +I ended up with a compromise. I rented a car from the airport which was only a six mile walk and ten mile bus ride and would, theoretically get me back to the bus by dinner time. I threw on some warm clothes, packed water and, at my daughters' insistence, some snacks in my backpack, and set off for Trinidad. + +I really did not want to walk to Trinidad. It just wasn't on my list of things to do when I woke up that morning. A bus or even a really expensive cab ride was much more appealling. At the same time, perverse though this sounds, I like these little breakdowns. I like putting myself in situations where I'm well outside my comfort zone and have the scramble a bit to solve problems. How else do you know what you're capable of? + +I don't generally try to teach my kids "life lessons" or any of that crap. Words are cheap. As a professional writer, I can tell you with some authority just how cheap they are. Children learn by watching . They absorb. The world around them gets organized into a patterns right before their eyes. One of them, that I have tried to cultivate to some degree, is that you should meet life head on. Good or bad you have to go through, not around. This is easy when life is good. When there are problems it gets more difficult. But still. The only way out is through. + + + +You cannot avoid. You can not ignore. You cannot put your head in the ground. The minute you pull it up and look around, there's everything you were avoiding, waiting for you. Similarly, there are no shortcuts, there are no easy escapes. No one is coming to save you. You have to save yourself. You save yourself by going through. Whether life gives you fear and sadness, or joy and wonder, there's no escaping it, there's no way around it, you go through it. You can choose to accept what comes and deal with it accordingly moving through it or you can lay down and die. It's really that simple. + +And usually what we think is going to be so awful isn't that bad[^2]. We're pretty terrible at telling what is good from what is bad in the midst of things. I am anyway. Many of my favorite moments in this life aren't ones I'm in a hurry to re-live, but doesn't make them any less wonderful to me. Whatever it is though, these experiences are here for you now. You put them on, you sit with them, so to speak, you live them. And then something else comes along. Some of it will be hard, unpleasant, involuntarily thrust upon you, not really what you wanted to do when you woke up that morning, but you get up and you do it anyway because it is life, whether you want to call it good or bad is up to you, but all of it is life and without it, there's no reason to be here. The only way out is through. + +That's what I was thinking about walking through the damp cold dreary world of Patrick's Point, at least when I wasn't concentrating on the sound of cars to avoid being run over by insane California drivers. I also thought about the millions of people all over the world (most of them women) who were also at that very moment walking further than me to get water. And they have to do it again tomorrow. I don't have to walk for water, I don't have to beg for food. I don't really have any problems at all, just a burned out coil of wire that needed to be replaced. No big deal. + +I also thought about how if I were in the south someone would have stopped to give me a ride before I made it a mile. Everywhere we've been recently has served to reinforce something I already knew: the only place still alive in America is the south. + +I made it to the bus station about half an hour ahead of the bus, time enough to grab some pastor tacos from the gas station, which was way better than you're thinking. I have my beefs with California -- lots of beefs in fact -- but damn if you can't get a decent taco at a gas station. Eventually the bus showed up only ten minutes late, which is almost Germanicly on-time by the LA public transport standards I grew up with. I made it to the airport, picked up the car, drove to Eureka, bought an alternator and drove back in time for dinner. + +The next day I installed the alternator and took the bus for a drive to charge the batteries. It wasn't enough to stop us from needing to conserve energy, but it kept us afloat a little longer, it got us out of our energy jam. It got us through. And that's all we really need. Eventually the sun even came out for day. + + + + + + + + + +[^1]: I have ridden the bus in 16 countries, reading over bus schedules through the fog of half a dozen different language barriers and I've never had so difficult at time as I have at every bus stop in the U.S -- MTA New York being the notable exception to that rule. +[^2]: By the same token, things that seems so great at first often turn out to be downright nasty. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-11-03_halloween-and-big-trees.txt b/jrnl/2017-11-03_halloween-and-big-trees.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6b03a64 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-11-03_halloween-and-big-trees.txt @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. It's got all the good elements of ritual to it, costumes, masks, sounds, night, and obliquely somewhere in there, veneration of the dead. For one moment, one evening, everyone is something they're not and somehow more themselves for it. The masks of everyday life get replaced with masks of our choosing, if only for one night. Plus, candy. + +Back in Athens the kids really loved going to Boo at the Zoo, the local zoo gets all Halloween fun so it's like a trip to the zoo plus costumes. Turns out Athens is far from the only place to have one of these so we crashed the Boo and the Zoo festival in Eureka. + + + + + + +We even managed to get some trick-or-treating in down in nearby Trinidad, which was completely enveloped in fog (natch) and just spooky enough to be fun. + + + +We kept the car I rented to get the alternator for a few extra days because we decided we didn't want to head north to check out the Redwoods proper with the bus. It's been nice to see the ocean and all, but we also wanted to see the sun. Still, you can't come all the way up here without showing the kids the tallest trees on earth. + +We left the bus at Patrick's Point and made a day trip up to the Redwood State and National parks. We hiked a few miles through a grove of the giant trees. + +
+ + + + + +
+ + + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-11-08_the-absense-of-glass-beach.txt b/jrnl/2017-11-08_the-absense-of-glass-beach.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..37decc0 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-11-08_the-absense-of-glass-beach.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +After Halloween we made our way south, ducking inland and around the Lost Coast, down to Fort Bragg where we finally, for a few days at least got some sunshine. Not that it was warm mind you, but at least we saw the sun for two days in a row. + + + + + + + + + +I never wrote about it here, but Corrinne and I visited this area about a decade ago and went to a little, out of the way, somewhat inaccesible beach called Glass Beach. The name refered to the fact that the entire shoreline was glass shards, the soft, sea-polished variety some people call seaglass. If I remember correctly it was there because there used to be a wrecking yard or a garbage dump or some combination of those things on the bluff above. At the time, 2009 , the glass was several feet deep and covered from the low tide line well up past high tide. It looked like this: + + + +Today it is all gone. People came and carted it home in buckets. We read about the loss of glass beach on the internet, but I confess I didn't really believe it until I saw it. It really is gone. I even saw two people trying to fill a bucket with the tiny amount of glass that still remains here and there. I have no idea what people do with a bucket of seaglass, presumably it all sits in garages and dens around the country, forgotten. Somehow, to me, this perfectly encapsulates America today: steal what's everyone's for yourself and then never even use it. + + + +At least there were still tidepools to explore. There wasn't much life in them, but give a kid some puddles and rocks and they'll be occupied for hours. + + + + +Because it's Northern California in the Autumn the rain inevitably returned. People always ask, what do you do when it rains? Answer: we get wet. If you look closely at the left edge of the image below there's a deer, also getting wet. + + + +Fort Bragg also turned out to be home to the third Travco we've run across in our travels. This one, sadly, is unlikely to ever move again. + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-12-02_the-city.txt b/jrnl/2017-12-02_the-city.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..073aae8 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-12-02_the-city.txt @@ -0,0 +1,47 @@ +We continued our slow meandering southward, stopping for a week to visit our friends Kate and Josh, whom we met back in Durango. They're in the process of building a yurt on some friends' land and there was enough room to tuck the bus under some redwoods as well. There was plenty of woods, fields, and streams for the kids to play in, and we got to wake up to the sound of hooting owls. They also loaned us a car, which was super nice. + +Our thanksgiving plans were to return to my uncle's house in Wellington, but I wasn't about to drive the bus back over the mountains. Fortunately Kate and Josh's friends (who actually own the land) said we could leave the bus there for a week. And that's what we did. Since the bus was safely stowed, we figured we'd head into San Francisco on our way to visit some old friends there. + +I'll be honest, I was kind of dreading San Francisco. I've about had my fill of the whole entrepreneur-as-hero, techno-utopian bullshit that's been spewing out of the Bay Area for the past decade or so. I was worried that that mindset had taken over the city, that the wealthy had squeezed the life out of it as they do everything else. I was, in short, prepared to hate what had become of the city I once loved. Fortunately for me, San Francisco hasn't yet entirely succumbed the banality underlying the agendas of a handful of wealthy residents (and their acolytes). Which is to say, San Francisco is still pretty close to what it's always been -- San Francisco. + + + +It probably helped that we arrived on a weekend of gloriously warm weather with wide open, deep blue skies filled with scattered clouds to match the wide open deep blue of the bay filled with scattered sails and whitecaps. We spent a lot of time outdoors, almost all our time in fact. Walking the city streets, the parks, the shore, the marina, we even made an attempt to visit [the wave organ](https://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/wave-organ/), something I've been meaning to do for decades now, though it proved too far of a walk to go all the way around from where we parked out to the organ, we could at least see it, but then, seeing is not really the point of an organ. Next time. + +We stayed on Lombard, down toward the touristy stuff because I thought the kids would like it and I was right. Hyde Street Pier was a hit, as was fisherman's wharf and the liberty ship we toured, of which I have no pictures since helping three children navigate a giant metal ship with stairs and railings built for grown sailors did not leave a free arm to snap any photos. But the real find was the Musée Mécanique, an antique penny arcade museum. + + + + + + + + +And of course, you can't visit the city with kids without a trolley ride. See how thrilled they look? + +
+ + + + + +
+ +One morning we made made the long trek out to the Academy of Sciences museum, mostly I think because the kids had heard there was an albino crocodile, which the really wanted to see. It turned out to be pretty cool, especially the rainforest area with all its butterflies and birds flying around right next to you. And yes there was an albino crocodile. + + + + + +You want to know how out of touch with the modern world we are, we took our first Uber in SF, actually it was a Lyft, which I'd never heard of before we got there. Our friends in the city got it for us and it was probably faster than a taxi, certainly faster than the bus we'd taken earlier in the day. But I felt weird and little bit dirty about the whole thing, like I was somehow contributing to the demise of something, though I'm not sure what. + +The next night I went to run a quick errand by myself, mostly just because I wanted to ride some public transportation alone, with headphones on. I have a [whole essay](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/03/one-nation-under-groove) on this site[^1] about what a magical thing it is to put on headphones on pubic transportation in pretty much any city. Twilight is the best time, but there's no bad time. You slip into an otherworld of music in the city, riding public transportation you feel the city around you as if it were just you and the city, a kind of intimacy of place I know of no other way to achieve, at once isolating and communing, not with man but what we have wrought, what we have made collectively greater than ourselves. Cities are living things and I don't mean that in some quasispiritual kind of way, I mean it very literally. This thing, this consciousness, we call the city for lack of a better word loves to commune if you ask it to. Paris and I get along best in this regard, though we have had our moments of disagreement. New York is all about flash and color, but here in San Francisco the conversation is always more sublte, warm yellow light and cool gray fog mingling in narrow streets, the glitter of shop windows and restaurants, blurring by as the bus lurches up Van Ness, inbound, coursing toward the heart the city. It was one short bus ride, another back but it was enough to spend some time alone with the city. + +After four days in the city we headed back over the Sierras to my aunt and uncle's place in Nevada. We had good Thanksgiving, I got to see some cousins I hadn't seen in ten years and few relatives I hadn't seen ever. The sunrises were nice too. + + + + +It was a good trip, but a week in hotels was quite enough. We were all ready to be back to the bus and when we got there Olivia jumped out of the car and ran to give the bus a hug. Home again. + +[^1]: Surprisingly, for someone who changes their mind constantly and generally crings when reading anything I didn't write today (and often then too), I actually still really like that essay and agree with every word in it. diff --git a/jrnl/2017-12-10_aquarium-kings.txt b/jrnl/2017-12-10_aquarium-kings.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..34c3be1 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-12-10_aquarium-kings.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +After so much time away from the bus it was good to be on the road again. We headed out the morning after we got back, picking our way south through the Bay Area and down to, as it turned out, Silicon Valley, the epicenter of what's wrong with America, and, as you might expect, a terrible place to try to camp. After an abortive attempt or two we gave up and got a hotel room. + +The next day we drove the rest of the way down to Monterey, hoping to visit some friends and take the kids to aquarium. There's a well located campground, right in the middle of Monterey, up on a hill. There's too many trees to see the ocean, and there's not even the pretense of a level site, but it's far better than what you'll find in most California cities so I won't complain. It also had a nice playground for the kids. + + + + +Being centrally located also allowed us to explore the town and see the aquarium. + + + + + + +I'm probably just a twisted person, but after a few hours at the Monterey Bay Aquarium I was starving and really craving sushi. + +One night I managed to sneak off one night to spend some time with my friends, who I'm pretty sure really didn't understand why I refused to drive the bus up the hill to their house. I'll tell you why in the next post. For now, rest assured that I made a wise decision. + +From Monterey we were supposed to head south to Santa Barbara to visit some more friends, but honestly, we were a bit sick of being damp and wanted to head away from the coast for a while. This turned out to be a smart choice since the Santa Barbara fires started a couple days later. The first day out of Monterey we were headed down 101 (probably the roughest, consistently awful road we've driven, Californians I know you don't want to hear this, but you are living in a third world country and you're the only ones who don't realize it. But I digress), I stopped for gas and when we pulled out of the gas station there was a horrible grinding noise that really sounded like wheel bearings to me. + +My wife on the other hand thought the noise was coming from further back, near the transmission. I crawled underneath the bus but I couldn't see anything amiss. Unfortunately I crawled from the engine and wiggled backward, which meant I missed seeing the problem. We drove back into King City and searched out a mechanic who, fortunately, had time to look around. He and I took it for a drive, then crawled under it from about midway back and immediately saw the problem -- the forward driveshaft mount had dropped down and the driveshaft was scraping against a crossbar. + +A quick lift with a floor jack and we tightened up the bracket and everything was fine. It took less time to fix than it did for my wife and kids to eat lunch at the Vietnamese restaurant next door. + +By this time it was midway through the afternoon and no one really felt like driving anymore. We had spied a county park on our way into town so we headed there instead of back on the highway. It was a nice place, virtually empty and there was plenty of stuff for the kids to explore. We ended up spending the entire weekend there. + + + + + + + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2017-12-14_terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-week.txt b/jrnl/2017-12-14_terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-week.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d577135 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2017-12-14_terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-week.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +I don't really feel like telling this story, so here's two pictures that do it instead. + + + + +If you're not real familiar with cars, that second photo is what your pistons look like after your head gasket leak destroys them. Or one of them anyway. + +It all happened climbing or trying to climb over Tehachapi pass, to get out of central California. We'd been holed up in Bakersfield where I came down with a sinus infection that gave me a fever of 104 and took three rounds of antibiotics to put down. I was pretty doped up on cold medicine, but we really wanted to get out of Bakerfield so we went for it. About half way up oil was spraying out the right side of the engine and that was that. I pulled over and called AAA. + +We got towed over the pass and, in the beginning, when I thought it was only the head gasket, we piled into a tiny, dingy Motel 6 room with 2 double beds and prepared to wait for a couple days. The next morning I got a call from the mechanic that I need to come down to the shop. That second picture is what I saw. + +It was demoralizing to see the exhaust manifolds, spark plugs and other things we had just done sitting there destroyed. I called Corrinne and we discussed what to do. We seriously considered cutting our loses and parting it out, in fact we decided to do that, but in the end we couldn't give up now. We're too stubborn apparently. We had to stick with it. But there was no way we were going to hang around for weeks in a Motel 6 in Mojave, CA. We rented a car and set off for Palm Springs, where they at least have things to do and more than one restuarant. + +We managed to get a great deal on a condo for a few days. It was a golf resort, the sort of place where I feel far more comfortable talking to the employees than I do my fellow guests, but it had a kitchen and the nicest foldout bed for the kids we've ever had. It also had a pool. And weather nice enough to use the pool. + + + + +Palm Springs is possibly the least Christmasy place you could think of, so we compensated by doing some Christmasy stuff, like going to the living desert museum's night time Christmas party. Lights, a carousels, and a pretty massive outdoor train setup were all hits, but our kids really can't stay up past eight so they didn't last long. + + + + +Reading over this it really doesn't sound so terrible actually. It always sucks to be homeless, but when you live on the road it's pretty much inevitable. One of the prices you have to pay to live this way I suppose. It could be worse. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-01-05_escaping-california.txt b/jrnl/2018-01-05_escaping-california.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d3c05f8 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-01-05_escaping-california.txt @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +There might have been a good bit of cheering in the bus as we crossed over the Colorado River, out of California and into Arizona. + + + +California wore us down. It's not a place we like. As my daughter put it, neatly summing up some nebulous feelings I was struggling to describe -- *everything is dead in California, there's no flowers or butterflies, I love flowers and butterflies*. + + + +I actually wrote 2,500 words on what I don't like about California, but I deleted it in favor of this. I prefer to focus on the positive -- California and all the problems we encountered there... it's all in the rearview mirror now. + +We got the bus back just before Christmas. We'd only been back in it for a day when we all came down with the flu. All five of us similtaneously. That's never happened before and it was every bit as miserable as it sounds. Luckily we were able to hole up at a campground in Victorville and wait it out. When we pulled in I figured we'd be stuck for the weekend. It was two weeks before we pulled out. A rather miserable two weeks I might add, I didn't take a single picture Christmas morning, I'm not even sure I was out of bed for more than an hour. It was not fun. + + + +After about a week we finally ventured outside again. The kids road their bikes a bit, had epic coughing fits and then rode some more. There's nothing quite like that first day outside after a bad illness. + + + + +By New Year's Day we were feeling well enough to get our proper New Year's meal together. Or sort of together. Collards are hard to come by out here so we settled for Kale, closest we could find in this desolate, dreary part of the world. + + + +When we finally did get back on the road the bus purred across the desert and even the kids hardly raised a complaint when we did back to back five hour drives. They were just happy to be out of California. It's warmer down here too, a little anyway. Warm enough to get back to our usual stuff, sitting around campfires, walking around looking at petrogylphs and digging in the dirt. + + + + + + +It's good to be back on the road, it's good to be home. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-01-10_youre-all-i-need-get-by.txt b/jrnl/2018-01-10_youre-all-i-need-get-by.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0981d34 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-01-10_youre-all-i-need-get-by.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +It was good to get back into the desert, into wide open wild spaces. It's worth remembering that Nature is everywhere, even downtown Manhattan, there is in fact nothing but Nature. That said, it's undeniably nicer for those of us who enjoy them, to be in less inhabited, vast tracts of wild, which is exactly what we had outside of Gila Bend, AZ. + +We spent the weekend out in the wild, getting back into our groove, which had been thrown off considerably by California. I worked the mornings, and sat around playing with the kids in the afternoon. We had fires, we stared up at the milky way. We did very little other than relax and slow down the pace of life. + +
+ + + + + + + +
+ + +The pace of life in California is so dissimilar to how we live that it produces this background tension in me, like static on the radio that you barely hear, but is there when you listen for it. I know it sounds crazy, but I can't explain what a weight was lifted from my shoulders when we drove out of California. It's like being free again, like I imagine that first breath of air would be if you were trapped under an icy lake. + +When Monday rolled around we drove into Tucson to visit some family, run some errands, one particularly long errand that I'm saving for the next post, and provision ourselves for some extended time out in the wild and on the road. + + + + +We re-grouped and re-stocked. And of course enjoyed ourselves as best we could amidst the traffic and jumble of consumer experiences that constitutes modern city life. + +One of the interesting things about living in a self-contained RV, camping mostly out in relatively remote natural areas, is that we have very little need of the sort of consumer experiences that make up modern American life. We very seldom buy things. We're very seldom in places where there are in fact things to buy. We don't have a house to buy stuff for, which eliminates a huge amount of shopping. We very seldom buy new clothes. We very seldom go to restaurants. The last time I went to a bar Big Papi was still on the Red Sox. All of which is to say we very seldom have consumer experiences anymore. + +Once you stop shuffling around the retail world for a while doing so becomes much more horribly tedious than it ever seemed when I did it regularly. I can feel the hours of my life slipping away at stoplights in strange cities. I can watch the strange packages of things we call food rotting away as I wait in line at the supermarket. I stare at retail endcaps for far to long trying to workout why in the world I would want any of this stuff. In fact I walk around stores in a kind of stupor, working out in my head different ways we might be able to run errands even less than we already do. I find myself in line thinking surely the freezer and icebox could hold enough food for 10 days instead of 7? Perhaps I should start fishing along way to supplement the freezer? Is there a farmer's market near camp? Maybe we can forage for veggies? + +Those things are fun to contemplate, but the biggest way to avoid spending your days running errands is to embrace a very simple philosophy: **If you don't have it, you don't need it**. + +Out of garlic? It'll still taste okay. Nozzle of your hose broken? Water still comes out, you'll get by. Radiator overflow tank blow a hole? By pass it with produce bag twist ties, an old spark plug and some bent hoses. back on the road. Just find a way to make it work. In almost every case you can think of, you have a choice, you can use some ingenuity and find a way to make things work with what you have, or you can get in your car and go shopping. Choose wisely. + +Don't feel bad if you're the shopping type. There's nothing wrong with that, sometimes you have to. Out of salt? Yeah it's probably not going to taste very good. Hose leaking non-potable water all over the place? Yeah that's probably not good. Radiator hose has an actual hole? Well, that might still be fixable. You'd be amazed how long an engine will run with duct tape on a hose. Trust me. + +But the extremely poor quality of goods these days means you'll be doing fair bit of shopping even if your ingenuity is in overdrive. Still, before you grab your keys, always sit down for a bit, take stock of what you have and try to figure out how you could make things work with what you have rather than heading straight to the store. + +In Tucson we had to run the sorts of errands there's no getting out of, stocking up on food, picking up the bus registration which was "overnighted" to us (it took three days to get to us "overnight", thanks USPS), getting medications, and one more big one that I'm just going to keep teasing you with again. + +We also set aside an afternoon to catch up with some my extended family who live around here, including my great aunt who just turned 95. If you want to bend your brain a bit sit down next to 95 year old and watch a couple five year olds run around and contemplate everything that's changed in those 90 intervening years. It'll split your head open. I got caught up thinking about the speed of movement that's changed in the last 90 years. In 1927 the car was still a thing that went about 40 MPH over rutted dirt roads. To start the engine you got out, opened the engine and cranked it with a long metal rod. Of course if you're me you still start your bus by opening the engine and lifting the choke flap with your finger, so maybe less has changed than I think. In some cases anyway. Whatever the case, happy birthday Marge, hope you liked the burgers. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-01-17_ghost-cochise.txt b/jrnl/2018-01-17_ghost-cochise.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c2b3ba7 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-01-17_ghost-cochise.txt @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +Juncos flit from the roadside, the conspicous flash of white tail feathers disappearing into the cover of brush as the bus engine approaches. The tires crunch and rumble as we creep over the moderately -- by Arizona standards -- washboard road. The road winds its way through dry desert grassland, interspersed with yucca and thorny mesquite trees, up into the foothills of the Dragoon Mountains where Arizona Oaks and Alligator Juniper cluster around the dry river beds and on up the rocky slopes of the mountains. + + + +I've been into Dragoon Mountains several times, from both the east and west side. The west is my favorite, but that road is far too rough for both the big blue bus and the Volvo. Both sides have access to the same central cluster of rock gardens and peaks in the middle, but the east is home to Cochise Stronghold, the place where Chihuicahui leader Cochise lived, later hid and eventually died and was buried. + +By all accounts this is where Cochise loved to be and I happen to believe Cochise still wanders this place. + + + +Every time I've been here odd things have happened. I have seen strange shapes in the shadows, heard whispers whipping through the wind, and found some downright hard to explain things. If I were of the scientific-materialist type I'd have a really hard time reconciling my experiences in the Dragoons with my worldview. Whatever the case, there is something here. As happens with some places, there is something more here than is elsewhere. Call it what you will. + +Our plan was to boondock a few nights at some spots on the way into Cochise Stronghold, but they ended up being already occupied by the time we go there, late afternoon on a Friday. We continued up the road and snagged a spot in the campground proper, which is a little densely packed, but it isn't too bad. The cold drove most people away in short order anyway. + + + + + + +And it was cold, down near freezing nearly every night and well below it for a couple of them. We have a propane heater that we use to take the edge of morning, but during the night all we can do is pile on the blankets. Fortunately we have a lot of blankets. + +During the day the temperatures were nice, great for hiking. We trekked up above the stronghold area into the canyons and passes. + + + + + + +It's hard to walk in this place though without thinking of the Chiricahua. + +As with most of American history, learning about what happened to Cochise and the Chihuicahui-Chiricahua makes for a dismal read. The United States suffered heavy losses every time it engaged with the Chiricahua, and eventually managed to capture leaders only by resorting the lying and murder under white flags. + +Cochise was once almost captured for a crime he didn't commit, but he slashed his way out of an Army tent and escaped. The Army held some of his relatives though and later killed them, which marked the beginning of what would best be called relentless guerrilla warfare, which Cochise kept up for 11 years, reducing, as Dan Thrapp [puts it](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3749289W/Conquest_of_Apacheria_(Civilization_of_American_Indian)), "most of the Mexican/American settlements in southern Arizona to a burned-out wasteland". Thrapp estimates the total death toll of settlers and travelers in the region may have reached 5,000, but that's apparently a controversial figure. + +Cochise was never captured or defeated by the U.S Army. In 1872 the Army negotiated a treaty granting Cochise and his band some land here in the Dragoons. That land was later taken away, but Cochise died of natural causes before that happened. Geronimo continued to fight long after Cochise had moved on from the obvious parts this world. + +The less obvious, who knows. + +We decided to move on when the temperatures in the area threaten to drop below 20 degrees. We wanted to get over to the Chiricahua Mountains, but they were even colder at the time so we decided it was time to hit the road again, bound for warmer climes. + + diff --git a/jrnl/2018-01-24_eastbound-down.txt b/jrnl/2018-01-24_eastbound-down.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b5e0776 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-01-24_eastbound-down.txt @@ -0,0 +1,84 @@ +We really loved the southern Arizona desert we've called home for the better part of January, but unfortunately the desert gets bitter cold this time of year, too cold for us. We had a choice -- head further south, into Mexico, or head east and south, back to the Gulf Coast. We really wanted to go to Mexico, but the Georgia DMV lost our registration papers for the better part of two months and it was looking like they were never going to get to us. No registration, no Mexico[^1]. + +We ended up deciding to head back to what remains one of our favorite places -- the southern Gulf Coast. + +We loved the southwest desert, especially the our corners area, but generally most of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado. If the weather were different we'd have headed north into northern Arizona and southern Utah again. But we go where the weather is warm and so we're headed back to the south for now. + +While Mexico still has a strong pull on our future, there are few things in this country quite as nice as spring in the south. We're looking forward to it. Especially because we felt like we had to rush through Louisiana on our way out west. + +It is of course, a long way from here to there. We hit the road for some long driving days across New Mexico and Texas. We rarely do more than 200 miles a day and hardly ever drive back to back days. But from the time we left the Dragoons we covered roughly 1200 miles in five days with only one weekend as a break. + + + +One night, the day we left the Dragoons, the forecast called for 18 degrees overnight so we got a hotel in Deming NM. I ended up sleeping in the bus anyway and it wasn't that bad, but we try to err on the side of caution for the kids. From there we went on to Las Cruces, ostensibly for the night, but we knew we wanted to head up to the Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns the next day and that area was having winds in the 60-70 mile and hour range. + +I wanted to see what the bus would be like in those kinds of winds, but Corrinne wasn't having it. We holed up at a state park outside Las Cruces for the weekend. Even there the wind was bad enough that one day I don't think we left the bus for more than 20 minutes. + + + + +When things finally calmed down we hit the road again and made the Guadalupe Mountains only to discover that -- despite what the news was saying -- the park was closed for the government shutdown. I really didn't care because I was still so excited the bus had actually made it over Guadalupe Pass without incident that the whole world could have been on fire and I wouldn't have cared. I made it over the hill damn it. + + + +We ended up camping in a parking lot just down the road for the night, along with a few other rigs in the same situation. + + + + +The next morning the government was back in business so we drove up to Carlsbad Caverns and had the place pretty much to ourselves. + + + + +Carlsbad was just like Corrinne and I remembered it from our childhoods, with one exception -- there's almost no water in any of the pools now. Turns out the park service was artificially filling those pools the keep visitors enthralled, but at some point it thought better of that and now lets nature run its course, which means very little water. + +It's a very strange thing to descend 800 feet underground, but what surprised me the most was how quickly the kids became hushed and whispered in the darkness. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +We spent the morning underground. Part of the reason there was no one in the cave was because the elevator wasn't working. We'd been told that it would be fixed around 10, but that turned out to not be true. There was about half an hour there where we thought we'd have to hike out. Not the end of the world, but not really what the kids were looking forward to. Just about the time we were going to give up and start hiking out we heard the hiss of elevator doors and we ended up escaping the underworld the easy way. So long Hades, Persephone, Dionysus and all the rest of the vegetation cycle personifications around the world. The underworld is fun to visit, but I wouldn't want to stay. + +We had a quick bite to eat in the parking lot and then continued on our way. The drive south from Carlsbad to Fort Stockton was the single worst road we've driven, and I'll go ahead and say it's in the top ten worst roads I've driven anywhere in the world. The reason? The fracking industry. This is west Texas, the water table won't support fracking, so water is trucked in. Hundreds and hundreds of trucks all day every day will absolutely destroy a road. And of course whatever water table was available here is full of chemicals now and, from a human perspective, forever. + +Fracking is bit like burning the furniture to keep the house warm, and all you need to know about the current state of oil in the world is to drive though an area where the old oil pumps are rusted and collapsing and water trucks are rolling by in the steady stream -- we're getting desperate and nothing illustrates that so well as a fracking field. This is the third we've driven through and by far the worst. + +After a night in Fort Stockton we continued on toward Kerrville and somewhere on that drive, I can almost pin it down to single climb over a single hill, you're no longer in the west. You're also not yet in the east. Nor are you in the Midwest. You're in something uniquely Texas for a while. By Kerrville though you're more or less back in the south. I got a little giddy at the grocery store walking the aisle and seeing okra, collards, grits, Duke's Mayonnaise and all the other things I love about the south. + + + +Westerners and Northerners always look at me funny when I say the south is my favorite part of America. Doubly so when they find out I actually grew up in Los Angeles. Whatever the case, it's good to be back in the south. And yes, there's more to it than a few foods that I've come to love. For example southern campgrounds put soap in the bathrooms, you really need to look into this westerners. + +To be totally honest I've never been able to put my finger on exactly what it is I love about the south beyond saying that the people are kinder, more open, and friendlier. If you want to be left alone and never have to talk to anyone at the grocery store, head to the west. If you prefer to engage with your fellow spaceship travelers you'll have a more rewarding time of it in the south. + +Sometimes this gets called "southern politeness", but I dislike that term. I prefer kindness. What I mean by that is that you say hello to people when you can, yes, strangers. You hold the door for them if you can, you pause to let them go first, you wait for them when they walk and you're in a car, you respect them and treat them as people even if you don't like them at all. This last point is especially important. Even if you thoroughly dislike someone, perhaps especially if you thoroughly dislike them, you still treat them with respect, you treat them as if you loved them. + +The reason I prefer to term kindness is that the whole politeness thing gets obsessed over by northerners and westerners who think it's somehow quaint and charming. It's neither. It's much simpler than that. It's something that used to be called common decency, which you would extend to anyone -- anyone with whom you have an I-you relationship. That is, anyone you consider a "person". When people get rude and people get dangerous it's because they have convinced themselves that you are an "it" not a "you"[^2]. + +That's why I don't like the term polite. In fact even the term kindness should be unnecessary. I would prefer to call the kindness nothing at all and instead define northern and western behavior what it is -- coarse and rude. + +One thing we've painfully noticed in 8000 miles of travel around the U.S. is that the lack of respect, the lack the treating the world around you and what's in it as equals, is a huge part of so many of the problems our country is having just now. When you deal with the world outside yourself as a collection of "its" things have a way of turning ugly rather quickly. + +There are, in my experience, more people with more "yous" in their lives in the south than elsewhere. + +This is part of why, despite the economic strife, lingering racial prejudices, and the arrogant dismissal of the rest of the nation, southerners remain a generally happier, friendlier bunch than most. And of course it's doubly impressive when you consider that there are more differences among people in the south than in much the rest of the country. + +That's not to say the south doesn't have terrible people or is somehow a paradise. It's flawed like everything else. It's a mess too, but the people in it have at least retain the ability to go about the daily lives with a certain grace, dignity, and kindness that I find missing elsewhere. I should also probably say that, by the same token, we've met very nice, kind people in the west and are glad to call many of them friends at this point. + +One of the interesting outgrowths of leaving the south has been discovering that southern culture extends beyond its borders. I can't tell you how many people have come up to us to talk because they saw our license plate. We've met Georgians, Carolinians, Louisianans, Alabamans and others who wanted to talk simply because we were also from the south, because they knew we would talk, because they knew we would treat them with respect, and perhaps because there is an unwritten understanding among those from the south that we must stick together in the face of the unkindness that has engulfed the rest of the nation. + +Truth be told I feel like, unfortunately, many of the things I like about the south -- nebulous and difficult to define though they may be -- are fast disappearing. They seem already gone in many larger cities, except perhaps New Orleans, but New Orleans is really it's own thing, not exactly part of the south. + +Still, if you stick to the small towns, particularly those lining the gulf of Mexico, the further out from the interstate and cities the better, you can still find some of the south Henry Miller describes in his 1939 drive across America. + +For the foreseeable future, that's our plan -- visit the small towns, the backwaters, the places in the south that time forgot so to speak. + +[^1]: Our registration eventually showed up and got to us in Tucson, but by then we'd already made reservations all along the Gulf Coast (the one downside of the Gulf is that you can't just show up and expect to get a campsite in most places). +[^2]: I'm borrowing those terms from philosopher Martin Buber because I think they work quite well, so long as you keep in mind that all dualities are concealing a third possibility. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-01-31_almost-warm.txt b/jrnl/2018-01-31_almost-warm.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..70323da --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-01-31_almost-warm.txt @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +On some level it's never made sense to me to differentiate between oceans -- they're all connected, there's only one ocean. That said, there are some very different, call them personalities, and ecologies to different oceans, different shores, in different parts of the world. My favorite in these parts is the Gulf of Mexico. + + + +We're a little way from warm, but it sure is nice to have sun and sand at least. If the wind died down it probably would be warm. Not bad for January. + + + + + +If the wind died down though it'd be because we were somewhere else. Wind swept barrier island is a phrase that gets used a lot when you read about the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico, it's the defining factor of these islands. The wind brings the waves, the waves bring the sand. No wind, no islands. + +The wind shapes the land too, controlling what can grow here. Anything that grows out here has to deal with poorly drained soil, endless winding bending it and the occasional large dump of salt water from hurricanes -- the wind again. Once you get beyond the dunes, the sea oats, prairie senna, and gulf croton, the island is like one continuous marshy sea of bulrush, cattails, and cordgrass. Hardly anything is taller than my waist. + + + + +It's a beautiful, if somewhat stark and, yes, windswept. We had warm and sunny though. Cold and rainy too. But if the sun was out, we were on the beach. + + + + +The kids had been bugging me to take them fishing for, oh, two years now. A while back I finally got around to buying a fishing pole. Then I read up on surf fishing rigs, since I've never fished from the shore[^1]. + +I just bought a one day license since I knew we wouldn't be in Texas long. Naturally it was the coldest day we'd seen. But, after a suitable lecture on how fishing requires patience, we're probably not going to catch anything, etc, etc, we tossed the line out. It was out for about two minutes when Lilah announced she'd caught a fish. I didn't believe her, because seriously, I cast the line, It turned around to arrange my chair and she said she had a fish. No way. But, sure enough. She had a fish. Shows you what I know. + +
+ + + + +
+ +It did rain from time to time, never very hard, but enough to force a break from the beach. Fortunately there's plenty to do inside bus, like learning to sew. And no, no one gets stir crazy anymore. After our long sickness, when no one went outside for a week, being cooped up inside for one day is nothing. + + + + + + + +The weather cooperated nicely to let us see the lunar eclipse, which was a super blue blood moon. Because in astronomy adjectives are cheap apparently. But it was really neat. We all got up early to see it, though the kids were considerably less enthusiastic about 5 AM moon viewing than I thought they would be. Go figure. I thought was pretty amazing to see the moon disappear into the darkness of the earth's shadow and then turn around and see the sun rising behind us a few minutes later. + + + + +On a totally unrelated note, several people have asked me for more writing and more photos so I've added a couple things to the bottom of this post (and future posts). One is all the animals and plants we see in a given place. Frankly that's probably overly ambitions, but I've been recording the birds I see for quite a while, because I'm nerdy like that, so there's plenty of birds. In the future you can click on a bird and you might read a story or two about it, but I haven't had time to add them just yet. + +I also started posting shorter notes, things that were interesting, but don't fit the narrative of a post. So far they're mostly about stuff that happens on drives, or things I think about on drives. I call them field notes. They're not edited and the photos are blurrier, but if you want more luxagraf, there you go. If you're clever with URLs you can figure out where a full list of notes resides. One of these days maybe I'll add a menu item for notes, but in the mean time... + +[^1]: Like everything else fun, in California you can't do that. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-02-05_hugging-the-coast.txt b/jrnl/2018-02-05_hugging-the-coast.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..565c4dd --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-02-05_hugging-the-coast.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +Our plan for the remainder of winter was to chase the weather along the Gulf Coast, working our way up into Louisiana in time for Mardi Gras. After a week on Padre Island we headed north, hugging the coastline up to Matagorda Beach, which supposedly had a beach where bums like us could park for free. + +It did turn out to have just that, but it would have meant driving out on sand that was way too soft for the bus. We ended up at a rather pricey RV park for the night. Fortunately it was right by the beach, so we at least had a nice sunny afternoon playing on the sand. + + + + + + + +A couple people have asked how we find the places we go, and, after giving this some thought I think I finally have an answer. There are three ways we find stuff. The best is when Corrinne finds something. I don't know how she does it, but she'll sit there with her phone for a while researching things while we drive (I can only recount what I observed before we had the dingy) and next thing I know we're at some really great, cheap campground. That's about 40 percent of where we stay. + +Another 20-30 percent of what we find is word of mouth. We meet someone, they say, oh you have to go to ______. So we do. The rest of what we find is pretty mundane, we look for green spots on maps, and sometimes we use freecampsites.net, wikicamp, guidebooks, etc. That's about it. + +Matagorda Beach was a green spot I had noticed halfway between Padre Island and Holly Beach, LA. + +While we were there I met a couple on a beach who told me about a good county park up on Galveston Island. Under normal circumstances that would probably have become out next stop, but the weather forecast for Galveston was rain and wind for several days so we pressed on, up into Louisiana, to a place called Holly Beach. + +The drive took us through Houston, which, like most cities, was largely forgettable except for one thing, the massive, ugly and rather ominous looking oil refineries and storage tanks the litter the coast for what feels like forever, but is probably only 20 miles or so. + + + +Sometimes it gives me great pause to see what we humans have done to our world. I hate that we need oil to do this. I hate that without all that ugliness this would not be possible. I have all kinds of stats about how little energy we use, how 65 gallons of water can last us a week, but in the end, we feed those refineries as much as anyone. We need a boat. + +I was thinking about energy, oil and the end of abundant cheap oil all the way to Holly Beach. I don't know why I wanted to go to Holly Beach. I'd first read about it in Peter Jenkins book, Along the Edge of America, which is a good read if you have any interest in the Gulf Coast. But I have no idea why Holly Beach stuck out, it doesn't really figure in the book much at all, but for whatever reason my brain latched onto it and I wanted to go. + +It turned out to be a sad little place. Broken down houses, a few renovated as rentals, but hardly anyone around anymore. There was free camping on the sand, but again soft sand so we just pulled to the side of the road and spent one night. The dead dolphin washed up on the beach didn't really make me want to fish and by the time the sun went down it was cold, raining and somewhat miserable. This is why Corrinne is usually in charge of where we stay. + + + + + + + +Of course, a cold, rainy day on the beach is still better than most days so it's not that I'm complaining, I'm just saying, if you want to find the really good camping spots, hit my wife up for advice, not me. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-02-07_on-the-beach.txt b/jrnl/2018-02-07_on-the-beach.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ef08262 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-02-07_on-the-beach.txt @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ + + +Soft sand? Ten thousand pound vehicle? What could go wrong? + +If you want a view like this though, you have to park in places like this: + + + +Ordinarily I probably wouldn't have done it, but when we pulled in there was another rig parked further down and its own came over and offered to pull us out with his truck should anything go wrong. I walked the sand it seemed firm enough so we went for it and it all worked out fine. There's nothing like free ocean front camping. + +If you use the websites I mentioned in the last post, notably freecampsites.net, and you zoom in on the south Louisiana coast there are basically two places to camp, Holly Beach and Rutherford Beach. After not finding much to like about [Holly Beach](/jrnl/2018/02/hugging-coast) we were prepared to be disappointed by Rutherford a well, but it turned out to be pretty near perfect. It's also listed as one of the best shell beaches around and it definitely has more shells than anywhere I've ever been. + + + + + +We spent five days on the beach. It stormed a good bit and fog would roll in pretty much every night, hiding the lights both onshore and off, making it feel like we were all alone in the world. + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2018-02-08_on-avery-island.txt b/jrnl/2018-02-08_on-avery-island.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f9b0cc4 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-02-08_on-avery-island.txt @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +Avery Island is best known to me as the title of a [Neutral Milk Hotel album](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Avery_Island), but for most people it's probably better known as the home of Tabasco. + + + +I love hot sauce, all kinds of hot sauce. A quick inventory of the pantry just now produced seven different bottle of hot sauce, including one home made ghost pepper sauce. Despite that I've never really like Tabasco, it's too vinegary to me. Still, people love it and it's been made more or less the same way, by the same family, since shortly after the Civil War. That's a longer, more storied history than any of the bottles in my pantry. + +My father-in-law grew up on this area and toured Avery Island in grade school, we put the kids in his footsteps. Or sort of. Back in the fifties they let you actually go in the salt mines, today you get to walk through a Disneylandesque replica. Otherwise though I doubt much as changed. For as widely distributed, and seemingly huge as the Tabasco company seems, production is decidedly down home. + + + + + + +Part of the reason Tabasco is on Avery Island is that the island -- which is just barely deserving of the name island -- is made mostly of salt. When Tabasco was founded everything was right there, plant peppers, mine salt and you're away. + +Avery Island also happens to be one of the tallest points in southern Louisiana, sitting at 163 feet above sea level. It doesn't sound like much, but it's allowed the structures on the island to survive over a hundred years of hurricanes. Apparently that's changing though. Rita, which hit this area hard in 2005, flooded the marshes and much of the island, and things are getting worse every year. + +The marsh that protects the island loses about 30 feet per year as saltwater from rising seas seeps in and kills off the fresh water plants. As those plants die the soil loosens and dissolves, washing out the sea. Dredging for shipping canals and oil exploration canals abandoned by the oil companies also hasten erosion of the marshes. Without the buffer of the marsh the storm surge of the more frequent and stronger storms reaches further inland, up onto the island. + +The McIlhenny family has been working hard to combat the soil loss, planting cordgrass and building its own levee and pumps system, which is not uncommon down here. There's simply too much coastline and it's disappearing too fast for the government of Louisiana to deal with, towns and companies in the area are [building their own systems](http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2017/08/levee-ing_the_odds_southwest_l.html). In the end nothing is going to stop the sea, some places will survive just fine, and Avery Island may well be one of them, but even the current heads of the McIlhenny family admit they might have to [move](http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2018/01/tabascos_homeland_is_in_a_figh.html) someday. + +In the mean time, the hot sauce is still too vinegary in my opinion, but the factory tour is well worth it, even the finished product isn't your thing. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-02-12_mardi-gras-deux-facons.txt b/jrnl/2018-02-12_mardi-gras-deux-facons.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e62bf21 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-02-12_mardi-gras-deux-facons.txt @@ -0,0 +1,60 @@ +When we were first plotting out a route for the spring it didn't occur to us that we'd be in Louisiana for Mardi Gras. Like most of the nation, for us Mardi Gras was just another Tuesday. Once we realized that our timing would put us there though we knew we had to go, preferably out deep in the Cajun/Acadian region from which Mardi Gras originates. + +I won't pretend to understand Mardi Gras, or where it comes from, though at least some of what we saw apparently dates from the Middle Ages when various guilds and small secret societies would celebrate, er, something? Some say it goes back to the feast of begging, in medieval France, but a good argument can be made that it's much older than that. Whatever its origins, it's insular enough that if you aren't part of the culture, I don't think you'll ever really understand it. That won't stop you from enjoying it though. + +Part of what makes it complicated is that there are so many different ways people celebrate Mardi Gras. What you see in one place often bears no resemblance to what you see in another. + +The only thing historians of Mardi Gras seem to agree upon is that at some point Mardi Gras became intertwined with the Catholic celebration of Lent. Mardi Gras became a celebration of excess in preparation for the deprivation of Lent. I think. Beads, heavy drinking and most of the other things we outsiders associate with Mardi Gras are apparently quite recent though, starting some time in the late 1940s, or '50s, or '60s, depending on who you ask. + +The basis of most celebrations these days are the parades, huge floats full of people decorated with beads marching through towns, throwing out candy, toys and beads to those of us who gather to watch. We got beads, so many beads. + +We attended two Mardi Gras celebrations, the first was a children's parade in Lafayette. It wasn't the best day for a parade, rain poured down just as it was about to get underway, but that didn't stop anyone, including us. + +
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ +We managed to make it back to the campground in time for the golf cart parade. Like I said, Mardi Gras is all about the parades, even when they're small. + + + + + + +Before there were beads there was the Courir de Mardi Gras, which is Cajun French for "Fat Tuesday Run". As with so many things in America over the last century, "run" morphed into "drive" and (probably) this is where the whole parade thing started. The biggest home of the old style "Courir" is in Mamou, where, apparently we [might have seen Anthony Bourdain](https://www.instagram.com/p/BfJ1JZkH0dA/), but we decide to go to Iota for a Tee Mamou, or small mamou. + +There was plenty of food and two stages with various Cajun bands. + + + + + + + +Before the main run, or drive in this case, there was a children's version that led up to stage for some dancing. + + + +Then the main run started, costumed people descended on the downtown area, chasing chickens, dancing, and begging for loose change. There's plenty of drunkenness, going on, but it's not the chaos you might expect. There's a Capitaine in charge of keeping people in line and he has a whip to back up whatever the rules are. + + + + + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2018-02-21_vermilionville-grand-isle.txt b/jrnl/2018-02-21_vermilionville-grand-isle.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6d128ba --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-02-21_vermilionville-grand-isle.txt @@ -0,0 +1,49 @@ +Just before Mardi Gras we had planned to head up to Lafayette, LA. There was a nice county park there that would have put us walking distance to some of the Mardi Gras things we wanted to do, but on the way there the brakes went out on the bus. I found a shop, put in a new master cylinder, but to accommodate that we ended up staying in Palmetto Island. Not a big deal, but it did mean we missed out on a couple things we wanted to do in Lafayette. + +The main one was visiting [Vermilionville](http://www.vermilionville.org/vermilionville/index-old.html), so on our way to Grand Isle we swung north to Vermilionville for the morning. Vermilionville is a little bit like [Pioneer Farm near Austin](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/05/austin-part-one), except that instead of Texas history, Vermilionville is preserving some of the Cajun and Acadian culture that once dominated the area. There's a bayou, some old bayou-style acadian homes that have been brought here, restored and once again face the bayou. + + + + + +The brakes still weren't quite where I wanted them, so I spent a bit of time in the Vermilionville parking lot tinkering, testing and mostly failing and sighing a lot. Eventually I decided to just go for it. We were only planning to go about a hour down the road, to a campsite we'd been told about by someone at Bayou Segnette. It was all highway driving, so the stop and go would be minimal. I made it, but by the time we got to our camp I'd died several times and knew what my problem was -- vacuum leak. + +It was too late to run anywhere for parts so I just parked it in our campsite and took the kids over to the playground. When in doubt it's best to relax and think things over. + + + + + +The next day we set out for Grand Isle. Corrinne and kids went ahead to run some errands along the way while I limped along behind them. I pulled into a Walmart parking lot to see if I could track down the vacuum leak. I ended up spending a few hours under the bus, running around getting some new hoses, failing to find new hoses and just generally failing. I cut down the main rubber hose that connects the engine side to vacuum line running back to the booster, reconnected it. Hit all the connections toward the back with starter fluid, hit the engine connections with WD40 and nothing ever sent the engine revving up or otherwise indicated I'd found the problem. + +By then it was 3 o'clock and we still had a good hour of driving to do so I fired it and when it didn't immediately die, decided that was good enough for the day. Clearly my standards have slipped. At the time I was thinking well, if I have to spend all day under the bus, in the heat, at least I want to be able to jump in the ocean when I'm done, so let's get to Grand Isle and then I'll work on it some more. It was a pretty good plan, except that I didn't anticipate the mosquitoes. + +Grand Isle is a strange little place, one of those places whose heyday is well in time's rearview mirror, but has managed in the mean time to develop a dilapidated charm all its own. Certainly an impressive amount of engineering and roadwork went into making it even possible to get out here. It's way, way out here. From here the next point south is the Yucatan. On the drive out you pass through some gorgeous marshland and get a tour of all the various efforts to stop the effects of rising seas and increasing hurricane frequency. + + + +The first day we were there I ignored the bus and spent the day at the beach like a regular tourist. + + + + + + +The next day I got back to work on the vacuum lines. Or rather I work my day job in the morning, waiting for the wind to pick up and then once it did, it drove the mosquitoes away and I could get to work on the bus. The mosquitoes on Grand Isle were the worst we've seen anywhere. They were massive, flew in swarms so thick you could see them coming and seemed totally immune to all the bug repellents we own. At times they made an otherwise quite nice place into a pretty miserable one. Fortunately during the day there was enough of an onshore breeze to drive them away. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +I started by checking every hose on top of the engine and found a cracked heater hose I'd been avoiding dealing with for some time. When I bent it back to get it out of the way it ruptured and dumped a considerably amount of coolant all over the engine. Fortunately there was plenty of slack in the hose so, after giving the rest of it a thorough inspection, I was able to cut off the bad end and reattach it. + +Then I decided to replace the fuel filter because I'd been meaning to for about 1000 miles now. I started to do that realized one of the small rubber fuel hoses was cracked, so I swapped that out as well. Then I went rhough tightening all the bolts I could find and, by the end of the day, I'd done next to nothing to fix the vacuum leak, but had put in a good few hours of repairs. + +The next day when the breeze kicked in again I got serious and pulled out the entire main vacuum line from engine to rear booster and inspected it thoroughly, finding nothing. However, when I put it back together again I had 20in of pressure and the engine was purring right where I like it to be. Alas, the brakes were still soft and would lock up sometimes, which probably means there's still a vacuum leak in there somewhere. I also knew we needed new shoes, which I wasn't about to do on an island in the middle of nowhere. + +That, combined with the mosquitoes, made the decision easy. We left Grand Isle after three nights. It's a nice place, well worth a visit, but we needed to get to New Orleans. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-02-28_trapped-inside-song.txt b/jrnl/2018-02-28_trapped-inside-song.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..829a5f0 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-02-28_trapped-inside-song.txt @@ -0,0 +1,69 @@ +We limped into New Orleans on a Sunday afternoon. I parked the bus in a camp site at Bayou Segnette, jumped in the car and we headed into the city. No one used the word "brakes". It was a perfect day. + +Somewhere on the drive in we'd crossed over the little line dividing the Gulf air from the lower edge of the jet stream[^1]. On the other side of that line is warmth. So, despite being February, New Orleans was the only way it's ever been in the eight times I've been here, as far as I can tell, the only way it ever is, the way it should be, the way it was meant to be: hot, humid, sweltering. I wouldn't want it any other way. + + + + + +This time around we hit some of our favorite spots, crepes in the French Market, swings and Storyland out at City Park, but we also spent more time in one of my favorite parts of New Orleans, Faubourg Treme. + + + + + +I ended up finding a good coffee shop to work at in the heart of Treme. It also served Sno-balls with an absurd amount of syrup on them, which kept the kids on a good sugar high while we wandered the streets. + + + +While I was working Corrinne and the kids went to the Children's Museum, which they all said was the best they've ever been to. Good enough that they went back a couple of times. + +
+ + + + + + + + + + +
+ +I'd be hard pressed to come up with a more kid-friendly city than New Orleans, but then I think our kids may be a bit unusual. + +One day at the campground I was working and Corrinne took the kids to the little playground. There ended up being some other kids there and they were all playing together. I wasn't there but apparently the parents were complaining about how dirty New Orleans was (homeless people! Poop on the street! The horror!) and one of the kids told Lilah she didn't like New Orleans. Later, when they were walking back to the bus Lilah whispered to Corrinne, *I just don't think I could be friends with someone who doesn't like New Orleans*. + + + + + + +While it would have been nice to ignore the brake situation completely, it did need to be dealt with. I got in touch with a shop that said they could do it and drove it over one morning. They got it apart and for the first time I saw the front shoes, and yep, we need new shoes, badly. Unfortunately the shoes are a bit of an oddity and the shop couldn't get a shoe that fit. We ended up sleeping in the bus in the driveway of the shop with one tire off that night. Probably our oddest campsite thus far. + + + +In the end though, two different shoes were ordered and neither ended up fitting. The next day we limped back to the campground to wait on a third set that was on order, but wouldn't get here for five days. That meant an extra few days in New Orleans, but we've certainly been stranded in far less interesting places. No one was complaining this time. + +We spent more time hanging around the campground this time around. Sometimes it's good to spend a few days doing nothing. I worked, the kids played, we cooked lots of blackend redfish, ate crawfish boudin, and waited out a rainstorm or two. Once I even tricked the kids into letting me take portraits of them. + + + + + + + + + + + + +At the end of five days of waiting... that shoe didn't fit either. I eventually tracked down shoes for the front, but it'd be another five days to have them shipped down and that would mean missing out on our reservations at Fort Pickens. We decided that, if we stuck to the interstate and avoided the stop and go traffic, it'd be fine. I also had a list of shops in Pensacola that I was pretty sure could help us out. + +After ten days in New Orleans we were ready to move on anyway. It's a lovely city, it'd still be top of our list to move to if we were interested in living in a city. But we're not. Right now we're more interested in discovering what's around the next corner. + +[^1]: Not mentioned in my summary of our planning tools were a couple of weather-related websites. We use [https://earth.nullschool.net/][1] obsessively, or at least I do. Pretty sure my wife has better things to do with her life. But between that site and [the University of Wisconsin's various weather data][2] you can get a pretty definitive understanding of why the weather is what it is where you are and where you need to go to improve it. + +[1]: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-86.26,31.40,3000 +[2]: http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/us_comp/large diff --git a/jrnl/2018-03-07_island-sun.txt b/jrnl/2018-03-07_island-sun.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f41d4ab --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-03-07_island-sun.txt @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +When we were sitting in the bus, sick, in Victorville, where the temperatures were in the twenties at night, nothing sounded quite so good to us as the perfect, sugary, white sand beaches of Gulf Islands National Seashore. + + + +The danger with reminiscing from a long way away is you tend to forget the negative things, but in this case the only downside is the campground, which is little more than a parking lot. I can live with that when the beach looks like this. + + + + + + + + + +This time around there were no Blue Angels flying overhead, but we did make a trip across the bay one day to check out the naval aviation museum. + + + + + +The kids were into the various Blue Angel planes, but otherwise seemed bored with the place. I thought it was moderately interesting until Corrinne pointed out that all the planes had been sanitized, not a single pin-up, or any nose art at all to be found in the whole place. + +I asked one of the docents about it and he told we it was done to make the place more family-friendly. Because building a monument to the various ways to kill people from the air is totally family-friendly, but sex, the way, if you recall, you actually get families, is not. One of the things I hope foreign guidebooks to our strange land prepare visitors for is that sometimes American logic will make your head explode. + +We beat a haste retreat back across the bay to the beach. + +The last day it suddenly turned quite cold and rained most of the day, but we still managed to get some time in the sand. + + + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2018-03-14_green-sea-days.txt b/jrnl/2018-03-14_green-sea-days.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b76bea8 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-03-14_green-sea-days.txt @@ -0,0 +1,49 @@ +When we planned out this trip back through the Gulf we made reservations at a bunch of places we knew we wanted to go but wouldn't be able to just show up and find anywhere to camp. In between those places though we left a month to wander around and see what we found. The first stop in our wander was a free campground on East Bay, which is part of Pensacola Bay. + + + +I've seen more than a few full time RVers complaining on the internet that there's no free camping in Florida or the Gulf Coast in general. I can't decide if I should correct this ignorance or not. I'm going to take the middle ground and say there's plenty of free camping all along the Gulf Coast you, but you do have to know where to look. We've found great free camping in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida. It's harder to find, that's true, but it's definitely there. And while I'm on the subject, the whole free camping thing is not, at least for us, really about being free. That is nice, but what free camping almost always means is fewer people and wilder places, which is the main appeal for us. + + + + + + +The place we stayed on the shore of East Bay is a small campground at the end of a dusty dirt road made of dried Florida red clay. The rains turned it to mud, but not so bad we couldn't get in and out. Follow the road long enough through the pine flats, bayous and marshes and you'll find a little campground on the bay. There's only 12 sites and a crazy online reservation system that ensure most of them will be unoccupied at any given time (despite being "full" if you look online)[^1]. We stayed a total of 10 nights there in two separate trips and never saw the place full. . + +So there is free camping in Florida, plenty of it in fact, you just have to find it. That said, this place is probably somewhat unique. It's a little slice of wild Florida that doesn't seem like it's changed much since the Choctaw were living here a few hundred years ago. + + + + + +It was nice to get back to something a little wilder. I love the south, and it does have some very wild spots, but they're fewer and further between than the west. East Bay felt wilder than any place we'd been in a long time, probably since Rutherford Beach. + +We first visited the area a week earlier on our way to Fort Pickens. The day we arrived they were doing a controlled burn in the pine flats (our neighbor told me there's a pine around here that only germinates with fire, which could be the reason). The air was filled with smoke and ash rained down on us all afternoon which made the place feel even wilder. That night we had a campfire, but real fire was beyond our camp in the woods. For the most part it was a steady red glow through the trees, but occasionally a dead palm would suddenly bursting into flame with a great crashing roar. + +When we came back there were no nearby fires. The first couple days we were there it rained off and on most of the day. The cloud cover never broke. Then one afternoon the sun finally came out and the whole campground turned out. I heard the squeak of Vanagon doors and the zipper of tents being thrown open and pretty soon folding chairs were pulled out to the shoreline, shirts came off and we all sort of sat in silence and enjoyed the sunshine. We do this sort of thing all the time -- just sit and do nothing -- so I think nothing of it until we get to a campground where people are always off seeing the sights, fishing, doing stuff and all the sudden I feel conspicuous in my doing nothingness. I knew I had found my people when I noticed that everyone here was just sitting, doing nothing, staring out at the sea. There was something about the place that seemed to inspire you to just sit and think. Perhaps it was the droop of the Spanish Moss, or the glaring Florida sun, or the dead oaks along the shore, limbs reaching out like gnarled fingers clawing at the sky. Whatever the case, it was an excellent place to simply sit and feel the warmth of the sun. Or have a water fight. + + + + + + + + +You had to snatch that sun though. The rain was off and on all week. Mornings started off looking like rain, but by 10 it'd be sunny, which would last until around 2PM, at which point clouds would roll in, the wind would kick up and it would feel like a squall was coming, but then nothing ever made it all the way across the bay and by sundown it was clear enough to watch the sunset. + +A couple of mornings a strange warm fog covered the bay, just before dawn the world looked flat and blurred, sea and sky become one and suffused with a blue glow. + + + + +The gloom burned off quickly once the sun was up and the last few days we were there the weather was perfect, even if the fish weren't biting. + + + + +[^1]: While we were there the online system was changed a bit and now you're supposed to call when you arrive or you forfeit your reservations and the site is available to walk ups. This seemed to be only about half implemented and unevenly enforced, but they're trying anyway. + +People say there's no free camping in Florida, but there is, you just have to know where to look. That said, the campground at East Bay is unique. It's a little slice of wild Florida that doesn't seem like it's changed much since the Choctaw were living here a few hundred years ago. + +People say there's no free camping in Florida, but there is, if you know where to look. That said, the campground at East Bay is unique, a little slice of wild Florida that doesn't seem like it's changed since the Choctaw were living here a few hundred yea diff --git a/jrnl/2018-03-21_stone-crabs.txt b/jrnl/2018-03-21_stone-crabs.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6123355 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-03-21_stone-crabs.txt @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +After enjoying such a [nice slice of wilderness][1], we were bound to be a little disappointed returning to the crowds. + +As we headed back to the coastline we found ourselves among two peculiar breeds of American tourist, spring break partygoers in rented convertibles and snow birds in massive RVs. + +To provide maximum contrast between wild and crowded, we headed first to a place called Topsail State Park and RV Resort. And yes, it really was an RV Resort -- full hookups, pool, the whole bit, but inside a state park. It was the strangest campground we've been in and not really our scene you could say. When my wife asked if there was a trail to the beach the woman at the counter looked at her like she was crazy and apparently the first person here to contemplate walking a whole mile. There was naturally a road, complete with shuttle, that could take you to beach. + +The minute Corrinne said there was a pool I knew I'd never see the beach anyway. For the kids, at this point, white sand beaches happen pretty much all the time, but pools? Pools are exotic and enticing, even when they're the coldest pool any of us had ever set foot in. + + + + + +Topsail certainly isn't a destination for Spring Breakers, though we drove through plenty of that crowd on our way, especially in Destin. Topsail drew in the snow birds. I lost count of midwestern license plates, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, and South Dakota, but those are fulltime people[^1]. And there were some truly massive rigs, with square footage well over the average Parisian apartment. I've nothing against big rigs really, it seems very limiting to me, but hey, to each their own, still, it was odd to be around such mammoth vehicles. + +I'm not really sure how we ended up with a spot here in the first place. Corrinne had been refreshing the reservation page the whole time we were at East Bay and finally found something, a cancellation we were able to snatch up for a couple of days. + +The pool entertained the kids, and we did make it out the beach one afternoon. We walked. It was a nice beach, though pretty crowded with people and high-rise hotels just down the shore in either direction. But if you stared out at the sea and squinted a bit, it looked more or less like Gulf Islands National Seashore. + + + + + + + + +The influx of Northerners and Midwesterns brought a return of what I call the stone-faced walk-by, which I thought we'd left behind in California. + +Imagine you're walking down a trail, or a path, a nice sun-bleached wood plank boardwalk over some dunes say, and someone else is approaching you. Now nearly everywhere I've been on this planet, in dozens of cultures, with dozens of language barriers, in nearly every case, everyone at least smiles and maybe attempts to exchange pleasantries, even if the latter are not maybe completely understood. + +In parts of America though there's another approach: the stone-faced walk-by. + +In this scenario you not only don't smile or exchange pleasantries. Instead you don't acknowledge the other person at all. You completely avoid making eye contact because you're very concerned about something over... there, anywhere really, except the direction of the approaching person. You find this spot to stare at, like it's the guiding light that will get you through, past the terror of interacting with other people, without actually interacting, like a child who closes her eyes and momentarily pretends that nothing around her exists. And then you slide on by the other person without acknowledging their existence in any way. + +It's fascinating to watch, bizarre and a little disconcerting to experience. It helps to narrate the whole thing in your head using the voice of David Attenborough. Sometimes I swear you can almost hear the approaching person's subvocalization: please don't talk to please don't talk to me please don't talk to me. + +It's strange, very strange. But then maybe it's the place, not the people. I didn't notice it the time, but I ended up with pictures of the kids looking hilariously (and unintentionally) angsty while playing on the beach. + + + + +Different places bring out different things in you. I have a post about that, but that's for another day. For now I'll just say that Topsail was an oddball place; we didn't dislike it exactly, but I think we were all ready to move on when our three nights were up. + + + +[1]: /jrnl/2018/03/green-sea-days +[^1]: A lot of full time people make South Dakota their state of residence. Just as Delaware attracts corporations with tax breaks and easy incorporation processes, South Dakota has (purposefully or not, I'm not sure) made it easy to be a resident, and even get mail, without needing to actually be in the state more than once every few years. So when you see an RV with South Dakota plates, chances are, that's a full timer. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-03-24_old-school.txt b/jrnl/2018-03-24_old-school.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6f71fda --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-03-24_old-school.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +There are a handful of places on the planet where the earth has created what are known as coastal dune lakes, fresh water lakes located within two miles of the ocean. They occur in Australia, Madagascar, New Zealand, South Carolina and here in Florida, more specifically, in Walton County. There were a handful of dune lakes at [Topsail][1] and a couple more at our next destination, Grayton State Park. + + + +These lakes are more than 10,000 years old, and play an important role in making this coastline look the way it looks. Unlike most dunes, these areas have pretty good soil. When it rains hard the lakes fill and the water escapes through what's known as an outfall, which is where the lake overwhelms the berm that separates it from the sea. When that happens fresh water floods out over the dunes, delivering nutrients, along with plants and animals that would otherwise not be on dunes. + +The lakes are also individually disinct, with varying levels of salinity and different specifies of life in each one. Probably the most popular of the lakes, from what I could tell, is here in Grayton, known as Western Lake. + + + +We were again, somehow, able to get in on some cancellations and spent four days wandering the lakeside and seashore of Grayton State Park. This time there was no RV Park, no pool and the people were mostly like us. One morning some kids from another site wandered over and started playing with our kids. Eventually the parents came by to check on their children and we got to talking. The mom told me about how she let her son, who was seven, wander wherever he wanted. He'd walked to the beach (about a mile) the day before. + +I was impressed because I often feel like we're the only people who let our kids do that sort of thing. But then the woman expressed my one great fear, that some meddling adult would end up calling the cops or otherwise harrassing our kids about doing their own thing. It's never actually happened, but I'm constantly worried about it given the average American's inability to mind their own damn business. Neither of us had any solution, but it was at least comforting to know that other parents have the same concerns. + +Eventually the other family had to go (our kids have an unfortunate knack for making friends with kids that are leaving that day). + +Not ten minutes later some woman came up to Corrinne talking about some kids she had seen "just walking down by the water" and how "someone should be watching them." Luckily for that woman she talked to Corrinne who shrugged and politely turned away. I'm not nearly as polite. + +Another blog I read regularly writes quite a bit about this meddling phenomena in other contexts and has suggested reviving the [Anti-Poke-Nose society][2] in response to people who can't seem to stop from poking their noses in other people's business. I'd love join. And seriously world, if no one's bleeding, just stay the hell out of my kids' business. + +Free ranging children wasn't the only old school thing we did at Grayton. One day we even managed to go super old school and spend all day in the sun, like I did growing up, a good six hours of sunshine, back when we weren't scared of the sun. We still aren't. + + + +There were plenty of sandcastles built, water fights had, and games of freeze tag played. And yes, we all got a little bit of a sunburn, but I'm pretty sure we'll live. And that night, everyone, even me, was asleep before the sky had even gone dark. + + + + + + + + +[1]: /jrnl/2018/03/stone-crabs +[2]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/aemays/5547187616/ diff --git a/jrnl/2018-03-28_forest.txt b/jrnl/2018-03-28_forest.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..77c5919 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-03-28_forest.txt @@ -0,0 +1,45 @@ +When we planned out this trip back through the Gulf we made reservations at a bunch of places we knew we wanted to go but wouldn't be able to just show up and find anywhere to camp. In between those places though we left a month to wander around and see what we found. The first stop in our wander was a free campground on East Bay, which is part of Pensacola Bay. + + + +I've seen more than a few full time RVers complaining on the internet that there's no free camping in Florida or the Gulf Coast in general. I can't decide if I should correct this ignorance or not. I'm going to take the middle ground and say there's plenty of free camping all along the Gulf Coast you, but you do have to know where to look. We've found great free camping in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida. It's harder to find, that's true, but it's definitely there. And while I'm on the subject, the whole free camping thing is not, at least for us, really about being free. That is nice, but what free camping almost always means is fewer people and wilder places, which is the main appeal for us. + + + + + + +The place we stayed on the shore of East Bay is a small campground at the end of a dusty dirt road made of dried Florida red clay. The rains turned it to mud, but not so bad we couldn't get in and out. Follow the road long enough through the pine flats, bayous and marshes and you'll find a little campground on the bay. There's only 12 sites and a crazy online reservation system that ensure most of them will be unoccupied at any given time (despite being "full" if you look online)[^1]. We stayed a total of 10 nights there in two separate trips and never saw the place full. . + +So there is free camping in Florida, plenty of it in fact, you just have to find it. That said, this place is probably somewhat unique. It's a little slice of wild Florida that doesn't seem like it's changed much since the Choctaw were living here a few hundred years ago. + + + + + +It was nice to get back to something a little wilder. I love the south, and it does have some very wild spots, but they're fewer and further between than the west. East Bay felt wilder than any place we'd been in a long time, probably since Rutherford Beach. + +We first visited the area a week earlier on our way to Fort Pickens. The day we arrived they were doing a controlled burn in the pine flats (our neighbor told me there's a pine around here that only germinates with fire, which could be the reason). The air was filled with smoke and ash rained down on us all afternoon which made the place feel even wilder. That night we had a campfire, but real fire was beyond our camp in the woods. For the most part it was a steady red glow through the trees, but occasionally a dead palm would suddenly bursting into flame with a great crashing roar. + +When we came back there were no nearby fires. The first couple days we were there it rained off and on most of the day. The cloud cover never broke. Then one afternoon the sun finally came out and the whole campground turned out. I heard the squeak of Vanagon doors and the zipper of tents being thrown open and pretty soon folding chairs were pulled out to the shoreline, shirts came off and we all sort of sat in silence and enjoyed the sunshine. We do this sort of thing all the time -- just sit and do nothing -- so I think nothing of it until we get to a campground where people are always off seeing the sights, fishing, doing stuff and all the sudden I feel conspicuous in my doing nothingness. I knew I had found my people when I noticed that everyone here was just sitting, doing nothing, staring out at the sea. There was something about the place that seemed to inspire you to just sit and think. Perhaps it was the droop of the Spanish Moss, or the glaring Florida sun, or the dead oaks along the shore, limbs reaching out like gnarled fingers clawing at the sky. Whatever the case, it was an excellent place to simply sit and feel the warmth of the sun. Or have a water fight. + + + + + + + + +You had to snatch that sun though. The rain was off and on all week. Mornings started off looking like rain, but by 10 it'd be sunny, which would last until around 2PM, at which point clouds would roll in, the wind would kick up and it would feel like a squall was coming, but then nothing ever made it all the way across the bay and by sundown it was clear enough to watch the sunset. + +A couple of mornings a strange warm fog covered the bay, just before dawn the world looked flat and blurred, sea and sky become one and suffused with a blue glow. + + + + +The gloom burned off quickly once the sun was up and the last few days we were there the weather was perfect, even if the fish weren't biting. + + + + +[^1]: While we were there the online system was changed a bit and now you're supposed to call when you arrive or you forfeit your reservations and the site is available to walk ups. This seemed to be only about half implemented and unevenly enforced, but they're trying anyway. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-04-12_st-george.txt b/jrnl/2018-04-12_st-george.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9c6477d --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-04-12_st-george.txt @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +Someone who witnessed Corrinne and I trying to figure out what day of the week it was asked if we often forgot what day of the week it is. The answer is yes, yes we do. Often. There's really no need to know in our lives. We avoid driving on Sundays (fewer auto parts stores and mechanics open), but otherwise dates and days of the week are not real pertinent to our lives. + +All which is long-winded way of saying we recently ended up with a night between the end of one reservation and the beginning of another with nowhere to go. We spent it here: + + + +It was better than it looks. There was a park across the street that kept the kids busy and there's a marina just behind where I took this picture, which always provides for entertaining characters. We met two brothers who'd been sailing for I don't know how long, but they grew up on more or less the same street I did and remembered when it was full of boat builders. There wasn't a boat builder left by the time I was born. + +They had stories though, good stories. Most of which I'm not at liberty to repeat here. But if you ever see a couple sun worn men driving a golf cart around Apalachicola, talk to them if you can. And watch out. The one driving is technically blind. + +The next day we headed over to St. George Island where we had rented a beach house to meet up with some of Corrinne's family. The weather did not cooperate, but we still had fun. + + + + + +We rented the house so there would be room for everyone, but it's a little odd for us to be anywhere but the bus. Even when we plan it. It was also very strange to spend so much time indoors. I'd never really thought about how much we're outside until we were inside for a week. + + + + +As soon as Corrinne's family left it got nice and warm and sunny again, though the wind took a couple more days to die down completely. We managed to get in some beach time anyway. + + +
+ + + + + + + + +
+ + + diff --git a/jrnl/2018-04-16_migration.txt b/jrnl/2018-04-16_migration.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1dd5882 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-04-16_migration.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +If you were a bird, a small one, maybe a Palm Warbler, or a Blue-winged Warbler or perhaps an Indigo Bunting, perhaps, say, this one: + + + +If you were an Indigo bunting and you were down on the west coast of Costa Rica, spending winter where it was nice and warm, and you decided it was time to head north again, you'd first fly across Costa Rica, then Nicaragua, and then perhaps stopover for a bit in Honduras, and then maybe go for the short hop over the water to Cuba, but, to get to the woodlands of the Great Lakes area, which is where all your bunting friends are spending the summer these days, at some point you'd have to head out over the Gulf of Mexico, starting from either Cuba or Honduras. + +Either way, it's going to be a long flight over water. + +You are, just for reference, about five inches long, weigh a couple ounces, have a heart about the size of your pinky nail and are about to fly several hundred miles without stopping, day and night. You're not very waterproof and sink like a stone, albeit a small one. But over the ocean stopping is not an option, barring a lucky piece of driftwood or a boat. Eventually you'd make it to some Florida barrier island in state roughly similar to what those doomed early polar explorers looked like shortly before they collapsed and died. + +But, assuming you make it, you just might find yourself, exhausted and starving, on the shores of St George Island. + + + +St George Island is an important stopover for dozens of species of birds coming up from Cuba, the Yucatan and points well south of there, all the way to central South America in some cases. But of course most of St. George is covered in houses and not a very good place to try to find food. If you're a bird. Or a person for that matter. + +Luckily for the birds, the east end of the island is a state park with a few square miles of land set aside to be something like it was before Europeans arrived, what I imagine the birds, somewhat like the Hopi, refer to as "the previous world". + + + + + + +Alas we all live in this world, so if you want to see birds, to the state park you go. + +And we did. Another short travel day, six miles and we were done, a campsite among the birds. And, as you can see by the list at the bottom of the page, birds there were. And birders there were as well. We weren't in camp more than hour before a couple different fellow bird watchers stopped by to let us know where the good spots were. I think sometimes birders hesitate to tell us anything because they're more or less sending small children into the woods, and birds like quiet, whereas small children do not. But at least some of them take the risk, for which I'm thankful. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +I find it a little odd to know that, as I sit comfortably on the beach, sipping ice cold beverages and munching on peanuts and pork skins, somewhere overhead the drama of migration is playing out and tiny little things like Indigo Buntings are completing a journey far more impressive and grand than any I'm likely to undertake[^1]. + +Higher up, above the buntings and warblers there's even more impressive migrations happening, though many of them are accidental. The sky is full of insects. Spiders in the clouds, insects on the high winds, tons and tons of biomass moving over our heads all the time. All these concurrent lives of which we know almost nothing passing overhead, almost unnoticed save for the moments when you stop and consider them for a moment or two. + +Do they consider us from up there, looking down at the strange meaty, fleshy creatures lying in the sand, apparently doing nothing but snacking? Or do they too largely just pass on by, ignoring everything else in their own quest for their version of peanuts and pork skins? + + +[^1]: Aside from our impressive feats of seafaring, humans are not big travelers, as a species anyway. We got everywhere eventually, a testament to our adaptability, but also something that took a very long time to happen relative to the rest of the animal kingdom. And compared to epic twice yearly migrations of birds, insects, even some mammals, we're more or less homebodies. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-04-26_too-much-sunshine.txt b/jrnl/2018-04-26_too-much-sunshine.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aa997a9 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-04-26_too-much-sunshine.txt @@ -0,0 +1,68 @@ +After a few days at St. George State Park we headed back down the island to the beach house for another long weekend with some friends who came down from Atlanta. We always love to meet up with friends, but by this time we'd discovered something interesting about ourselves that we sort of already knew, we don't particularly like staying outside the bus. + +I know most people think we're crazy for living in such a small space, but for us it's not even something we think about, it's home. We're also used to being outside all the time. And I mean that pretty close to literally. If we're awake, we're generally outside, it's the best thing about the way we live. The thing is, it turns out that even we will stay indoors given the opportunity. Even though we know we're happier outside. I don't really have a good explanation or solution, other than having a tiny house. + + + +In the end though I know I probably sound like an asshole. Having access to a beach house, as well as an open-ended schedule that allows a more or less unlimited amount of time in this area, and yet deciding that we've had enough of the beach isn't going to endear me to anyone. But there it is. + +Sometimes you need a change, no matter how nice it is where you are. + +There were also a couple practical considerations that drove us to leave about 10 days before we'd originally planned. + +The first was that it's starting to get hot down here. The second, and far more important reason, is that the bus needs new brakes. I called at least a dozen mechanics between New Orleans and Apalachicola and not one of them was willing or able to do the job.[^1] Just outside of Athens, however, there's a truck mechanic whose been working on m300 series Dodge chassis since they were coming off the factory line. We also have friends and family willing to put us up in Athens, so to Athens we went. + +But not before we went to a classic car and boat show over in Apalachicola. + +I'm not really much impressed by cars these days, I was in it for the boats. Unfortunately there were only a couple boats, very nice boats, extremely well preserved/made/taken care of, but only three of them. + + + + + + +There are plenty of people keeping cars alive, but far too few keeping maritime traditions going. Future generations will suffer because we've turned our back on the sea as a culture. But so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say. + +If you want classic boats and maritime history though, Apalachicola has you covered. The Maritime Museum has quite a few restorations and a few more in progress. + + + +The museum's current big restoration project is The Golden Ball, a 50 foot wooden sloop, designed by L. Francis Hereschoff and built especially for the west coast of Florida, thanks to its shallow draw (2.5 ft) and [leeboard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeboard) stabilizing system (controlled with block and tackle, no winches or motors). There's a [video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbXpUJQhrJM) of her arrival in Apalachicola (on the back of a truck) along with the donor talking a little about the boat. + +It's a far larger boat than I would want -- should we ever decide we want a boat -- but boy would it be awesome to sail a wooden ship around the world. Nothing says fun like a family struggling to careen a worm-eaten 50-ft wood ship on some south pacific atoll. The family that careens together stays together. Probably not actually. When you come down to it, fiberglass was a pretty brilliant invention, probably up there with the ability to calculate longitude reliable on the things-that-revolutionized-seafaring scale. + +Anyway our friends had never really spent any time in Apalachicola so we wandered the town for a bit, walked around the Maritime Museum and docks, along with the old canneries and warehouses that line Water Street. + + + + + +Since no one else was interested, I wandered off to stick my head in the tent where the Golden Ball was being restored. + + + +There was no one around, it was just a big canvas shed that I guessed was covering a boat. I poked my head in, snapped a few pictures and was getting ready to head off to catch up with everyone else when a voice said, "you can go in". I turned around and an older gentleman was crossing the street coming toward me. He gestured to the giant tent and said go in. + +I said I already had. It's a beautiful ship I told him. + +He said, "thanks, but it still needs a lot of work." + +"True," I said, "but that's the fun part." I told him a little about restoring the bus, far simpler than his project, but the only restoration I've ever done. We talked about the beauty of fiberglass over wood and metal when it comes to surviving long-term exposure to the elements. + +He looked at me for a bit and then squinted a little and said, "you want to help restore this thing?" + +"Absolutely," I said. Learning wooden ship building is one of those things I've always wanted to do, along with welding, sewing, sailing, tracking, hunting, and several dozen other skills I've yet to pick up. "The problem is I don't live around here. Worse than that I don't really live anywhere." + +"Well, that's easy to fix." He smiled, "you need to move here." + +I laughed. "True, that would be the simple solution." And it's not often someone more or less offers to teach you wooden ship restoration. It was tempting. The most tempting settle-down-in-one-place offer I've had. "Someday we might," I told him, "we do love Apalachicola, but right now we're having too much fun on the road. Good luck with her though." + +"Thank you. And if you ever change your mind, come on down, I'm sure I'll still be here." He smiled. + +We shook hands and he ducked inside the tent. + +I set off down the street, walking fast to catch up with the family. + + + +[^1]: There actually is one I'm pretty sure would have been capable, and had worked on the bus last year, but he was booked up three weeks out. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-05-18_keep-on-keeping-on.txt b/jrnl/2018-05-18_keep-on-keeping-on.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8ec25a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-05-18_keep-on-keeping-on.txt @@ -0,0 +1,58 @@ +One day we fired up the bus and finally headed off St. George Island. We hugged the coast for a while before pointing our nose north, toward our former hometown, Athens, GA. + + + +It was a slow drive, the mushy brakes never far from my mind, which gave things an edge, made it far more interesting than it should have been. But, and I know this sounds crazy, I really don't use the brakes much in the bus. Take your foot off the gas and 10,000 lbs (or so) will stop pretty damn quickly. That's no excuse for letting the brakes get as bad as I did, but it might explain how I made it to Athens in one piece. + +We stopped overnight at Reed Bingham State Park in south Georgia. It had been several months since we'd driven more than 100 miles in a day and we were out of practice, after driving for two hours, we needed a break. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +After a little time on the playground, a good night's rest in the forest, and a dump of the tanks, we managed to make it the rest of the way to Athens. + +We had couple nights in town before I dropped the bus off at the mechanic's, so I spent the first few days in town frantically trying to get a dozen or so bus projects done. I pulled several panels of wood in the front (the little scoop air vents leak and I'm pretty sure they'll never stop so I cut new wood and sealed with fiberglass resin, if it's not waterproof now, it never will be), completely gutted our step area (the porch I call it), ran some new wires for new electrical outlet, repainted the kids' room in the back, and took care of at least a dozen other little "paper cut" annoyances that needed to be solved. + +And then we dropped off the bus at the truck mechanic's shop and became homeless for about three weeks. It was our longest stretch of homelessness to date, but at least we knew it was coming and we had friends and family to take us in. + +We spent a week at my in-laws', a week with our friends who run [Eastern River Expeditions](http://www.easternriverexpeditions.com/) and have a house on the river, a few days in our trusty tent (the guest house, should you meet up with us on the road) and then back to the in-laws, back to our friends' house, and so on. + +Many thanks to everyone who put us up. Somewhere in there we managed to celebrated a birthday, have a mother's day water balloon fight, and beat the unseasonably warm temps playing in sprinklers. + + + + + + + + + + + + +We also made sure to stick close to a river. We have two friends that live backed up to rivers and Watson Mill State Park has a river running through it as well so we had plenty of water to keep cool in. Lilah and I even managed to catch a small bass and a sunfish of some sort. Neither was any bigger than my hand, but they were the first we've managed to land since Texas. + + + + + + + + + +The bus brakes ended up taking about three weeks. Not because they were that complicated, but because the mechanic is essentially the only truck mechanic around and he's very, very busy. The brakes turned out to be less complicated, and less expensive than I thought they would be. In the end the main problem was that the rear self adjusting screws froze up. Or rather they got so gunked up they no longer worked. When this happened I'm not sure. I know the rear brakes were smoking coming down the pass into California, but that could have been due to the axle issues. It's possible, likely even, that we've never had rear brakes. That meant the front brakes were the only thing stopping the bus for quite some time, which then wore down those shoes much faster than it should have. + +Now that we have new shoes in the front and working adjusters in the back I have a full pedal of brakes and she stops like a nice lightweight sedan. + +Three weeks of bouncing between houses and camping, with stuff here, stuff there, projects half finished in three locations, eventually it takes its toll. I can't tell you what a relief it was to have the bus back, I don't know about the kids, they seemed more or less fine, but I was approaching desperation by the end of those three weeks. + +We got it back on a Monday and for about 48 hours all I did was eat, sleep and work on the bus. I re-installed all the panels, ran new wiring, fixed the dinnette seat cushion, and gave it a good tune up and an oil change. Just for good measure I got some new rear shocks installed on the Volvo and changed its oil too (many thanks to John and Mike for help with the shocks). + +We had a perfect weather window lined up for a Monday departure, but then somehow I got talked into staying until Wednesday, which brought plenty of rain. It was, as Snoopy would say, a dark and stormy morning when we finally pulled out of Athens. + +It was nice to see our friends and family and spend some quality time with everyone, but if anyone was wondering if we'd decide to move back, uh, yeah, that'd be a very emphatic no. We love the bus and we're still looking forward to what's around the next bend. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-05-30_thunder-road.txt b/jrnl/2018-05-30_thunder-road.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8c24e49 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-05-30_thunder-road.txt @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +There was a line of thunderheads just north of us and another just south, but we managed to slide right through Atlanta with hardly a drop of rain on the windshield. + +Sometimes I forget that most people drive cars that allow them to more or less disregard the weather. We don't. I can drive the bus through a storm, and I have, but if we can avoid it by staying put for a day or leaving a day early, we usually do. When we slide right between two of them, I won't lie, we feel a little more clever than usual. + +We spent our first night back on the road at a small campground somewhere in Alabama. We got up the next day and hit the road early. As is par for the course, we didn't realize it was Memorial Day until it was really too late to plan for it. Most campgrounds we could find that took reservations were already full. We went with our usual plan, find a campground with no electricity. Take away people's ability to run the air conditioning and televisions 24/7 and you're pretty much guaranteed to find an empty campground. + + + +And we did, right in the middle of the Natchez Trace, one of the oldest thoroughfares on the continent. It probably started with big game during the last ice age and then various tribes picked it up as well. By the time Europeans arrived it was pretty much a highway connecting the Choctaw, Natchez and Chickasaw nations. These days it's a smoothly paved road that doesn't allow trucks. + +The Meriwether Lewis campground is somewhere in the middle, a bit toward Nashville. It's where the explorer lived and died I believe, though honestly we never made it to the monument. + + + +The campground was one of those head scratchers for me. It's really nice, up on a ridge in the middle of a mostly beech and oak forest, cool breezes, plenty of shade and pretty level sites, a water spigot, bathrooms with flush toilets, trash pickup and yet totally free. I mean I get it, my tax dollars at work, but why not charge a few bucks to cover some of the costs? Like everyone else, I love free camping, but when something is free I don't expect luxuries like picnic tables and bathrooms. I expect to not be hassled about where I'm parked and not much else. Amenities and free together doesn't seem sustainable to me, but then I've never been over the Interior Department's books, so what do I know? + +Whatever the case we claimed a spot on Thursday and didn't leave all through the weekend. Memorial Day, survived. We didn't get a lot of sun, but we managed. By the time we left nearly a week later our batteries were way lower than you should ever let your batteries get. Somehow though ours keep on going though, sorta. + +We sat out some thunderstorms, sweating a bit in the bus. Those gloriously huge windows don't do you much good with it's storming too hard to have the awning out. + + +It wasn't all rain though, usually just a couple of thundershowers around midday and then it would be overcast, but plenty warm enough to head down to the creek and cool off playing in the water, catching frogs, chasing minnows, throwing rocks. + + + + + + + +We tried to get in the water every day to make sure we got the ticks off us. This part of Tennessee has ticks like nowhere I've ever been. Most of them are not deer ticks thankfully, but ticks suck even if they don't carry some disease. + +One afternoon I drove a few miles up the road to dump the tanks at a nearby RV park and couldn't help noticing how badly rusted our black tank straps had become. It was on my mind because someone in a Facebook group that Corrinne belongs to posted a story about their black tank falling off and smashing all over the ground while they drove through a campground. Awkward. + +We already refer to small towns we can't remember the name of by saying things like, "you know, the one where the fuel line cracked?" or "What was that place, where the rear transmission mount almost fell off?"; "What was that place where you hitchhiked to get a new alternator?" + +I really did not want to have one of these that went, "you know, that campground where we dropped the black tank on the ground?" + +When I got back from dumping I crawled under the tank with a flashlight to get serious about things and realized that one of our straps was already cracked about halfway through. It is 1969 steel so it probably had some life left in it, but I didn't want to risk it. + +I called a few auto parts stores in the area looking for fuel tank straps, but no one had anything. I ended up driving the Volvo to the nearest good size town, which had a Lowes, and bought some aluminum, some large sheet metal screws and two long drill bit extensions. A couple hours under the black tank and I had a nice new strap in place. The only problem was that when I jacked up the tank to lift it off the old strap, I cracked it. So two days later I was back at the RV park dumped it again, dried the outside and got busy with the fiberglass and resin. Fun times. + +Nothing makes a creek bath feel sweet like an afternoon of sweating, fiberglass, and resin. + +That night we were sitting around the fire after dinner when a pair of summer tanagers flew right up to us, chatting away as if we didn't exist. The male sat up in the tree, chirping away, almost like he was giving suggestions to the female that was down on the ground gather sticks and pine needles in her beak. Then they'd fly away and come back a bit later for more. + + + +The whole time they didn't seem bothered by our presence, even the kids playing quite loudly, at all. It was the start of something of a running theme the last couple weeks in Tennessee -- birds just fly right up to us. This morning a hawk landed about 10 feet from us and just sat there on the ground, occasionally looking over at us, but for the most part seemingly unconcerned about our existence. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-06-02_alberto-and-land-between-lakes.txt b/jrnl/2018-06-02_alberto-and-land-between-lakes.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d91b18f --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-06-02_alberto-and-land-between-lakes.txt @@ -0,0 +1,81 @@ +We outran the storms of the better part of a week, but eventually the remnants of Alberto caught up to us in northern Tennessee. We spent a couple nights at Mousetail Landing campground, mostly because it was on a ridge, no flooding to worry about. We got there early, barely lunch time. On the way up we passed this sign, which gave me pause. + + + +I dropped it in first and we made the top. It was a pretty good grade, but not that bad. We had the campground to ourselves the first night, well most of the night. I took the kids down to the playground for a while before the rain started. + + + +The rain kicked in about three that afternoon and didn't let up for about twelve hours. Luckily we keep plenty of rainy day activities on hand, though no matter how much there is to do eventually patience wears thin. + +
+ + + + + + + + +
+ +At some point in the night ranger had to move Larry, the only other camper around, from the lower campground up to the ridge because the river flooded. We didn't actually know anything about it until the next morning when we met Larry, but he had a far soggier night than we did. Aside from the front window seals, which have always leaked, there was hardly any water coming in the bus. Which means nothing, but until you remember that it makes you feel good. + +The next day was still a soggy, humid one outside. We plugged in the air conditioner and tried to de-humidify and dry things out. We did a little laundry, gave Larry a ride to a grocery store (he was paddling down the Tennessee River and had no ride for a week, and no where to go now the river was way too high to run) and hung out around camp. The next morning we said our goodbyes and continued on to Land Between the Lakes, which is a rarity for American names, it is what it says on the tin. + + + +Land Between the Lakes is one of the places we run across every so often that draws in semi-permanent residents. You find people well settled for the summer, rigs with full size refrigerators next to them, grills bigger than the one I had at our old house and golf carts, oh the golf carts. + +We stick out like sore thumbs at these places, but that's fine, at this point we're pretty well used to the attention. I'm not sure it'd feel like camping if half the campground didn't stop by to say hi and ask about the bus. Meeting new people is why I travel so I like it. Usually. I do wonder about the people who come up to me at the dump station, but otherwise. What interests me about these semi-permanent residents at campgrounds like this is that they're actually living the way the semi-nomadic people of the world have always lived -- winter in something designed for warmth, summer in something with easier access to outside. I often wonder why more of us don't do that, it's still fairly common in much of the world. + +Land Between the Lakes is what is says it is, a huge chunk of land wedged between two large reservoirs. + + + +Most people seem to come for the fishing and boating. We drove around a bit and more or less felt like we had the place to ourselves. We discovered a road with a bridge that was out, found a herd of buffalo, saw a bright yellow flock of Goldfinches flying through a field of wildflowers that looked like you'd imagine a prairie should look if you didn't know what a prairie looked like, which I don't. + + + +Then we stopped at the 1850's era farm that's been preserved. I find these places somewhat tedious, but Corrinne and the kids love it. I like the history aspect, especially in this case because people are actually still running the farm as it would have been run in the 1850s, in period correct clothing no less. It's living history, and that's pretty cool. + + + + +That said, it's probably no surprise that my interests lie with the more nomadic people of history. I like the mystery of people who left only fire rings and animal bones here and there. The sort of people that left archaeological finds that tell little other than the obvious -- the ship lost its anchor in this little cove, the hunting party paused for a fire in the shelter of this cave, the hazelnuts were processed at this camp by the river, the clam shells where dumped in a mound here and so on. What these people thought, believed, loved, hated, revered, despised, or just did all day -- all lost in the fog of time. + +As one of my favorite characters says, referring to her desire to not have a gravestone: "I do not need a marker of my passage, for my creator knows where I am.... I lived a good life, my hair turned to snow, I saw my great grandchildren, I grew my garden. That is all." + +Still, I completely understand why the rest of my family loves to visit places like the farm. It's a way to step into the past and momentarily feel like you're part of it. + + + + + + + +We're probably something of a letdown to the re-enactors though. We shuffle into a two room house and they say something to kids along the lines of "can you imagine if you all had to live in something this small?" The kids stare and don't know what to say and then we explain that we actually live in something smaller right now and that two rooms is fairly palatial by our standards. Then there's an awkward moment of silence. + +And it is interesting to see how the various European immigrants did things a little differently depending on what they were used to back home. But in every case so far, when I see how people chose to live I can't help sitting there thinking, why...? Why were you fighting against the land? Why spend all this effort reshaping the land to meet your preconceived ideas of what it should be when others had been living off it for millennia working considerably less than the average newly arrived agriculturist? + +One thing that becomes apparent quickly when rummaging around in the European immigrant history of America is that only one among millions seems to have ever bothered to find out what the people already living in any area were doing. And for whatever reason those one in a million turn out pretty frequently to be French. The guiding light of settlement in most of the US seems to have been hubris and a misplaced sense of self assuredness. Basically the two American qualities that continue to irritate the rest of the world. + +That's not to say the farm didn't have its clever ideas, and clever uses of limited resources. It certainly did and I'm glad there are people out there keeping these ideas alive. But it's sort of funny that many of the things we do for fun -- hunting, fishing, hiking/walking, going to picking berries and other fruits, etc -- are the things hunting and foraging tribes, well, just do. Something to think about. + +Whatever the case, the kids had fun wandering the farm and we happened to be there when they were feeding the animals and putting them in the barns for the night. We watched chickens and ducks get driven into the coop, sheep and pigs fed and led to the barn and we even managed to get let back into the big barns to see the largest mules I've ever come across. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +And of course there was the hawk I mentioned in the last post. It just flew in a hung out one morning. The minute we left Tennessee the birds stopped being so friendly. I have no explanation for that. + + + +On a totally different note, a couple luxagraf readers have asked where we're headed this summer. We're not entirely sure, but the rough plan is to visit Wisconsin, go around the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, then back west into Minnesota and the Dakotas, then south through Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, and down to either Texas/New Mexico. I mention this because if you're in that route and you want to meet up, drop me an email. + +**Also, if by chance you have a place somewhere roughly between Dallas and Santa Fe where we could store the bus for about six months, starting in mid October, please get in touch.** diff --git a/jrnl/2018-06-07_st-louis-city-museum.txt b/jrnl/2018-06-07_st-louis-city-museum.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b4133e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-06-07_st-louis-city-museum.txt @@ -0,0 +1,83 @@ +There's something I left out of the story of our time in Land Between the Lakes -- it was brutally hot and humid. More humid than I've ever experienced, including [Angkor Wat, Cambodia][1]. It put us in the mood for something, well, cooler. Or at least less humid. So we headed to St. Louis. Because we're not that bright. + +Actually it was strange, we drove north, up through Kentucky, and the minute we crossed the state line the humidity dropped about 50 percent and it was actually tolerable again. I didn't look it up, but I know what [earth.nullschool.net][2] would have told me -- we'd just crossed into a mass of air moving down from the north. It was short-lived, but welcome nonetheless. + +We stopped off at a mounds site on the way, and went through the somewhat creepy town of [Cairo][4], which has more or less been abandoned. It's about five miles of abandoned buildings slowly being taken over by vegetation. + + + + +We stopped for one night at the Trail of Tears State Park, which had a campground right on the Mississippi River. We ate an early dinner and spent the evening down by the shore, watching the tugboats pushing their loads up and down the river. I managed to refrain from any [Clarke Griswold impersonations][3]. + + + + + +And there was a train, you can't go wrong with kids and trains (which fortunately did not go by in the middle of the night, because you can go wrong with grownups and trains). + + + +By the time we made it to St. Louis it was back to being hot and humid, doubly so because it's a city and cities are always 10 degrees hotter than anything else. + +We came to St. Louis pretty much for one reason -- the City Museum. Everyone who said we had to go there, and there were half a dozen of you, became real vague when we asked what it was like. And now it's my turn to be real vague -- I can't really say what the City Museum is exactly. + +It's like [Antoni Gaudí][5] and Jules Verne got together and built an amusement park. + +It's sort of for kids. There are definitely things only kids were small enough to do, but then there's plenty for adults too, enough that every evening it becomes 18+ and stays open until midnight. Normally I'd say that a picture is worth a thousand words and insert of few here, but it's also a really difficult place to photograph, it's massive, full of dark areas with hidden passageways and tunnels. + +There's a bunch of slides and wire scaffolding stretching up about five stories on the outside, with an old fire engine, a wire rocket, an old cutaway airplane and a few other odds and ends mounted near the top. It's all connected by narrow scaffolds and slides. It's full of sharp edges, metal stairways and a good old fashioned modicum of danger you don't usually find in the United States of Safe and Boring. + +
+ + + + + + + + + + +
+ +Then there's the inside. The City Museum occupies a 13 story building, though only about four of those stories are currently open to the public, others are open, but still in the process of being built. There was even an art gallery of some sort that was blocked off behind drapes and locked doors, no idea if it even had anything to do with the City Museum. It's a very open space meant for exploring. + +The best part of the inside part is a kind of dark, cave-like labyrinth, that extends for at least two, possibly three floors, with connecting tunnels you have to crawl through made of rebar and driftwood, cement, plastic, metal ribs, you name it. They sell knee pads near the ticket windows at the entrance. + +
+ + + + + + + +
+ + + + +Then there's the roof, which costs a little extra, but is worth it. There's a full size bus mounted on the corner of the roof, 13 stories up, with a door that opens into a sheer drop off (blocked off, but you can look straight down). The roof also has a Ferris wheel and a giant praying mantis. + + +
+ + + + + + + +
+ +The roof is also the place to catch the 10 story high spiral slide. It's long, but not actually as much fun as some of the other slides, especially the slides so steep you briefly free-fall or the others so narrow you spend your time really hoping you don't get stuck. + +Then there's also random things, like a 19th century-style natural history specimen collection, a barbecue joint on the patio (it is St. Louis), and a place you can train to be a circus performer. + +The City Museum is unlike anywhere I've ever been anywhere in the world and it's pretty damn amazing. If you're ever in St. Louis you should go, even if you don't have kids. Maybe especially if you don't have kids. + +[1]: https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/03/angkor-wat +[2]: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-92.74,40.99,3000 +[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUNMmSbkAG8 +[4]: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/cairo-illinois +[5]: https://www.archdaily.com/519298/happy-birthday-antoni-gaudi diff --git a/jrnl/2018-06-14_illinois.txt b/jrnl/2018-06-14_illinois.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d98e31e --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-06-14_illinois.txt @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +After the City Museum there didn't seem to be any real reason to stay in St. Louis, and the temperatures kept rising. We're generally okay until about 95 during the day, after that it's rough without air conditioning in this humidity. There were no electric sites left at the St. Louis campground so we headed north, to a campground just over the river in Illinois. Unfortunately that one turned out to be full, so we pushed on further north and found Beaver Dam State Park. + +One of the few guidebook series I actually like is Smithsonian's various guides to "natural" America[^1]. The one for Illinois starts off with something to the affect: "Only one state has less public land than Illinois". I read that back when we were in Athens and I thought, okay, well, how bad can it be really? Turns out... While it does have a few places in the southern part of the state, generally speaking, Illinois got used up before the push for public land preservation of the late 19th century could get much of it set aside. + +For the most part, Illinois is a desert of corn. + +From researching the seed strains and brands I saw advertised it would seem that the vast majority of the corn is not for food, but goes to the production of ethanol which (unless you're lucky) ends up in your gas tank. Author and adventurer Craig Childs has an essay about hiking through these lifeless fields of corn in his book, Apocalyptic Planet. After two days of hiking in Iowa cornfields the only living things Childs finds, besides himself and corn, are two spiders and a species of fungus. + + + +Dotted around, almost as if someone salted some green on the map as an afterthought, are little pockets of land generally just large enough for a small lake to draw in fisherman, the bare minimum of forest necessary to grant two hunting permits a year, and a little room left over for a campground. There are generally no other attractions, nothing that warrants a ranger station, nothing that needs a map. At Beaver Dam, if you opt for the back edge of the campground, you'll have one row of trees and then the endless expanse of cornfields spread out before you. + +The kids loved Beaver Dam though, so we stayed a few days. They loved it because it was full of kids. For the first time in quite a while they made new friends. And for the first time they got to run about in a gang of kids, roaming the campground the way we used to roam the neighborhood before everyone got scared of everything and started tracking their kids' every movement. + +The kids would jump up out of bed in the morning and run to the front of the bus and tear down the curtains to see if any of their friends were out riding their bikes yet. We tried to explain to them that most people sleep past six, but they just don't really have an context to understand that. Once there was someone else up and about they'd take off not to be heard from again until evening, except when they needed snacks. + + + + +Corrinne and I mostly sat around and read, there's wasn't anything else to do really. There were a ton of red headed woodpeckers in the campground, probably because it had the only trees for hundreds of miles, so I took probably 200 photos until I got a couple I was happy with.. + + + +We'd made plans to meet my parents down in the southern part of the state, so after the families went home Sunday afternoon and the kid gang shrank in size to just three, we packed it up and headed south to the auspiciously named Garden of the Gods. No, not the one in Colorado. This one is the limestone remnants of where the Gulf of Mexico's waters used to lap at the sand. + + + +Garden of the Gods gives something of a glimpse of what the wooded parts of Illinois were probably like hundreds of years ago. There's a campground up on a ridge overlooking the area, which also manages to catch a little more breeze than most of the surrounding area. There were also some pines and junipers mixed in with the hardwoods, which made it feel more like being in the mountains. + + + +The geology here is such that a lot of iron got mixed into the rock and formed interesting patterns. We hiked around one day, had lunch in the woods and let the kids climb rocks for a while. If you squinted hard enough and ignored the humidity it was almost like our time in Colorado last summer. + + + + + +The first campsite we had was right next to a pretty good size blackberry patch. They weren't really ripe, but tart berries you picked yourself still beat ripe ones from the store any day. + + + + +Garden of the Gods was the nicest place we saw in Illinois, but it was still brutally hot and humid. Normally I don't complain about the heat, but here's the thing, if it's going to be hot there needs to be a payoff -- ancient ruins, beautiful beaches, spectacular deserts, or what have you. Illinois has some trees and lots of biting insects. + +So when I found out my parents might not be able to make their trip due to illness anyway, we jumped at the chance to have them reschedule to meet us elsewhere. Fortunately they were able to do it, so while the kids were disappointed they'd have to wait to see their grandparents, we were all thankful to have no reason to stay in Illinois. + +Unfortunately, the minute we hit the road north, a heat wave plowed through and send the temps into the triple digits, which made our drives miserable. We somehow traversed the rest of the state in two days, but we finally gave up just outside Chicago where we got a campsite with electricity, cranked the air to high and barricaded ourselves against the heat for a few days. + + + +[^1]: I really wish they also had a series, Guide to Unnatural America. Or would change the title of the Natural America series to "wild" America or something similar. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-06-24_wisconsin.txt b/jrnl/2018-06-24_wisconsin.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b4e998e --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-06-24_wisconsin.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +The drive from the border of Illinois to Harrington State Park, half an hour north of Milwaukee, was the most dramatic climate change we've experienced on this trip. It was partly weather related, but we went from temps of over 100 with 72 percent humidity to 60 degrees and not much humidity at all once the rain stopped. It was a rather amazing and welcome transition. + +We stopped at Harrington because it gave reasonably easy access to Milwaukee and because if you run your finger along the edge of Lake Michigan starting at Chicago, it's the first green spot you hit. The day we arrived it was overcast, cold enough to pull out sweatshirts and pretty much exactly what we were looking for after weeks of sweating through Tennessee, Missouri, and Illinois. We ended up staying almost a week. + +As soon as we arrived and got settled I took the kids down to see the lake. We are, I think, with one possible exception, water people. Put us on a shoreline and chances are we'll be happy. There's one of us that insists the shoreline have salt water, but the rest of us aren't that picky. By the time we got to the shore of Lake Michigan the storm we'd been just ahead of all day finally caught up. There was a steady drizzle and the wind was blowing hard enough to drive even the kids back the bus in short order. + + + +It wasn't only the temperature that changed, we reset the seasonal clock by a good month or two as well. Up here wildflowers still carpet the hillsides, trees haven't been leafed out for very long and the mosquitoes haven't hit cloud status quite yet. All the song birds are newly arrived too, still setting up house. Yellow Warblers and Cedar Waxwings were busy building nests in the trees and bushes around our site. It was the sort of campsite we haven't seen since Patrick's Point, heavy shrubs, most of which looked to be blueberries, or something very similar, about two feet taller than a person and far too thick to see though. The sites themselves were carved out and probably required regular maintenance to stay that way. + + + + +It was still storming a little the next day so we decided to run our errands in Milwaukee and then we met up with some friends from Athens who recently moved to Milwaukee to take over the Woodland Pattern. We met up with them at Woodland Pattern and then headed out for Thai food. We only spent a few hours in Milwaukee, but we enjoyed it. + + + +We ended up hanging around Harrington Beach for a few more days so I could get some work done. I'd work in the mornings and in the afternoon we'd hike or head down to the beach for a swim. We hiked a trail called the Bobolink trail and saw bobolinks, we hiked the White-Tailed trail and saw white-tailed deer. After that I decided I had to go far enough down the birch trail to see a few birch trees. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +Once the storm that followed us in was gone we had gloriously sunny days, highs in the mid 70s, pretty close to perfect. We ended up spending a lot of time down at the beach. Unlike the first couple of days, once the sun came out we did not have the beach to ourselves. + + + + + + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2018-07-02_trees.txt b/jrnl/2018-07-02_trees.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..630b3bd --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-07-02_trees.txt @@ -0,0 +1,86 @@ +I lay in the hammock looking up at the trees, watching the birch leaves fluttering in the light breeze a hundred feet above me. From down here it's a confusion of light, color, motion, and shadow. What's it like up there though? What would it be like to stand among those slender branches that would probably, some of them, support my weight? What kind of perspective on the world would you get up there? + + + +People climb trees, adults I mean. Probably kids aren't allowed to climb trees anymore. But some adults do. There are even groups that get together and go climb trees. So I've been told. + +John Muir writes about climbing a tree in storm to see what it felt like to be blown around. He climbed a 220 foot sugar pine in a storm. "Climbing these grand trees, especially when they are waving and singing in worship in wind-storms, is a glorious experience," writes Muir in The Yosemite. "Ascending from the lowest branch to the topmost is like stepping up stairs through a blaze of white light, every needle thrilling and shining as if with religious ecstasy." + +I plan to do that some day, but I probably won't start with 220 foot sugar pines in the midst of a storm. I'll probably work my way up to tall trees in storms, but I'd like to try it. One of the nice things about this life is that I can lie here in this hammock and stare up at the trees. I can think about climbing them. I can think about other trees, other hammocks. + +Last summer, Colorado. A very similar vertical view. This summer it's birch rather than aspen, jack pine rather than lodgepole and ponderosa, but the overall feel of the place is very similar to Colorado and the vertical view is very close. + +A friend of luxagraf, who lives in Iran, but has traveled the desert southwest of the U.S. quite a bit has an interesting article about the [visual and ecological similarities][4] between the Sindh desert in Iran (where he lives) and the high desert region of eastern California into western Arizona. + +These similarities exist everywhere. I have no doubt that if you beamed me and this hammock into the right elevation of Ural mountains in Russia or the Andes in Peru or the Himalayas of Himachal Pradesh, I would have a similar view of similar tress. The world is made up of similarities more than differences I find, and I think that's true whether you speak of ecology, culture, religion or my preferred starting point for philosophical reflections -- the vertical view from a hammock. + +Significant ecological, cultural and religious differences exist as well. I think to certain extent that's the part of traveling that I like the best, discovering these similarities and differences and holding them up before you and trying to make sense of them, finding the threads that connect places, the threads that exist only in one place and then weaving them together until in some way your journey makes sense to you. Why does the jack pine thrive here, and lodgepole pine thrive in Colorado? Why is there a massive body of fresh water here and a huge range of mountains there? Why do men and women hold hands here, men and men hold hands in India and no one holds hands in China? Why does the idea of reincarnation thrive in Himachal Pradesh and not here? Why is the arboreal forest that used to be here now over one hundred miles north of here? + +It's wrestling with these things that makes travel interesting to me. Seeing things is part of that, part of finding the unique threads of a place, the threads that bind things but that's not the end of it by any means. Round the world sailor and author [Teresa Carey][3] calls this kind of inquiry "a far greater adventure" than just traveling. + + + +If you only have two weeks in a place, I guess I understand that drive to get out there and try to see everything you can. We watch people pulling out every morning to go do things while we're still cooking breakfast[^1]. A lot of people seem to go somewhere every morning. But then if your time is limited, you want to see what you came to see, I suppose. I'd still probably spend at least half my time "sitting around" because without the chance to daydream and reflect, to pull it all together what's the point? + +But then we're fortunate enough to be able to more or less stay anywhere we like as long as we choose. Camping limitations do exist, but otherwise we're pretty open ended. Consequently we don't tend to rush out and see everything right away, if we see it at all. For instance, we've been in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore for well over a week and haven't seen the eponymous rocks yet. And I'll be fine if we never do, that's not a thread that happens to interest me. + +These days I'm content with trees, hammocks (when I get some time in one), sitting here in the forest, watching the wind play in the leaves, the birds sharing food and building nests, the kids digging up earthworms for pets. As more than a few writers have [demonstrated][1], you can spend years obsessing over a [single square meter][2] of forest and not exhaust everything it has to teach[^2]. + + + + + +At the same time, you can take that too far. We don't sit around all the time, we don't refuse to "see the sights". Some long term travelers I've met seem to look down on seeing things, like that's the status symbol that sets them above the common traveler -- they're too cool to see the sights. I think that's equally as silly as running around like the proverbial headless chicken trying to see it all. The opposite of one bad idea is often another bad idea. If I no long care what's around the next bend, over the top of that rise or on the other side of the horizon then I'd stop traveling. There is always a third option; some sitting around, some seeing what's around the bend. + +In our case we walk around quite a bit. I walk slowly, the rest of my family not so much. Sometimes I can convince Lilah to hang back with me though, that makes for nice hikes. The world is more fun when you have someone to share it with. + +Here there's a good 3 mile round trip trail out to a lighthouse. That's about what Elliott is comfortable doing these days, three to four miles. At the end there was a lighthouse and a few outbuildings connected with the lighthouse. We forgot the money for the tour of the lighthouse, but it seemed closed anyway. We marched right on past and scrambled down some rocks to the lake shore for a little lunch. The sandstone shelf we sat on extended nearly half mile out into the water without getting much more than six feet deep. Hence the need for a lighthouse. + + + + +There was a fog bank to the east of the lighthouse that day, a thin layer that obscured all but the top of the dunes just to east of us, dunes that sit some five hundred feet above the lake. The first four hundred feet were hidden by a fog bank that stretched out over the lake and curved back toward the lighthouse, losing density as it neared the point we sat on. We ate our food and watched wisps of wet cloud blow by us and down the coast, seemingly circling back down toward the dunes. + + + + +It wasn't particularly warm and only Lilah and I hung around after lunch we finished lunch. We explored the shoreline to the east for a while, looking for interesting signs of life. There weren't many. Lake Superior is cold, clear, and not exactly teeming with life. I've seen a few fish, including a huge trout in very shallow water, and Lilah and I found some curious insects, around the rocks, but for the most part it's pretty quiet around here, biologically speaking. At least on the water. The water average 42 degrees, there's just enough life to support a fair number of fish, and the birds that feed on them, but not much more than that. + + + +But what it lacks in life it makes up for in weather. The weather here is the most unusual and dramatically changing weather I've ever experienced anywhere on the planet thus far. It's completely left field. One minute it's hot, the next it's cold. And a good percent of the time that's just barely hyperbolic. + +A good bit of my early travels were in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. I've backpacked several hundred miles worth of trails and seen a good bit of "interesting weather". Lightning so close your hair stands up? Check. Hail the size of small oranges? Check. Snow in mid July? Check. Rapid drops in temperature as a storm approaches? Check. Well, maybe not check. + +I thought I had experiences some rapid temperature drops, but Lake Superior is a different class with those. One morning, a particularly warm, humid morning, it was 8 AM and the temperature was already climbing steadily. It can get surprisingly hot and muggy around here, and I figured it was going to be a really hot day. But then, about five minutes later the sky was so dark it looked more like night than night, the temperature had dropped well below 55, and the wind was tossing the leafy crowns of the birch trees around like a salad spinner. It was the most complete reversal of weather I've ever experienced anywhere in the world. + +It was also very localized and didn't last long. The wind faded quickly and within an hour the nice cool temperatures were gone as if it had never happened. Curiously though, it happened again around 2PM and again around 8PM. My best guess is that somewhere inland it's heating up enough to pull some air off the middle of the lake and the lake is definitely cold enough to drop the air temp by 30-40 degrees. That particular day the last lake effect cooling timed nicely with bedtime. I still woke up sweating by 1AM, but at least we got to go to bed with a nice cool breeze blowing through. + +When it is hot here, and it is more than I expected it would be, especially after our experience in Wisconsin, at least there's a freezing cold lake to cool off in. And it is cold, cold enough that even the kids haven't been past their waists. I went under, but it took some effort. Lake Superior is the coldest large body of water I've ever swam in. The water temp right now is 55 degrees, but honestly it feels even colder. It's almost as cold as the Sierra lakes I used to swim in during the early season when there were still fields of snow leading down into them on the north facing slopes. + +When its 85-90 out though Superior feels refreshing and nice. At least for a minute or two. Then you get out and the air around you feels insanely humid and hot and you want to slip back into the lake, but then it starts to be too much, you get a sort of pins and needles sensation in your feet after a while. So you climb out, sit on the rocks, and play with the kids until you get hot enough that you want to try getting back in the lake again. + + + + + +The second time we went down to the shore line to beat the heat we learned something else about the wind in these parts. When it blows onshore it keeps the black flies at bay. When it blows offshore, look out. + + + + +For whatever reason I have no problem with mosquitoes. Some recently asked what we do about mosquitoes and I told them we have Thermacell, which works well enough, and we use it during the times of day the mozzies are really bad, but the rest of the time, honestly, I don't bother much. They bite me. I swat them when it hurts, and if I'm in malaria/dengue/etc areas I take mosquitoes more seriously, but mosquitoes are supposed to bite, that's what they do. + +Where I come from though flies are completely benign, perhaps that's why biting flies bother me. It seems extra cruel to take an ubiquitous and already fairly annoying creature and then make it capable of a painful bite. Screw that. I hate black flies. But then I hate when black flies drive me away from something I want to do, so I tend to stick it out until they get real bad. If you keep moving they don't bother you as much, so we spent most of our beach time walking, climbing rocks, looking for agates, good skipping rocks, gnarled driftwood, birds, fish and whatever else captures out attention. + + + + + +[^1]: Not that we're late risers, by the time we make breakfast I've usually been out birding, meditated and drank my way through at least two moka pots worth of coffee and Corrinne has generally walked 5 miles or so. +[^2]: This is, to me, the best argument against traveling -- it doesn't allow for the sort of depth of study, be it ecological, cultural, whatever, that's possible when you stay in one place. For me though, staying in one place leads to complacency, less awareness and a tendency to take the world for granted. + +[1]: /books/gathering-moss +[2]: /books/the-forest-unseen +[3]: http://teresacarey.com/ +[4]: http://newslinemagazine.com/is-it-california-or-is-it-sindh/ diff --git a/jrnl/2018-07-07_shipwrecks.txt b/jrnl/2018-07-07_shipwrecks.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f9ede42 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-07-07_shipwrecks.txt @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +We were looking for something cool to do for the girls' birthday, something along the lines of [last year's train ride][1], when we stumbled across a billboard for a glass bottom boat shipwreck tour. Perfect. We checked the weather and made reservations for the next warm sunny day. + + + +Somewhat surprisingly the weather was actually correct and we had sun, blue skies and just enough breeze to keep things from getting too hot. + + + + +As I've written before, I generally eschew guided tours because most of them suck. In this case, however, it did not suck at all. The tour guide knew her stuff and we learned a ton of stuff about Lake Superior navigation and some of its less successful practitioners. The details are mostly unimportant if you're not actually here, but there's one important detail that makes this place unique, perhaps in the world -- the water temperature. + +On average Lake Superior is 42 degrees, the day we were there it was about 55. That makes for cold swims, but it also means that most of the organisms that eat wood don't live in Superior. That has two major side effects -- the water is insanely clear, and wood lasts a really, really long time underwater because there are no organisms the eat. Lake Superior is, I'd guess, one of the very few places in the world in intact wrecks of wooden ships from the mid 19th century. + +The first wreck we floated over in the glass bottom boat sunk in 1870 and was almost completely intact until a couple of years ago when one of the harshest winters on record froze the water all the way down to the wreck (7 feet of ice) and snapped off the stern railing. + + + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +I found the first wreck to be the most interesting because it was a canal boat, a little reminder reaching across time to remind us that the only renewable kinds of energy on the planet are wind, water and animals. All three would have been used to moved this boat from Superior down to Lake Erie, across that, and then down the Erie canal to New York. Before interstate highways and fossil fuels good moved by water. After interstate highways and fossil fuels are gone I suspect the waterways will return to their former glory and boatmen will once again be able to make a living. We happen to be living in a brief span of history in which we don't have to navigate rivers. + +We didn't do the tour out to the cliffs that give Pictured Rocks its name, but we did come up alongside some smaller ones that line the coast of Grand Island. + +
+ + + +
+ +One afternoon I took the kids on a hike up through the Sable Dunes, a large dune area that's about half way to being not dune. Come back in a couple thousand, maybe even a few hundred years and you won't even notice there are dunes here. Like almost no one notices that the entire midwest is a giant dune, temporary held down by about ten feet of soil. At the moment though there's still a good bit of sand. + +The trail was closed in some fashion, though the only clue at to which parts were closed were some tiny, faded pieces of paper printed out and nailed to trees inside plastic baggies. Apparently, that's a real thing in Michigan. But closing an area by typing out a physical description is, well, hell if I know where they were talking about. Possibly we walked right through the closed area, possibly we did not. It was a nice hike anyway, and took us about as high above Lake Superior as you can get. + + + + + +The last few days we spent down by the lake, where the river comes in. I've noticed an increasing number of rock stacks in the world. Up here they're everywhere, including in the middle of the river where the kids were playing. Apparently people [like to stack rocks][2]. We like to knock down stacks of rocks. Win-win. + + + + + + + + + +[1]: /jrnl/2017/07/happy-5th-birthday +[2]: https://www.hcn.org/articles/a-call-for-an-end-to-cairns-leave-the-stones-alone diff --git a/jrnl/2018-07-13_six.txt b/jrnl/2018-07-13_six.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..79a9768 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-07-13_six.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +We gambled a bit for the girls' birthday this year. We couldn't stay in Pictured Rocks anymore, we'd hit our two week limit the day before their birthday. We considered trying to stay anyway, bribe the camp hosts or something. In the end we rolled the dice and drove on east, out to the edge of the upper peninsula hoping that the campground we'd found on the map would have a nice enough spot. + +It worked out perfectly. We ended up with a spot off to ourselves, beside a smallish lake, with our own private beach -- the perfect place for a sixth birthday party. + + + +The kids tend to be up by 6AM these days, but on their birthday it was about 5. Don't let the light fool you, it's early. It's only truly dark up here for about five hours a day. + + + + + + +One of the upper peninsula's endearing charms is its decided lack of consumer stuff. There's not much in the way of stores. I had to drive almost two hours and very nearly into Canada to find the girls their new bikes. + + + +Elliott is still at the age where it's really hard to accept that there's a birthday and it's not his. We tried to cheer him up by pointing out that we'll be in Mexico for his birthday and that in Mexico they have exciting things like piñatas. Of course the minute that came out of my mouth the girls had to have a piñatas. You think it's hard to find bike in the UP, try finding a piñata. Somehow though Corrinne managed to come up with the perfect tiny piñata for our tiny home. + +
+ + + + + + + + +
+ +We have still never fixed our oven. It can probably be done, but at this point we've already adapted. I'm going to be buying a waffle iron in Mexico because Elliott won't hear of not having waffle cake for his birthday. See what you started Taylor and Beth? Thanks for that. + + + +
+ + + + + + + + +
diff --git a/jrnl/2018-07-19_lakeside-park.txt b/jrnl/2018-07-19_lakeside-park.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9be1258 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-07-19_lakeside-park.txt @@ -0,0 +1,55 @@ +
+

After the girls' birthday we had a few extra days before we needed to head south to meet up with my parents. We decided to stick around Andrus Lake a while longer. Who can say no to your own personal beach?

+ +

We spent most of the time enjoying the warm lake water (relative to Superior). It's not a big lake, it's not a deep lake, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in character. I don't think I ever looked out at it and saw the same lake twice.

+ +

Over the course of a full week we saw it choppy, red and frothy in the wind, glassy and mirrored, with morning fog softening the edges, silent and blue in the evenings, and completely obscured in a gray blanket of fog on our one rainy day.

+
+ + + + + + +Most days though, it was sunny and warm, making out little private beach just about perfect. + + + + + + +There was also plenty of time for breaking in the new bikes. + + + + + + +There were a few reasons we came up this way in the first place, one of them was to see a couple sets of friends who'd moved up this way in the past year or so. Another was reason was a book series I'd read to the kids. We picked up a copy of Louise Erdrich's [The Birchbark House](https://birchbarkbooks.com/louise-erdrich/the-birchbark-house) for the kids for Christmas, and they loved it. They obsess over it with the kind of enthusiasm and depth that only children and Shakespearean stage actors have. + +The Birchbark House takes place on Madeline Island and is the story of a young Ojibwe[^1] girl living through the changes that happened in this part of the world between roughly 1840-1870. It's part one of a five book series and we've read them all and, by popular demand, are re-reading them currently. So when Corrinne noticed there was an small Ojibwe powwow and re-enactment happening in nearby St. Ignace, we had to go. + +The Ojibwa Cultural Center in St Ignace turned out to be a really nice museum, complete with replica birchbark buildings, and the powwow had a bunch of stuff for kids. Ours got to make some necklaces out of beads and sinew and could have done something I couldn't parse out with porcupine quills. They also got the best face painting they've had on this trip. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +The fascinating part for me was realizing that in the course of reading the five books to the kids I'd picked up about the same amount of Ojibwe as I ever did Thai, Laos or even French. Which is to say that when Ojibwe speakers greeted each other, said thank you, good morning, afternoon, and all the other sorts of small greetings and polite interactions you pick up when you travel in another language, I understood them. It was sort of odd since until that day I'd never knowing met any Ojibwe before in my life. + +The re-enactment portion of the festival was less captivating to the kids, but I picked up a bottle of real maple syrup that's so dark you can't see through it and tastes like pouring a tree on your pancakes. It has a wonderfully smokey flavor to it and is by far the best maple syrup I've ever had (sorry Vermont, previous home of the best maple syrup I've ever had). The only problem with it is that it has made all store bought syrup seem like bland sugar water. This bottle isn't going to last forever and I have no way to get anymore like it. Always buy two. + +The Ojibwe powwow itself didn't get going until midday. We saw what I would call the opening ceremony and then our friends from Traverse City got there and we headed out to walk the streets of St Ignace. It can get pretty warm up here if you don't have shade -- the temperature difference between the sunny and shady side of the street is striking up here. We ducked in an antique store to cool off for a bit, (our friend also collects 78 records and I'm never against looking for used camera lenses. One of these days I'll find that dusty Leica Noctilux 50mm f/1.2 for $50). + +After that decided that we needed to just sit outside in the shade and enjoy the beautiful afternoon, maybe drink a couple of beers while we're at it. Michigan is noted for its plethora of local of breweries; we've been in towns with fewer than a 1000 residents that nevertheless had its own brewery. But in St Ignace the best place we could come up was a restaurant which, if it would through a few shrimp shell buckets in the center of its table, could easily pass for a Florida seafood shack. Fortunately it had a decent selection of Michigan beers. + +It's strange to sit around "all afternoon" up here, because at 5 o'clock it still looks and feels like it's about 2 in the afternoon. But it's not. And we all had about an hour and half of driving to do, so we said our goodbyes, they gave us a basket of what turned out to be the best cherries we've ever had, and we all hit the road. + + + +[^1]: There's some variation in the spelling of Ojibwe. Louise Erdrich spells it with an e, the Ojibwa cultural center spells it with an a. I went with the e. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-07-23_house-lake.txt b/jrnl/2018-07-23_house-lake.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cdd2289 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-07-23_house-lake.txt @@ -0,0 +1,55 @@ +On our way southeast to Lake Huron we first went northwest. Because that's how we roll. We wanted to see Whitefish point, which had a lighthouse and shipwreck museum we wanted to see. When we got there no one was into it, so we ended up skipping the indoor stuff to spend some time on the beach. + + + + + +Corrinne wandered off in search of rocks, I stayed to keep and eye on the kids, who were amusing themselves climbing up a rock retaining wall, or embankment really, not a wall, then they'd run over to edge and jump or slide down the sandy embankment next to it. The wall was adjacent to a little boardwalk area that you could get a view of the beach without getting any sand on you, something I've never really understood, but whatever. + + + + + +At one point a family with a couple of kids came out onto the viewing platform and I overheard one of the kids ask their mom what my kids were doing. "It looks like they're climbing," she said. But the way she said it, there was such disdain in her voice that made it sound like climbing was the worst thing in the world. + +Naturally the little boy instantly said, "I want to climb." I was thinking, cool, maybe the kids can make a friend. And then the mom said, no, you can't climb up that you'd hurt yourself. I felt bad for the kid, but what can you do? I wanted to say, let him climb, let him find out what he can and can't do, let him hurt himself if he needs to, but I didn't. I sat there and felt bad for the kid. Then his mom added, "you'll get all dirty." + +That got me to stand up and turn around to see what sort of monster was near me. I have as much patience, and love, for these so-called helicopter parents as I do mosquitoes. Alas you cannot swat the former, so I glanced up and tried to focus on giving them my friendliest smile. It's not their fault really, this culture handed them a bum deal, made them afraid of everything. But I hate to see them passing it on to the next generation. Sorry kid, better luck next time. + +I sat back down and watched my kids climbing, getting dirty and possibly even hurting themselves. Such is life. It got me thinking about an even sadder possibility though. Possibly that parent knew their kids limitations quite well, knew they didn't have experience climbing sharp, quarried granite rocks, and knew they really would hurt themselves badly. Maybe those parents know their kids aren't capable of it. That's even sadder though. Get your kids outside, let them explore and learn for themselves. Let them fall down and get scraped up, that's how they learn. Pain tells you where the edges are so to speak, that's where you learn the edge of your current abilities and how to get even better. You fall down, and fall down, and fall down, until eventually you stop falling down. + +After we'd had our fill of Whitefish Point we finally headed south toward Huron. It wasn't a long drive, a little over an hour and we were setting up camp at Carp River, which alas, did not have easy swimming access. + + + +Instead we headed over to the cottage on the marsh that my parents had rented for the week. The first thing the kids noticed, aside from their grandparents was the spiral staircase. I shudder to think what that lady would have done when confronted with a narrow all metal staircase perfect for climbing. And climb our kids did. Up and down, up and down, up and down. + + + +I retreated to the porch and watched the red winged blackbirds diving in and out of the reeds and cattails. Whenever I see cattail fluff now I always think about how it's perfect for lining a babies diaper, that was the go-to material for nearly any tribe who had access to it. I grew up by a marsh full of cattails and I'd never even thought of that before. Necessity is the engine of ingenuity. + +We spent most of the week playing in and around the house my parents rented. It came, as most everything up here does, with a couple of canoes and kayaks, which we used to explore the river a little bit. Lilah even wanted to paddle on her own, so I dropped off the other kids and let her take me on a little canoe ride. All I did was steer, and even that I only had to do because of the wind. It reminded me of the unfortunate truth of parenting, in a few years they won't need me around much anymore. + + + + + + +I finally gave in and went full tourist and picked up some smoked whitefish and lake trout, all of which turned out to be really damn good. I think we plowed through about four pounds in as many days. It took several more before the smell of smoked fish was completely gone from my fingers. + + + + +I took advantage of the grassy field surrounding the rental house to give our solar panels a full day's sun, something they had not had in nearly a month. I took care of a few bus tasks as well, pulled my spark plugs and check them out, tightened some hose clamps, a few bolts and even pulled apart the wiring to the temperature gauge, which I'd still like to get working. + +I figure the gauge consists of three basic parts, the sensor and sending unit, which I can't get to, if that's the problem I'm screwed, the wiring, which is horrid and needs to be re-run, and gauge in the dash. Any one, or several of them could be the problem. The easiest place to start is the wiring, so I pulled out a ton of electrical tape (why do people use that stuff?) traced the wire, and realized the metal inside the little covered end that fits onto the sensor is cracked, not connected and may well be the solution to the problem. I made a note to stop in the next auto parts store I see and pick up something similar and see if that fixes the problem. Right when I figured that out though the kids needed me to do something and I went off and promptly forgot all about it until now, when I was looking over my notes and remembered. So still no working gauge, but the next auto parts store I see, I'm going to get that wire, I swear. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +There wasn't much of a swimming beach at the rental house so one day we loaded everyone in the car and headed down the coast to Hessel, which had a little marina and swimming beach (and a wooden boat festival we'd just miss, damn it). We couldn't leave the shores of Lake Huron without going for a swim. It turned out to be like the middle lake it is -- warmer than Superior, colder than Michigan. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-07-30_crystal-lake.txt b/jrnl/2018-07-30_crystal-lake.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..27e1dde --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-07-30_crystal-lake.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +After we said goodbye to my parents, we packed up and pointed the bus west, tracing the Lake Michigan side of the Upper Peninsula. The first night we stopped at a place we'd intended to go after Wisconsin, but skipped in favor of Pictured Rocks. And I'm glad we did. It was all right for a night, but there was nothing much to make us linger for longer than that. + +There are three basic things our kids can find pretty much anywhere: 1) water the swim in, 2) things to jump off, 3) mud to dig in. Little Bay de Noc had all three. + + + + + +It also had something of a rarity in our limited experience up here -- west facing beaches with sunsets. + + + +The next day we headed north again, toward Lake Superior, but also west, back into Wisconsin. We had another one-night stopover at a place called Imp Lake, which is notable for having a nesting colony of Loons on the island in the middle of it. We were serenaded all afternoon and into the evening, if serenade is the right word for loon calls. I really wanted some of the deeper howls to be wolves, but they weren't. + + + + +Quite a few people have asked if the mosquitoes are bad up here. In general no. At Imp Lake, yes. Bad enough that we didn't really go out much that night. Which was fine since we got up early and hit the road again the next morning. + + + +We pulled into Memorial Park in Washburn WI around 2 in the afternoon and grabbed spot. It was something of a change for us. After having been in the woods, largely alone for the better part of six weeks it was odd to be in a campground with neighbors a short distance from our door and downtown Washburn a mere five minute walk away. Luckily this part of Wisconsin is full of friendly people and we enjoyed ourselves in spite of the more crowded campground. + +The campground dated from at least the 1930s from what I read on some of the signs scattered around. It had a feel to it that you don't find much anymore. It still had an old lunch counter stand with these ingenious folding tables and chairs. No one knows who built it, the source of ingenuity is lost to the fog of time, but the lunch stand is still there, though, disappointingly, not in use anymore. + + + + +The campground also had the kids of old school playground that was made of metal and tires and wasn't padded everywhere like some kind of outdoor asylum, which is what the modern plastic playgrounds always remind me of, the sort of you'd find outside Bedlam. Thank you Washburn for resisting, in however small a way, the notion that children should be coddled in padded plastic playgrounds. + + + + +We came mainly because it was the closest campground to the Madeline Island ferry, but we were also glad to be back on the shores of Lake Superior. I've never seen a shoreline I didn't like, but, that said, there are certain bodies of water that seem to draw us in more than others and Lake Superior is one of them. Perhaps it's the clarity, though it's not nearly as clear over here, or the cold, though it's not nearly as cold here, or maybe some more vague, impossible to define quality. Whatever the case, the shores of Lake Superior is our favorite place to be up here. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-08-02_island-golden-breasted-woodpecker.txt b/jrnl/2018-08-02_island-golden-breasted-woodpecker.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b568b2c --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-08-02_island-golden-breasted-woodpecker.txt @@ -0,0 +1,66 @@ +The wind is light, the air still cool and heavy with the morning dew. Already though the sunlight is warm on our backs. The crisp, clean smell of Lake Superior's cold waters fills the air. Ring-billed gulls fight over pier pylons. Occasionally one launches out over the lake, perhaps in search of a less contested perch. Beyond the pier sailboats are already unfurling sails and heading north, up the coast, currently downwind. The ferry shudders underfoot, the diesel engine coming to life for the short passage to Madeline Island. + + + + + + +The Ojibwe, who were here when the first Europeans paddled through, call Madeline Island Moningwanekaaning, which translates to Island of the Golden Breasted Woodpecker. Today, a more literal translation might be Island of the Northern Flicker, but that just doesn't have the same ring to it. + +Moningwanekaaning is one of twelve islands clustered near the western end of Lake Superior, off the coast of present day Wisconsin. Moningwanekaaning is the only one that's not part of the Apostle Islands National Seashore (the name Apostle Islands comes courtesy of the Jesuits). This is where the bulk of the action takes place in the first three novels of Louise Erdrich's [Birchbark House][1] Series, which, as I've mentioned before, our kids are obsessed with. It's one of the reasons that we came up here, to see where the characters of those books walked and ate and slept and swam. + +To some people that might sound strange, traveling somewhere because a historical novel happens to be set there, but it's not the first time I've done it. All the little "how do you decide where to go" things I've written about previously take a backseat the number of times I've gone somewhere because I read a book about it. + +Books fire the imagination in ways that travel guides and glossy magazines can't. If I'd never read Henry Miller I'd probably have cared less about Paris. Prague would have meant less to me without Kafka. I couldn't help noticing all the places in London that I knew about because Slothrop had affairs near them. And I'm never in New Orleans or near the Louisiana coast without thinking of The Awakening, A Confederacy of Dunces and The Yellow Wallpaper. + +The desire to visit more than a few places I'd still like to visit can be traced to novels I've read -- Tangier Morocco, Dublin Ireland, and Varanasi India to name a few. + +The only problem with going to places you've read about is that they'll never measure up to what you've read, which is to say they'll never compare to what you've created for them in your imagination. I've spent the last month or so making sure the kids understood that Madeline Island is not currently like Moningwanekaaning is in the books. + +They didn't seem disappointed wandering around Madeline Island. Part of that could be that Madeline Island, save for the town of Laporte, actually hasn't changed much since the 1830s, when the novel is set. + +After a short ferry ride over we stopped in at the Madeline Island Museum, which traces the history of the island, but is also part of that history. The museum was made by joining four historic log structures end to end, part of a small 1835 American Fur Company warehouse, the former La Pointe jail, a Scandinavian-style barn of somewhat mysterious origin, and a building known as the Old Sailors’ Home, which was apparently a memorial to a sailor who drown. From what I could tell the museum is in four of the oldest remaining buildings on the island. + + + +The museum was somewhat unique in our experience for having by far the most knowledgable, friendly staff we've encountered anywhere. I didn't ask a single question that someone didn't know the answer to. At one point I was pretty sure there was a private tour happening in one of the rooms, the guide was going into way too much detail and answered way too many questions, but no, it turned out to just be one of the staff whose sole job appeared to be hanging out on the artifacts room answering questions and telling stories. He was an Ojibwe historian and seemed to know not only the origin of every artifact in the room, but roughly the year it would have been created and used. + +One of the women who worked there gave us a kind of personalized tour, pointing out artifacts and telling us not only the story of the artifact, what it was, where it came from and so on, but also how it came to be in the museum's hands. + + + + + +I'll be honest, I don't generally like museums much because everything is under glass and out of context. I'd rather find a tiny potsherd hiking in the backcountry than see a whole pot in a museum. Even the best museums that do try to get some context in their displays still leave out the modern context, who found it? What were they doing when the found it and so on. While none of the context is necessarily on display at the Madeline Island Museum, the staff seem to have all the information in their heads and if they see you studying something there's a good chance they'll come up and offer the full story of the artifact, what it is, what it was for, where it was found, who found it, what they were doing when they found it and how it ended up in the museum. + +I would have stayed another couple hours in the museum and really it was only three rooms, but the kids were hungry and wanting to swim so at the advice of one of the museum staff, we wandered down to a little park with a nice beach the kids could swim at. We made sandwiches and went swimming to cool off. + + + +There's a hand drawn map at the beginning of each of the Birchbark Series books, showing roughly where the birchbark house was, where other characters lived and where various events took place. I, perhaps more than the kids even, wanted to see some of the places. I'd spent enough time studying the map to know roughly where they were. + +After the kids had swam for awhile I convinced them to get out of the water (no small task) and we drove around the island to roughly where one of their favorite character's house would have been. We walked through the wood along the shoreline and wondered about what it all would have looked like in 1837. Probably, I'd guess, not all that different than it does now. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +We'd looked into camping on the island, and the campground happens to be roughly where one of the character's houses was, but it was booked full for the entire month of August. We had to content ourselves with a day trip and after our short hike, we headed back to catch the ferry back to the mainland. + +The next day was supposed to be our last day at Lake Superior. We set out reasonably early for a little beach a local woman told us about and spent the morning playing on the shore and swimming. + + + + + + + + +At lunch time Corrinne went back to the bus and brought some food over to the beach because no one wanted to leave yet. I realized I was really going to miss Lake Superior. I don't know what it is exactly, some bodies of water just get under your skin. The UP is nice, Wisconsin was fun too, but really the best part of our summer was Lake Superior. Somehow we just couldn't bear the thought of saying goodbye to it just yet. And since we're fortunate enough to not really have to be anywhere, we decided to change our plans a bit and head up into Minnesota to check out one more side of Lake Superior -- the north shore. + +[1]: https://birchbarkbooks.com/louise-erdrich/the-birchbark-house diff --git a/jrnl/2018-08-05_northern-sky.txt b/jrnl/2018-08-05_northern-sky.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4fc93ff --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-08-05_northern-sky.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +Unable to leave Lake Superior behind, we decided to head west and north, out of Wisconsin, into Minnesota, through Duluth and up to the north shore of Lake Superior. + +Here, for the first time in our Lake Superior travels, we hit real crowds. There aren't that many camping spots along the shore up here and nearly all of them offer online reservations, which means they're full most of the summer. + +We ended up heading inland, further north, up toward the Boundary Waters area. Once you get away from highway 61, which hugs the shore of Superior, it's mostly wilderness up here, and mostly dirt roads, which keeps the summer tourists away. We cut inland without any real clue where we were headed, but you rarely go wrong with fourteen miles of dirt road that looks like this: + + + +Eventually we found a campground on the edge of a smallish lake. It was relatively secluded and the water was plenty warm for swimming. + + + +The only downside was that Lake Superior was the better part of an hour away. We ended up only going down once, to Tettegouche State Park, to have one last day on the lake and say goodbye to Superior. I stopped in at the visitor center and asked the ranger if there was a good swimming beach around and she directed us a "nice beach, good for kids," at a little oxbow a ways up the river. Uh, yeah, we don't want to swim in a river. I had another of those increasingly common moments when I realize how much people underestimate children these days. + +I studied the map and didn't see any reason we couldn't hike the cliff side trail and figure out some way down to the water. As it turned out, plenty of people have had the very same idea and there was a well worn trail that led down to a nice rocky point sticking out into Superior. The kids scrambled over the rocks and were out of their clothes and into bathing suits fast enough to put a superhero to shame. + +And then they stuck their feet in the water. Cold, very, very cold. The north shore of Superior is much colder than around Madeline Island. No one went in past their knees, but we did have a nice lunch and a rocky point all to ourselves for most of the day. + +
+ + + + + + + +
+ +You can't have the most prominent rocky headland to yourself for long in these parts though. By the time we were done eating there were a dozen other people on the beach and rocks around us. We packed it up and headed back up the dirt road to Ninemile Lake for warmer swimming. + + + + +The lake was enough to entertain the kids for a few days, but eventually the weather took a turn. + + + +Faced with three more days of rain and a dirt road out, we decided to go ahead and push on, south, out of the north woods and into the plains, which just so happens to parallel the journey that makes up the last three books of the Birchbark House series. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-08-14_superior.txt b/jrnl/2018-08-14_superior.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c259bf2 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-08-14_superior.txt @@ -0,0 +1,79 @@ +In the coldest parts of Lake Superior it takes discipline to convince yourself to swim. Just walking out knee deep in that water which looks no cloudier than air, but feels like a vise of cold squeezing at ever pore of your skin, takes concerted effort. + +After a few steps your feet are numb. A few more and they begin to hurt. I never made it deep enough dive in at the coldest of the beaches, around Pictured Rocks, instead you lie down quickly, and then jump up, more of a baptism than a swim. + +After the gasping subsides, and you climb back out of the water to lie on the warm brown and apricot rocks, the sun slowing draws the blood out of your core and back to the edges of yourself with a prickling, almost painful feeling, like the rock is needling at your skin. + +This is the story of Lake Superior: water, rock, weather, and life. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +This is of course the story of everywhere as well. The world we experience with our senses is made up of water, rock, weather, life, and the relationships between them. Or, to use more familiar, but perhaps less fashionable terms, Water, Earth, Fire, Air and Spirit. + +On the shores of Lake Superior, Water and Earth are the most obvious. Nothing is written here without taking them into account. The shoreline is the story of rock and water moving through time. "The journey of the rock is never ended," writes poet Lorine Niedecker in a journal kept during a 1966 road trip around Lake Superior. "In every tiny part of any living thing are materials that once were rock that turned to soil," she reminds us. "Your teeth and bones were once coral." + +Niedecker does something here that few have done in recent times -- she makes us part of the story. Because we are part of the story, and have always been part of the story. Especially here. The "environmental" historian[^1] William Cronon writes of what he calls "historical wilderness,"[^2] an effort to remember that no matter what our ideologies and beliefs may claim, we are nature. Nature is not something outside of us and to pretend otherwise is to sell yourself a pack of lies that will leave you very confused about your place in the world. + +We have always been part of the story, the question is *how* are we part of the story? + +As California is slowly starting to realize, John Muir's vision of untrammeled wilderness has always been about personal ideology more than anything else -- Man as the special snowflake that lies outside nature, though in this case the snowflake ruins everything. The problem with that vision is that it's demonstrably wrong. Muir's beloved Yosemite Valley was the beautiful vast meadow he writes about because the people who lived in it used controlled burns to keep it that way. It was a garden because they made it a garden. Muir and his ilk kicked those people out, put fences around the trees and now wonder why it all burns down. + +Here on the shores of Superior humans have been part of the story for longer than anyone can remember, which helps stop ideologies that espouse otherwise. Once this was the land of the people we call Sioux, who were driven out by the Ojibwe, who in turn were driven out by European settlers, who in turn will be driven out by someone. We're all temporary. + +Right now though, this moment in history, is a good one for Superior. Somewhere in the elaborate dance between people and place that's been happening here for thousands of years is a feeling that's difficult to pin down, but is clear when you experience it. + +Lake Superior is one of those places where we immediately felt at home. The landscape, the forests, the water, the towns, everything up here feels welcoming and, for lack of the better word, good. In the 1960s, when it was still widely acknowledged that there were human experiences that did not fit into the world as defined by modern industrial society, people called this the "vibe" of a place (or person, or thing). + +The more closely you examine this feeling, the more complex the experience of it becomes. For those of us passing through it often feels more like a color or hue that seems to hand over the place. And Lake Superior is a place of many hues, literally and figuratively. Its water alone can be twenty different shades of blue and green in a single day. + +
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ +The notion that Lake Superior has a single vibe to it is of course a simplification. It has many shores, many faces, many vibes. It's also a place of moods that can turn on a dime. Sometimes it's warm and humid and icy waters are a relief, but then ten minutes later you might find the sky shrouded in clouds that bring near darkness and leave you shivering in the wind. + + + + + + +Part of Lake Superior's charm is that it has somehow escaped the "progress" of the world since about the early 1980s. Don't get me wrong, I think humans are part of the story, but lately I think we've been doing a really bad job of writing it. Curiously though, much of the crap that's come to infest our lives in the past few decades hasn't come here. + +It's not just that there's no Starbucks, no strip malls, almost no chain companies at all, though for the most part there are not, it's more that it has somehow retained that previous world, carried it through the recent past and left it alone. Old metal playgrounds abound, the family-owned single story motel still provides 99 percent of the lodging, supermarkets are usually locally owned, co-ops are common, and even elements of far older eras persist, like the supper clubs that still seem to function. Houses remain simple, small and cozy, the McMansions found in most other parts of the country simply aren't here. + +It's a place that seem to have recognized the difference between genuine human progress and technological advancement for its own sake and opted to stick with the former. Like the denizens of the Lake Superior region, I don't think we've seen much of real progress in technology since about 1978[^3] and even that would be pushing it. I can make a strong case for the early 1940s being the peak of human technological advancement, but I won't bore you with it. + + + + + + + + + +We would probably have lingered in the Lake Superior area longer, but unlike last year's completely open-ended travels, this year we have an appointment to keep. We must be in Dallas by September 26th and we needed to pass through South Dakota on our way. Eventually we packed it up, took a last look at Lake Superior as we drove down the Minnesota coast, and then headed west, away from the water, the forest, the rock, the water, the weather and the life of Lake Superior. + +[^1]: Environmental historian is an interesting term, it implies, correctly I'd argue, that our conception of history is so woefully incompletely we neglect to even include the environment in our reckoning of it. It's no wonder we completely fail to understand the past in any meaningful way -- we can't even construct a reasonably complete story of it. +[^2]: Cronon, William. “The Riddle of the Apostle Islands: How do you manage a wilderness full of human stories?” Orion May-June 2003: 36-42 +[^3]: But what about the internet? I give it a maybe. Future generations can decide that one. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-08-18_west-to-wall-drug.txt b/jrnl/2018-08-18_west-to-wall-drug.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8f6dd6d --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-08-18_west-to-wall-drug.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +We left Lake Superior the historically correct way -- heading west, watching the trees thin out until they're gone and the there is only grass and sky. + +To be truly historically correct you must be driven out by someone else. This is how the Ojibwe left when they were driven out by the United States, how the Sioux went when they were driven out by the Ojibwe, and how whomever the Sioux drove out probably went as well. These days we have it easy, we get driven out by our own engines. + +Over the course of a couple of days driving, the trees disappear and then, rather suddenly, you find yourself surrounded by sky, on the seemingly limitless plains of South Dakota. + + + +The first night out of the Great Lakes region every campground we tried was full. We ended up in a hotel. Driven out by crowds. + +After that we spent a couple nights at a South Dakota state park, mainly for the receipt, which we needed to become residents of South Dakota. + +Just as Delaware is home to corporations, who come for the tax breaks and whatnot, South Dakota is home for full time RVers who don't want to pay state taxes anymore. All you need to do is sign up for a mailing address (which forwards your mail to you), stay one night in a hotel, RV park or anywhere that give you a receipt with your name on it, and your previous ID. We're now legally residents of South Dakota, though we'll always be Georgians in our hearts. + +With our receipt in hand we headed west, stopping off at the Missouri river for a night. + + + + + +After that we abandoned the back roads we usually stick to and headed down I-90 toward the Badlands and South Dakota's other famous landmark: Wall Drug. + +Wall SD is one of those places that no one would have ever stopped in were it not for one woman who gave them a reason to stop there. Ted Hustead bought Wall Drug in 1931. At the time Wall had 231 residents and pretty much nothing to entice anyone else to ever come into Hustead's new drug store. His wife hit on the idea of offering free ice water to travelers headed for the newly opened travesty monument, Mount Rushmore. Back before air conditioning, ice water was no small enticement in these parts and it worked. And if water worked, think how many more people 5¢ coffee will bring, think how many more a giant jackalope will bring and so on until the tourist phenomena of Wall Drug had become something significantly more than a drug store should ever really hope to be. + +Today Wall somehow manages to be terribly touristy, yet charming in its quaintness, even if that quaintness is itself a well-crafted enticement. Some things when examined too closely threaten to accidentally unravel the entire universe. Don't dig too deep into these things. Still, the billboards are small, understated and feature photos of food seemingly lifted straight out of the illustrated pages of the 1953 Sears, Roebuck and Company catalog. It's quaint. + + + + +The even stranger part is that inside the display cases of Wall Drug -- the cases themselves looking not unlike something that might have been sold in that 1953 catalog -- the food really does look just like the pictures. I still can't figure out how they pull that off. + +Wall Drug is more or less a full city block of tourist junk and food, and yes there's still free ice water, and the coffee is still 5 cents. The donuts are pretty good too. Bill Bryson sums up Wall Drug perfectly in The Lost Continent: "It's an awful place, one of the world's worst tourist traps, but I loved it and I won't have a word said against it." + +You can't pass through these parts without stopping at Wall Drug. Something will entice you in. For me it was the donuts, though later I discovered the gas station sold them too, so I didn't have the wade through Wall Drug just to buy a donut in the morning. + +Head due south of Wall and you'll run into the west entrance to Badlands National Park. About a mile before you get to the national park entrance there's an unmarked dirt road with a barbed wire gate and small sign that says "Please Close Gate" and has a small logo of the National Forest Service. Open that gate -- close it behind you! -- and then you're free to camp pretty much anywhere inside Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. There are "campsites" along the dirt road, which threads the edge main ridge that becomes the center of the Badlands. Pretty much anywhere there's enough space to pull off the dirt road and not slide down the cliff there's signs of someone having camped. We grabbed a small pullout about half way down the road that had amazing views of the canyons and ridges that make up the Badlands. + +We liked it so much we stayed for two weeks. We'd have stayed even longer if we could have, but two weeks is the limit for federal land. It's probably just as well, otherwise we might be there still. + + diff --git a/jrnl/2018-08-22_range-life.txt b/jrnl/2018-08-22_range-life.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2c16b35 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-08-22_range-life.txt @@ -0,0 +1,80 @@ +There's something about wide open spaces that makes time slow down. The vastness of the sky stretching around the endless hoop of the horizon overwhelms and dims our sense of clock time. There are only four times out here: sunrise, sunset, night and day. After that all is one open expanse of light and land dancing around together, indifferent to anything so mundane as the railroad time schedules that form the basis of our concept of "time". + +The vastness and timelessness of the Badlands makes the improbable seem less. Wall Drug, I'm pretty sure, would never have worked anywhere else. + +After land and light there is only wind. It never stops, or at least it didn't in the two weeks we were here. It ranged from a gentle breeze to a howl that drowned out every other sound and whipped a fine dust into the air. The sky was often hazy from the smoke of fires in California and elsewhere in the west. + + + + + + +Camping in Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, the area south of Wall SD, known as "the wall" is unique. Free camping with a view, less than ten minutes from to a town that has a dump station, free water, free swimming pool and a small, but decent grocery store is not something you find very often, which might explain why we stayed two weeks. + +The first week we were out here was hot, in the high 90s. We can only run our air conditioner if we have hookups, which we obviously did not have, so the free public pool in Wall was a daily necessity. Every afternoon the kids and I would pile in the car and drive the ten minutes to Wall and go swimming in the deliciously icy cold pool for a couple of hours. + +
+ + + + + + + + + + +
+ +Lest you think we've given up on seeing the sights, we did one day drive into the Badlands National Park proper. The first overlook on the drive in gives you a view of the other side of the Badlands from what we could see at our camp. After that you wind down into some of the more colorful of the formations. + + + + + +It was pretty, but also very crowded. I'll take a slightly less expansive view and no crowds any day. We did get to have a close encounter with some big horned sheep though. It started off normal enough, Olivia spotted some bighorns up on a hill and we stopped to watch them for a minute. They'd wandered by our camp a few times already, but they never got too close. + + + +Eventually a Yellowstone-style traffic jam started to happen as more and more cars stopped to watch the sheep. We jumped back in the car and went on to the visitor center. On our way back the sheep had decided to come down to the road. + +
+ + + + +
+ +One day Lilah and Elliott and I decided to go for a hike in the Badlands. We found a trail that lead out to a juniper flat about three miles away and was somewhat off the beaten path. It turns out though that nearly everything beyond pavement is well off the beaten path in the Badlands. + + + + +This is not a place people hike. It might be that after mid morning there's absolutely no shade anywhere until late evening. The midday sun is fairly intense, and after an hour or two you want a break. We went a couple of miles and in that distance saw no one and found only a single cottonwood tree to rest under. It was the only shade for miles and all the grass under it was trampled down and matted with clumps of fur from sheep, cattle and quite a few other things that had rested under the same tree. + +We ate our snacks, contemplated going the rest of the way to the juniper flats, but we remembered [resting under a juniper tree in Chaco](/jrnl/2017/06/arc-time) and decided the cottonwood was a good as it was going to get for shade, so we started back. + +Lilah's shoes were giving her a blister so she walked all the way back barefoot, which I think made to two hikers we met at the trailhead, who were geared up with all the latest tech from REI, feel a little foolish, which, let's face it, they should. + + + + +A day or two after our hike, storms started to blow in more regularly and we got not just a break from the heat, but downright chilly, especially at night when it started dropping into the 40s -- a little reminder that winter comes early up here. + + + +From our campsite at Buffalo Gap we watched a lot people come and go. Most people only stayed the night, but a few hung around longer. The sort of people who come camp out in a place like this for more than a night are generally our sort of people, which is to say, people who live full time on the road. + +One day a family with some kids pulled past us and parked their rig in a spot a little ways beyond us. They stopped by to say hi one evening and we got to talking and next thing you know all the kids had made friends and were roaming the range in a pack, the way I think kids should. + +If I have any hesitations about living the way we do its the occasional thought that I should be giving our kids more opportunities to roam the neighborhood with a pack of friends the way we did growing up. There's two problems with this notion of mine though. One is that no one back home lets their kids roam anywhere, let alone wander the neighborhood by themselves, so if we hadn't done this our kids still wouldn't be roaming the world in packs they way I think they should. + +The other problem is that the whole idea that this is what kids should do is predicated on the assumption that my childhood was somehow a "correct" one, which, for all I know, is completely wrong. + +One thing I do know is that this trip has erased any sense of shyness in our kids. They'll march up to pretty much any kid they see and try to make friends with them, which they didn't do before we left, and is really more than I can say for myself. + +Whatever the case, I do love it when we meet people our kids can hang out with for a while, it's even better when we get along with the parents too, which we did. We hung around Buffalo Gap a little longer so the kids could have more time together. Community is harder to come by when you live on the road, but when you find it, it tends to be tighter knit and you value it more I think. At least I do. + +At the same time those moments of friendship and community don't last as long and before too long we needed to start south and Mike, Jeri and their family needed to get to west before the cold comes, and it comes early up here. + +After two weeks Buffalo Gap had started to feel a bit like home, much like every place where we've spent more than a few days. But we did what travelers do: we pack up, say our goodbyes, and head down the road for the next place we'll call home. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-08-27_grassland.txt b/jrnl/2018-08-27_grassland.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3d9e18b --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-08-27_grassland.txt @@ -0,0 +1,47 @@ +The vastness of the prairie sky is addictive. Once you've spent a while surrounded by nothing but grass and sky you start to feel closed in whenever there is something else near you. We tried to go back to regular campgrounds, but you find yourself wanting more space, asking why are these things blocking my sky? + +It took me a while, but I eventually I realized that what draws me in about the prairie is that it's the only landscape that offers the vast unbroken horizon of the sea. This is why almost no one can come here without remarking on the "sea of grass" or the "islands" of trees within it. The grasslands are the land playing at being the sea. + +We went to the other side of Buffalo Gap National Grasslands to a little campground called French Creek. It was a strange little campground, surrounded by a fence, but with a big gate. I figured it was tent-only, but there were no signs saying that, and the gate was open. As a U.S. taxpayer this is technically speaking, my land, so I drove the bus in and parked next to picnic table. + + + +The ranger who came by the next morning did not like that one bit. I wasn't rude, but I did tell him if he didn't want people parking in the campground then maybe consider signs and a lock. + +French Creek is near the town of Fairburn, home to about 100 people. We came here because Corrinne is a rock hound and this is the one and only place on earth to find something called a Fairburn agate. Corrinne went rock hunting the first evening we were there, but came up empty. The next morning she took the kids out to the agate beds and Olivia promptly found a Fairburn. She spent the rest of day teaching everyone else how to find one. *Daddy, you have to **look**...* + +
+ + + +
+ + + +We left the next day, headed for another national grassland in Nebraska. Corrinne and kids drove ahead to the campground while I dumped and filled our water tank in the nearby town of Crawford NE. I was just about to head down the 20 miles of dirt road when Corrinne called to say it was tent-only. Hey, at least this one had signs. + +We ended up staying in Crawford at the city park. It was deserted, pretty close to free, had two playgrounds and a livestock auction that was could listen to all afternoon. + + + + + +The next day we pushed on to the third grassland on our list, Pawnee Grassland, just over the Colorado border. Here, finally, we again found something as nice as Buffalo Gap near Wall. The road in was one of the roughest we've done, but we made it more or less intact. The first night we just pulled off the road, but then the rig that had been on the ridge overlooking the whole grasslands packed up and left so we swooped in and grabbed the spot. + + + + + + + +It was a pleasant place to stay for a week. I could work, the kids played. The cows came by to investigate us. There's something about this sea of grass that makes it seem as though just watching it is enough. You don't need to do anything, just observe the land, the sky, the ever changing light. + + + + + + + + + +We'd have stayed longer, but unlike our spot outside of Wall, in Pawnee Buttes the nearest water and dump facilities are over an hour away, and it's a rough road in and out. Too rough to risk when your main goal is get to a specific place at a specific time. We stayed as long as we could, but when the water tank ran dry we fired her up and pointed our nose south. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-09-25_southbound.txt b/jrnl/2018-09-25_southbound.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8e6551a --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-09-25_southbound.txt @@ -0,0 +1,49 @@ +From our perch on the Colorado high plateau we descended southward, to the small little town of Limon where we waited out a two day heat wave in a motel, with a swimming pool. Once it cooled down we broke from our usual back roads ways, jumped on the interstate and spent the next two weeks slowly working our way across Kansas, which we really liked, then down through Oklahoma, which we were less fond of, and finally to Dallas to visit family. + + + + +It was about 900 miles in all, which we spread out over two weeks. The first two weeks of September were a wet two weeks in this part of the country. I think we saw the sun maybe two days in that time, and even then, not for long. It was probably the least interesting two weeks of our trip thus far. At least for me. I was either working or driving, which quickly makes Jack a dull boy as it were. I didn't realize just how busy I had been until I went back and looked for pictures to post and realized I only had a few. + +It probably wasn't a whole lot more exciting for Corrinne and the kids, though they did sneak off into Wichita to a children's museum once, and the kids made some friends in our favorite weekend stopover, the small town of Ellis Kansas, where we met a lot of really nice people. + + + + + + + + +You might be wondering, why did they spend two weeks doing almost nothing, driving through the midwest? + +Well, first off, I would say that until we got to Wichita, Kansas is very much the west. It looks like the west, it feels like the west. And then somewhere in there you cross that invisible line, which some say is the 100th meridian, but which I think is far too ephemeral and shifting to pin down that precisely, and the humidity is back, the undergrowth lusher, and you're in the east again. + +But, the real answer to that question requires going back to the very beginning, before we ever had the bus. + +One day Corrinne came into my office at our house in Athens and said she thought we should move abroad, to Nicaragua, which we both enjoyed when we spent a couple months there. A friend of ours had moved down there recently and really liked it. At the time the girls were still babies and Elliott hadn't been born yet. I said sure, let's move to Nicaragua. I mean why not? + +But I've always thought the United States, despite its many flaws, is a very beautiful place and I wanted the kids to see it before we left. So I said, okay, let's move abroad, but first let's get an old camper and drive around the U.S for a while so the kids can see it. My wife, as I recall, said, I don't know about that. But I started to do some research on old trailers. + +In the process I discovered the bus. Not our bus, not right away anyway, but the Travco more generally, and, well, you know how that ends. But this was just before Elliott was born, Corrinne wasn't sold on the bus idea yet. It wasn't until about four months later, we were down in Apalachicola, and one day Corrinne came up from the beach and said, okay, I could travel for a while. About a month later we found the bus for sale and bought it. + +The rest of the story is documented here already. The point is though that, for us, traveling around the U.S. was always a temporary precursor to going abroad. + +So, after over a year and half of living in the bus we decided the time had come to head abroad for a while. In those 19 months though many things have changed. We're not going to Nicaragua, which has become decidedly unstable in recent months, but we are storing the bus for a few months and heading down the Mexico. Corrinne's parents retired to San Miguel de Allende earlier this year and we thought we'd visit and let the presence of loved ones ease the transition a little for the kids. We are, in other words, sticking to what has always been our rough plan[^1]. + +We could have driven the bus down to Mexico, and someday we might. In fact I'd really like to do the west coast of Mexico in the bus as some point. But since our plan is to stay in one place for a while, bringing the bus didn't make sense. My brother-in-law's parents have some land outside Dallas that they said we could store the bus on, so we decided to leave it for a while (many thanks to Terry and Gram for taking care of our baby while we're gone). No, we're not done with it yet. I don't think. Certainly no one wanted to leave it, but different places demand different travel strategies, and the bus was not the best strategy for what we want to do for the next six months. We'll miss the bus, it still feels like our home, but now it's time for something different. + +Before we caught a flight south though we got to spend a week with family around Dallas, swimming, running some last minutes errands and somehow managing to squeak in some fishing and swimming time out at the lake. + + + + + + + + + + +And then, before we really knew it, we were in the air. + + +[^1]: The idea that we have a plan is completely laughable. What we have is more like a collection of ideas that float around our heads like balloons and every now and then we grab one and float away on it for a while. These ideas are often contradictory and impossible. I think it was Eisenhower who said plans are useless, but planning is essential. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-09-29_big-exit.txt b/jrnl/2018-09-29_big-exit.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3dfb1b5 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-09-29_big-exit.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +The blue-gray light of the distant dawn filters down the canyons of building to the city streets outside the window. I've been awake for hours already, listening to the city. The grinding staccato of diesel engines, the pop and sharp hiss of hydraulic arms raised and lowered, the clatter of metal doors rolling up, the clanging rattle of chains banging against them, shops entered, and the rattle and clang again as the doors close behind the shop keepers. + +Later comes the soft hiss of brooms on the sidewalk, the splash of water thrown out a bucket, and the louder hiss of the broom in the soapy water, the jangle of handcart wheels rolling over uneven stone of sidewalks. Last comes the rush of cars, the muted voices of workers emptying trash, and the blue gray light turning to the white of day. + +This is no longer the largest city on earth. Last time I was here it was, but that, as my wife regularly reminds me, was a long time ago. Now Chongqing China is three times as large as this. Still, Mexico City is a hell of a city. Larger than any other on this continent. And there is something about here that is more alive than anywhere else on the continent. It is big, loud, overwhelming, incomprehensible. Wonderful in its way. + +We arrived yesterday afternoon, made it through customs and caught a cab to our rental apartment. The first thing we did was head out for tacos. Just kidding. The first food we went for was Indian. Corrinne and I have a kind of tradition of eating in immigrant restaurants. Our first meal in Nicaragua was at a Palestinian restaurant. Our favorite meal in Paris was at an Iraqi restaurant. For Mexico City we went Indian. Then we walked down to the zócalo and watched the sun fade away and the blue twilight descend. + + + + + +It was a great end cap to a long day of travel, which was surprisingly smooth all things considered. Our kids are pretty great at entertaining themselves anywhere, using almost nothing, so airports and airplanes were, relatively speaking, pretty much non-stop entertainment. Just the notion that *we're floating above the planet* was enough to keep them enthralled for a three hour flight. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +I was a little worried about going through customs, someone saying the wrong thing, being grumpy and throwing a fit, etc, but everyone was fine, we coasted right on through without missing a beat. + +I won't lie, I felt my spirits lift considerably after the rather bored customs official stamped the last of our stack of passports and waved us out of no-man's-land and into Mexico. I get a giddy feeling every time I leave the United States, a feeling that I've somehow managed to survive something, though exactly what is unclear to me. + +I don't want to write some cliche bit about how the United States sucks or what have you. I like the United States, it has its upsides -- mostly that nearly everyone we know and love lives there -- but one thing that I think universally irks travelers and expats is the smug satisfaction that folks back home have about how "free" they are. If Americans have a blind spot, it's this. We *believe* we're free. + +We are not free at all relative to the rest of the world. Oh sure, we have the right to assemble, which is often lacking elsewhere, but in terms of daily life, the United States is the most micromanaged, regulated country I've ever been to. + +I'll be honest, it feels good to leave that behind for a while. And that's all I'm going to say about that. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +We explored Mexico City for a few days, adjusted to city life as opposed to roaming the wilds of the United States, and then, we were done. Or rather we weren't done, but we were ready to get to something more permanent. We ended up cutting our time in Mexico City a little short and jumping a bus for San Miguel de Allende. The biggest festival of the year was about to start in San Miguel and we didn't want to miss it. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-10-06_alborada.txt b/jrnl/2018-10-06_alborada.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..71cddfd --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-10-06_alborada.txt @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +We left Mexico City earlier than we'd planned in part to make it back to San Miguel in time to catch the weekend-long Alborada festival. We grabbed the fancy fast bus from MXCD to San Miguel, which came complete with seat-back movie screens that the kids used to watch some cartoons in Spanish. I watched the countryside roll by and, by force of habit, kept track of campgrounds via the [ioverlander](http://ioverlander.com/) site. + +Since we got to San Miguel four days early, we had nowhere to stay. Fortunately Corrinne's parents squeezed us in and we spent the next day wandering around, getting a feel for our new home. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +A day later the Alborada began. At 4 AM in the morning. Actually it was closer to 2 AM. The Jardin was packed, there was plenty of music and then thousands and thousands of fireworks. Not that I saw it, but I did periodically wake up to volley's of fireworks between 3 and 5 AM. + +I've been in quite a few large scale parties -- Songkran, Chinese New Year, New Year's Eve in New York. San Miguel's Alborada deserves a spot among those, it's a hell of a party and it lasts for four or five days. + +There's way too much to keep track of as an outsider, but we managed to see a couple parades, hours and hours of dancing, drumming and music, a blessing of the horses, which saw at least a thousand horses and riders come into town one afternoon (technically I don't think the horses are part of Alborada, but it happened the same weekend this year), giant paper maché dolls dancing, and the "Voladores de Papantla" which are people spinning on ropes around a 100 foot high pole, slowly lowering to the ground. + + + + + +From what I've read, the central premise of the festival/party is, well, it depends a little on who you are, how Catholic you are and how far back into history you want to reach. Ostensibly though the parade at least is the story of St Michael, patron saint of San Miguel, defeating um, something. How exactly the very indigenous parts of the festival -- the Chichimecas are the local tribe in this area -- fit with that is a little mysterious to me. + +The dancing groups are highly organized in a hierarchy of seniority, with each group of dancers having two elders who represent the Aztec gods Cipactonal and Oxomoco, who handed down the various rites to humanity. And at least some of the dances represent the various tribes asking for forgiveness for "misunderstandings and mistreatments" from the other tribes. + +That much a bit of research can teach you, but how that all fits together with the post-conquest Catholic symbolism and the festival of St Miguel is something you'd have to be born into to really understand in any meaningful way. + +As an outsider all you can really do is watch. So we did. And there were conchero dancers, huge xúchiles (floral arrangements with palm fronds and lots of marigolds mounted on bamboo frames), and more traditional parade-style floats, all going up our street to the church and square at the top of the hill, the parroquia. + + + + + + + +The dancing lasts late into the night. We, for most part, did not last very late into the night. One night after the kids were asleep Corrinne and I walked up to the parroquia and watched the Voladores. + + +The next day everyone was back up in the parroquia area and the dancing picked up roughly where it left off the night before. + + + + + + + + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2018-10-23_como-se-goza-en-el-barrio.txt b/jrnl/2018-10-23_como-se-goza-en-el-barrio.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bb564d5 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-10-23_como-se-goza-en-el-barrio.txt @@ -0,0 +1,77 @@ +Every morning I get up, put on my coffee, and walk all the way to the front of the house to swing open the two oaken doors that serve as our window onto the street below. I can tell the time by what's happening outside. Usually the eastern sky is already glowing pink behind the hill, but the streetlights are still on and the western sky a deep purplish blue with three stars still visible. The rock pigeons and white-winged doves will be just arriving, pausing here and there on rooftops as they make their way uphill. Most mornings a quiet pair of little Inca doves sit on drain pipes two stories up, eye level with me, watching the street below. Sometimes we watch each other, the doves and I. + + + +Even in the half light the street is always filled with people. If it's very early I'll see the sweepers making their way up, cleaning the night's debris. After them come the workers, walking up the hill to their jobs, munching tamales or breads, rolls, containers of fruit, some with cups of coffee or bottles of coke. There's a rhythm to their movement, like rivulets of water bouncing over stone sidewalks. It's a rhythm that's matched by another coming down the hill -- buses wheeze and groan making the turn onto San Antonio just before our house, and cars and motorcycles weave in and out and around, dropping off spouses to work, children to school. Snatches of conversation drift up to the window where I sit, goodbyes and hellos floating around the ever-brightening day. + + + + +Sometimes, if I'm late to the window the vendors are already pulling in their carts, setting up for the day -- the fruit sellers, the juice lady, and somewhere down the street, the tamale lady. + + + +Nearly always there is music. It is loudest between 12AM and 2AM when people seem to leave the bars and head back out to wherever they live, speakers throbbing. But people walk with music playing on phones in the morning too. No one plays music quietly. It's my kind of place in that sense because even if I don't like the music, which I usually do, but even if I don't, I still like it loud. Occasionally someone walks up the street playing guitar and singing. Once Elliott and I sat in a chair at the window and watched a lone drummer come up in the middle of the day, pounding out a beat for no apparent reason other than he wanted to play the drum. This morning a small parade of indecipherable origin or destination wandered by with horns, drums and guitars. + +
+ +
+ +For all its constancy though, we get little continuity. Music drifts up from the street and into our house in little staccato bursts, the time it takes for a car or bus or motorcycle to pass by with its ranchero, samba, salsa or more modern, less drifting, more wall shaking sounds of pop, rock and rap, and then it's gone, on down the hill. + +At first the constant noise was annoying, but we adjusted. Now it feels slightly strange on the rare occasions when I hear no squeal of worn brakes, rattle and growl of engines in various states of collapse, or shouts or cries or clangs or dings or clamor, when I hear silence. + +It might sound strange, given how much time we've spent away from the clamor of cities, to know that I like it. It surprises me a bit, but there are some qualifications worth mentioning. For instance, this is a real city, not a sanitized one. The streets here are where people live out their lives to a large degree. People rule the streets, not cars. Food is everywhere. There are no huge stores, there are tiny stores selling single things well. To get everything you need you'll need to visit a dozen of them, talk to dozen people, interact with a dozen more coming and going. Life is more public, but more fun too. There's only one place in America I can think of that even comes close -- New Orleans, but even it lacks the street food. + +We do miss being outside all the time, and it might bother me more if I didn't know that I'll be returning to outside life again. + +And it did take a little adjusting to being in a city. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +There is always that period of shock when you first arrive somewhere new, especially if its outside your birth culture. I think what people mean when they say "culture shock" is the severe cognitive dissidence that comes from realizing that everything you think is true, and "just the way things are" turns out to be neither. + +Everything you believe, do, say, and think is relative to the culture you were raised in. + +We say that a lot -- everything is relative -- and we think we know what it means, but by and large we don't *live* it. Go abroad and you will suddenly live it. + +The simplest things in life become grand adventures. You either thrive on this or you have a rough time until you figure out the new world you're in. Or you go home. Even if you enjoy it like I do, it can still be overwhelming at times. + +
+ + + + + +
+ + +This is why, generally speaking, people spend their vacation in little islands of their own culture that have established themselves abroad. People from the United States go to Cancun because there's an entire industry set up to insulate them from having to deal with the vast difference between their culture and the local culture. Australians go to Bali for the same reason. The British love India. The Japanese have enclaves that put a little bit of Tokyo in Bangkok. You can rest assured that every place you think of as a tourist destination, every place that's on the cover of a glossy travel magazine, is a place your culture has established a kind of bulkhead. + +A lot of people on the internet turn up their noses at these sort of places, "tourist traps" is the snob's term for them. Some people seem to think they lack authenticity, as if some things in the world were somehow more real than others. That doesn't mean you should spend your time (or any money) in tourist traps. I don't. But they have their place and they have value. + +Tourist traps -- bulkheads if you will -- are important gateways between worlds. If there wasn't some way to smooth over cultural differences nearly everyone who ever left their own culture would be back the next day. I know this because I made the rookie mistake of avoiding tourist traps on my first trip abroad, and my first week in India was pretty rough. + +It's really hard to relearn every assumption you've ever made about the world. No one wants to spend their precious two to six weeks of vacation a year doing that. It's not most people's idea of fun. Good tourist bulkheads smooth some of this over, allow in just enough outside culture to whet your appetite for more, but not so much that you spend an entire day struggling to find toothpaste. + +I happen to be one of those weird people that thrives on turning my world upside down. I like spending the day trying to figure out how the hell to buy toothpaste. Then the next day, you don't have to worry about toothpaste, you can move on to the next thing. Little by little you find the things you want and you form these little patterns, you walk over here to get tortillas, over here to get coffee, over there to get roast pollo, up the hill for the gordita lady, around the corner to the flouta lady, to the market downhill for veggies, but the market uphill for fruit and meat. You figure things out, day by day, little by little. Until, if you're me, you start to notice your little patterns. + +Sometimes I see myself like I imagine a hawk sees the patterns of a field mouse moving to and fro, getting seeds here, roots other there, all by traveling well-worn trenches in the grass that are obvious to good eyes even 2000 feet in the air. If you're me you notice these trails and you force yourself out of them, force yourself to find a new fruit vendor, a new butcher, a new gordita stand, a new place with better salsa, a new queso stand in the mercado, a new pollo rostizado seller. Actually, no, I'm loyal to the chicken lady. We have an understanding. You have to have some patterns. + +Eventually though you parse out a place and start to find yourself in it, start to understand it in some way. Not the way the people born into it do, but in your way. + + + +That's a common expat mistake, thinking you understand a place like the locals. That's impossible. I will never understand San Miguel the way the locals do. And they'll never understand the Los Angeles area the way I do. But you do start to develop your own understanding. Finding your places helps you find your place. And surprisingly quickly a place can come to feel like home, whether it's the wilds of Lake Superior, the barren emptiness of the Badlands, or the main drag in San Miguel de Allende. Home is where you are. + +[Note: Most of the titles on luxagraf come from songs, I rarely point it out, but in this case, since it's in Spanish, I thought I'd mention the translation: *Como Se Goza En El barrio* translates literally to "how you enjoy in the neighborhood". The song is by the great Cuban musician [Arsenio Rodríguez](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenio_Rodríguez) and comes from the album of the same name, which is well worth getting if you enjoy Cuban son, mambo and similar styles of music.] diff --git a/jrnl/2018-11-03_friday.txt b/jrnl/2018-11-03_friday.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ef479fb --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-11-03_friday.txt @@ -0,0 +1,62 @@ +It was a week of Fridays. Some weeks are like that, you're forever on the edge of a weekend, but never quite there. + +The first Friday that week was a Tuesday. I got fired from the programming job I've had for a couple years now. I wasn't particularly surprised, companies are made of people, when the people change, the companies change. These things happen. But hey, if [you ain't got no job...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4tbZ7xnEjk) it's Friday. I walked down to the tienda and grabbed a Modelo. As you do. Maybe it was two. It could have been three. But no more. Their fridge is much colder than ours and they're only thirty feet from the front door. Never buy more than you need. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +The next Friday was Wednesday, Halloween. + +It's not much of a holiday down here and honestly, aside from some candy corn I brought down for Elliott, who has been obsessed with the stuff ever since he discovered it last year at Ron's house, we were pretty much going to skip Halloween this year. + +That said, the girls' dance teacher wanted to take all the kids down the Parrochia/Jardin area after class on Halloween, where, apparently, the expats hand out candy. I thought, well isn't that creepy of them. But then I'm always slagging the expats and I've been trying to do that less so I didn't say anything. It turned out to be way creepier than even I had imagined, but the kids got to walk around town in their costumes and really didn't care about anything else. They had a ball. + + + +After the girls' dance class was over all the kids changed into their Halloween costumes and Michelle, their teacher, the six or so other kids, their families, and the five of us all walked the half mile or so down to the Jardin. There, in exchange for candy, a bunch of older expats took pictures of the all the kids. Not weird at all. Uh... + +I might not have thought anything of it if the expats had been taking pictures of *all* the kids in the Jardin, but they weren't. They were taking pictures of the Mexican kids. That our kids were taken for Mexican was an accident of assumptions -- since we were walking with a group of Mexican families, we must be Mexicans. + +It got me thinking about *why* we all take all the pictures we take. The kids -- regardless of nationality -- didn't seem to care, by the end they had buckets full of candy and for children, candy transcends all. + + + +The next Friday was Thursday, Dia de Muertes. Despite the name, around here celebrating Dia de Muertes takes two days. + +Day of the dead is a colorful holiday, lots of marigolds, elaborate family shrines, candles and, at night, fireworks. We went out wandering the town in the morning, watching people set up all the painstakingly handmade decorations. I hardly took any pictures though. The expats with their cameras in the Jardin the night before was still in my mind and then, unfortunately, we kept running across more people with cameras behaving badly. Normally I hardly notice expats or tourists, but for some reason they were all over the place for day of the dead, and behaving obnoxiously. + +We watched people shoving cameras in the locals' faces while they tried to make shrines for their dead, the parents they missed, the children they'd lost. And let's be clear, it wasn't "people" it was, in all three cases I witnessed, white males of a certain age. And it wasn't just any locals. They sure as hell weren't shoving cameras in the face of the guy covered in tattoos with a prominent 13 on the back of his head, no they were doing it to the grandmothers and grandfathers, the people who, again, were least likely to protest. + +And I point that out not because the guy has gang tattoos, but because his tattoos make him photographically interesting, more so than a grandmother to my mind. But then he's intimidating and the grandmother isn't. Or so you'd think. But the only public act of violence I've seen in Mexico was grandmother beating a guy with her purse when he got in her way at a parade, so it's not like old Mexican women are helpless. + +Still, you have to wonder what makes people think it's okay walk around shoving your camera in a grandma's face, while she's in the midst of a celebration designed to honor the dead. It's rude any day of the week. And, after the experience in the Jardin the night before, I couldn't help thinking -- to what end? Why are we even taking all these pictures? To remember? Are our memories that bad? To show others? To impress our friends with... what exactly? How little you understand the culture that's been kind enough to allow you to visit it? I don't understand how anyone comes to think it's okay to behave this way. + +I do know where the idea for the image comes from though -- National Geographic. But National Geographic photographers don't get those images by rudely shoving a camera in someone's face. Shoving cameras in someone's face is something shitty photographers do -- the people who take pictures no one will ever care about precisely because they have no empathy, no feeling, no soul, lack even the self-awareness to recognize that there is a soul. These are crappy selfies in which the self just happens to be outside the frame. + +The people making art out of the beauty they see around them, the people whose images could actually end up in National Geographic don't take pictures like that because there's no beauty to be had that way. They don't take pictures without permission, they don't take pictures without first getting to know a person, even if only for a few moments. + +On Dia de Muertes I watched shit photographer after shit photographer behaving like asses and I didn't want to be like them, which is why there's so few images in this post. I'm too shy to go out and meet people and ask to take their photographs, so I took the other sensible path -- I put my camera away. The only pictures I have of Dia de Muertes are of me, my family, and few of the public decorations we saw while walking around. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +I think that's how Dia de Muertes is supposed to be anyway. It isn't the huge party I thought it was. I always thought of it as a Mexican Halloween, but it's not. It's a celebration of *your* dead. Like everything in this country it's about your family, your history, your people. There are public aspects to it, certainly fireworks and parties, but it's primarily a more personal holiday. There's an essay I really like, [Let Me Die like a Mexican](https://claritamannion.wordpress.com/2016/10/25/dia-de-muertos/), which calls Dia de Muertes a "bittersweet reflection on love, loss and life well lived." That's very much what it felt like to me. + +It's also the day the dead come back to visit the loved ones they've left behind. That's not metaphorical and it's not taken lightly. Everything that's done is done to make their journey back from the underworld more pleasant -- the food, the offerings, the alcohol, it's all for the returning family members. Any student of the world's bardo literature knows that coming out of the underworld is no easy task. You're going to want a drink afterward. + +Walking around during the day I spent a fair bit of time contemplating how Dia de Muertes managed to survive the Catholic church. It's the most overtly pagan celebration I've ever seen. Sometimes the older pagan ways are too strong to be denied I guess -- what comes from below outlasts what is imposed from above. Surprisingly, the recent movie, Coco, does a pretty decent job of capturing what the celebrations here are actually like. + +I, on the other hand, cannot do a decent job of explaining what Dia de Muertes was like because I decided I wasn't invited. My dead are nowhere near here and I've got nothing for them even if they came. I'd never really thought about it until that night, but I'm a crap descendant in that regard. I've never done anything to honor the dead in my family, certainly nothing of the sort that happens on Dia De Muertes here. I don't even think about them much if I'm honest. I didn't even make to their funerals in most cases, what business do I have being out on day of the dead? + +So I went back to our apartment. I sat in the little covered outdoor area between the two rooms, listening to the fireworks, watching the flickering colors in the window. I drank a Modelo. Maybe two. It could have been three. I mumbled something about it being Friday, and it was actually Friday by then, and I ain't got no job. I ain't got shit to do. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-11-17_lets-go-ride.txt b/jrnl/2018-11-17_lets-go-ride.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..381b63d --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-11-17_lets-go-ride.txt @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +The goggles barely fit over my glasses, they're pressed tight against the bridge of my nose -- in a few hours I'll have a headache. But unlike last time I found myself [hurling down dusty tracks](https://live.luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/03/ticket-ride) through the bush, this time I can see. This time I have two extra wheels and loads more stability. It's also an automatic so I rip into to tight turns with far more recklessness than I ever did on a Honda Dream. + +I won't lie, it feels good to be astride an engine again. + +There's no cool mask for this trip though. Mike asked for a bandana and got one. I stuck with the little white painter's mask the guide gave me. It reminds me of sanding down the bus. The dust isn't that bad out here anyway. Half the time we're in mud and at one point we very nearly submerge our quads in the lake. I would never have dreamed of putting an engine through what the guide seemed happy to lead us through, but who am I to argue? + + + + +Without the bus I've lost the understanding of surrounding terrain that was part of life in the bus. In the bus we'd have been coming from somewhere and we'd have to figure out the best way from point A to point B, which might not have been the main road. In any case I'd have looked at all of the roads into San Miguel before making a decision. I'd have a map, I'd have looked at elevations in my own online mapping tool. I'd have figured out the outlying roads, how they connected San Miguel to points around it. Corrinne would have planned where we were going, what we'd do. We'd know the best way into the city, what to avoid, and where to go once we got there. Most of that research wouldn't have been very formal, we'd have just kind of absorbed it a little bit at the time as we looked and talked. + +Instead we were handed a bus ticket in Mexico City, and then we sat back and chatted until we magically appeared in the middle of town a few hours later. There's very little context when someone else is driving, and almost no planning. Since then we've only been places we can reach either on foot or on the local bus, which hasn't added to my understanding of the overall picture very much. + + + +We have been to the botanical gardens at the top of the hill a couple times. It offers a pretty good view to the north and east. The kids and I once rode the number 10 bus to its end point in the neighborhood of Malanquin, where we found a playground atop a hill with really good views to the south, but otherwise my sense of the lay of the land is very vague. I know roughly where various neighborhoods are, but no sense of how they connect, and hardly any sense of what the surrounding country side looks like. + +That's one of the reasons, when my friend Mike suggested we rent ATVs and go riding, I immediately said yes. The other reason was, even if it's not a motorcycle, at least I'd be riding an engine again and I never pass up the chance to do that. + +Right off the bat we drove through a neighborhood I'd only heard of from seeing for rent ads on Craigslist. I quickly realized why I hadn't been there --it's the suburbs, and rich suburbs at that, not my part of town, but I'm glad I know where it is now. We quickly rode on through and down to the lake shore past this crazy Gaudi-esque house that came up so fast and was so close I couldn't get a good picture, but it's on the list of things to get back to, eventually. + + + +We continued on down to the lake, stopping at a little church that I believe, if my Spanish isn't failing me, is the original structure that started San Miguel de Allende. And it was built atop the ruins of a pyramid that was, until the day the Spanish arrived, not in ruins. + + + + + + +Normally I'd have wondered off to think on the history and architecture and stone and water and dead birds, but on this particular trip I wasn't in the mood. Actually I did sit for a while and think on the dead bird. I'd never see a vermilion flycatcher that close, dead or alive, they're even more beautiful than they look from a distance, even dead. + +I'd like to do another trip, slower, maybe on a horse, and bring an archaeologist or historian back to the church and find out how it fits into the structure and system of the world we're in here. And since we actually met an archaeologist/historian there's a good chance that will happen eventually, but on this particular day I just wanted to feel the wind in my face, see the country side rushing past, and maybe try to get all four wheels off the ground a time or two. I wasn't in the frame of mind to explore the details, I was after the high level overview -- the frame, not the picture. + +After a while at the church we rode on, at one point, for the sheer fun of it, we road through water deep enough to flood the engines, which somehow did not die. Still puzzling that out in my free time. + +We went past little town, clusters of houses really, always with a small tienda where everyone, and every dog, seemed to be gathered to talk and relax on a Sunday afternoon. I would have like to stop in a few, buy a Coke or a beer and talk to the people, but we kept on. We went past enormous restaurants that seemed far larger than was necessary given the nearby population was near nil, but perhaps people come out from San Miguel, who knows. I filed that, along with many other questions away for another day. + +At some point we passed an RV, a beat up old thing, probably a late 80s or maybe early 90s model. It was clearly functional though, and hooked up to both sewer and water in the middle of nowhere. I filed it away to think on later and punched it over the railroad tracks. + +We stopped for some water and a huge flock of either ravens or crows came circling overhead. I like to think they were crows, since that would make them a murder of crows, but I couldn't say for sure, I had no binoculars on me. + + + + +Eventually we circled back around, up past the train station I knew must be around -- we'd heard the trains -- but hadn't seen yet, and finally up the hill with the giant cross. When I said that to some people who have been here a few years they looked at me like I was an idiot -- which hill, which cross? Right, every hill has a cross. In this Catholic, yet not quite Catholic, world every neighborhood has a church, every hill has a cross. Oh, you know, the one with nice views of San Miguel and the lake. + + + + +I still don't know the area like I would if I had the bus, but I know where things are better than I did before. And I did, I think, manage to get all four wheels off the ground at least once. Those quads are no Honda Dreams, but they'll do for now. Special thanks to my friend Mike for making this trip happen. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-11-26_food-table-tonight.txt b/jrnl/2018-11-26_food-table-tonight.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a750c5c --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-11-26_food-table-tonight.txt @@ -0,0 +1,61 @@ +We abandoned all pretense of traditional American fare for Thanksgiving this year and instead went full Mexican -- tamale pie, chayote squash, ensalda pepino and plenty of salsas. This was partly because none of us like roast turkey anyway and partly because we wanted to eat what was around us. To me if you aren't eating what's around you, if you're always hunting out the familiar foods from back home, you're missing out on one of the best things about travel. + +There are, to my mind three great things in the physical world: *phylos*[^1], sex and food. There are many other great things, but most of them are subcategories of these three. The first two you'll have to figure out for yourself, but food... food is life. Food powers economies, shapes ecology, dictates religious rituals, causes wars, drives the explorations of the unknown, determines the size and shape of our bodies, and, to an extent we are only beginning to realize, shapes how we act, how we think, and even how we see the world. + +Food has always been a big part of our travels, even if I don't often write about it much. Sometimes we refer to places we've been by which foods were really good there. Colorado and its Palisade peaches. The UP and its cherries. Louisiana and its boudin. Florida and its gulf shrimp. + + + +In Mexico it's the guavas and green apples and strawberries. But even more than any specific foods, in Mexico food permeates nearly every aspect of life. Food is everywhere all the time. Sometimes for just dinner, sometimes for ceremony, sometimes for sale. I doubt you could walk more than 20 feet down any street without passing some sort of food. There are so many things to try that we've been here months and I haven't even scratched the surface of what's available. + +Partly that's because I tend toward a slow, systematic exploration of food. While I love eating prepared food, especially street food, what I really love is the markets. I didn't plan it, but it just some happened that our first place was a block from one of the bigger markets in town. It's not necessarily the nicest, nor does it have the best stuff, but *Mercado de San Juan de Dios* is still my favorite. + + + + + +I like to go and search out things I don't recognize, and then buy them. But then rather than rush in I get one new thing every time I go. I always start with fruit because there's really no such thing as a bad fruit. Once I've tried all the fruit on offer I move into vegetables and after that different cuts of meat. Lately I've been exploring Mexican cheeses, working my way through a variety of queso oaxaca, quesa fresca, and some other round one I haven't even learned the name of yet. I'm also on the hunt for a good cotija cheese. + +But it's not just exploring the variety of foods, I also like to try things from each vendor to see who has what I like the best, at the best price. I get perhaps a little obsessed. I've had dreams about buying fruit. I recognize that this is a little odd to most people. + +But sampling and talking to people is what makes it fun. To me that's the point of exploring food in another culture, to get to understand the people growing it, selling it and making it. It's a way into a culture, for me particularly I guess. I'm not always that outgoing so sometimes I can make connections with people through food much easier than talking. And to me there is no better way to start to understand the daily lives of the people around you than to go to the local market and see what's there, the food, the people, how it all fits together. + + + + +When I first got here I went to the center of the market, bought a couple tacos and a coke and sat and watched. I watched what people bought, how they examined it, what they picked, what they rejected, what they asked the vendor to get, what they insisted on getting themselves. I watched how they handled it, what was delicate, what was not, who was careful with what they were picking out, who was not (the latter were probably buying it for someone else). + +I came back the next day and spent another half hour watching. Then another. Then I walked around the every stall, looking things over, figuring out who had the best of what, how things changed from day to day, what time the new stuff arrived, how it was rotated, who cared if you grabbed the fresh stuff in the bins under the display and who didn't, who pulled their their borderline fruits and veggies, who didn't, which butcher got whole animals and cut them down, which got the halves and quarters already cut. All these details tell you stories about the people behind them, and if you want the best possible local ingredients you have to go out and learn these stories. + + + +Sometimes of course you do things even though you know better. I buy most of my fruit from a woman who is slow to rotate things and I have to carefully look over every piece I buy, but I like her, she teaches me the Spanish words of veggies I don't know and I sometimes help her translate words in her daughter's English homework. People are more important than ingredients. + +When I finally had a few ideas about what was going on in the market, I dove in. I started to buy all the things I didn't recognize, didn't understand, and didn't normally eat. I figured out how to eat cactus -- it's delicious, though tricky, like a strange combination of asparagus and okra -- then I went for chayote, except that while I was studying it there on the counter at home, trying to decide what to do with it, Corrinne dove in and fried it up with potatoes, onions, garlic and mint. The kids, who had never seen a guava until about two months ago now plow through about 10 a day. At first we scooped the seeds out, but then we noticed the locals never do that so now we just eat them whole, seeds and all. They're also big fans of the *elote*, boiled corn on the cob you can get on just about every corner. + +I head over to market generally every day, partly to get out of the house, but partly because there's still so much there I don't understand yet, so many foods in so many stalls, it'll take me months to get through them all, and that's only one market in one town. It would take years just to even scratch the surface of one place. Because after I figure out what I like and where to get it I like to figure out where it's coming from, who's growing it? What do they do? Why? How? You pull at one tiny thread and you can follow it forever. Like I said, I recognize that this is a little odd, even obsessive. + +Luckily my family is usually game to go with me and try new foods. The other day I came back from the big market outside of town with a cup full of dried, salted, chili-covered sardines and even my kids all had one. Only one of them actually like it, and in this case, I think she liked them more than even I did, but it makes me happy that they're all willing to at least try new things. That's long been my motto: try anything twice. + + + + +A lot of people seem to obsess over food in other ways. Like health. I seems like nearly everyday there's some new food discovery that either kills you or cures you of everything. Then there's the whole fear of foreign food. You see this when chefs [talk](https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/craving-the-other-0) about "elevating" street food (so they can overcharge you for it). You also see it in people's fear of getting sick from food they're not totally comfortable with. I've overheard tourists around here telling each other not to the street food, but yet they go to the restaurant up the hill and sit down to a dinner made from the same ingredients, from the same markets, coming from a kitchen they *can't* see. That's far more likely to get you sick than the stalls in the market where you can see for yourself every step of the process. + + + +Sometimes it blows my mind how little people understand food and, more importantly, food preparation. I do have an advantage I suppose, having worked in the restaurant industry for about six years, but most of what helps me comes from learning the basics of microbiology. All the restaurant experience did was provide practical examples of microbiology in action. If you food is bad, you'll smell it. Trust me. + +Contrary to what you've probably seen on TV, most of running a restaurant does not involve cooking. There is some of that, but mostly you stand around and wait. Technically you're chopping stuff, but after a few years you can do that without thinking about it. So really you're just standing around. Then for about three hours you're so busy and focused it feels like only ten minutes went by. But mostly you wait. You smoke a lot and stand around a lot. And for me, standing around smoking, I needed something to read. There's not a lot to read in restaurant, so I read all the bizarre food industry trade magazines that would arrive every day in the mail. + +One of the things that you learn from reading these bizarre magazines -- which would have cover stories on strange things like how to entice millennials with foods that remind them of their favorite sitcoms -- is that real food poisoning, the outbreaks that the CDC tracks, not the ones where you mistakenly attribute some diarrhea to whatever bizarre food you ate most recently, the real outbreaks, almost always come from vegetables, particularly vegetables that grow on the ground and have to be harvested by hand. Because the people harvesting the food don't get paid enough to take bathroom breaks, so, well, you do the math. From my anecdotal observations, if you really want genuine food poisoning, a bout of salmonella say, eat asparagus, preferably raw. + +Which is why I find it hilarious that so many people here are deathly afraid of street food, but in the next breath tell me how they don't need to wash their veggies because they get them at the organic market. WAT?! And no, I never say anything. It's not my place to shatter anyone's carefully constructed delusions. Though I did write this. So now you know. Wash your veggies, eat where you can see the kitchen. You'll mostly likely be fine. + +That said, I eat unwashed strawberries all the time and regularly get gorditas from a place where they use dirty rags from god knows where to sop up the grease just before handing it to you. But I have a stomach of steel. I'm not sure which came first though, my stomach of steel or my willingness to eat anything at least twice. + +But more importantly than a strong stomach, I eat at that place because I see the people around me doing it too. They're still here so it must be fine. That's the part of food that a lot of people seem to forget -- ingredients are nothing, people are what matter. I could spend the next ten years practicing making tamales, but I'll never be as good at it as the abuelas sitting on every street corner here (don't buy their tamales though, they aren't selling the good ones). + +When Thanksgiving rolled around we wanted the foods we were excited about and that happened to be tamales, chayote and tomatillos, so that's what we made, and man was it good. So good it makes you thankful that you have the opportunity to explore food rather than be ruled by it, by the need for it, as so many are here and everywhere. Thankful that another country would even let you come to it, let alone have free run of the place to meet its people enjoy its foods. + +[^1]: Greek, "to love". diff --git a/jrnl/2018-12-14_mary-wild-moor.txt b/jrnl/2018-12-14_mary-wild-moor.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f8dd25d --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-12-14_mary-wild-moor.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +On December 9th, 1531 Juan Diego was walking up the hill of Tepeyac, just north of Mexico City, when a woman appeared to him and, spoke to him in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec empire. She told him she was the Virgin Mary and asked him to have a church built on that site to honor "her native religion". + +Diego then went to the archbishop of Mexico City several times with the message, but the archbishop did not believe him. Finally, three days later, after some other trials, a miraculous death bed recovery, and non-native roses blooming at 7500 feet in December, Diego delivered a shroud with an imprint of the Virgin Mary to the archbishop who finally believed him and thus was born the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Marian vision that is the cornerstone of Mexican Catholicism. + +This, far more than Christmas, is what Mexicans celebrate in December. In San Miguel the neighborhood of San Antonio is home a blessing of the horses, which involves basically every horse in the nearby countryside coming into San Antonio to be blessed. I think. The truth is, we lacked the necessary Mexican sense of patience to see this one through. We saw the horses lined up, but even our horse obsessed daughter was ready to go long before any of them were actually blessed. + + + + + + + +I never did figure out what Guadalupe has to do with horses, other than she has to do with everything in some way, but I did do a good bit of research on her, in part because I think 300 years from now she will be the focal point of this religion. + +The story above is the purely Catholic version of events. Alas, any other version of these events, including that of Juan Diego in his own words, is lost to time. I mention this not because I do not believe the story as it is, it is, to my mind, as likely as any other. For historical completeness it might be worth noting though that even most Catholic historians doubt the authenticity of story of Diego. Still I'm happy to accept the story in full, it's the name of the goddess that I think is worth quibbling about. + +One of the reasons Catholicism was so successful is that no other sect of Christianity is so good at taking what's already in place and tweaking it slightly to fit with Catholic doctrine. And prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the very same hill where Mary appeared to Diego was rather well know for as the home of the goddess Tonantzin, who regularly appeared to travelers. While there is no English translation, I have seen several second hand sources quote Juan de Torquemada -- whose epic tome *Monarquía India* is apparently one of the more complete histories of early Mexico -- as saying that the goddess Tonantzin regularly appeared to the natives on that hill "in the form of a young girl in a white robe." + +If you wanted to tweak that existing story to fit Catholic doctrine all you need to do is swap some names and you're away. Next thing you know you're feeling quite justified in tearing down the temple of Tonantzin to build a church for Our Lady of Guadalupe, as she is now known. + +Monotheistic religions that want sole claim to the capital T truth have a hard time accepting this, but religions are always changing, always in flux. Gods and goddesses come and go throughout time. Whatever essential mystery is behind them remains. + +I point this out not to mock anyone's faith, but because I find the Mexican version of Catholicism fascinating and a bit confusing because, well it isn't what most Americans or Europeans would recognize as Catholicism. Here Catholicism seems to be the thinnest of veneers over a much, much older set of gods, goddesses and religious practices. + +But Mexicans are adept at adapting and incorporating, so it all blends and molds together into a cohesive whole that makes sense when you see it, even if you probably couldn't put it in words. Still, everything is changing and I think if you come back in 300 hundred years you'll find worship of Jesus has been replaced with worship of Maria -- and only those of us on the outside would think this odd. Arguably it's already that way. + +That's not to say Mexico does not celebrate Navidad. It does, complete with lit up trees and all the rest of the trimmings. We were on hand to see the tree light up in Plaza Civica and lights come on in Centro. + + + + + + + +We tried the night after to see another tree light up in San Antonio, but we got there a bit late. We were in time to see another round of fireworks though, and somehow I think lights in the night sky will always trump those on the ground. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-12-22_four.txt b/jrnl/2018-12-22_four.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a263fa9 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-12-22_four.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +For months Elliott said he wanted to spend his birthday at the beach. I would have settled for a birthday in the bus, but even that doesn't seem to happen for us. Luckily he let the beach idea go a while back because I didn't have the heart to break it to him that generally speaking, those of us with birthdays in December do not get to spend them at the beach. Unless we go to Australia. + +It might be warm enough for the beach down in the Yucatan, but around here winter is much colder than I expected. I'm not alone. It's common to see tourists shivering in thin jackets because they thought Mexico was always warm, even in December. But here it's in the 30s at night. By the middle of the afternoon it's typically 75, but the combination of long shadows and concrete construction often conspires to leave you shivering in the sunshine. Not beach weather by any stretch of the imagination. Still, it beats last year by a long shot. + +One day Elliott and I will spend a birthday in the bus, but this year, like last, we were homeless for our birthday. This year, like last, we spent our birthday in a friend's house. This time though we had it to ourselves. We were fortunate they offered it to us while they went back to the states for December because otherwise I'm not sure what we'd have done. Our Airbnb rental ended and our longer term place wasn't ready when we were told it was going to be ready. The latter wasn't surprising, but for some reason we were naive enough to think it would be different for us. When our friends said hey, you can stay in our place, we jumped at the opportunity. Who says no to a place up on a hill overlooking the city? Life is rough on the fun side of the wall. + + + + + +This year I got to play Santa Claus -- which we have never done because we don't like lying to our kids. To their credit, thus far, our kids, despite knowing Santa is not real, have never told any other kids that he didn't exist. That I know of anyway. This year I made a quick trip up to Denver just before our birthday, and, while officially a work trip, it became a way to haul a load of birthday and Christmas gifts back down to Mexico, which left me feeling a bit like Santa. + +Before Christmas though, two birthdays. We did our balloon ritual but in the vastness of a house it somehow loses something compared to the bus. This time though the girls helped me inflate balloons and pile them on top of Elliott in the morning. + + + + + + + + + + + + + +It wouldn't be a birthday in Mexico without a pinata. This one was somewhat easier to come by than the pinata we somehow managed to come up with in the UP, but no less appreciated. + +
+ + + + +
+ +Happy birthday little man and one day, I promise, we'll spend our birthday at a nice, warm, tropical beach. diff --git a/jrnl/2018-12-28_sparkle-city.txt b/jrnl/2018-12-28_sparkle-city.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e42d016 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2018-12-28_sparkle-city.txt @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +Children know no moderation. At least ours don't. The minute they discover something new they love, they must have it ALL THE TIME. + +Pretty much nothing in Mexico happens without fireworks. Luckily actual fireworks are hard to come by, at least here. Sparklers though, they're everywhere. I picked some up for Christmas Eve, which kicked off an episode of *this is the greatest thing ever*, which of course means we must have sparklers ALL THE TIME. + +And for a while we did, pretty much every night through the new year. If you look closely you'll notice that these are not your average American sparklers, some of them are about three feet long. Mexico is serious about its fireworks. + + + + + + + + +Mexico is more serious about fireworks than it is about Christmas. It seems to be a much less significant a day than Three Kings day, which comes later, in January and is when most families exchange presents. Most expats go home for the holidays it seems, but fortunately some of our friends stayed and we got together for a little cookie baking party. + + + + + +Christmas stockings are unheard of down here. What's Christmas without stockings? Maybe this is why Three Kings day is a bigger deal. Corrinne came up with a substitute to get us through -- some nice ceramic pots. When in Rome, adapt. + + + + + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2019-01-03_these-walls-around-me.txt b/jrnl/2019-01-03_these-walls-around-me.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bc31939 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-01-03_these-walls-around-me.txt @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +We moved into a new place at the beginning of the year, down a block and over a street from where we'd been, overlooking Canal. I miss swinging open the heavy wood doors on the second floor of that house and watching the life of the street below. Our new place has its charms though. We have a courtyard, a roof top deck. Pretty fancy stuff for us. Haven't been able to find the engine though. + +It's a spare place, tending toward the monastic, which is perfect us. There's no knick knacks, no clutter, nothing on the walls even, save one image of Guadalupe. It suits us I think. It's nice enough, but it seems obvious that this a place for people who are passing through, in every sense of the idea. We did our own temporary decorating. + + + + + +We moved in a couple days before the new year. One nice thing about our one-bag-per-person lifestyle, moving is simple. Except for food. Pretty sure our new neighbors thought I was crazy schlepping bags of sauces and spices and flours and oils and vinegar down the street, but hey, we like to cook. And we wanted to spend the new year in a new place, which we did. With sparklers of course. + + + + + + +The streets here are cobblestone rivers threading canyons of smooth, watercolor concrete. The canyon walls rise on either side as you walk, one side offering shade, the other sun, their smooth contours running continuous, unbroken lines down the street, save the occasional door or window. + +Sometimes it's hard to tell where homes begin and end. Looking at photographs, you might assume that color changes in the canyon wall mark where one home ends and the next begins. Sometimes you'd be right. This can be misleading though -- sometimes colors change for no reason, or don't change at all from one house to the next for an entire block. + +The doors aren't much help either. It's hard to know which door goes to which house, or even if they lead to a house at all. Many doors, usually double doors, open to courtyards like ours, or similar outdoor spaces, which offer an air-gap between home and world, making home feel at least a little removed from the bustle of the street. + + + + + +Courtyards are one-way mirrors of sound. The street comes in. You hear everything. Less seems to go out. Walking down the streets you rarely hear noise coming out of the walls. Perhaps the noise of the street hides it, or perhaps a single family can't make a enough noise to get it over the tops of the walls. + +I do a lot of listening in the courtyard. It's visually cut off from the world, but sound surges over the high yellow walls. Disconnected from the source, it's only tiny parts of stories, never the whole thing. Inchoate beginnings, clipped endings, snippets of sound -- brakes whining sharp and shrill, engines grinding gears, cracked mufflers growling, conversations drifting, doorbells buzzing, phones chiming, whistles, horns, bells, birds, buzzers. + +On rare days when the wind blows, it seems oddly quiet on the street. The courtyard swirls with sound of rustling bamboo and clattering palm leaves, putting me back in southeast Asia, or wishing for the west coast of Mexico, the Yucatan, somewhere tropical, somewhere sandy, somewhere hot and humid, with watery winds, salt air, the unbroken horizon of the sea. + + + +In our courtyard, near the door to the street there's a cluster of bamboo stretching far above the broken-glass topped walls. The leafy crowns of bamboo play host to a flock of house sparrows every morning and every evening. + +It's a deafening chorus of feathers, a large enough flock to leave a significant amount of crap on the concrete below. Strangely though, you rarely actually see the birds. The bamboo isn't particularly dense, but it's enough to mask them. The balcony off our bedroom is roughly eye level with the top of the bamboo, and even from there it still takes concentrated effort to make them out. If you sit and stare, wait for your eyes to adjust to the subtlety of shadow and leaf and bird and light you slowly begin to make them out, singing, fluttering and bouncing among the leaves. + + + +They've been here for a long time. One day I was walking back from the market, about to cross the street to our house, when I noticed a little girl walking, tugging on her mom's dress, saying *mama, mama, el arbol de los pájaros*. Another day I was sitting at the table in the courtyard, drinking coffee when I heard a little girl's voice drifting in from the street, roughly the same words, but in English. + +You can set clocks by the sparrows, light clocks anyway. They are shadow singers. Like true Mexican birds, they don't seem to care much about watch time, but they do sing at the same time everyday, with regard to the light. When the light in the evening reaches a certain point, when the tops of the bamboo are in shadow I think, and it seems obvious that dusk has settled on the world, they begin their farewell songs. + + + +In the mornings, when it is light enough to see, but the sun hasn't yet risen high enough to reach the bamboo, they sing again. Each time their singing and chattering lasts about twenty minutes and then they sort of fade out. In the mornings they don't leave all at once, they trickle away in pairs and alone, which makes the noise of them seem to fade away, you don't notice them leaving, just later, when they're definitively gone. + +They come back around the time we eat dinner and have their evening song and chattering, and then, I'm not sure, but I suspect they roost in the bamboo. It seems at tad rude to go out later at night and shine lights on them just to check a hunch, but I think they're up there all night. I like to think of them still up there anyway, roosted down for the night, a ruffle of feathers tucked in a bamboo node here and there, sleeping, waiting for dawn, waiting to sing again. diff --git a/jrnl/2019-01-11_sounds-san-miguel.txt b/jrnl/2019-01-11_sounds-san-miguel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ba2f673 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-01-11_sounds-san-miguel.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +In California I only ever met my neighbors after an earthquake. In Georgia it was big snowstorms that brought everyone together. In Massachusetts it took the first Red Sox victory in 86 years for me to meet my upstairs neighbor. + +Down here the trash truck brings everyone together every morning. + +One of the men hops off the truck at each stop and walks ahead, banging a bell up and down the street. It's not really a bell, though it sounds like one. It's a hunk of metal the size of reporter's notepad, which he beats with a broken bit of pipe that clangs and echoes off the concrete facades. There is no mistaking when the trash man cometh. Assuming you know what the sound means. + + + +That's how trash is done here, you bring it to the truck yourself. You hear the bell, grab your trash and then stand in line with your neighbors, awaiting the trash truck. Everyone says hello, everyone chats. Some raised an eyebrow at me in the beginning, a gringo bringing out the trash. Unexpected apparently. After a few days people started to say buenos dias to me as well, commenting on the chill of the desert mornings, and then turning to ask after their other neighbors. + + + +San Miguel has a reputation for being a bright and colorful colonial town, with good reason. Still, what I end up noticing when I walk around is the kaleidoscope of sound that bounces around amidst all those colors. Not the random noise of chaos in a city, though there is that, but out of that comes organized sounds -- the bells, chimes, whistles, and clangs that mean something. There's always a melody drifting around the corner, down the alleys, always someone signaling their whereabouts. + + + + + +Even in our courtyard, [sounds drift in](/jrnl/2019/01/these-walls-around-me) and the kids know now, sound has meaning. They always want to open the courtyard doors and discover the source of whatever reaches us. Every morning they yell, *Daddy, trash man is here*. But the trash man isn't the only one announcing his arrival. + +The knife man comes by in the afternoons. You know him by the piercing whistle he plays. He carries what looks like a miniature pipe organ, similar to indigenous flutes I've seen elsewhere. Whatever it is, it's an unmistakable calling card. Grab your knife and head out the door to get it sharpened. + +The propane tank guys aren't so creative. They blast a musical spiel that I assume is some sort of sales pitch, though I can't understand it. It's not the Spanish that's hard, it's because it's played out of what sounds like a New York City subway announcement speaker. It squawks and buzzes in roughly four-four time with a scratchy harmony, and that's when you know the truck with all the propane tanks is near. Not to be confused with the propane truck, which is one giant tank of propane, and must be summoned by phone. + +Bells, softer bells you won't notice if the windows are closed, are generally pushcart vendors of some kind, helado or elote or pina or who knows. + + + +The honey hawkers shout, miel, *miel!* The shrimp man, whose son usually carries the bucket of shrimp, cups his hands and yells something that vaguely resembles the word camarones, but we live in a desert and for a long time I thought I must be mishearing him. But no, it is a bucket of camarones on ice. + +The water truck is silent. The delivery man holds everything in his head, knows who needs what and delivers it all without any signifying sound. I want to tell him he should leave a few empties on the outside of the truck, they'd drone all down the road, but my Spanish isn't that good, besides, maybe silence is his calling card. diff --git a/jrnl/2019-02-04_candlelaria-in-san-miguel.txt b/jrnl/2019-02-04_candlelaria-in-san-miguel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5f1094f --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-02-04_candlelaria-in-san-miguel.txt @@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ +Someone once quipped that cultures only need a word for "religion" when they no longer have one. Aside from our brief encounters with indigenous tribes, no other people I've lived among have less need for the word religion than Mexicans. Here there is life, and it is always a celebration. + +It feels the opposite of where we come from. You want to bring it back with you when you leave, but I don't think that's possible. All you ever get to take with you are memories. + + + +Halfway between winter solstice and spring equinox lies a day that has long been celebrated in various forms as the "return of the light". Around the British Isles it's known as Imbolic. Farther south it fell close enough to forty days after Christmas that it merged with existing pagan traditions and become Candlemas. + +Candelaria, as it's called around here, is not celebrated in the States anymore, but in San Miguel it's going strong. Like most things here it's half Catholic, half indigenous and falls such that it marks roughly the beginning of spring. To celebrate there's an indigenous ceremony at the park, with a blessing of the seeds to future harvests, and a huge plant sale. + +The park is transformed into an outdoor arboretum. Plant vendors line the walkways and little kids push wagon loads of plants through the park to waiting cars on the street. And of course there's food. Any time three or more people gather in Mexico, someone materializes bearing food. + + + + + +We're not great with plants. We took the kids to a nursery to get some plants for the pots we gave them for Christmas and by Candlelaria they were already dead. We bought a few more at the plant sale, but um, cough, one of those is already mostly dead as I write this. Not sure what's wrong with us, perhaps we're just not plant people. Animals seem drawn to us though, so at least there's that. + + + + + + +It is warming up here. Perhaps our plants will do better going forward. I doubt it though. All you ever get to take is your memory. Like this memory, which has an explanation, but which I like better without it. + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2019-03-03_cascarones.txt b/jrnl/2019-03-03_cascarones.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e4caf41 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-03-03_cascarones.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +The weekend before Ash Wednesday is Carnival, marking (roughly) the beginning of Lent. Lent is an odd duck to me, but then all the various religions growing out of the Arabian deserts are odd ducks to me. + +When faced with deprivation, followers go on a spree of excess, which is considered a sin, but then you can "repent" and all is magically forgiven regardless of the consequences of these actions in this life. Never mind that this files in the face of the actual experiences of life, in which all actions most definitely have consequences. + +
+ + + + +
+ +On one hand I think this idea that you can do whatever you want and later be absolved is the source of most of what's wrong with western culture. It's the source of our environmental and social problems and I think in hindsight will be seen as the bit of philosophy that landed us in history's dustbin way ahead of schedule. + +On the other hand, who doesn't love a big party in the streets? + +Unfortunately, just as Candelaria fades the further you go north, Carnival seems to fade the further north you get from Brazil. Which isn't to say Mexico doesn't celebrate at all -- by most accounts Mazatlan is the place to be for Carnival -- but here in San Miguel de Allende it's been reduced to día de los cascarones, or day of the confetti eggs. + +It's good fun for the kids anyway. + +Cascarones are eggs that have been drained and filled with confetti. Or glitter or flour. They're colorfully painted, cost less than 50 cents a dozen and exist primarily to smash on someone's head. What's not to love? + + + + + + + +Aside from a few vendors hawking giant crepe paper flowers, some glittery masks, and various hand-made puppets to tourists, the only other sign of anything happening in relation to Carnival was the indigenous dancers. One night I took the girls up to the Jardin to watch the drumming and dancing. + + + +Most of the dancing groups we've seen quite a few times at this point, but there was one that was new to me who had drumming punctuated by machetes clanking like cymbals, by far my favorites from a musical point of view. + + + +The dancers all wore white outfits with red fringing and large feather head dresses. They would dance in a circle and then at some point in the rhythm, form up into two lines of four or five people all facing each other. The footwork moved with the drums, but the hands then clanged the flat side of the machete blade against that of the partner opposite them. The line then shifted and everyone lined up with a different person and the melody and rhythm repeated. When they reached the end of the line they broke into a circle again. + + + +The kids loved everything about día de los cascarones so much they dragged me back up the next morning to see if there was anything still happening. There wasn't. No one's kidding about the "día" part, but we did get to see the entire square in the Jardin covered in flour, evidence that the night before had gotten considerably messier after we headed home. diff --git a/jrnl/2019-03-17_around-san-miguel.txt b/jrnl/2019-03-17_around-san-miguel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..55fda94 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-03-17_around-san-miguel.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +Last week I was walking up from the bus station when I happened across my favorite of the indigenous dance groups that come into town, dancers luxagraf readers might recognize -- a group that turns out to be called La Sagrada Familia. There's no [machetes](/jrnl/2019/03/cascarones), but they have the best drummers, best costumes, and best dancing in my opinion. + + + + +They were on a narrow side street, dancing between a line of cars and the brick and plaster facades of houses. It was a tight space, not great for photos, but with no more than 20 or 30 people sitting around watching. This was the closest I'd been able to get to them. In the Jardin they're always surrounded by a crowd at least three people deep. + +Thanks to the concrete confines of the street the drums were more than sound, they hit me in the chest with vibrations I could feel from my ribcage to solar plexus. It was a more intimate and intense experience in the narrow street than anything I'd seen in the Jardin. + +Vibrations are an important part of many ceremonies. As anyone who's spent a good bit of time either vibrating with their voice or sitting in front of something that vibrates your whole body can tell you, it has profound effects after a while. + +This is probably best known as a negative thing, as in the PTSD many soldiers get from being too close to too many explosions. The shock waves have [permanent and lasting negative effects](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/us/ptsd-blast-waves-research.html). But there are more positive effects to vibration when it arrives in smaller, saner doses. The effect is similar, just lower dosage you might say. This is why rhythmic chanting and other ways of vibrating your own body are so often a part of religious ceremonies -- they are a quick and easy way to change brain states (among other things). + + + +I sat in the middle of the street and watched them dance their way up and down in a slow looping ellipse, feeling the drums vibrate inside me while the dancers' foot work, with ankle rattles attached, filled the mid tone space, and hand held shakers hissed in at the high end of the rhythmic scale. It was a wall of percussion that all fit together, making something larger than the sum of the parts. + + + + +I'm still not sure what the occasion was, or why they were in town. It was the weekend of Benito Juarez's birthday, which could have been the reason. Earlier in the day there was a parade just up the street from our house, which also could have had something to do with Juarez's birthday, though it looked more like Halloween than anything. + + + + + +Sometimes there's no discernible reason for a parade. Even the locals standing on the street around us seemed a little mystified by it all. Or perhaps that was annoyance since the parade held up all the buses headed out of town for a good hour or so. On the weekend many people just want to get the market, get their food for the week, and head home. Damn the parades. + +But they're Mexican, so they waited patiently, with almost no outward sign of irritation, certainly not anger, though, if Octavio Paz is correct, there might be plenty of irritation and anger behind the public mask. + +I'm not sure if Paz is right, sweeping general statements about an entire culture have severe rounding errors, nor an I sure that keeping everything behind a mask is a good thing. Anger has its place, it's a natural, common human emotion. Still, I do admire the Mexican ability to keep it in check, especially in one particular circumstance I encounter nearly every time I head out the door - northerners behaving badly. + +There's no shortage of bad behavior by northerners around here, but Mexicans never confront it. At least as far as I've seen. That is a choice after all -- confronting and complaining about the things you don't like. It's one I generally choose, but you can also choose, as my neighbors do, to ignore it all. Or, as I suspect, to store it up for gossip in the evenings, when everyone comes out into the streets to gather around the grills and cookers to eat, gossip, and laugh. My Spanish isn't good enough to say for sure, but I suspect some of this talk is all the crazy and annoying things that gringos did in the neighborhood that day. + +Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Paz is wrong too. It's impossible to know as an outsider, and even when you're an insider, part of the culture, can you speak for everyone? We like to sort the world, to group individuals together by common traits, behaviors, beliefs. Sometimes there do seem to be currents of thought and idea running common among us, the backbeat of our dreams perhaps. Other times though those who would speak for all of us are really speaking of themselves, for themselves. Sometimes I think we'd all be better off if more of spoke only of ourselves, for ourselves without assuming anyone else thinks, feels, or dreams the same. + +> Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the maze of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason. When we emerge, perhaps we will realize that we have been dreaming with our eyes open, and that the dreams of reason are intolerable. And then, perhaps, we will begin to dream once more with our eyes closed. –Octavio Paz + + +I was walking up from the bus station when I happened across my favorite of the indigenous dance groups that come into town. There's no machetes but they have the best drummers, best costumes, and best dancing in my opinion. diff --git a/jrnl/2019-03-27_visa-run.txt b/jrnl/2019-03-27_visa-run.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1ce566b --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-03-27_visa-run.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +I'm not aware of another country with a tourist visa process that's as simple and generous as what Mexico offers. You show up at the border, you get six months in the country. Cross over the border, come back, another six months. I've met people who have been doing this for years, which is silly really because getting a resident card is about as simple as it gets too. + +We recently reached the end of our six month visa, and the end of bus storage situation, so we headed back to Dallas for a week to visit family and move the bus to a new storage location. + +Our travel day started about 5 AM. It was a strangely foggy morning, the world muted and blurry at the edges. We walked a mile or so down to the bus station in San Miguel and caught a bus to Mexico City. The age of the chicken bus is long past in Mexico, or at least the necessity for it, these are smooth sleek buses far nicer than the plane we'd be on later in the day. + + + + + +We made it to Mexico City around noon and caught a cab across the city to the airport. We made an amateur mistake in not eating at the bus station and had to settle for some pretty awful airport food, but it passed the hours before our flight at least. + + + + +The flight up from Mexico City had probably a dozen kids on it, more than any flight I've ever been on which made it kind of fun because kids love everything about flying. It was a laughing, shrieking, happy kind of flight. And it was funny to watch the handful of people without kids frowning in their seats about the raucousness of their fellow passengers. + + + +At first I barely even noticed it. I'm so used to kids being allowed to be, well, kids that I didn't even think about it. Mexico loves children. The only other place I've been that's as kid-friendly is India. Yesterday I was running some errands around town with the girls. We stopped to buy tortillas and the woman working at the tortilla shop gave them each a fresh warm tortilla. We went to the carnitas shop and the man working there gave them each a napkinful of carnitas to eat while he packaged up our order. And then, walking home, two random strangers handed the girls some beautiful paper flowers because... Mexico loves children. It wasn't until I got up and walked down the aisle to the bathroom that I noticed people, yes Americans, giving me dirty looks. Which was funny because our kids weren't the ones making noise. Guilt by association I guess. + +No one said anything though and we made it to Dallas, fourteen hours of travel later. It wasn't as bad as that probably sounds. + +Our kids were super excited to be back in Dallas, see their relatives and jump in the pool. No amount of warning would put them off the pool, it's going to be cold we told them. Didn't care. Until they got in the water. Then they cared. + +To their credit though they did get in. The water was 62 degrees. Both girls swam across the pool a couple times on two different days. I used to surf in the ocean in those temps (without a wetsuit) all the time when I was younger, but I've gone soft. I didn't even think about getting in. + +At one point the hot tub got turned on, which proved a much bigger hit. There was also the trampoline to jump around on and warm up. + +While we mostly played and worked, we did make a trip down to the bus to move it to it's new temporary home. + +Up until the moment we climbed in I think we were all pretty happy in Mexico. And then we got in the bus. Everything was as we left it. There was no one else around that day. We all sort of stood there looking at each other for a minute and then Corrinne said I miss our home. + +The kids ran back to their room and grabbed the toys and book and clothes they've been missing. I surveyed the batteries, crack the doghouse and looked the engine over. And then... it fired it right up. The wire fell of the ignition coil after about a minute and it died, which temporarily freaked me out until I opened the doghouse and immediately saw the problem. + +After that I had no problems driving the bus and Volvo down to a nearby RV park where we're storing them. It's not ideal, but it'll do for a few more months. The gas in the tank is near the end of its lifespan. I may have to siphon some out when we get back again. And I'll replace the plugs, filters,fluids and other bits. + +We'll give it lots of love when we get back later this year. We're considering an entirely new engine, probably a new transmission (or a rebuild of the current one), and a host of interior improvements. We might even go crazy get a refrigerator. Stay tuned. diff --git a/jrnl/2019-04-07_koyaanisqatsi.txt b/jrnl/2019-04-07_koyaanisqatsi.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0e7acf1 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-04-07_koyaanisqatsi.txt @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +A twenty minute cab ride north of San Miguel, on the road to Atotonilco, there's a stand of towering mesquite trees set back up against several plowed fields. Sprawled out under the mesquite like an old hacienda is a restaurant that's at least partly aimed at kids. One of the huge mesquites plays host to a towering tree house and there's plenty of open space to let the kids roam. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +Prior to coming down here I thought of mesquite trees as smallish shrubs that occasionally, with the right blend of soil, water and light, sometimes make it to tree status. In the United States that's a fair characterization. Our mesquite are not big trees. Here they soar like oaks. + +I don't know if perhaps the trees here are a different species or if they just like it better down south. Whatever the case, the mesquite down here can grow into huge canopies of green that can shade you from even the intensity of the midday Mexican sun + +The midday Mexican sun has become more intense lately. The dry season stretches its legs and lays down across the land, pulling a blanket of dusty haze over it. I don't know where it comes from, I don't even know what it is, perhaps it's the wind out on the plains kicking up dust. Perhaps it's smog drifting up from Mexico City. Perhaps its the endless construction in town. Whatever the case it's bad enough to burn the eyes and lungs some days and anything we leave outside soon has a thin coat of dust on it. + +Between the dust, the sun, and work I've been spending more time around the house, indoors even, than I have in years. I don't like it. We get by, we have fun. Elliott and I try to get outside on the roof in the afternoons. + + + + + +Still, there have been days where I've felt like I was living in some taco-filled version of Plato's cave, watching the shadows on the walls all day. I go up to the roof sometimes after the kids are in bed and try to feel like I'm getting out into the light, but it's usually just leaving. + + + +I want open space, clear air, room to roam, a horizon to stare at, silence to listen in, rain to fall, but it never does, there will be no rain for at least another month, possibly more. + +Corrinne and the kids get out more than I do thankfully. I get to look at the pictures, just like you. One day they went to the toy museum in town. + + + + + + +It looked like fun, but what I enjoyed far more than I would have enjoyed the musem was seeing the kids come home and start making their own toys out of whatever we had lying around. One evening I walked down to the tienda and bought them corn husks which they used to build not just corn husk dolls but whole families with houses, canoes, tikinagans, birchbark houses, and more. + + + +Like all children, they're much better than us adults at playing enthusiastically with what the world has given them, regardless of what that may be. diff --git a/jrnl/2019-04-22_semama-santa.txt b/jrnl/2019-04-22_semama-santa.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2b3031f --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-04-22_semama-santa.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +Semana Santa, holy week, is the roughly two week period leading up to and just after Easter. If you want to pin it down more than that you're not Mexican. There is no pinning down time here. That's one of the things you should leave at home if you ever come. Here time is vast and endless you must make yourself at home in it. + +The first of the public events was around Palm Sunday, which the locals celebrate with plenty of decorations and paletas, which get handed out to just about anyone who will take one. The paletas, melting in a increasingly intense dry season sun, represent the tears of Mary mixed with, um, fruit. The kids loved it anyway. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +San Miguel has its own little special little tradition on Good Friday, which involves papier mâché figures called Judases. They are not, however, limited to figures of Judas. Everything is Mexico is layered and goes far below what things appear to be, so I won't pretend to know who the figures represented, but local political figures and other controversial people are common targets. + +The puppets get wrapped in firecrackers with one big one inside. They're strung up on a horizontal line and lit up. The fireworks cause the figures to spin for a bit and bam, the big one blows them apart. And it really blows them apart. Even for here this was a substantial blast that hurt your ears if you were at all close. + +
+ + + + +
+ +Domingo de Pascua as Easter Sunday is known around here, doesn't have any of the non-religious associations it does in the states. I didn't see any Easter Bunny or chocolate eggs. It's a day people go to Mass and celebrate with their families. We dyed some eggs anyway. + + + + + + +We also found some good pork belly tacos for lunch. I've never understood it, but something about travel causes you to find more and more things you like the closer and closer you get to leaving a place. + + diff --git a/jrnl/2019-04-30_horses.txt b/jrnl/2019-04-30_horses.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c572ad1 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-04-30_horses.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +The girls have been asking to go horseback riding for quite a while now. Well before we came to Mexico. But in San Miguel horses come and go on a daily basis, which brought things to a sort of fever pitch. + +While finding a horse in San Miguel is easy, finding one to ride is more challenging. There's plenty of tourist outfits in town that do horseback rides just like [the ATV ride I did](/jrnl/2018/11/lets-go-ride), but none of them have much in the way of kid-friendly riding options. After a few months of stalling, a lot of hemming and hawing on my part, Corrinne's parents' friend, who owns a ranch outside of town, heard about our kids and invited them out to go riding. + +That's how we ended up in the campo with the girls riding horses for the first time. Elliott was not interested. + + + + + + +The ranch hands brought out some wonderfully gentle horses that seemed content to walk in circles in exchange for the occasional carrot. + +While Olivia's horse was completely sedate with a rider on her back, she had a whole smiley routine she pulled out in the stable to get attention and more carrots. It worked very well on us. Who knew horses could smile? + + + + + +I didn't do any riding, but I did make a friend. + + + +The campo is a world apart from the life we know in San Miguel. It's been hot lately in the city, but when you get out of the concrete canyons of the city streets there's a nice steady breeze that blows through and keeps things cool, if a little dusty. Life out here has a different rhythm, a different pace. Sitting on the bus back into town I couldn't help thinking that I really need to get out and see more of Mexico, less of the city. diff --git a/jrnl/2019-06-03_hasta-luego.txt b/jrnl/2019-06-03_hasta-luego.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ca6ee64 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-06-03_hasta-luego.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +We came to Mexico with a pretty simple plan -- hang out, visit family, live cheap, save money, get some projects done. It is hard, traveling and working for someone else, to carve out time for your own work and I had some work I needed to get done. + +But sawdust in a hurricane has more permanence than our plans, so nothing we planned to do ended up happening. That's how these things go. You adjust, tack as it were, and keep sailing. We loved our time in Mexico even if it didn't turn out at all like we planned. + + + + + +After I was laid off I went back to doing what I've always done, drumming up clients and writing things that made them happy. In my search for new clients I noticed my old friends at WIRED were looking for a full-time writer to do roughly what I've done for them on a freelance basis for years. + +I applied. I talked to the editors. Some months passed. I talked to more editors. Then all at once I had a job and was hurriedly booking plane tickets back to the United States. While the job is remote, it involves products, shipping physical things to me. If you know anything about customs, you know that's not something that's going to work abroad. + +We love Mexico, we'll miss the people, our friends, our family, but this feels like the right thing to do, at the right time too. + +The longer, more in-depth projects I'd like to tackle are still there. As I've discovered in last eight months, they're projects that are hard to do without the stability of a regular paycheck. As a freelance writer you are either hustling all the time or starving. I dislike starving. A job with a steady paycheck eliminates the need to spend every free minute hustling up more work. It helps draw a line between work and play, giving you the time and mental space you need to tackle other things in your free time. + + + + +The last few days in town our friend Mike from San Francisco and a friend of his stayed with us. We showed them around as best we could while trying to pack up. It was good to get out and walk around town, show other people this wonderful little world we found down here. It also gave us an excuse to get out and visit our favorite haunts for the last time now, which always makes you see them differently. + +Then before we really knew it we were stumbling up the street half asleep in pajamas in Elliott's case, catching a cab to the bus station to catch our pre-dawn ride to Mexico city. + + + + + + +After scarfing a few tacos in the bus station and catching a cab over to the airport, we whisked through security and found ourselves climbing out of the smog, back to the United States. + + + + + +There are plenty more stories to tell, and I do plan to get caught up eventually. diff --git a/jrnl/2019-07-13_seven.txt b/jrnl/2019-07-13_seven.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..24c3ae1 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-07-13_seven.txt @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +This year we spent the girls' birthday in Texas. Stuck in the middle as it were. We made the best of it. I drove to the nearest Mexican market and got a piñata. We found some papel picado at the bottom of a bag. We bought way too many balloons. As you do. + +We made do with what we had, a skill you learn well living on the road. And we had a pool, a lake, and family in town. Everything you need for a good birthday. And some [chocolate waffle cake](/essays/waffle-world). Of course. We'll always find a way to make chocolate waffle cake. + + + +As per usual we were up at early dark thirty for the girls' seventh birthday. I've embraced the early rising. I'm usually up before the kids. Not on their birthday though. No one beats a kid out of bed on their birthday, not even the one trying to pile balloons on them before they wake up. + + + + + + +After presents and breakfast we strung up a piñata and took turns pounding on it with a stick. I can't recall who finally broke it, one of the birthday girls, but it was a sturdy piñata, made in Mexico. More impressively, despite never playing or even watching any baseball, the kids can hit. Some things come naturally, especially things useful in the pursuit of hidden candy. + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2019-07-28_summertime-rolls.txt b/jrnl/2019-07-28_summertime-rolls.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..df8bb56 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-07-28_summertime-rolls.txt @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +We flew back to states thinking we'd booked a house in Athens, GA. That ended up falling through at the last minute, which left us homeless. Not a new thing for us, but a hassle when you're trying to start a new job. We decided to head down to where the bus was stored to see where things stood. + +We knew we had to stay in one place for a while and unfortunately we didn't have time to move. Between the summer heat, working, and a cracked exhaust manifold, there was no time to go anywhere. + +We decided, against our better judgment, to hunker down in Texas and wait out the summer. We'd get our exhaust manifold, knock out a few other bus projects we'd been wanting to do, and then, once the weather caught up with us and things cooled off, we'd head west and spend the autumn and winter out west in the Arizona desert. + + + + + +The challenging part of this plan was the middle, the wait out summer in Texas part. As regular readers know, I do not like Texas. I try not to complain too much because we have a pretty great life, but given a choice between Texas and anywhere else and I'd go with anywhere else. Yes, even California. Still, it was the best plan we could come up with and I thought we could do it. + +There were a couple things going for us. The RV park where we were staying had a nice big oak tree we could park under and a swimming pool to cool off in. Even better, just down the road some extended family have a lake house where the kids could swim, ride jet skis and generally have fun and stay cool. + +Those things, the pool and the lake house were the highlights of the summer. The girls learned to swim and got to go inner tubing, ride jet skis, and spend their days in the water. If you're stuck in Texas, this is the way to do it. + + + + + + + + + +It's funny how oblivious children are to the problems of adults. Not all problems, but some. Corrinne and I were frustrated being stuck in Texas. We tried to make the best of it, but I'll be honest, we didn't always. But the kids didn't care at all. They loved it. They had a pool to go to every day, a playground to run around on, a lake house to visit at least twice a month. Jet ski rides, boat rides, inner tubing. When I look at from their perspective it feels like we had everything we could possibly want. They didn't care where they were. + +Early on, before the heat became insufferable, we went out and explored the area. There was a big flea market once a month in nearby Canton, Texas that was fun to explore. + + + +I was struck by the fact that we could stroll around a huge flea market for a couple of hours and the only thing we bought were some small bamboo flutes for the kids and snow cones. + +Living in a small space really does curb your consumer tendencies. Everything we even consider buying has justify itself: where would we put it? More importantly, is it worth the space it takes up? The answer, after a bit of reflection, is almost always no. At this point we don't even really have to think about it. We have what we need, adding more would create clutter. + + + + + +What's nice about this way of living is that it eliminates purchasing stuff as a form of entertainment. That leaves us free to be entertained by just wandering, watching the world around us. We've always done this to some degree, but I think our time in Mexico really brought this out. There's so much to see just walking around in Mexico that it became a habit. When there's nothing to do you walk up to the Parroquia, sit in the shade, have a snack, and watch the world around you. + +That was early on though. As the heat increased and the utter lack of anything to do overwhelmed me, I got considerably less zen about being stuck in Texas. Still, I'm old fashioned. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. diff --git a/jrnl/2019-08-25_georgia-road-trip.txt b/jrnl/2019-08-25_georgia-road-trip.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..02cc98c --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-08-25_georgia-road-trip.txt @@ -0,0 +1,55 @@ +The America family road trip -- immortalized so well by [Chevy Chase and company](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHThGmVfE3A) -- is a pretty miserable experience in my view. Pack the kids in the car to drive all day and half the night to Disney World? No thanks. + +Driving long distances is pretty awful. Our rule in the bus has always been no more than 200 miles a day. There are plenty of days when we don't even hit triple digit mileage. When you do this full time there's no reason to hurry anywhere. The only time we've ever hurried anywhere was because we were meeting someone. + +One reason we didn't immediately head west out of Texas for spots more to our liking was that we knew we'd be heading east to Georgia at the end of summer. Corrinne's parents came up from Mexico for a couple weeks and we wanted to see them. We knew we were going to drive and less driving the better. + +Visiting family and friends in Athens sounded like a whole lot more fun than Wally World or Disney World or any other fake world. We're awfully fond of the world we have, so why not try a good old fashioned road trip to Athens, GA? + +We left the bus in Texas, but there was still no way we were going to drive 12 hours straight through. Jackson, Mississippi is roughly the halfway point, so we set about finding something fun to do in Jackson. Something better than [wrecking our health or making a big fool of ourselves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGhCsznO0S8). + +Corrinne discovered that the natural history museum was hosting a dinosaur exhibit complete with huge animatronic dinosaurs. Sold. We set out early Saturday morning and made Jackson by afternoon. The dinosaurs were a hit and the crowds weren't too bad considering it was a weekend. + + + + +The rest of the museum wasn't quite a nice as the traveling exhibit. It had a semi-broken down feeling to it and many of the stuffed specimens were old and ratty, but not really in a charming or understandable way like [La Specula](/jrnl/2011/06/natural-science) in Italy. + + + + +When in doubt, more dinosaurs. + + + + +After we'd had our fill of animatronic dinosaurs we had a mediocre dinner and crashed out in a hotel room. + +You might think, after years on the road, that we'd be super-organized, super-efficient packers, but no, we're not. It's pretty much a chaotic sprawl of bags, clothes, electronics, and toys. + + + +The next day we drove the rest of the way into Athens. Overall not to bad. *Are we there yet* did not reach cliche road trip fever pitch and no one got too grumpy. Or else I blocked all that out in my memory. + +AirBnB we rented in Athens was a strange place though. We found and unplugged 15 air fresheners. No joke. Who lives that way? I suspect that many air fresheners put out enough petro chemicals to shorten your life by a measurable amount. Even without them, the place still smelled like someone was trying to cover up something awful. + +At least the view across the street was good, some neighbor had a 1970ish Crown school bus at least partly converted to an RV. If we ever do the school bus conversion thing, the 60s and 70s Crown school buses would be high on my list. The mid-body diesel engine is awkward though, eats up all the room for your tanks. Not that I've put a lot of thought into this or anything. + + + +I first came to Athens in 1999, moved here on a whim. I've never really felt at home anywhere except the wilderness, but Athens is probably as close as I come to having a home town at this point. Whatever the case, it's always fun to come back for a visit. We wandered around, went to some of our old haunts, took the kids places they claim not to remember, ate some good food, even managed to put together a huge cousins sleepover party. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +Around the time we were getting ready to head back to Texas, an opportunity to stay in Athens presented itself. Well, not stay in Athens exactly, but hang around the area for a few months. After thinking it over for about five minutes, we said sure, why not? + +The next day I got in the rental car, drove it back to Texas, and returned it. Then I grabbed our stuff out of the bus, threw it in the Volvo, said goodbye to the bus for another little while, and headed back to Athens. Boom, done. The less you have the easier it is to drop it all and do something else. + +Okay, so I forgot the silverware. No one is perfect. But one thing I've learned on the road is to trust our intuitions. If something feels right, it generally is. If something feels wrong, it's time for change. It took quite a while and several second-guessing failures to get that confidence, but even those failures taught me that no matter what happens, things have a way of working themselves out in the end. diff --git a/jrnl/2019-09-12_hanging-around-town.txt b/jrnl/2019-09-12_hanging-around-town.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5227ab1 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-09-12_hanging-around-town.txt @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +Athens has always been a good town to come back to. It's something of a joke among those of us who've been coming and going for decades now. Most of my friends in Athens have left for somewhere else at least once, many have left more than that, but most seem to find their way back here again too. + +I thought about this a good bit as we walked around town, exploring what's left of the Athens I once enjoyed. + +
+ + + + +
+ +It's always interesting to take the kids to places I've been and see how they react, how they like it. They don't have any history to get in the way of enjoying it as it is now, which helps me figure out if a place really has started to suck, or if it's just me. + +The kids don't remember downtown Athens before it was all chain restaurants and banal, new-construction high rises. They love walking around downtown Athens the same way they love walking around downtown San Miguel de Allende, downtown San Francisco, or downtown New Orleans. I don't anymore though, try as I might to see it through their eyes. + +
+ + + + +
+ +I came to Athens for the first time in 1996 and moved here for good in 1999. I left for a few years in 2002. Came back in the 2005. Left for a couple more. Came back in 2007. Stayed a decade that time, which is as long as I've lived anywhere since I moved out of my childhood home. + +In that decade things changed in Athens. Things are always changing, but this time things changed more than usual. California came to Athens. + + + +It's the same story everywhere, a handful of greedy people sell out their town to highest bidder, which is inevitably wealthy refugees from California[^1]. In Athens it was, as far as I can tell, a semi-senile mayor and a handful of real estate developers who did the damage[^2]. Whatever the case it's done. It'll be decades before the pendulum of wealth swings back the other way, and then decades more before it gets back near the balanced center, where it was when I first arrived in 1996. + +When we left in back 2017 I didn't figure we'd ever come back. Visit sure, but hang around for any length of time? Probably not. It'll be years before the housing market crashes back down to sane levels. House prices are currently well out of the price range of staff writers. Houses in our old neighborhood sell for well over half a million dollars (do I wish I still had ours? Not even a little bit). + +Still, an opportunity came up for us to spend a few months around here and, after talking it over for ten minutes, we took it. So we're going to hang around our old home town for Autumn, maybe Winter too. + +The key to living on the road is learning to deal with the uncertainty. You never knowing where you'll be in two weeks, which is both freeing and stressful. To cope with it you need to act slowly, and be able to turn midstream as it were because things will very rarely turn out as you plan. + +In some ways I think much of my travel strategy is something I read once in poker book: be selective, but be aggressive. That is, do not play many hands in poker, but when you do, play them aggressively. In travel terms that means spend a lot of time making plans. Not plans you act on, just possibilities. Think things over, explore possibilities in your imagination. And I mean that literally. Sit in a chair, back straight, hands on your knees, breathe slow to relax, clothes your eyes and bring some ide a to mind and follow it out. + +Part of the beauty of living on the road is that you have much more relaxed, quiet time than most people, which means you can think things through much more easily. You can have a lot of sit and thinks as my [favorite kids' show](https://www.sarahandduck.com/watch/) calls it. You can't be selective if you haven't considered all the options. So you consider as many as you can. + +But then when it is time to act, you must act decisively and without hesitation because you have to commit. Once you jump, you can't unjump. Sometimes you have to correct your course on the way down, sometimes you go oh shit and start flapping your arms. Sometimes you hit the ground hard. It happens. But this is just a metaphor so you pick yourself up, dust off, and carry on. Usually. And you have to be okay with any and all of the outcomes. Otherwise, this is probably not a lifestyle that's going to make you happy. + +We've spent a lot of time in the sit and think stage of late. We've been trying to figure out what comes next for us for the better part of year now and we've been all over the map. We've put significant effort into lots of different imaginary plans, all of which were appealing for a time, but none of which drove us to actually take that decisive step forward and commit. + +The ones that stick out range from the obvious, continuing to travel in the bus, to the less obvious, like moving to the Yucatan. We had another plan that would have seen Corrinne running a small school in Costa Rica. We considered living on the coast of Serbia, which then somehow led us to consider living in a remote village in Alaska, and then a small town in Nevada. + +Then we thought no, let's buy a boat, or maybe an Airstream, or maybe a smaller Travco. There were other ideas in there I can't remember now, and those are just the ones we were semi-serious about. Not that we could actually have made all these things happen. There are all sorts of technical and financial hurdles to overcome in all those plans, but when you're just having a sit and think you don't have worry about details, rather you worry about whether or not it feels right. + +If it does feel then you move on to practical things. Maybe (probably) it turns out you don't have the money for a boat. Okay, scratch that off the list. Or you make a longer term plan to get the money you need. And so on. + +Like I said, you have to be willing to think things over, consider every possibility. There comes a time to act though. In my experience the universe will present you with an opportunity to move in some direction you've been considering. I try not to think of these things as *suggestions* from the universe. Just because an opportunity comes doesn't mean you *should* take it, just that *hey here's something that will help you do X if that's what you think you should do*. + +For us, right now that opportunity was to hang around Athens GA for a while. It's not our whole plan, but it's a step in the direction we want to go. So you go. One step at a time. + +[^1]: They're wealthy by every standard of wealth save those of California. +[^2]: And let's not forget complacent constituents like myself who could have gone to some city council meetings and made an effort to stop said developers and mayor. While it would most likely have been ineffectual it would have been worth a try if Athens were a place worth fighting for to you. For me, I take it, it was not. Because I did not. I prefer to move on rather than resist. diff --git a/jrnl/2019-09-25_old-growth.txt b/jrnl/2019-09-25_old-growth.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..133367e --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-09-25_old-growth.txt @@ -0,0 +1,86 @@ +In my usual manner of reading things that have no bearing on where I actually am, I've been sitting in the linger summer heat of Georgia reading Barry Lopez's *Arctic Dreams*. It's one of the finest books of natural history I've ever read and many things have jumped out at me, but one in particular has stuck with me for a while now. + +Lopez comes to believe that for the native peoples of the Arctic "land does... what architecture sometimes does for us. It provides a sense of place, of scale, of history." + +I think this is true of anyone who frequently moves through the land, you begin to do the same thing that Lopez identifies in Arctic natives, searching out our own sense of scale and history in the land around us. + +I've noticed myself doing this more. This struck me because whenever we are around non-travelers I notice how much I talk not just of what happened, but where it happened. + +I have developed a largely unconscious need to locate my past in both time and space. I have to watch out for this because it is annoying to non-travelers. Space, the land around the event, is information most of us don't need. + +But Land becomes paramount to life when you live this way. Where you are is as meaningful as who. Where defines who. Landscapes rise up, become more than backdrops against which we live. Land shapes our lives, all our lives, all the time, but out here it becomes so plain, you feel it deep within. + +It's not something you seek out. It is something that arrives. Slowly, almost unnoticed. Until one day you realize you're not talking to the trees, you're answering them. + +You gain a sense of place by merging into it, however briefly, in way that can only be done by giving up familiarity. Novelty sharpens the experience of place. Perhaps because we evolved to be wary of the novel, to be on edge in experiencing the unfamiliar. Now the evolutionary threat is largely gone and novelty becomes the grindstone that sharpens the experience of place until it comes to the foreground for our lives. + +Out here you mark time by space. The land is always present in you. The smell of wet leaves after a rain. The grit of fresh soil under your nails. The silence of snow. The glitter of water in noonday sun. The small patch of gravel where you first noticed your broken axle. More than the words that describe them, places become real things in which we exist and locate ourselves, our past, our present, and how we measure the scale of ourselves. We speak not of things that happened, but of things that happened and where they happened. Experience gains extra dimensions. Places become a way of locating the self within the world that is either not necessary or not possible when the places in which you exist rarely change. + + + + + +Spread out a map of the United States and trace your finger down the border of North Dakota and Minnesota. Let your finger drift to west a little as to comes down through South Dakota, across eastern Nebraska, the middle of Kansas and down from Wichita City Texas to Laredo. This line you have just drawn separates The East from The West. + +There's no real consensus on this line. You'll have to give a couple hundred miles of gray area in either direction to make everyone happy, but by and large this is where two things happen as you move west: the humidity drops and the forest stops. + +Trinidad Texas, where we spent the summer, is just to the east of this line, but still mostly out of the great hardwood forests of the east. When we decided to stick around Athens for a bit it had been well over a year since we'd spent any amount of time around trees. + + + +I was born out west, and the wide open spaces and skies of the west will always feel more like home to me than the forests of the east, but my people come from forests, I think there are trees in my blood, somewhere back there. I don't know everything about my ancestors, but what stories I do know are of people in the primeval Beech forests of the southern Carpathians on one side, and the ancient Hemlock and White Pine forests of eastern United States on the other. For me, going back into the woods will always be a kind of homecoming. + +I feel relaxed in forests. But also sharper. All the leaves require more visual acuity, sharpen the senses. After a few days in the trees I start to feel more what might be called poise, that balance point between relaxation and tension. + + + + +Maybe it's the extra oxygen. It would make senses to me that the more trees around, the more oxygen you have and the more oxygen the clearer and sharper you feel. I'm not particularly interested in the science behind it though, just the experience of it. And interestingly, I get the same feeling of clarity, sharpness, and overall well-being walking in the desert, above timberline and other places without trees, so maybe it's not that at all. + +Perhaps its not strictly trees, but the entirety of the ecosystem around me. The wholeness of it. The way everything is continuous, intertwined, uninterrupted. + + + +We often talk about these parts of the world as though they were some separate thing. We say "ecosystem," or more often "nature," as if this were something other than the world we live in. + +It's not though. We are part of nature, part of the ecosystem, part of the world. We are never separated from anything else on this planet. But I do understand what people mean when they say they want to "get out in nature" as opposed to where they live. + + + +I think what we seek when we seek "nature" is part of something where all the connections between all the parts remain intact, where hard edges of modern human ideas do not exist. Where everything flows into everything else. Where the connectedness of life has not been severed to serve human purposes. Where roads and sidewalks to not keep the earth hidden away, the grass divided, the trees encased. Where power lines do not bisect the sky into segments, where hedges are not trimmed, grounds not neatly swept. + + + +We seek places away from the order we have attempted to impose on the world because our imposition fundamentally does not work. Drawing lines between things does not work. The worst part is all the lines we draw around ourselves, as if we were not part of all this. + +We are creations of earth. We come from here. We are part of this planet. Nor more and no less than any other part of it. And like every other species we shape it, it shapes us. We seem to have lost sight of that. We see ourselves on one hand as special snowflakes, exceptions, immune to laws of this planet. We are not. We cannot continue to draw everything out for ourselves without also drawing everything down on ourselves. + +On the other hand I think it's just as naive to think the world, "nature," needs to be protected from us. The world does not need to be protected from us, it needs respect from us. It needs us to recognize it for what it is, rather than how it's "useful" to us. It needs us to treat it with dignity and respect, like a brother, sister, mother, father. Like family. + +Thanks to science our current perception of the world is more nuanced and detailed than any culture we're aware of in the past. This has opened a thousand doorways and done some much good it's difficult to capture in words, certainly not in a few paragraphs. But it's always left us very cut off from the world in ways that no other culture we're aware of has ever been. We know so much and understand so little. + + + +It seems to me that this has happened because our stories, our ways of understanding the world, have seriously diverge from the way the world actually is. This is the source of our problems: on the one hand self-destruction and the other self-loathing. Vicious cycles repeat. + +I think we are slowly coming to realize that we need different stories. We need stories that better reflect the world as it is, not the world as we think it should be. + +I don't have a solution. Sorry. I don't even think this is a problem we will solve. Not you and I. We will play our parts, whatever they may be. We can show that there are other possibilities by living them. + +But this is a problem of grand historical proportions. The stories that shape our world, the processes that got us here, have been in motion for thousands of years and will likely continue along for many hundreds, perhaps even thousands, more to come. + +Still, we have our lives here, now. In the trees or out of them. + + + +For us, lately, it's been in them. + +From what I read, the great forests of the east are not what they used to be. They are not virgin, always Europeans with their virgins, but to my mind these woods are still a grand thing. A beautiful place to sit quietly in, to play in, to drink this early morning coffee in, to live in. + +The heat has not yet broken. The afternoons swelter. The river with its slick, algae covered rock slides is a cool and welcome escape. + + + +The heat isn't gone yet, but you can feel Autumn at the edges of evening. The breeze stirs, the dead still, stagnant air of summer is broken by wind wandering through the trees. It comes in fits and stutters. Cool puffs of air that find us as the sun sets. + +It's coming though. I watch the chickadees and squirrels, they know it's coming too. If they are right this winter will be long and cold, even down here in the South. diff --git a/jrnl/2019-10-09_bird-watching.txt b/jrnl/2019-10-09_bird-watching.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3b81b39 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-10-09_bird-watching.txt @@ -0,0 +1,45 @@ +Most mornings I am up early enough to hear the signature sounds of whippoorwills, sometimes even the cackling of an owl. It's not long before those birds quiet down though. By the time my coffee is ready the forest is transitioning from night sounds to dawn sounds. Song birds warble in the dogwoods. Red-bellied woodpeckers drum on oaks. Somewhere high over head a red-tailed hawk shrieks. + +We were house sitting for a few days once and the kids were complaining that, with the curtains closed, they could not tell when it was morning in the house. I asked them, "how do you know when it's morning in the bus?" And they said, "we hear the birds singing." Birds mean morning. + +Every morning somewhere between the golden light of sunrise and the starker white of midday, three Carolina Wren's stop by our campsite looking for food. Many birds move through the forest around us throughout the day, but these three come right into the campsite as if we're not even here. + +I sit at the table, writing. I don't move that much I suppose, but certainly the wrens are aware that I am here. The noise of my fingers typing on the keyboard is enough to keep squirrels away. Yet everyday these three wrens behave as if I don't exist. + +Carolina wrens are tiny brown and tan birds with a slightly downward curved bill. They're the sort of small brown bird that never stops moving. They flit and hop and bounce and chip-chip around beneath the table, even *on* the table sometimes, while I work. + + + +Periodically one stops moving and cocks its head to look at me, as if reassessing what sort of threat I represent. But inevitably curiosity is satisfied and it goes back to ignoring my existence, hopping around, once even perching on my foot to get a better view of the ground. One wren even got up on the table and hopped along picking at crumbs, coming right toward me. I thought it was going to land on my arm, but at the last minute it seemed to suddenly remember me and it flew off into the bushes. + +It's nearly the time of year when the permanent avian residents of the Georgia mountains begin to ban together. There aren't that many. Most species are off in Mexico or South America by now. Those that remain band together for the winter. You see flocks consisting of Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice, and Carolina wrens, sometimes joined by golden-crowned kinglets, downy woodpeckers, perhaps a nuthatch or two. They join up in Autumn and often, from what I saw back when we lived here, stick together for most of the winter. + + + +But it's not quite cold enough for that yet. These are Carolina wrens, traveling alone, together. Their dark eyes watch me whenever I walk around. If I get too close they scurry away, flutter off under the bus or into the wheel well, but for the most part it feels like I am in their mid-morning snack spot and it's me who should be moving. + +These three were the first time I'd had much encounter with the avian world in a long time. Mockingbirds had ruled in Texas, and I was feeling bad about the summer tanager I'd hit and killed while driving out there. It seemed as if the avians were angry with me, understandably. I dreamed once that a goldfinch was pecking at my finger, biting me until I bled. + +After a few days of the wrens coming through I started to feel like perhaps I was forgiven for that bloody mishap with the tanager. Then one morning I stepped outside at dawn and there was a barred owl not more than ten feet away. + + + +I don't write about them much, but birds have dictated our destinations as much as anything else. If you were to overlay our route [through the Gulf coast in 2018](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/01/almost-warm) with popular spring migration birding spots, our route might make more sense. We're not [Kenn Kaufman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenn_Kaufman) by any means, but we've been known to be [on St. George Island in April](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/04/migration), maybe [spend summer in the Great Lakes](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/07/trees), and perhaps try for an [early spring in the Chiricauhua region](https://live.luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/01/ghost-cochise). + +My kids have been bird watching since they could stand up. It wasn't something I forced on them, they'd never do it if I'd done that. You can't force things on people, especially kids. If you want to teach your kids something, don't talk about it, do it. Don't tell them what you're doing, just do it. They learn by osmosis and curiosity, not "teaching"[^1]. + + + +Our kids picked up the bird book that was sitting on the coffee table in our old house and started looking at the pictures before they could walk. There's a photo of one of them, still in diapers, the Sibley Guide to Birds spread out before her, thoughtfully tracing her finger down a page of warblers, trying to find one that looks like the bird in a photo a friend's mother had sent us (it was a goldfinch). + + + + + +Our kids know a lot about the natural world because it surrounds them every day and piques their curiosity. They wake up to the sound of birds singing. They point out the shrieks of the red-tailed hawk when it circles overhead in the morning. They note the chickadee and titmouse flock when it comes through not long after that. Every time they go for a walk when I'm working I get a full catalog of interesting birds I missed. Birding by proxy. + +It's not always birds of course. One evening the kids found a meadow vole under the bus, drinking from the tiny puddle of condensation that collects below the air conditioner. I imagine it's busy around that water at night. The vole apparently overstayed and got caught out in the open. The kids dug it some roots and piled them back in the shade, where it could eat, but still keep cool. We stepped in for dinner and when we came back out it had moved on. + +Later, after the kids were in bed, I sat out by the fire, listening as the evening sounds faded back to night sounds. The songbirds fell quiet. The woodpeckers stopped tapping. The whippoorwills started up. Later the deep voice of a great horned owl drifted up from somewhere down by the river below. I thought of the vole. Good luck out there friend. + +[^1]: At least not teaching the way we commonly do it in American schools. General strategies can often be conveyed well (aka, taught) but no one (kids or adults) learns when they aren't interested. And you can't force interest. diff --git a/jrnl/2019-10-16_back-to-raysville.txt b/jrnl/2019-10-16_back-to-raysville.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..39546b1 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-10-16_back-to-raysville.txt @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +After the better part of a month hanging around Athens, GA, we were ready for a break. Cities, even small ones like Athens, stress me out these days. Even when I'm technically miles away from them. It's not a very acute stress, not even something I notice until I leave and I catch myself sitting around the fire in the evening with my shoulders tensed tight. + +I don't know why, but I know some time further from civilization was calling. Our friends Mike and Cassidy were feeling the same. They wanted to get out on the water in some boats so we all headed down to Raysville, the very first place we stopped when this trip began nearly three years ago. + +The campground at Raysville is under used, which is to say almost no one is ever there. We arrived on a Friday and had no trouble getting a spot. It took all of about five minutes for the kids to be out the door and into the water. + + + +I don't think they'll ever get tired of getting in water. Doesn't matter what water really, they're out there. They'll ask to go swimming when it's near freezing temps outside. It's like just the idea of water makes things seem warmer. + + + + +The Raysville campground is an old army corp of engineers campground that the corp sold to the county a few years ago. It makes me laugh every time I think about it because there are all these things that only an engineer would think of -- every site has a ground fire pit *and* a raised cooking grill, and there's a table to eat off and another by the grill for cooking. It's brilliantly well engineered. Also the sunsets are remarkable. + + + + +The next morning the kids were back in the lake pretty much as soon as the sun was up. + + + + + +That was pretty much life for a week: wake up, go swimming, write some things, paddle around on the SUP, test out a drone, row the john boat out to the island (which the kids named poop-rock island for what the nesting Canada geese and other birds leave behind), write some more things. Then eat dinner and watch the sun light up the clouds. That's about all you need really. Water. Sun. Food. Friends. diff --git a/jrnl/2019-10-23_elberton-county-fair.txt b/jrnl/2019-10-23_elberton-county-fair.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..efd60ee --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-10-23_elberton-county-fair.txt @@ -0,0 +1,65 @@ + + +Once, years ago, Wired ran a Christmas wish list in which they asked each of the writers what we would want if we could have anything. I, fresh off the boat from southeast Asia, said: ubiquitous fast internet. These days I nearly have that and spend a good bit of time avoiding it. + +I have a great fondness for places with no signal, but traveling with modems that connect to all three major U.S wireless carriers means those places are few and far between. Especially east the of the Mississippi. Which is why, when we pulled into to Richard B. Russell state park and discovered there was no cell service, I was caught off guard. It isn't even remote. It has a golf course. We only came because everything else was booked. + +I had work to do that afternoon so I did the only thing I could. I got in the car and drove into Elberton, which is how I discovered that the very next day was the opening of the Elberton 12-county Fair. As it says right there on the sign. That's when I remembered that travel has its own agenda, it bends you to its will as it sees fit. If there had been signal, we'd have never made it to the fair. No fair, no monkeys racing on dogs. No one wants that. So no signal, yes fair. + + + +We got there early the next day just after it opened. We sprung for some wrist bands so the kids could ride whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. Then we ran into the height problem -- there were far too many rides that not everyone could get on. + +We managed though. I taught them how to stand up straight and how to walk toward the entrance with the surety of step that says, don't even think about questioning my height. And it worked with all but one ride operater. Doesn't matter where you go, there's always *that guy*. + +No matter what the situation, in the United States, there is always someone obsessed with the letter of the law, lacking the creativity to discern the spirit behind it. Or as my daughter put it with some degree of frustration and disgust "in Mexico this would *never* happen". Mostly though, we had a blast. + +
+ + + + + + + + +
+ +What surprised me was the solidarity. The one who could ride never did if the others could not. And there was no reluctance about it, the nose was very nearly upturned. She would not hear of it even when I encouraged her to go ahead. + + + + +I have thus far been pretty lucky with aging. It's rare that I feel my age, but things that spin or swing or whirl? Yeah, I can't do that anymore. Those spinning swings used to be my favorite as kid too. These days the Ferris wheel is about the speed I can comfortably spin. There'd have been snow cone syrup all over those spinning rides if I'd been on them. The girls loved the spinning swings though. + + + + + + + +There was a livestock section at the fair, nowhere near as serious or big as what we saw at the [Montezuma County fair back in Colorado](/jrnl/2017/07/mancos-days), but there were horses to pet at least. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +And then there were the monkeys riding dogs. The Banana Derby. + +"Monkey jockeys" I believe was the phrase. + + + +I'm not sure what it is about [small town fairs and monkeys](/jrnl/2006/02/cant-get-there-here), but I've seen them on two continents now, so I guess there's some kind of universal appeal. Personally I find it far too much like rubber necking at an accident scene, but other people seem to like it. And unlike that night in Laos I just linked to, or [the chicken chase at the fair in Colorado](/jrnl/2017/07/mancos-days), this time we have video. + +
+ +
diff --git a/jrnl/2019-11-06_halloween.txt b/jrnl/2019-11-06_halloween.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..316e19a --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-11-06_halloween.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +Autumn has finally arrived in this part of the world. A series of fronts have been moving through, delivering crisp cold mornings one day and then damp foggy ones the next. + + + +One thing I think that's not obvious to people who don't live this way is how much more the weather becomes a part of your life. Living in an RV is effectively living outside. And living outside is living with weather. + +We do have a warm dry place to retreat to when we absolutely need it, for which we're thankful, but for the most part we stay outdoors, even when it's wet. That's what rain boots and jackets are for after all. + + + + + +What an amazing thing to live in the day and age of waterproof clothing. Every time I see the kids out there playing in the rain I'm thankful for warm, rubberized clothing. I don't image rain is nearly as much fun when the options are cotton, wool, or buckskin. + +
+ +After a few weeks out in the country, we came back to town for Halloween. And by town I mean Watson Mill State Park, which is about 30 minutes outside Athens. We don't really get much closer than that to towns. + +In hindsight we should have stayed further away. + +There was Halloween hayride that more or less ruined Watson Mill for the week. A group that erroneously calls itself the Friends of Watson Mill, takes over the campground every year at Halloween and set up a bunch of cheesy horror movie decorations, flashing lights, and "haunted" sounds. For a few dollars they'll drag you around in a trailer full of hay pulled behind a tiny, diesel-belching tractor. + +It should be an innocuous, possibly even fun, thing. But it's not. The people doing it manage to make it, at best, annoying, more often infuriating. We've never camped around a more dour, humorless, and downright rude group of people as the Friends of Watson Mill. They also completely trashed the place. We've never seen the campground as big of a mess as these people left it. + +But we didn't know any of that was happening when we made our reservation. We just wanted the kids to get a chance to spend Halloween with friends and Watson Mill seemed like the best place to stay while we did that. Thankfully, other than when we walked around the campground, we were mostly able to ignore the haunted hayride decorations. + +The kids are at the perfect age for Halloween: old enough to think getting candy is the best thing ever, young enough to not worry about anything else. This year I made the mistake of introducing them to the theme song from the original Ghostbusters movie. Weeks later, we're still listening to it on a daily basis. + + + + +This Halloween the kids had to work more than usual for their candy. We ended up in a neighborhood where the houses were spread out on giant lots. Sometimes it was nearly a quarter mile from doorbell to doorbell, all which must of course be run at full speed. + + + + + +On the bright side, by the end of the night, everyone was exhausted. The hayride had packed it in the day before, so we came home to blissfully quiet, empty woods. And despite all the candy consumed on the way home, all the running won in the end. Everyone went out like a light. diff --git a/jrnl/2019-11-13_land.txt b/jrnl/2019-11-13_land.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..620588f --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-11-13_land.txt @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +Out here the land is always present in you. The smell of wet leaves in your nose after a rain. The glittery glare of stream water in the noonday sun in your eye. The sharp crack of a twig breaking under foot. The grit of fresh soil under your nails. The silence of snow pressing in on your ears. + + + + +The land is everywhere around you, in you. You come out here and you find it again. Right where it always was. + +Land reciprocates. The deeper you go, the more it reaches out to you, into you. The more you become part of the land, the world, the more it becomes part of you. It's a simple truth I suspect good gardeners, farmers, anyone still living in the land knows well. + + + +The land is how we locate ourselves, our past, our present, how we measure the scale of ourselves in the world. We lose touch without the landscape to remind us. The land operates on a different scale. Some of the trees near me right now were seedlings during the civil war. The rocks record forgotten dreams of yesterday's creatures. The land turns us all back into land eventually. + +Let the land define your scale and your sense of the world enlarges. The way you see yourself within the world changes. Not in a reasoned, philosophical sense, but in a lived, experienced sense. + + + + +It envelopes you slowly and subtly. At first you hardly notice. But then you notice things. You begin to sense the rhythms of the land. Your body soon knows when the sun rises. The hour of the day becomes less a number, more a quality of light. You notice the phase of the moon, where it is in the sky, when it rises, when it sets. Soon you know without thinking which way is east. + +None of these are things I set out to learn. They are simply things I have come to know. Extra dimensions of experience that were always there, but in the background. They are not the background of the story though, they are the story. + +I wish I could claim that this all dawned on me, or came to me in some profound way, but it did not. It was gradual. So gradual I can't even go back and trace the path of thoughts that led me here, or even find an origin. It arrived so slowly and subtly it felt as if it were something I had always known. So obvious in hindsight it's now impossible to imagine a time when I did not think this way. And I don't think twice about any of it, until I brush up against those for whom these things are not so much a part of daily life. + + + + + +I try to keep it in check around others. It feels like censoring myself, like I am holding back key elements of the story by leaving out all these details, but I also think it's the polite thing to do. I do not like to impose my world on anyone. It is okay to do here, you came here of your own free will. You can easily leave here of you own free will and I will never know. But I do not usually speak of these things in person. + +Still, I would be lying if I said I am the same person who drove out of Athens three years ago. And I'm not sure that the experiences that lie between then and now are the reason. The more time I spend thinking on it, the more I think it is not me at all. It is this land. It is this world, what is left of it, that reached out and grabbed me in ways I was not expecting. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +As I told someone the other day, it's all good and well to go out in the woods, but one day you'll realize you're not talking to the trees, you're listening to them. And once that door swings open, there is no closing it. Once you see the world this way you cannot unsee it. It stays with you, it is part of you. diff --git a/jrnl/2019-12-22_birthday-beach.txt b/jrnl/2019-12-22_birthday-beach.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..95d7273 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-12-22_birthday-beach.txt @@ -0,0 +1,55 @@ +Last year I promised Elliott that he and I would have our birthday at the beach, and we did. + + + +But next year I'm upping the specificity: we're going to have our birthday at a beach *where it's warm*. + +Not that I'm complaining. Cold beaches beat no beaches any day. And a couple days after our birthday it warmed up and we had a week of great, relatively warm, weather. + +The birthday celebrations started dark and early. Elliott was out of bed and asking to open presents at 5:30 in the morning. + +
+ + + + + + + + +
+ +After some breakfast it warmed up enough to get outside and play. And there was one more present waiting outdoors. + +
+ + + + + + + + +
+ +The most played with item of the day was... the cardboard box the bike came in. It was a raft, a houseboat, and several other things I wasn't allowed to know. For all the plastic in the world, it's been my observation that kids are best entertained with cardboard, sticks, mud, and the occasional bit of rope or twine. + + + + + +It wouldn't be a birthday without a pinata. As happened [last year](/jrnl/2018/12/four) there was nothing around to string it up with so we just stuck it on the end of a stick and hoped for the best. Two years running with no injuries is probably pushing it. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +After plenty of cake -- and no, it was not [waffle cake](/essay/waffle-world) this time around -- we headed down to the beach to burn off some sugar-driven energy. It may not have been all that warm, but there's pretty much no such thing as a bad day at the beach. + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2019-12-31_holiday-island.txt b/jrnl/2019-12-31_holiday-island.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..33cfc63 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2019-12-31_holiday-island.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +It rained pretty much all day for a couple days. We spent way too much time indoors. Thankfully there were a lot of recent birthday gifts to keep the kids occupied. + +We considered giving the kids their new rain boots a few days early, but the nice thing about storms in South Carolina is that even at Christmas, it's warm enough for flipflops. + + + +The rain let up the day before Christmas. The wind and cold came in behind the storm, but it wasn't bad enough to keep us off the beach. Looking at our kids you'd never know it was cold. They'd have been swimming if we'd let them. And we would have let them if the surf wasn't so rough. They settled for running around at the shoreline exploring all the treasure the storm brought ashore. + + + + + +Some friends of ours come to Edisto for Christmas every year. When they found out we were going to be in the area as well, they invited us over for some cookie decorating on Christmas eve. It was kid sugar heaven. + +Normally this is the sort of thing I like to do early in the day and then take the kids out somewhere and let them run off the sugar. I was surprised at their restraint though. They went over the top decorating cookies, but they didn't eating them. I mean they ate their fill, but their fill turned out to not be very many. I'd have eaten the lot and been sick. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +I'm sure anyone with kids can say the same, but Christmas started before dawn. I never realized it until I had kids, but stockings aren't about gifts, they're about stalling the main present opening long enough to make some coffee. And monkey bread. Coffee is even better with monkey bread. + +My favorite part of Christmas, or any other time there's gifts being given, is watching the kids give each other gifts. They have the same look of anticipation and excitement watching someone open a gift they've carefully picked out as they do getting something themselves. It's impossible to strip the gross face of consumer culture from Christmas at this point, but there's these little moments like this, the honest enthusiasm of giving and sharing, where I can see what it must have once been like, not all that long ago. + +
+ + + + + + + +
+ +After Christmas it was back to the beach to see what new treasures had come ashore. The sea is a little like Santa Claus. But real. + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2020-01-08_walking.txt b/jrnl/2020-01-08_walking.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ad60dc0 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-01-08_walking.txt @@ -0,0 +1,59 @@ +We've never stayed at the beach front campground in Edisto. We prefer the marsh campground, back from the beach, on the inland side of the salt grass marsh. It's not any less crowded, but there's at least some vegetation between sites. + +There's a trail that makes a roughly mile long loop through the marsh. It's partly boardwalk built over the water, and partly a sandy trail that follows a series of hammocks running half the length of the marsh. I managed to get out on it most mornings, partly for the birding, partly to experiment with a walking form of meditation. I tried to time it so I'd be in the middle of the marsh at or around dawn. + + + + +It's winter, which means many of the birds are well south, but there were enough around the make it interesting. I sat most mornings on the edge of the marsh for a few minutes marking all the slow waders that would disappear the minute I stepped out of the shadows. A kingfisher never cared what I did, it just fished and shrieked. As you do fishing. + +I stumbled upon and startled the same hooded merganzer couple three mornings in a row. The first time it was a true surprise to all present when I rounded a corner and there they were. The second time we were all more startled that it had happened again, than startled I think. By the third morning it was no longer shocking, none of us flinched, we merely regarded each other for a while before moving on, they deeper into the water channels tracing their way through the marsh, me to the sandy side of the marsh walk. + + + + +One morning there was almost no bird life at all. I was standing in the middle of the boardwalk, wondering where everyone had gone, when a black glimmer of shadow shot across the water beside me. I knew it was an eagle before I ever looked up. I spent some time later trying to work out how I knew that, but I never arrived at anything beyond: I felt it. + +By the time I found it with the binoculars it was on the far side of the marsh perched exactly where you'd expect an eagle to land, near the top of a huge dead pine, sitting on the most gnarled, skeletal branch. It sat watching the marsh, feathers ruffled, head cocked, unperturbed by cars passing on the road below. + +As long as it was out there bird life in the marsh ceased. The kingfisher was still out fishing, but he was decidedly quite. Everything else made itself scarce. I walked the rest of the way back to the campground without touching my binoculars. When you see a bald eagle you see little else. It's worth the trade off. + +
+ +Charleston is a good town for wandering. The main street is mostly shopping, but if you duck off on the side streets you'll stumble across all sort of odd things, little parks, squares, churches, centuries old buildings abound. + +We've always used the lack of laundry in Edisto as an excuse to drive up to Charleston. It's like a tradition at this point -- we do our laundry, eat some Thai or Vietnamese, and wander the streets of downtown, seeing what we see, including something new for us in our travels: a sunscreen dispenser. + + + + + +I don't know why I find this so disturbing but I do. There's some kind of cautionary metaphor in this disgusting clump of caked white paste, but I'm not exactly sure what it is yet. + + + + +Sometimes, when you're young, you've just had enough of walking. You just want to stand still and fish. Our friends Charlie and Allison have been coming down here for decades and they showed us the best fishing spots. This one was ridiculous. I've never fished somewhere you could throw out a line, wait less than five minutes and reel in a fish. Consistently. For hours. Best place to take your kids fishing ever. + +
+ + + + + + + + + +
+ +Standing still has its place, but if you're young and you happen to live with us, you'll probably be walking again before too long. The world is too big to see standing still. + +
+ + + + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2020-01-22_traveling.txt b/jrnl/2020-01-22_traveling.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..68fd475 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-01-22_traveling.txt @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +I dislike traveling. + +This will seem like a strange comment coming from someone like me, but it's true. I don't like traveling. By traveling I mean leaving home, leaving your sanctuary, your familiar. To leave is to disconnect, to be adrift. It's exhilarating in one way, draining and tragic in another. + +Maybe it's neither and I complain too much. Still, I have never seen living in the big blue bus as traveling. My home is like yours. I am just as connected to it. It may move from place to place, but I never leave home. Or I try not to anyway. Sometimes you do though. + +First I went to Las Vegas for work. Las Vegas is America turned to 11. It's awful, but also hard to look away. The Strip, where I stayed, is strange place, like being inside a pinball machine, bouncing from bright light to bright light. At least there was good Thai food. I got to see some old friends and make some new ones. It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be, but Las Vegas is still just... too much. + +The last night I was there I walked a couple miles to try to get a better sense of the city. I started from my hotel, went down the strip, and turned west at the first street. The desert air was sharp and clear, so dry you worry it'll start crackling. + + + + +Once you're fifty feet away from the strip Las Vegas becomes an ordinary western city. I walked broad highway-like streets designed never to be walked. I took a convoluted freeway overpass walkway lined with the tents of a homeless village. It was a warm night for January. Several people returned my hello from beneath nylon tarps. + +After a while time ran out for my walk and I called a ride. I met some old friends for dinner. It was nice to be around normal people after a week on the strip. It's exhausting being in crowds in Vegas. The desperation and longing are palpable and it seeps into you. Later I caught another ride straight back to the hotel. I took a cold shower and caught a plane back home before the sun rose. + + + +
+ +A couple a weeks later the kids and I boarded a plane for Los Angeles to visit my parents. Corrinne went to Mexico to visit her parents. + +Newport Beach, where my parents live, was warm. Warmth in January? Yes, please. The kids got to spend a week with their grandparents, nearly every day of it at the beach. It wasn't always sunny, but it was never cold, and that was all that mattered. + + + + + +Even the gray, overcast didn't dampen anyone's enthusiasm for the beach. We tried going inland one day, to the La Brea Tar Pits, but despite the bones and fossils, it failed to generate much enthusiasm. + + + +It was funny how much the drive and L.A. traffic dampened the kids' enthusiasm for it. I'd never really considered it before, but our kids hardly ever spend time in a car. True, we drive all over the country, but it's rare that they're in the car for more than a couple hours. On the rare occassionas that they are, at the end of it there's a whole new world to explore. And it doesn't happen again for weeks after that. + +Our kids have no idea what it's like to sit in a car seat for hours on end, stuck in traffic after school, or running errands around a city, and the taste they got on this trip left them unimpressed. After that experience we stuck to the beach. Whole worlds to explore there. Even foggy days at the beach beat a car ride any day. + + + + + + + + +Luckily the gloom only lasted two days. The rest of the time we got to live that luxury that is a southern California January -- sunny and 75. We explored the jetties, ate plenty of tacos, and even managed to get some swimming in on the warmest day of our stay. + + + + + + +And then just when we'd found a bit of familiar we were yanked back out of it, disconnected. Slammed in a metal tube and shot back across the country. + +I am convinced that future generations will look back, long after the cheap oil is gone and flying is a luxury, if it's possible at all, and marvel at our extravagances and peculiar habit of air travel, wondering why we did it at all, and ostensibly for fun. + +Which is to say, we were all glad to be back home, together. diff --git a/jrnl/2020-02-05_learning.txt b/jrnl/2020-02-05_learning.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..813a6d1 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-02-05_learning.txt @@ -0,0 +1,45 @@ +Winter is a good time to remain still and watch. The world is naked, dazzling in the winter light. It is easy to focus. Single flowers break through the frost. Buttercups, trout lily, dandelion, and Skunk Cabbage leaves in the wet bottomlands. You can count the buds on bare dogwood branches and still-leafed holly. + +There is less of you here, more of the world around you. You learn by being quiet. Leaves fall one by one, each with a clatter as it lands, all winter long. Orange dust appears, grows and extends to reveal fungi, and returns to dust again. The wind tastes of rain long before the clouds appear. + +All of this is to say, it is not you and the world, it is the world with you. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +It is the world within you. There is no world without you. Existence is a relationship. It put you in it to learn. You put what you learn in it. It puts more in you. Give and give. No taking. You're not here for long, there's no time to take. Barely time to give what you can. Better still: remain motionless, watch, wait, listen, observe. + + + + + +Down below the falls I watched a great heron feed. It moved slowly, sometimes not at all for longer than I can endure sitting still. And then when it need to, it snapped so fast I could not see it move, only the head coming up with a fish. + +This is the way to learn I think. Moments of sudden insight are rare. Rather there are a whole lot of moments that come together so gradually you don't notice them. Even in hindsight they seem painfully slow in arriving. But then, at some point, you holding that fish in your beak and you *know*. + +Watching the kids learn is like this. There is no day I could point to and say, this is when they learned to read, this is when they learned to write. There are simply days that pass, and more days, and more days, and then -- fish. + +
+ + + + + + + + + + +
+ +When we decided to spend autumn and winter here it felt like another defeat to me, like spending summer in Texas, like we had once again failed life's geographic climate test. We're supposed to chase the weather, be in the sunny deserts of the west, or down at the beaches of Mexico. + +Now though I am glad we were here. There is much to learn in not getting what you want. + +There is much to learn from discomfort -- like how fast you adapt to cold for instance -- much to learn from the leaves falling, much to learn from herons fishing in the cold waters, much to learn from the forest when it falls silent for the winter. diff --git a/jrnl/2020-02-19_snow-day.txt b/jrnl/2020-02-19_snow-day.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..05e3ced --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-02-19_snow-day.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +It starts falling when we're at the hardware store, filling the propane tank. At first I try to downplay it for the kids. I don't want them to be disappointed if it turns out to be just a couple flurries, which is all we're likely to get in this part of the world. Still, the chickadees and titmice *were* particularly chatty and busy this morning. Maybe. + +Driving back to the campsite though I can see it's sticking to the ground in the colder areas, the tops of trees, on grass in open fields. The birds are on to something I think. I allow myself to get a little excited. The kids are way ahead of me, yelling about a real snow day. + +By the time we get back to the site it's coming down hard and clearly sticking to the ground. Jackets and gloves go on, everyone piles outside into the winter wonderland. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +Anyone living north of Georgia will probably chuckle at this amount of snow. I know. I lived in Massachusetts for a few years. It's not snow much, but it's enough to put smiles on everyone's faces. + +Maybe it's more special because it is harder to come by snow in these parts. Six inches of snow in this part of Georgia somehow feels more miraculous than three feet ever did in Northampton. Maybe I am just weird though, I used to get excited every time it snowed up there too. Even when it snowed in May. There's just something great about snow. + +This was not the first time the kids have seen snow, but it might as well have been -- it's been years since they've been in it. + +I always say we chase the weather, and we try to, but when you fail at that, then you might as well get some snow out of it. And for once, we did. + + + + + +After an hour so the cold began to set in. We don't really have the clothes for snow. Cotton is not your friend in a snowball fight. Wet and cold I was ready to warm up. Lilah was undaunted though. She made me take her for a snow hike. + +We walked down the river to see snow on the covered bridge, but water was running high and cold made white vapor that all but obscured the bridge. On the hike back the cold finally overcame her and I carried her the last half mile up the hill. We caught a couple last snowflakes on our tongues and ducked inside to dry off and drink hot cocoa. And play a few intensely competitive games of Uno. As you do. + +
+ + + + + + + +
+ +The world seemed to warm up with us. By the time we went back outside for round two, melting snow was coming down like a hard rain. By evening our white wonderland was gone. diff --git a/jrnl/2020-03-04_high-water.txt b/jrnl/2020-03-04_high-water.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3fabcb2 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-03-04_high-water.txt @@ -0,0 +1,63 @@ +After a winter in Georgia, we were ready for some warmer climes. We managed to book up a month of beach time at some South Carolina State Parks. Everything came together well, weather, work, and bus repairs. Like we did nearly three years ago, we split the drive down into two days. This time we stopped off for a night at a tiny state park on the Edisto River. + + + +This part of the country, and upriver of here, has out-rained even the pacific northwest so far this year, and it showed. The river was ten feet over flood stage. It was difficult to even tell where the river was, it looked more like a lake. Another three feet and the campground would have been underwater. There wasn't much land to explore, we settled for an early fire and some marshmallows. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +The next day we headed the rest of the way out to what I still think of as the [edge of the continent](/jrnl/2017/04/edge-continent). Edisto Island is remote, for the east coast anyway. It's true, Charleston is only an hour and half away, but somehow Edisto still feels like the edge of the world. + +Civilization falls away as you drive. The road winds through alternating stretches of muddy marshland and deep stands of gnarled oak trees, bearded with Spanish Moss. Chain stores and strip malls disappear, replaced by crumbling no-name gas stations, fish shacks, cinder block garages, old single story motels. + + + + + +It's not some idyllic world out here of course. The land and people here are abused like they are everywhere. Environmental destruction and the deep, unsolvable poverty that follows it linger everywhere in the shadows. The ruin of modern systems is always more obvious out here at the leading edges, the places where the supposed benefits never quite reached, just inexhaustible desires. These are the places from which life was extracted to enable comfort in some other place. + +There's a divide. I notice it every time we come down here. You cross a high bridge over the Intercoastal waterway onto Edisto Island proper and everything after that is magically fine, derelict buildings hidden away, poverty pushed off the main highway to some backroad most of us will never take. + +Life here is different let's say. And we'll leave it at that. + + + +Humans are latecomers here anyway, newcomers to this world of sea and sand and muddy marsh. This is the time of year that other migrants are passing through. Every morning we get to wake to the *tea-kett-le, tea-kett-le* of Carolina wrens, the *chip chip chip* of cardinals, and the more elaborate songs of the warblers headed north to their summer homes. I can't think of a better way to wake up than lifting your head, looking out the window, and seeing a Carolina wren staring back at you. + +Our time at the beach here is starkly divided. I am a sitter. To me the beach is a place to come and watch the sea, the sky, the birds. For much of the rest of my family it's a place to hunt for treasures from previous worlds. While I relaxed, staring up at the blue veil of sky, occasionally given depth by a passing gull or brown pelican, Corrinne and the kids wandered up and down the shore finding fossil shark's teeth, bones, bits of black, fossilized turtle shells, and thoroughly modern seashells. + +
+ + + + + + + +
+ +The temperature always hovered on the edge of warm, usually tipping over by late afternoon.Most days you could find a small depression in the sand to stay out of the breeze and it was warm enough to relax in shorts. Sit up though and the temperature dropped considerably. + + + + + + + + +I did a lot of staring at the sky. I'm not sure if it's the act of lying down and looking up, or the actual view of the blue sky, or warmth and light of the sun itself, or some combination of those things and more I haven't sussed out, but there is something wonderfully cathartic and healing about staring up at the sky. + +I did it every chance I got, which alas was not quite as much as the last time we were here. But things change, morph, I wouldn't want them to stay the same. If they stayed the same it never would have warmed up enough to coax me off my back and out into the water. + + + + +The water was cold, biting cold when the wind hit you after you came up. But you have to get in. And not just when it's easy, not just when everyone is swimming. + +You have to get in even on the days when you don't want to. Even when it's so cold your teeth are chattering before you even get your shirt off. Those are the times when you have to reach down inside and find some way to get out there. The ocean pulls me in, it's part of an understanding I've reached with it, with myself. There are certain rituals that must be performed or the world stops working. And so you get in. When it's cold. When it's not. It doesn't matter. Just get in. diff --git a/jrnl/2020-03-11_distant-early-warning.txt b/jrnl/2020-03-11_distant-early-warning.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..41027e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-03-11_distant-early-warning.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +There is nothing like a good storm by the sea. The smell of salt on the wind, the slash and clatter of palms as the wind comes ashore. The muffled *thick thick think* of the first drops spitting on the sand. The lightning flashing far out at sea is always visible long before you hear any hint of a rumble. It blinks like Christmas lights on the horizon. + +The waves of wind begin to swing ashore, it's then that you can sense the life in the storm, the personalities, the intentions. Storms are alive too. They have a path to follow just like us. Just because something only lasts a few days, does not mean it doesn't have intentions. Just because you can't decipher the intentions doesn't mean they aren't there. + + + +Tonight I sat by the fire feeling the barometer drop, feeling the stir of wind, watching the whirl of embers as the fire died down and the wind came up. I could feel it coming, I could sense its presence. + +This storm comes from the southwest, a mix a southern and western personalities, a storm we all know in this part of the world. I never worry about a storm unless it comes from the north. Storms from the north aren't more dangerous exactly, but they're chaotic and unpredictable. You never know what a north wind will bring. Though around here the ones you really have to watch out for are the east and southeast winds. But we're months from those. + +This one we watched arrive. Storm clouds sweeping up from the southwest all day. One or two at first, floating lazily along. Then more, as if they were forming up around some kind of a plan. Whatever the plan was, it didn't involve Edisto. Despite spitting rain a little during the night it was back to sunshine the next day. + +I love a good storm, but not when I have to drive. That morning we headed down the coast a couple hours to Hunting Island State Park.The drive was sunny, fortunately. Uneventful. Beaufort proved to be a charming little coastal southern town. Or it looked that way anyway. By the time we drove through, the rest of the country was starting to lock down over the coronavirus. South Carolina remained in a state of blissful ignorance, but having watched the virus spread via stories of friends and family on the west coast, I wasn't about to head out and wander the streets. + +I'd just as soon strangers always keep a six foot distance from me. But South Carolina wasn't about to make rules regarding that or anything else. South Carolina is the south's "live free or die" state. There still aren't helmet laws here, which I think is great actually. But a virus is not a motorcycle. A virus is not something you choose to do. A virus really has nothing to do with "rights". A virus is a good reminder that rights are a thing conferred by communities of people to members of those communities. There are no "natural" rights. + +It's also important to dig too, because behind all the talk of rights, usually you find someone making money. As one of the camp hosts put to it when I asked if he thought the South Carolina State Parks would close, "These greedy bastards? Never." And he was right. The parks down there remained essentially open through April 12. + +So we missed Beaufort because the virus-exposure-to-fun ratio did not work out in its favor. We did get to spend a few days on Hunting Island though. By a stroke of pure luck we had the nicest campsite in the campground, which was good because otherwise it was packed in and crowded, as beach campgrounds tend to be. The best I can say for it was that the water was walking distance away. + + + + +The kids spent all day every day out on the sand. We even made in the water a couple times despite the cold. As you do. + + + + + + + +The beach here was not nearly as forthcoming with treasures. There were shells, and a lot of jellyfish, but little of the fossils and other things we'd been finding in Edisto. + + + + + +And then our options began to fade. North Carolina shut down its parks, which killed our next plan, which was head to the Outer Banks for a few months. Then Florida shut down its state parks and we were starting to feel the squeeze. Competition for what few camping spots remained became much more intense. We full timers may fly under the radar for most people, but there are far more of us than you know. Take away public camping and the options get thin quickly. We decided it was time to get out of South Carolina. + +At the time most people were not taking the virus very seriously. Here's the thing. Maybe you can get Covid-19 and be fine. But what if you can't? Do you really want to find out right now when there's no treatment and hospitals are crowded? When we don't even really understand what the virus does, [especially any long term effects](https://mobile.twitter.com/lilienfeld1/status/1251335135909122049)? Just because you survive it does not mean you go back to normal. Ask anyone who lives with Lyme, RSV, chronic fatigue syndrome, or any of the other virus-borne diseases with long term consequences. Viruses are nothing new, sickness and death are nothing new, but that doesn't mean we should run full speed toward them without a care. + +We decided to take steps we felt would best help us avoid coming in contact with SARS-CoV-2. Unfortunately that meant changing our plans. But it's hardly the first time we've had to change plans. These things happen. Traveling around in RV isn't a right you know, it's a privilege that we've enjoyed, but right now it isn't possible. A big part of travel is waiting, so that's what we're doing right now, just like everyone else. diff --git a/jrnl/2020-03-18_pre-apocalyptic-driving-adventures.txt b/jrnl/2020-03-18_pre-apocalyptic-driving-adventures.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..53b52e9 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-03-18_pre-apocalyptic-driving-adventures.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +There are days that are good for driving and days that are not. I prefer Wednesdays. This was a Thursday. Close enough. I took the day off work and we hit the road, back to Athens. + + + +We didn't want to go. But to avoid a pandemic you have to be willing to sacrifice. And where we were there were no sacrifices being made. There is a sense of entitlement that runs deep in this country. I can't figure it out, but I see it all around me -- this idea that you can get everything you want out of life without compromise or concession. It's annoying when you're talking about politics or economics, but it's disastrous when it comes to community health. + +Staying six feet away from other people is socially awkward, but if that's all it takes to stop a pandemic, that's not a big deal for a few months. People spent *years* avoiding London and Paris during the plague. If all we need to do is stay six feet apart, and remain at home for a few months, we're getting off light. Unfortunately, even that wasn't happening in the campground. Rather the opposite in fact. + +We've already had a [bout of bad illness in the bus](/jrnl/2018/01/escaping-california) and let's just say it's not an ideal place to be ill. If one person gets something, everyone gets it, there's no way around that. We were not interested in dealing with that *and* having South Carolina State Parks close on us. + +Our reservation at Hunting Island was up. We'd planned to go back to Edisto for a couple more weeks, but the uncertainty regarding public lands -- would state parks in SC stay open? Would we be safe in them? Would groceries continue to make it to a small island at the edge of the world? Would the residents of that island mind our presence if things got real bad? -- made it an easy decision. We decided to head for some private land. + +Fortunately we had a friend back in Athens with a place we could stay for a while, so we jumped on it. We just had to make the four hour drive back. No big deal. + + + + +It started inauspiciously, as stressful drives inevitably do. I was dumping the tank when I noticed the driver's rear tire was low. There's two wheels in the back, so I wasn't overly worried, but it wasn't a great way to start. Still, it was only a couple hundred miles, what could possibly go wrong? + +Nothing for the first 70 or so miles. I even managed to get the rear tire filled up at a truck stop. All my tires in fact. No charge. And the woman stayed well away from me while doing it. Perfect. For minute I thought, hey, maybe this will all work out. + +Forty miles later the engine sputtered. At first I thought maybe my foot had let up off the gas pedal by accident. My knee had been swollen and driving was painful, so it wasn't out of the question. But no. Ten minutes later, it happened again. This time it was worse. I pulled over. Naturally it was the only stretch of the drive with no cell service. + +I knew from the way it behaved that the problem was gas, specifically not enough of it getting to the engine. I had a quick look and saw air bubbling into the fuel filter. Not good. I knew there was a little leak in the filling hose at the rear of the gas tank. I decided to start there, I got out old trusty -- the rigged up combo of small hose clamps that, along with some aluminum foil and header tape, once let us limp along with a cracked exhaust manifold -- and put it to new use on the rear of the gas tank. It stopped the leaking gas (a task I'd had on my list for the following weekend anyway), and for about ten miles I was pretty happy with myself. + +Then it happened again. Damnit. Stopped again. Now Corrinne wasn't just looking at me with that look that said, *really? today*, she actually said, "Really? Today?" I didn't say anything. I opened up the doghouse again. There were still bubbles leaking up in the fuel filter, so I knew the problem was somewhere between that and the gas tank. About 18 feet of fuel line and one pump. I put on my headlamp, crawled under the bus, inhaled unholy amounts of grass pollen, and slowly worked my way up the fuel line to the pump. No leaks. I stared at the fuel pump. The very [first thing I ever replaced in the bus](/jrnl/2016/06/engine). It's probably the fuel pump I thought as I lay there in the pollen. + +Under ordinary circumstances I'd just hop in the car, drive to the nearest parts shop, get a new fuel pump and install it. But that would mean all kinds of potential exposure of me and the family to coronavirus. That would defeat the purpose of this drive, which was to get us away from people, not closer to them. + +I considered the problem for a bit, lying there, staring up at the engine. If there's extra air coming in, maybe if I tightened up the carburetor to cut the air coming in that way it would balance out? At least enough to let me limp back to Athens. I crawled out and did it. It didn't help much -- the real problem was not enough fuel, not too much air -- but it helped enough that it got us back on the road, limping along. + +After experimenting some I figured out how to accelerate in such a way that it would not stutter much and I could get up to about 50 miles an hour. It took a while, but I limped into Augusta. I decided to skip the interstate and drove through on surface streets. It was slow going, but the bus didn't stutter as much at lower speeds, and eventually we got out of the city and back onto the highway to Athens. + + + +In the end it took an extra three hours, but we made it to the old farmhouse turned schoolhouse where we've been staying ever since. I was tired, but grateful to have made it. I squared the bus away, and made dinner. We put the kids to bed, and I went online and ordered a fuel pump from Rock Auto. Problem solved, no one sick. diff --git a/jrnl/2020-04-18_reflections.txt b/jrnl/2020-04-18_reflections.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a4d11a4 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-04-18_reflections.txt @@ -0,0 +1,83 @@ +April 1, 2020 marked three years on the road for us. + +For all practical purposes our time on the road really ended in October 2018 when we [flew to Mexico](/jrnl/2018/09/big-exit). After that we've continued to live in the bus, but we haven't traveled like we did those first 18 months. Still, three years of traveling and living in the bus is far longer than we intended [when we set out](https://live.luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/04/april-fools). + + + +Living in the bus was always about far more than traveling. It would not be inaccurate to say that traveling was really a byproduct of living in the bus. A nice fringe benefit if you will. + +More importantly living in the bus was more about stepping outside, literally and figuratively. Stepping back from life, taking stock, and critically evaluating the assumptions that had been handed to me about how to live a good life. + +Do you need a house to live a good life? What about a car? What about a refrigerator? What about a fixed address? What about a phone? Oven? Books? Speedometer? + +Living in the bus very quickly became about living with less. When you have less than 160 square feet of space -- with only about a third of that truly "livable" -- everything becomes about doing more with less. That's what we wanted to learn how to do, which is why the bus was perfect. + + + +It eliminated a lot of things by necessity. We did without and got to see if any of that stuff mattered. It is one thing to sit around and wish you could get rid of things because they cost money or you think you might be able to get along without them. + +It's another story entirely to actually do it. + +Living in the bus provided a way to experiment in doing without, but offset any sense of loss with the adventure and excitement of travel and living on the road. If you want to eliminate something and learn to do without it, fill that open niche in the ecosystem of your life with something you *do* want. Otherwise the weeds will take over. + +You might miss having a hot bath for instance, but you know, it's also nice to be sitting here on this perfect white sand beach in the Gulf of Mexico. Or you can think, gosh I'd really love to have some ice in this drink, but... since I was willing to forgo it I get to sit here in the amazing smelling pine forest 8000 feet up in the mountains of Colorado watching thunderstorms roll in all afternoon. And I could get ice actually, but I no longer need it. + + + +It's harder to notice what's missing when you're surrounded by the beauty of the world. You spend less time thinking of what you miss when you can't wait to see what's over the next hill. It also helps to know you couldn't get over the next hill -- you can't have that feeling of freedom and peace -- without having given up those old requirements. + +So your mindset shifts over time. The things that you were "giving up" turn out to be things you don't need. There's no giving up in the end, you free yourself of those unnecessary burdens -- those burdens you didn't even realize were burdens. + +I could see the beginnings of this before we left. I could read it in between the lines of some of the long term travelers I follow, like Rolf Potts, Wade Sheppard, the Bumfuzzle crew, and others. But you don't really know something until you live it yourself. Happily, I was right. And it grows. The further you go, the more any sense of loss fades and the sense of gain grows. + +Having less became really wonderful quite quickly. By the time we made it to [Fort Pickens the first time](/jrnl/2017/04/gulf-islands-national-seashore), about a month into our trip, I don't think we were missing anything. And we didn't have solar power, a water tank, or even a working shower yet. + +To even get on the road in the first place we had to get rid of a ton of stuff. And that is helpful, but I think it was more important to take that step back, to, as I said above, think critically about the assumptions your culture has handed you, and to question those assumptions. Once you do that deliberately for a while it becomes second nature. You start to look at everything a little sideways. + +So we questioned everything, trying to look at it sideways and see if there was another way to solve the problem. In doing so we learned all kinds of things about how we live. Do we need a large living space? No. Provided we have a large outdoor space we don't really need any more than a place to sleep and get out of the rain. Did we really need an extra car? No. Do we really need air conditioning? No, but it can be really nice at times. How about refrigeration? No, but again, nice for some things. The list here is very long, but you get the idea. + + + +It took a bit longer to extract overarching principles from these small lessons, but I think there are two very important things I've taken away from this experience so far. + +The first principle is: accept the environment for what it is and learn to live in it. + +One of our unspoken cultural values is that we can shape the environment the way we want it and that this is good. This is barely-consciously a part of our daily lives in very subtle, seldom-noticed ways. Take air conditioning for example. For the entirety of human history no one had air conditioning. Somehow, those people did not all expire of heat exhaustion[^1]. + +If you don't turn on the air conditioning, eventually you won't need it. The first time you get hot make it a point to sweat. Deal with a little discomfort and let your body adapt to the heat. In the end you'll be cooler and have no dependency on air conditioning. This frees you up to explore and exist in places others cannot. You body is phenomenally well-designed, it is capable of miraculous things if you give it a chance to adapt. + +This principle -- adapting to, rather than changing, the environment -- also applies at the micro level. Don't change the environment around you by adding an extra fork, wash the one you have. Don't bother fixing your oven, [buy a waffle iron](/essay/waffle-world). And so on. This is something that, once I saw it, I was never able to unsee it. I see it everywhere I look in the world, ways to make do without abound when you're looking for them. + + + +The second principle is really just an extension of the first: stop worrying about what you can't control. + +How do you do that? You learn to adapt to things. You let go of the need to make the "right" choice and you make the best choice you can based on the best information you have at the time. You make a choice and you move on. You can always adjust and chose differently when conditions change. + +Are you going to make it to that campsite you wanted to get to? Maybe? Maybe not? Okay, then where are we going? Well, on the map there's something over there... let's try that. If I had a dollar for every time this played out I could buy you a couple dozen tacos. + +Are you going to have enough water to stay another night? Maybe? Are the tanks full? Maybe? There are dozens of unknowns like this every day in traveling, you either make peace with the uncertainty of it or you become stressed out and miserable. It's not for everyone. + +It's not a matter of solving all the unknowns. That's not an option. There are always more of them. You have to learn to be at peace with them because you know you can adapt. That is peace, knowing that whatever happens, you're going to adapt to it. + +That's not to say I don't have moments of stress and misery because my world falls apart. I would actually say there's been far more world falling apart situations on the road than there ever were before. If your house has a engine, expect your world to fall apart frequently. + + + +Part of adapting is learning when you *should* do something. Traveling has made me very suspicious of myself whenever I say "no". Whenever I don't do something I force myself to stop and think, why not? Why not go swim in the river with the kids? Why not take a walk to watch the birds at dusk? Why not sit around the campfire half the night? Too many times there is no good reason for not doing it. It's painful to admit, but sometimes I'm essentially refusing to go swimming because I don't have a towel. That's crazy. + + + +That said, sometimes the answer to the question *why not?* is *because your axle is falling off genius*. The picture above is of our rear axle mount, which supports about 5000 pounds, with three of the four pins sheared off. I don't care how comfortable you get with uncertainty, how much you can push aside worry, how much you say yes to, there's no way to stop yourself from freaking out when your axle hangs by a single, obviously weak pin. Ditto when your head gasket blows and takes out a cylinder, or when you run out of money in Mexico, or any of the other things that will come up in life whether you travel or not. There are times you will not be able to stop yourself from worrying to some degree. + +What I've learned is that the things worth worrying about are fewer and farther between with every passing year. After the axle almost broke and the head gasket blew, I wasn't all that concerned when the exhaust manifold cracked in half. I've built a tolerance perhaps. + +I've also learned that worry is often a way of avoiding the work that needs to be done. Worry and stress don't fix anything. + +If you want to have any control over which future you get, you have to figure out how to turn your worry into action. You have to stop freaking out and get to work. When your axle mount is about to shear off you have to turn that worry (actually more terror in that case) into action. Call a tow truck. Call a friend. Call everyone you know. In our case, [my uncle came to our rescue](/jrnl/2017/10/trains-hot-springs-and-broken-buses)). When there's a pandemic and you have nowhere to park your rig, figure out your options, pick the best one, and make it happen. Call a friend. Call everyone you know. Spend all day pouring over Zillow and Craigslist. Do whatever you need to do to find the solution. + +Someone said to me the other day that things always seem to work out for us. I won't argue, but I take except to the implication that this is solely the result of luck. We are very lucky, and yes that does help, but to be completely honest the main reason we've had so much good "luck" is because Corrinne works very hard to make things happen for us. + +I might write more about coaxing the engine along, but she's the one who spends long hours solving all the other, much more frequent problems we encounter, like where to live in Mexico, what to do when the budget has to stretch farther than you thought, or where to go and what to do when the world shuts down. To figure those things out you have to set aside the worry and do the hard work. + +[^1]: It is true that in many case their homes were more intelligently constructed than ours, and they understood their land and its microclimates at lot better than we did, which gave them more ways to escape the heat. These are things worth exploring should you decide you want to free yourself of tyranny of air conditioning. diff --git a/jrnl/2020-06-25_hands-on-the-wheel.txt b/jrnl/2020-06-25_hands-on-the-wheel.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..910d7d5 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-06-25_hands-on-the-wheel.txt @@ -0,0 +1,73 @@ +I once had the opportunity to float for a while in the confluence of two great rivers. It was hot, the middle of summer in the Utah desert. I waded out into the cold water and floated along for a while, half my body in the Yampa River, half in the Green River. + +The Green River was true to its name. The Yampa was muddy brown. The brown and green waters met at a surprisingly sharp line you could see and feel. + + + +I floated along for maybe five minutes. Ten at the most. It was a pit stop on a long day's paddle, but I think about that confluence all the time. I think about how sharp the division was there, and how utterly it vanished two hundred meters further down the channel. Two very large, incomprehensibly powerful things join together and become one in a matter of feet. + +What's perhaps more startling, having started out on only one river, is to suddenly see that second one join in. A world you didn't even know existed suddenly arrives and blends into what you thought was the world. Everything changes in an instant and then carries on toward the sea as if nothing happened. Rivers of thought, rivers of possibilities, rivers of history, rivers of choice all coming together, opening and closing worlds in ways that are sometimes difficult to predict. Everything always heading toward the sea. + +--- + +We spent some time at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown in an old farmhouse that had been converted into a schoolhouse. It seemed in keeping with our general strategy that, when the world zigs, you should zag. In a world where no one was going to school anymore, our kids, who have never been to school in their lives, suddenly lived in one. Zig, zag. + +While everyone else struggled to entertain their kids at home, ours suddenly had access to swing sets, climbing structures, stages for plays and magic shows, and every STEM-related learning toy and tool you can imagine. There was even a zip line. From my kids point of view, for a few weeks, the pandemic was the best thing that had ever happened to them. + + + + + + +We tried to make the best of things and not let the pandemic intrude on the kids' life too much. We were isolated of course, no campground playmates to run and bike around with, no campground even, but otherwise we tried to stick with our normal routines -- school and work in the mornings, playing outside, climbing trees, zip lines, swings in the afternoon. Then after the kids were in bed I finished up work. Naturally there was plenty of time for waffling. + +
+ + + + + + + + + + + +
+ +When it became apparent that the lockdown would last more than a few weeks, we started looking around for a place to hole up a while. The school house lacked beds, and its future was uncertain. It also had a ghost that liked to walk around smoking a cigarette. + +As so often has happened to us in our travels, someone we barely knew offered us a place to stay. We took them up on it for a few weeks while we tossed around ideas for the future beyond that. + +It turned out to be a perfect place for us, plenty of room for the bus, and a huge yard for the kids to play in. There was even fancy stuff like an oven, which we used to make brownies, because brownies don't work in a waffle iron, we've tried. + +
+ + + + + + + + + +
+ +We toyed with a variety of plans, but we're more strategy people. Broad sweeping life aims are pretty well defined around here. We know what we want, but there are a lot of ways to get what you want. + +Consider for instance this trip. We had a few goals, but one of the biggest things that's emerged over time is that we like to spend time in the wilderness, undisturbed by the trappings of modern culture. A plan to achieve this would be to look at BLM land and maps. A strategy to achieve this would be to modify your life in such a way that you can get to the BLM land, or get it to you. + +One day Corrinne ran across a Zillow listing for an 19th century farmhouse for rent in the middle of a 300-acre forest. I dismissed it out of hand because real estate descriptions are usually nothing but lies. Still, it did get me thinking. Thinking strategically. Instead of wondering when we'd get back on the road again, I began to wonder if getting back on the road again was the best strategy. + +What if you could rent the wilderness for a while? Bring the wilderness to you so to speak. + +Those two rivers swirled around me for a while. On one hand there was the comfort of the familiar, life in the bus. But [you can't go home again](/jrnl/2008/06/you-cant-go-home-again), things are always changing. With international travel largely shutdown we knew people would turn to camping. RV sales went up 600% in April 2020. This year is shaping up to be an [Eternal September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September) for RVing in the U.S. and I was not at all sure I wanted to be part of that. + +There was also a parallel current that's been pulling at me for some time, one that seems to want me away from the road for a while. We flirted with this in Mexico, but that didn't work out quite the way we wanted. We were not able to get the things done that we intended to get done. At the end of the day, we were still on the road in Mexico. + +One of the strange things about writing about travel is that it's very tough to do when you're actually traveling. To write you need long uninterrupted periods of nothingness, which travel generally fails to provide. Most writers I know travel in bursts, then retreat to write about it. And to be clear, I mean writing longer projects. Creating a site like this on the road is a lot of work, but it happens in short bursts so it's not too tough to do. + +Eventually, these two streams for ideas began to mingle. Both Corrinne and I have projects we want to get off the ground that we just can't swing from the road. And that property? It turns out the description wasn't all lies. It really was an old farmhouse in the middle of 300 acres of pine forest. + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2020-07-01_wouldnt-it-be-nice.txt b/jrnl/2020-07-01_wouldnt-it-be-nice.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d955164 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-07-01_wouldnt-it-be-nice.txt @@ -0,0 +1,68 @@ +Perhaps the strangest thing for us about these times is the number of people who have said to us something along the lines of, "well, you had three years to prepare for this, huh?" Or "not much of a change for you, eh?" + +I've had plenty of time to meditate on these statements, but I am still puzzled about what people mean by them. + +Let's be clear. There's nothing about living in an RV that prepares you for illness, nationwide shutdowns, supply chain disruptions, or anything else we've all dealt with in the past six months. If anything, living in an RV makes you much more vulnerable to these things[^1]. Where are you going to camp when public lands close (which has [happened to us twice now](/jrnl/2018/01/eastbound-down))? + + + +When people say these things I think maybe they're referring to the fact that I've always worked remotely, and we homeschool our children, but that was true long before we started living in an RV. The other thing I've considered is that, historically, people who are willing to leave at the drop of a hat, tend to survive upheaval better than those who are dug in, but I don't think that's what the comments above are getting at. + +What I think people are referring to is the very mistaken idea that there's something self-sufficient about living in an RV. There isn't. Look, I love living in the bus, but even I will admit that the self-sufficient notion is mostly fantasy. + +There's plenty about living in an RV that makes you self-reliant, which is well worth being, and will help you all the time, not just in these peculiar times, but self-reliant is a far cry from self-sufficient. Self-reliance means you know what to get at the hardware store, self-sufficient means you never needed to go the hardware store in the first place. + +It's an interesting notion, self-sufficient. When I looked it up in the Webster's 1913 dictionary (the one true dictionary) nearly all the example usage was negative, bordering on pejorative. Self-sufficient was next to words like "haughty", "overbearing", and "overweening confidence in one's own abilities." + +At first glance I thought, well, that does describe luxagraf fairly accurately, maybe we *are* self-sufficient. But whatever it used to mean, for most of us today it means roughly, *sufficient for one's self without external aid*. Which is to say, no one anywhere on earth is 100 percent self-sufficient. + +We think self-sufficient is a singular thing when in fact it's a spectrum on which we all live, where at one end you have the floating chaise-lounge bound people in the movie Wall-E and at the other you have children raised by wolves. That there are more people at the Wall-E end of the spectrum right now seems indisputable, and any effort you can make to slide yourself down toward the wolf children is worth making in my opinion. + +But just because you can get a month's worth of groceries at Costco does not mean you're self-sufficient for a month. It means you can plan ahead, that's all. Similarly, if you think living in an RV is going to make you completely self-sufficient you are in for a learning experience. I know this because that's how I envisioned living in an RV, and I have personally learned the hard way how wrong that vision was. + +The easiest example of this is solar power. I need about three minutes of conversation to discover whether the person I'm talking to has ever actually lived entirely off solar power. Which is to say that, while I love solar power, it does not make you self-sufficient. Having solar slides you down the spectrum a bit closer to the wolf kids, but honestly the lifestyle changes you have to make to live with limited solar power do a lot more for your self-sufficiency than the actual solar panels (which don't last forever, and have to be made in a clean room -- got one of those in your RV?). + + + +Typically people hear solar power, and think, oh cool, you're self-sufficient for energy. And sure, we can run our freezer, lights, and charge all our devices with nothing more than the sun. That *is* pretty cool. In fact there are times when I pinch myself because it still seems so science fiction to me. Solar is awesome. When it works. But sometimes the sun [doesn't come out for five or six days](/jrnl/2017/10/pacific), or we're camped in a deep valley with only a few hours of sun a day, or we're [camped under trees](/2018/07/trees), or a fuse blows, or a wire frays, or the [alternator goes out and you don't realize it until it's too late and your batteries are dead because you never installed the isolator](/jrnl/2017/10/through). These are not hypothetical scenarios. All of these things have happened to us. + +And you know how we have saved ourselves every single time solar power has let us down? By connecting to the power grid. By admitting that we're not self-sufficient and using the available shared resources of our times. + +Want another example? Water. We can carry just under 80 gallons. We can stretch that to about six days if we don't shower much. That's actually crazy impressive. The [average American uses 80-100 gallons of water](https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/water-qa-how-much-water-do-i-use-home-each-day?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects) *every day*[^2]. But it doesn't make us self-sufficient at all. Not even close. If we happen to be camped near water then sure, we can filter and boil and get by pretty much indefinitely, but I can only think of a handful of times in three years on the road when this would have been possible. + +Then there's food. Food is the best case scenario. We can easily store two weeks worth of food. I believe we could probably go about a month, though it might be a little grim and vegetable-less by the end. I'm super interested in trying to grow some veggies in the bus[^3], but so far we have not tried this. + + + + +The single biggest limitation on our self-sufficiency is waste. I'd guess this is true for all RVers, but I do know that five people on a single black tank is somewhat extreme, even by RV standards. Under normal circumstances we can go about three days without dumping the tank. If we're camped somewhere that it's okay to dump grey water (AKA, dish and washing water), we can stretch our tank to six days. Six days. That's the hard limit. Anything beyond that, and you are full of shit. + +So for everyone thinking, damn, those RVers were really ready for this lockdown, yeah, not so much. If it seemed that way it's simply because full time RVers started abiding by the rules later and stopped abiding by them sooner. And I think in most cases they did that not because they didn't think the virus was a problem, but because really they had no choice. And that's not were you want to be. + +This is actually something I spend a good bit of time thinking about though. I am with you people who think RVs are self-sufficient. I *wish* there were a way to make an RV more self-sufficient. But I've yet to come up with a way to do that without going to extremes that are impractical. We could, for example, put out tarps and harvest rain water when it rains, and dew when it's damp, but that's way more hassle than it's worth when you're going to have to dump the tanks anyway. And this is the core of why an RV will never be very far to the self-sufficient end of the spectrum. + +If you want self-sufficiency in travel, look to boats. The self-sufficiency of boats was born out the best of mothers: necessity. + +Boats are more self-sufficient because they have no choice. + +So long as you are always just a few miles from the grocery and hardware stores (like RVers) you're never going to apply the same kind of evolutionary pressure and so you're never going to get the same level of self-sufficiency in the outcome. + +Every smart thing in the bus was taken from reading books on sailing. Sailors know how to store food and stretch water because they have no choice. + +There's a side effect of this that's worth thinking about though no matter how you live. Without that pressure, you also don't generate the kind of community that sailors have, and in the end, even with social distancing, that community is what I've seen sailors turning to more than their own individual skills. The collective sufficiency trumps self-sufficiency every time. + +But you have to have that collective sufficiency, and I'd argue that the dynamics of sailing are what created it. Take a group of people, select for self-reliance out of the gate, because you have to have some degree of self-confidence and self-reliance to even begin to want to live on a boat, and then throw those people together and stir the pot for a hundred-odd years. What you'll get is a tight-knit community of like-minded individuals who know the value of working together because they know the hardship of going it alone. + +That last bit is the key. The hardship of going it alone. When the going gets tough, most RVers go home. Most people with houses lock the door behind them and hole up. That's not to say we haven't met great people on the road, or that communities don't come together, we have and they do, but so long as there's a fall back plan to fall back on, we all do. + +If there is no backup plan and everyone around you is used to improvising, solutions will be found. If everyone around you has a fall back plan, no solutions will be found. + +In the end this is really neither here nor there, except to say that no, living in an RV does not make you much more self-sufficient than living in a house. Buy a few solar panels, get a water holding tank and composting toilet, and you'll be every bit as self-sufficient as we are. Throw in a garden, five years practice in the garden, and you'll be well ahead of us. + +Don't get me wrong, I love living in an RV. It's more fun, puts a lot more adventure in your life, makes you feel more alive, makes you learn to rely on yourself, and host of other things that make it my favorite way to live of the ways I've tried so far. Don't let me put you off it if you're thinking of trying. + +This is really just to say that, no, we were no more prepared for this very interesting year than you were. + +[^1]: Living on a boat puts you in a better place because you have access to a much more self-reliant, better connected community (few, if any RVs have radios. Every ocean-going vessel has a way to communicate, which is a big part of it I think). You might also be able to harvest water if you have a desalinizer, but those are fantastically expensive (worth it in my opinion, but still expense). And seafood is easier to catch than land food. But yeah, self-sufficient RVs? Not a thing. +[^2]: The largest single use of water in the average household is flushing the toilet. Every day we fill a bowl with clean, pure, drinkable water, and then we literally take a crap in it. The is to me, probably the most puzzling, bizarre behavior in the modern western world. +[^3]: There's an old guide to growing veggies on a boat called *Sailing the Farm* that got me thinking about how we could grow food in 26 feet. Crazy as that sounds, people have some clever ideas out there on the internet. And no, it wouldn't make us self-sufficient, but it would move us a little closer to those wolf children. diff --git a/jrnl/2020-07-08_windfall.txt b/jrnl/2020-07-08_windfall.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dcc2b7c --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-07-08_windfall.txt @@ -0,0 +1,54 @@ +The change from living on the road to living in a house is more difficult than the reverse. Or perhaps more painful is the better way to put it. It was difficult to get rid of all of our stuff, [surprisingly difficult](/jrnl/2016/05/root-down), but buying new stuff is downright painful. + +In order to avoid the financial pain, but also the more nebulous, soul-sucking pain of consumer culture that eats at us all, and since most stores were closed anyway, we ended up essentially camping in the house. This was not so much a conscious decision, as a thing that happened. Camping is what we know. + + + +We did have a few items in a storage unit that we brought out here. Our storage unit provided an interesting lesson (again) in how bad I am at estimating what my future self will want. I saved all the wrong things (again). Five boxes of books? Could not get rid of those fast enough[^1]. But damn I wish I had kept more of my tools. I wish I had my saws, my benches, my shelves, my shovels and rakes. [Tools](/jrnl/2015/12/tools). Always save tools. + +Thankfully I did keep my desk. We also kept a dining table. No chairs though. No problem. We pulled up our camp chairs for the first couple weeks. Eventually we found some cheap chairs at a local antique store. To date, that and a bunk bed for the kids, are the only pieces of furniture we've purchased. The previous tenant left a bed frame, we bought a new mattress. + + + + +For the most part though, even months later, we are camping in a house. + +We try to spend most of our time outdoors anyway. Early on in the spring this worked great, but as the summer wore on, without much water to swim in, the heat drove us in. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +While we did buy some furniture, there were certain things we just did not want to spend money on. Like a washing machine. What an insanely boring thing to spend money on. No one needs a washing machine. What we all need are clean clothes. + +I assumed Corrinne would not stand for this line of thinking, so I said we'd get a washing machine off Craigslist. To get us by until that happened, I bought a hand washing plunger and a couple of five gallon buckets. The house came with, as any house dating from the 19th century should, a clothes line. + +If you've followed luxagraf for long you probably know where this story is headed. Yes, six month later, we're still hand washing all our clothes. In a bucket, with a plunger. It sounds crazy, but the things is... we like it better. Our clothes get just as clean, very little money was spent, and, as a nice added bonus we get healthier because we've built a little exercise into our day. At this point, if I were going to buy anything, it'd be a clothes dryer. + +
+ + + + +
+ +I think this little fringe benefit, of exercise, is a bigger deal than it seems at first glance. Maybe it's just me, but I really dislike "working out". I don't dislike the effort or process, actually, truth be told I love lifting weights, but the whole idea of "exercise" bothers me. That I should stop my life and go to a gym or go do *something* other than just daily living, feels fundamentally unnecessary to me. It feels like a symptom of much deeper problem. Why does my daily life not provide enough physical exertion to keep me healthy? Doesn't that seem odd? + +There are certain habits and customs of modern life that only seem sane because we've been so deeply indoctrinated into them. I believe this is one of those. The idea that you should stop your actual life and "exercise" says a lot about our lives. Life has become so physically easy for most of us these days that we become unhealthy living this way. If this is true, and most evidence suggests it is, I posit there is something seriously wrong with our lives, and the effects probably go far beyond needing to exercise. + +I think this is a sign that life is not supposed to be physically easy, that there needs to be struggle and even suffering to be a fully realized, healthy human being, but never mind that right now. Let's just say you hate the idea of working out, and want to build more exercise into your life: that's quite simple. + +The more time I spent thinking about this, and yes, I often think about it while plunging the day's laundry, the more I thought hmm, what if I built more of these little workouts into my day? What if you used a hand crank blender instead of a Vitamix, what if you used a reel push mower instead of riding mower? What if you used a plunger and a bucket to do laundry? It's really just extends a basic life philosophy I established years ago when I was living in New York: when there's an option, take the stairs. Walk slowly if you want, but take the long way. + + + +And I have good news: you can do this too if you want. It's simple really. Look around your life for machines, and then figure out what people did before there were machines to do it for them. In this spirit I bought a push reel mower and a hand crank coffee grinder. And I know it sounds silly. But you know what, it works. + +The best thing is that it actually makes life more fun. The kids get involved, doing laundry becomes a little thing you do everyday rather than an anonymous task that has to get done. And I like that. I don't think we're here to get things done, I think we're here to do things. + +[^1]: Not that books don't have value. But I find that making notes, writing down passages that grab me, and other methods of extracting information from books is sufficient that there's rarely a need to keep the actual book around. I've since gotten rid of most of them. There are a few I keep for their rarity, or because I frequently refer to or re-read them. diff --git a/jrnl/2020-07-15_eight.txt b/jrnl/2020-07-15_eight.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4181d9a --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-07-15_eight.txt @@ -0,0 +1,63 @@ +Happy birthday girls. I can't believe it's been only eight years since you arrived. It feels like you have always been here, like we have all always been here. I can't remember what I did without you, but it couldn't have been much fun. + +I know we weren't able to celebrate your birthday where or how we'd intended this year. But I also know you've already learned that the world is always turning, and you know how to roll with it. + +One thing that doesn't change though is the waking up before dawn. As per birthday request we ate crepes for breakfast, and as per usual, we ate in the early morning twilight. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +We skipped the balloons this year. As a birder I've always had hesitations about balloons, an alarming amount of which end up in seabird stomachs. This year we decided to retire that tradition. + +
+ + + + + + + +
+ +My favorite part of their birthdays, especially as they get older and more thoughtful, is watching them give each other gifts + +
+ + + +
+ +Then there's this boy who somehow has certain relatives convinced that he too should get some gifts on his sister's birthday. + + + + +Our original plan for the year was to spend a few months exploring the Carolina coasts, then cross the Allegheny Mountains, and head across Ohio, up the thumb of Michigan and back to the Great Lakes. Part of the motivation behind this was that the girls really wanted to spend their birthday at Lake Superior again. + +Obviously that didn't happen. Instead we are here, deep in the Carolina pine forests, making the best of it again. Mostly I am fine with this, but on their birthday, I did feel like I had failed them. I felt it even more so when I went to add the related entries to the bottom of this post and I saw the last four years: train rides, nearly private lakes, white sand beaches, even the swimming pool in Texas looks pretty appealing in the stifling summer heat of South Carolina. But it is what it is, and I don't mean to imply we have a hard life or anything like that. It's just harder to let go of some plans than others. + +On the bright side, we had an oven to bake an actual cake in. We still [love our waffle cake](/essay/waffle-world), but sometimes you need to change it up. Unfortunately, the kids weren't willing to wait for the cake the cool, so the frosting got runny and the cake split on us, something you don't have the worry about with waffle cake. No one cared but me. + +
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
diff --git a/jrnl/2020-09-23_summer-teeth.txt b/jrnl/2020-09-23_summer-teeth.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..df550db --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-09-23_summer-teeth.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +I am so far behind telling these stories I am giving up and skipping a few things in the interest of catching up. + +I spent most of the summer unable to write. Or unable to write what I wanted to write. Unwilling perhaps? I'm not sure, all I know is I didn't do anything I had planned to do when we got here. Like most people I imagine, I was in a bit of a funk most of the summer. + +Opportunities were all around, but I just sat back and listened to the whooshing sound they made as they flew past me. + +Despite having a chance to work on the bus without deadline or the inconvenience of living in it while tearing it up, I did absolutely nothing. I didn't even wash it. I didn't even go in it for months. The coronavirus situation provided me with a nice excuse to be lazy. If the world's shut down anyway, what's the point of doing anything? + +Those bigger, longer writing projects [I said I was going to work on](/jrnl/2020/06/hands-on-the-wheel)? Nah, didn't touch them. I squandered months. The most I managed to do was help Corrinne plant a few things in a small garden plot. But by mid summer I'd lost interest in that too. Corrinne kept at it though. We managed to get a good tomato harvest at least, along with one lonely, but pretty delicious, watermelon. + + + + + +It was a strange summer. I think we were all longing for some beach time, some wide open stretches of sand and water instead of lawns and humidity. But even if there had been beaches open to go to, I'm not sure I'd have made the effort. Something in me was deeply in retrograde this summer. I couldn't even bring myself to post things here. Normally I write things for luxagraf like I breathe, without thinking about it. Not this summer. + +Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the transit of the stars, maybe it was just me. Whatever the case, I did finally snap out of it and start doing the work that needs to be done (more on that later). But for those few months I, we, maybe the whole world to some degree, moved like a somnambulist. + +That's not to say we just lay around in daze. We got out and picked wild berries growing down the road. The kids rode their bikes, built wooden weapons, and explored the world around them as they always do. From their point of view, this summer was undoubtedly different, maybe a little boring, but they still had fun. + + + + + + + + + +And lest you think I am so self-aware, let me be clear: I didn't notice any of this as it happened. It wasn't until the heat broke one day in early September that I suddenly sat up and thought wait, what the hell just happened? How is it September? Why am I not doing anything? + +I don't know for sure what it was that snapped me out of it, but I distinctly remember sitting on the porch, watching the kids reading in the hammock, and suddenly thinking *what am I waiting for? Whatever it is, clearly it isn't coming. I need to get going, now*. + + + + +So I did. There is really no magic to writing. It's like anything else you want to do, at some point you have to force yourself to sit in the chair and do it. Even when you don't want to. Especially when you don't want to. I forced myself into the chair and got to work. That effort cascaded. Start one project and it's easier to start another. And another. + +In some ways, though I look back on it mostly in disgust with myself for falling into a trap of my own thinking, my own lack of will, perhaps my summer malaise was necessary. Perhaps I needed to get the bottom of the barrel I'd been wallowing in for a while. Perhaps you never wake up until you have an uncomfortable collision with the ground beneath you. diff --git a/jrnl/2020-10-01_light-is-clear-in-my-eyes.txt b/jrnl/2020-10-01_light-is-clear-in-my-eyes.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7d95e47 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-10-01_light-is-clear-in-my-eyes.txt @@ -0,0 +1,61 @@ +Summer heat never bothers me. It's the humidity. The irony is that I moved back here two decades ago because I loved the humidity. I wanted to sweat, I wanted to suffer that overbearing presence of the world, air so thick you could cut it with a knife. Sometimes I still do. I'll take a humid night in New Orleans over a cool one in Chicago any time. But increasingly I find myself itching for that first day when the humidity breaks and you can feel Autumn in the air. + +You can see it too. There is a quality of light in dry air that is cleaner, crisper, more revealing. The world sparkles more, feels more brilliantly alive. + + + +I've come to think lately that it's not Autumn that I was wanting, but the dry western air of my youth. That dryness is calling me back home. Technically speaking, I grew up by the beach, the air was rarely dry like the desert. Still, it was never as humid like it is here. + +I miss the desert. But I miss the balance between extremes even more. I miss the damp foggy mornings that give way to warm, but crisp clear afternoons. Around here the damn foggy mornings give way to... damp foggy afternoons. + + + + +At least it's cool and we can get outside again. We'd gone soft over the summer. We lived inside. Cheated the heat. Lured into the air conditioned nightmare. It's hard to escape it without some serious effort of will. It also helps to have something worth going outside for -- white sand, red rock, cool mountain forests, waves, tacos, something. + +The minute the humidity broke though we went back out. The hammock went up, the camp chairs moved back by the fire pit, the rope swing got pulled out of the branches where it had hung, unused through the summer heat. Life is good again. + +
+ + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ +I've said for years living indoors was killing us. All of us that is. This year, for the first time, I've seen quite few other people saying the same, albeit for different reasons. Stale, recycled building air is especially bad if you're trying to stop the spread of a virus, but it's bad for a host of other reasons too. Long after this virus is a distant memory, spending all your time indoors will still be bad for you. Get outside more if you can. Spend a little time every day under the open sky and you'll feel better. No roof but stars. + + + +With the heat gone I finally got to work cleaning and fixing up a few things on the bus. I replaced the exhaust manifold gaskets, flushed the radiator, bled the brakes, replaced the starter relay (again), and cleaned up some wiring. There's a considerable amount of exhaust leaking though and I think I am going to take it in to get that looked at. I have neither the tools nor skills to redo all the exhaust pipes and joints. I did finally get started washing and waxing it though. + + + +I also started on some interior work. I installed a new MPPT solar controller that is a thousand times better and cheaper than the PWM controller we had previously. It's amazing how much the price of solar components have come down in the past five years. Even LiPO batteries are about half the price they were two years ago. + +Next I tore out an entire wall, taking out the couch, and pulling down my custom made cabinet. I also removed a good portion of the ceiling. I did all that primarily so I could fix a water leak where the wires from the solar panel came in. I added a proper cable entry cover to stop the water leak. + + + +I decided not to drill for the cover, opting instead for some high strength polyurethane adhesive. It makes me a little nervous, but I thought this made a good test since if it fails, the wires will keep the cover from flying off. It definitely solved the leak anyway, how it holds up over the years remains to be seen. + + + +I figured as long as the wall was torn up I might as well make a few improvements as well. I installed some heavier wire coming down from solar setup so we can add a couple more panels down the road if we want. I also ran some coaxial cable up to the roof for a Wi-Fi antenna. The I added a shunt to the batteries and ran some wired up through the wall so we can monitor the battery state without Bluetooth (which is handy, but will inevitably fail). + + + +Since I was tearing up the ceiling I also decided to test how my initial ceiling panel installation strategy worked. I deliberately left some strategic gaps (which are covered by the metal strips you see in the photos) so I could remove the tongue and groove panels without removing all of them. I'm happy to say this did work, perfectly in fact. I was able to easily pull out a couple panels over the stove to fix the ground wire on the light there, which had been flickering annoyingly for years now. + +After a summer in which I was unable to do much of anything, working on things again felt good. When we were on the road I tended to work in small bursts when time and circumstances permitted (or at the side of the road when circumstances required). Now though I can get a little bit done everyday, which gives me a sense of slow steady progress that I rather prefer to the burst and then nothing workflow. + +I find this interesting because I was once a fan of the extremes of things: everything and then nothing at all. I still see the merit in this for some things, but the danger is that time spent doing nothing at all comes the vastly outweigh the time spent in intense bursts of work. Everything or nothing too often turns out to be nothing at all. + +I've come to appreciate that steady, little-bit-every-day approach. The secret is to never take a day off whatever it is, make it a habit. Do something every day. It doesn't matter how much, just do something. Sometimes it's hard to tell you're making any progress, but if you just force yourself to sit in the chair and do the work anyway, then one day you look back and realize how far you've come. diff --git a/jrnl/2020-10-28_walking-north-carolina-woods.txt b/jrnl/2020-10-28_walking-north-carolina-woods.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e69ffa1 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-10-28_walking-north-carolina-woods.txt @@ -0,0 +1,57 @@ +I started traveling with my feet, walking out the front door as a kid to go exploring. There was a tract of vacant land not far from my house I would walk to in the early days. It had a cluster of Eucalyptus trees that offered shade in the summer, and from mid way up, a view of the sea. + +I started going farther and farther afield as I got older, until I was sneaking off to catch the southbound PCH bus, carefully horded change heavy in my pocket, often ending up twenty or more miles from home at the age of twelve[^1]. + +Later I spent a lot of time on the trails of the Sierra Nevada, the White Mountains, the Trinity Alps, the Arizona desert, the western slope of Colorado, and the canyon lands of Utah. And then one day, I stopped walking around. + +It wasn't a conscious decision, stopping. I just didn't make the time for walking anymore. What you don't make time for, doesn't happen. And it didn't for over a decade, until I decided it was time to plan a walk. It just popped into my head one day, *you should go for a walk*. + + + +So I pulled up a map and plotted a trip to the mountain trails of North Carolina, a place called Shining Rock Wilderness. I'd intended to go alone, but my kids got wind of my plan and wanted in. It took some scrambling to find enough gear for us all, but I managed. I'm glad I did, walking with my kids made it better in every way. + + + + +It wasn't a long walk, but it was our kind of walk. We followed a river side trail a few miles up a thickly forested valley, under a canopy of yellow birch, oak, and beach, with buckeye and tulip poplar beneath. The forest was decked out in autumn colors. Red, orange, yellow, and brown leaves rained down with every shuddering breeze. + +We set up camp in the fading light the first evening, and there we stayed. We played by the river, exploring upstream the first morning to see where another river cut in and the valley opened up some. Mainly though we spent our time in our little neighborhood of river valley. + + + + +It was a fine river, babbling calmly in some places, but turning to a tumbling cataract in others. It had the perfect clarity of western rivers. Even in pools six feet deep, we could see the rocky, leaf-strewn bottom below. In the shallows thin ribbons of clear water slid over the black granite rocks, shimmering like heat waves on a desert horizon. You wanted to lay down and drink it right off the rocks. + +We didn't of course, but there is something tremendously calming about laying down by the water. It was cold, but not unbearable. We tossed our clothes on the rocks and went swimming one afternoon, laying afterward on the black granite shore, letting the warmth of the afternoon sun on the rocks chase away the chill. + + + + + + +In the evenings we would cook dinner down by the river on our tiny stove. We made all our own food in the dehydrator ahead of time and rehydrated it in camp. Mac and cheese, a chicken curry we named Shiny Rock Curry. Rehydrated canned chicken is better than it sounds. And everything is better when you eat it in the wild, next to a river. + + + + +Every night after dinner we walked a little way up the river and stashed our bear canister well away from the tent. On the way back we'd lie down on our backs and watch the pink sunset through the yellow leaves of the trees. Then the bats would dart overhead, silhouetted against the twilight sky. + + + + +The kids didn't seem to mind the deep darkness of the forest at night. Although, for once I didn't encounter any resistance to going to bed. They may not have been afraid of the dark forest, but they weren't terribly eager to remain out in it either. A campfire would likely have helped, but sadly, there are no fires allowed in the Shiny Rock Wilderness right now. + +One night I got up in the early morning darkness and unzipped the tent to a panorama of stars, with Orion perfectly framed in the one treeless spot of sky. It was cold, but I sat out on a log, watching the clouds drift past the glow of the moon, hidden somewhere behind the ridge. I couldn't help wondering how many problems might be solved if we all had a chance to more regularly see the stars. It's hard to take yourself too seriously when the stars are always there to remind you what's real and what's theatre. + + + +Early mornings on the river are magical. Get up when the light of the world is still soft and gray and stand and listen to the water. There is nothing better than morning twilight beside a river. + +We were up early every morning. The kids would play on the rocks while I made coffee in the close company of a trio of rock wrens that were our only real visitors the whole trip. They seemed genuinely curious about what we were doing. They studied us with cocked heads, watching as we ate our breakfast burritos. They left when I made hot chocolate, though even later, when we were racing leaf boats in the eddies, I heard them chattering somewhere in the thicket of mountain laurel across the river. + + + + +The last morning we packed up our gear and headed home. None of us wanted to though. I was kicking myself for not taking more time off, I had plenty to spare. I just hadn't anticipated how much we would all want to stay. The kids spent much of the hike back plotting ways to come back, times to come back, what would it be like in spring? Was it hot in summer? As I listened to them talk about it I found myself wondering how long it would be before they were counting their change and looking up bus schedules. + +[^1]: Kids don't do this any more. I'm not sure I'd want mine to, but it was a different time. And my parents were never, so far as I know, aware that I did this. The bus riding was mostly done in the company of a friend or two, mutual support was needed to travel far at that age. diff --git a/jrnl/2020-11-04_halloween.txt b/jrnl/2020-11-04_halloween.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..34263c6 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-11-04_halloween.txt @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +Our kids look forward to Halloween the way I used to look forward to Christmas. They'll sit around in May plotting different things they can be for next Halloween. Then they'll ask *when is Halloween?* the way some kids ask *are we there yet?* + +It's fun for Corrinne and I to listen to all their costume ideas. In the course of a year we hear dozens of plans tossed around. I encouraged the more outlandish ones, though those tend to be abandoned the fastest. I've always wanted to see if Corrinne could figure out a way to make some of their more creative ideas into costumes, like "a haunted pine tree" or a siren. + +
+ + + + + + + + + + +
+ +This year costumes that are also pajamas were all the rage. I support this rage because costumes should be worn for at least the next six months, ideally much longer. Our kids are still playing with the fairy wings they [wore for Halloween when we were in Patrick's Point](/jrnl/2017/11/halloween-and-big-trees) three years ago. + +Elliott somehow found out about these pajama costumes and discovered one that was a flying squirrel. But then his sister chose to be a rock star (specifically, [Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs](https://karenomusic.com/biography), because Lilah's imagination is always very detailed and precise), so he decided to be a rock star flying squirrel. Then the same thing happened to our erstwhile leopard, who became a rock star leopard. + +The funny thing about this is our kids really have no idea what a rock star is, not that such things matter. They just want to get dressed up, eat candy, and dance around all night. Are there even rock stars anymore? I have a hard time picturing Keith Richards or Mick Jagger getting away with their antics in today's world. + + + +We skipped the trick-or-treating this year, as I imagine most people did. For us there wasn't really anywhere to go anyway. Our nearest neighbors are cows, which are notorious for only having tootsie rolls, good and plenty, and other candy no one wants. + +We played it safe and celebrated by having a Halloween candy scavenger hunt and decorating some sugar cookies. The scavenger hunt was all Corrinne's doing, I lack that sort of festive creativity. + + + + + +Black frosting turns out to be tough, we settled for gray. Otherwise though the kids made out like bandits with cookies *and* plenty of candy squirreled away for the rest of the week. + +I always try to get them to eat all their candy on Halloween. I am a big believer in the binge -- just get it over with. Somehow they never fall for this. They have rather remarkable restraint in that way. Elliott always tells me he can't eat anymore or he'll get a stomach ache. No way I was smart enough to let that stop me when I was his age. + + + + + +One change from bus life, we have an oven so we got to roast our pumpkins seeds this year. It got me thinking, *hey now, I could fix the oven in the bus while we're sitting around here.* + +I'm not entirely sure I want to fix it though. Somehow it feels like abandoning our [waffling ways](/essay/waffle-world). Then again, there are things you can't waffle. Like pumpkin seeds. But is that worth the trouble? I don't know. I'm still mulling it over. Maybe by next Halloween we'll have it sorted out. You don't want to rush into these things after all. diff --git a/jrnl/2020-11-21_invitation.txt b/jrnl/2020-11-21_invitation.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9ac6cab --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-11-21_invitation.txt @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +**TL;DR**: I started a club in the form of an email newsletter. I call it *Friends of a Long Year*. We meet once a month, digitally, in your email. If you'd like to join, drop your email address in the box below. If you'd like to know why you might want to join, and where the name comes from, read on. + + + +Late last year I got it into my head that I should start a club, a good old fashioned club, like the Elks or the Masons. + +But then, we travel, how the heck would that work, traveling while trying to have a club that has meetings? Hmmm. Well, then, a digital club. But what does that look like? And what is a club really? Why would you join one? + +There's actually [a really good book][1] about this, but I think it boils down to getting together with people and talking, building a community, usually around a common interest or theme. A good club is a way of bringing together people from all walks of life who have some thing in common. + +[1]: https://bookshop.org/books/bowling-alone-the-collapse-and-revival-of-american-community-9781982130848/9781982130848 + +Around the same time I was thinking that I should start a club, I pitched (but later abandoned) an article about the email culture of the early 2000s, what now looks like the golden age of email. Perhaps you remember that time? The days when you would email friends just to say hello, just because frictionless simplicity of email was still new and exciting. + +I distinctly remember the emails my friend Mike used to send. He was traveling around Southeast Asia in those days. He didn't *blog* about 13 Things You Have to Do in Thailand or some bullshit. He emailed us. Like we were people, not *readers* or *supporters*. He didn't write to an audience, he wrote to *us*, his friends, his club if you will. He wrote about the things he did, riding elephants, walking on beaches, visiting ruins. They were little things these emails, but they were great. I looked forward to those emails more than I look forward to anything on the internet of today. + +This is all I want to do with this club, to bring a little bit of joy back to your inbox. + +So this club is an email newsletter in the spirit of Mike's emails[^1]. I call it *Friends of a Long Year*. + +I know what you're thinking, that's not much of a club there Scott, that's just you email us. And, well... that's true. I do have some additional plans. More things to build, which takes time. But as they say, you have to start. You have to overcome the inertia. First email. Then the world. + +Now, that name. What is *with* that name? + +The name comes from Mary Hunter Austin, and we need to say some things about Austin because I think she might be the sort of beacon we need just now. Certainly she will be the guiding beacon of this newsletter. + +Mary Hunter Austin was an explorer, botanist, desert rat, author, mystic, misfit. She was also far ahead of, and out of step with, her time. All qualities we could use more of just now. + +Austin lived in, explored, and wrote about the Mojave desert of Nevada and California at the turn of the 20th century. What makes her writing special is that she saw things other people did not. At a time when most people saw the Mojave desert as a wasteland to be mined, Austin saw a thing of raw, majestic beauty. + +Most people in her day hurried across the desert to the central valley of California to farm. Mary Austin stayed behind to wander the desert. She dug down, got to know the sand. She wrote about the sand. She wrote about dry, cracked, brutal expanses of sand. She wrote about the hills rising out of the desert heat, about the mountains above the hills. She wrote about the natives calling this strange place home. She wrote about the immigrants trying to make it home. + +She saw what no one else around seemed to notice because she paid careful attention to details. She did not hurry through. She did not gloss over. + +These are qualities we need more of. We need more adventurers, explorers, more curiosity, more DIYers, more attention to details, more mystics, more misfits digging in the sand. + +I think it's possible Austin and friends founded our club. Austin's collection of short stories, Lost Borders, is dedicated "to Marion Burke and the Friends of a Long Year." + +It's a mysterious dedication. Who were the friends of a long year? What were the friends of a long year? When were the friends of a long year? I like to think it was some kind of club. Some kind of gathering of explorers out in the wilds of the desert. + +So I decided the *Friends of a Long Year* is the club we will build, or perhaps rebuild. In the spirit of Mary Austin. And Mike's emails. + +I don't know exactly what it will be, or where it will go, but it will be done in the spirit of the emails we used to send back in the early 2000s, it will strive to bring joy to your inbox. It will be about things Mary Austin would have enjoyed talking about: deserts, mountains, trees, oceans, misfits, mystics, and marvels of the mundane. If you'd like to join *Friends of a Long Year*, you can do so right here: + + + +Two things to note: First, I [built my own mailing list software](). This was an adventure (natch) and took a lot longer than I expected, but it was worth it. I looked around for some existing software that respected your privacy, the way email did in the early 2000s, but found nothing. So I made my own. There are no tracking codes, no pixels, no sneaky links, nothing. It's just an email. I will have no idea if you read them or not. + +The only way I will even know you got the email is if you hit reply, and I encourage you to do so. It's set up in such a way that you are only replying to me. There's no way to accidentally reply to the whole list -- we all have a painful story about that happening. Don't worry, that can't happen here, no one else will ever see your response. And I encourage you to respond, that's the point after all. + +[^1]: I don't think I've ever given my friend Mike the credit he deserves for propelling me on the trajectory that my life has been on since 2005. But he does deserve credit. And some of it goes to those emails. diff --git a/jrnl/2020-12-02_learning-to-ride-bike.txt b/jrnl/2020-12-02_learning-to-ride-bike.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b08d4be --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-12-02_learning-to-ride-bike.txt @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +We gave Elliott a bike for [his birthday last year](/jrnl/2019/12/birthday-beach), but I've been slow in teaching him how to ride. When we got back from our [walk in the woods](/jrnl/2020/10/walking-north-carolina-woods), I made it a point to give him a chance to practice every day. + +The road in front of our house sees four or five cars a day at most. It's generally a safe place to ride. We'd make a couple trips back and forth, up and down the hill with me running along beside him, holding on to the back of his seat. We'd do this two or three times before my back started to hurt and he'd want to go back to his scooter. He was faster on the scooter and he didn't have dad loping along behind him the whole time. I'd sit at the side of the road and watch the kids, the girls on bike Elliott on his scooter. The only condition was that we had to do the two laps on the bike. + +After doing this for a few weeks, my fingers getting ever lighter in their grip, he had it down. I'd let go for extended distances and he was riding his bike. He just didn't know it yet. He was cruising along in that blissful space where he had no idea that he could fail. In his mind, no matter what happened, I was there to catch him so he could relax and be free. + +One evening his sister noticed me letting go. She squealed in excitement and started to say something, but I managed to keep her quiet. I knew she'd tell him that night though -- they're very loyal to each other -- but I didn't want him to discover it while he was doing it. It's better to find out after the fact I think, to have that realization of not only can I do this, I already did it. + + + +The next day he asked me if it was true and I said yes. He smiled and got on his bike and asked me for a push and he was off riding. For a couple days I needed me to give him a little push to get him started, but then one day I went to do that and he said no, "I don't need any help." And there you go. + + + + + + + +--- + +If you know me or Corrinne it should come as no great surprise that our kids love to read. People often ask what we do out here in the woods all day, well, one answer would be: we read. These days nothing goes unread -- packaging, labels, fine print, everything gets read. + + + + + +This got me thinking about parenting. I've always said, half jokingly, that all you really need to teach your kids is basic human kindness and how to read. The rest is information and experience they can seek out for themselves using those tools. Be kind and read the signs is the modus operandi of life. + +I've since added cooking, spreadsheet formulas, compound interest, and edge cases in American tax code to my basic human curriculum, but I haven't changed my overall approach, which has always been that the main job of being a parent is to keep your kids alive and stay out of their way as much as possible. + +I've tried to do that, though sometimes it is hard. Mistakes have been made. One of my daughters is still getting over a fear of boats because I thought she'd be fine sitting on the floor of a canoe for a short paddle. She was not. She's coming around though. This spring we'll try again. + +Sometimes you have to hold onto the seat. No one just rides a bike. No one just reads. But I remain convinced that you should let go as soon as you can, probably sooner than you think you should. diff --git a/jrnl/2020-12-20_six.txt b/jrnl/2020-12-20_six.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..de3bdc4 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-12-20_six.txt @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +Five was one of those years that seemed to fly by. I feel like you just turned five and now you're six? How did that happen? + + + +Even crazier for me to think about is that when we left home three and a half years ago, Elliott was still a toddler in diapers. And now he's six and [riding a bike](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2020/12/learning-to-ride-bike) and [backpacking](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2020/10/walking-north-carolina-woods). + +You'd be hard pressed to find a sweeter kid than Elliott. I know I am biased, but I keep waiting for him to turn into, well, a little boy. A little boy like I remember being, up to no good all the time. So far that just hasn't happened. He's the kindest, most thoughtful person I know. His sisters have no idea how lucky they are. + + + +Happy birthday Elliott. I have enjoyed the past year, strange though some of it has been, I have enjoyed it. I've enjoyed it with you. + +
+ + + + + + + +
+ +I like that you enjoy doing the unusual things we do, that you like figuring out how to make things work, that you always want to go over the next rise and see what's on the other side, that you always want to keep doing everything for just two more minutes. I know you won't always be a little boy, but I sure am enjoying it while you are. I hope you're enjoying it too. + +And sorry about all the ribbon, it won't happen again. + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2020-12-23_solstice-strange-land.txt b/jrnl/2020-12-23_solstice-strange-land.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..296ee3a --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2020-12-23_solstice-strange-land.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +I have some western habits. Artifacts of growing up in a world like the American southwest. One of those habits is *going for a drive*. Not a drive to get anywhere, just a drive to drive. People don't seem to do that as much here in the east. Roads are all the same here, a furrow cut through the trees. Out west I think it's harder to locate yourself in space because there's so much of it. You drive to find out where you are. + +Aimless driving is not the most ecologically sustainable thing you can do, but I do miss it sometimes. Driving is a kind of meditation, especially in the wide open empty spaces of the southwest where I grew up going for drives, where there's nothing but clouds and sky and road. + + + +It was a sunny winter day when I decided to go for a drive. There's no endless sky here. Where we are in South Carolina I have tree-lined country roads overgrown with huge, heavy old oaks, their bare, twiggy arms stretching toward the winter sky. The dappled light of afternoon sun flickers like a strobe light across the windshield at 50 miles an hour. + +I drifted aimlessly, taking random left turns but trying to keep the sun on my right, so I knew I was heading south. + +I wound up in a town called Abbeville, which has the slogan "pretty near perfect." + + + +You have to be careful with overly-optimistic slogans, lest they become ironic. I have no idea what life is like in Abbeville, but if the old broken windows theory is correct, things are probably headed in a direction that you might charitably call, not good. I know that's the case in Iva, the closest town to our woods. It's not a social problem. It's an economic problem. The jobs left when the mill shut down. + +That last sentence applies to any number of a hundred small towns we've driven through in the course of our travels around America. Whatever social problems may exist in this country, they pale next to the economic reality that most of us live with. + +I wandered around downtown Abbeville for a while, trying to decide if it was anywhere near perfect. + + + + +I stumbled across a beautiful old hose, the Quay-Wardlaw house, built in 1786. + + + +It wasn't open to visitors, in fact it seemed to me like someone still lived in it, which is a refreshing change from the usual "historic" building in the U.S. For reasons I've never understood, in America old things need to be set aside and not used as they were intended. They are *historic*, which here means *not used*. They are locked up, consigned to the past. + +I suspect this need to keep the past frozen and remote is an artifact of our civil religion as it were, the myth of progress. That is, the idea that history is a progression, always moving toward something better. If things were still used exactly as they always had been it would undercut this narrative. See, things are getting better, we don't have to live in 18th century buildings anymore. + +The Quay-Wardlaw house though seems to have some heretics living in it, a living debunking of the myth that history has a direction. It looked to still be what it once was: a house people live in. I think Quay, whomever he may have been, would be happy to know his house is still fulfilling it's function 230 odd years later. + +I stood there a while, looking at the house, envious of Quay. I seriously doubt anything I've built will last a fraction of that long. I'd actually bet Quay's work has a better chance of lasting another 200 years than mine does of lasting its first 200. + +Eventually the chill of the wind drove me back to my car and I left Abbeville behind. I reversed the choices that had taken me to Abbeville, turning right at every opportunity, keeping the sun to the left. I didn't pay much attention to where I was headed. Lest I forget where I was, there were always face slapping clues like the Gulla Gulla gas station. + + + +I meandered through farm country on my way home, thin roads winding through the maze of property lines. I watched the long shadows of lonely oak trees race away from the sun. Cows standing in front of crumbling gray barns looked up curiously as I passed. Towns like Due West and Level Land went by in a blur until I saw a sign for Iva. + +That's where we are right now. I would not say it's anywhere near perfect. Nor would it apparently. The Mill is gone, so are most of the people. But it's still here for now. I turned off the main road in the fading light and drove back down to the river bottom and into the woods we call home. diff --git a/jrnl/2021-01-30_down-by-the-creek.txt b/jrnl/2021-01-30_down-by-the-creek.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..13bd43e --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2021-01-30_down-by-the-creek.txt @@ -0,0 +1,63 @@ +Warm winter days are best spent at the creek, laying back in the soft sand bed of a shoal, sun on your chest, watching the white tufts of cloud drift across the deep blue sky. + + + +We're lucky to have a creek nearby. Step out the back door and hang a right. Walk past the garden, past the blue bus, past the pump house, and you'll come to a partially overgrown path that twists around a massive, skeletal oak tree before disappearing into the shadows of the deeper pine woods that surround us. + +Along the way you'll see the remains of buildings, a mound of bricks, old, rusting early 20th century farm equipment, unnatural rows of daffodils marking the remnants of a once-loved structure, now crumbled back into the forest floor. + +
+ + + + +
+ +Keep going down the path -- watch your step around the small bog near the brick pile -- and then the undergrowth thins, the shadows deepen, and the pine woods begin. In less than fifty feet you will no longer be able to see the house you left behind. + +Once you could have seen for miles. A century ago this was all wide open farm land, cotton fields. If you'd headed across the road, into the woods on the other side of our place, you might run into some old sharecropper cabins, though I've never been able to find them. + +I'm not sure who originally planted the pines that are here now, but it's a very different land than it was even fifty years ago. It bears no resemblance at all to the accounts of William Bartram, who walked these parts around the time of the American Revolution. Bartram writes of this area that, "these hills are shaded with glorious magnolia, red mulberry, basswood, oak, white elm, walnuts, with aromatic groves of fragrant spice bush, rhododendron, red buckeye, Azalea, flowering dogwood, and even shooting star."[^1] + +I am no botanist, but you need not be one to notice that the woods we're walking in are not diverse enough to contain that many species. The hardwoods have been gone for a century, except back by the house, where planted pecans, walnuts, and oaks showered us with nuts all through the fall. + +Oaks are the only real survivors from Bartram's day. There are still oaks down in the creek bottoms. The old growth hardwoods may be gone, but newer trees are still to be found. Pines don't like soggy soil, so once you make it past the mounds of bricks, the occasional glade the hunting club has cleared, and follow the slope of the land down into the creek bottoms, you get back into the oaks. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +One thing that is still down here is [gold](https://live.luxagraf.net/friends/003/golden-sunshine). Normally I am a birdwatcher, I leave the rocks and fossils to Corrinne. But it's winter, which means bird life is largely limited to the mixed flocks of chickadees, titmice, and wrens that inhabit the southern Appalachian woodlands this time of year. There is a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker that's been working on the large pecan tree that hangs over the bus for months now, but the [flood of migrants](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/04/migration) that really gets birdwatchers like me up in the morning won't start for another month or two. + +So rocks. In streams. We're in a borderland, geologically speaking, which is always the place to be -- edges are where everything gets interesting. + +We're between the Appalachian foothills, which you can see on a clear day if you get out of the forest, and what gets called the low country, the part of the state below the Fall Line, where the Piedmont foothills and Atlantic coastal plain meet. We're technically in the upcountry, but at the very edge of it. We're where everything washes down to, where the waters slow, meander, and the rocks start to collect. + +Under the omnipresent layer of red clay there's a mish-mash of schists that bubble up, everything from quartz to amphibolite to gold. There are certainly a lot of golden flakes in the sand at the bottom of the creek. Is it all gold? Probably not. Is some of it? Most likely. + + + +The kids have reached a stage of childhood I remember well, the one where you don't go more than a few hours without food. We usually bring some sandwiches for lunch and eat them down on the sand bars at the edge of an old fence that *might* mark the edge of the property. We're not really clear on where things begin and end back in the woods, but we err of the side of *let's call that the property line* since we're guests here at best. + + + + +Heading back through the woods we eventually pick up one of the hunting club trails which help avoid the tangles of thorny vines that make bushwhacking slow going. The thorns seem to have some kind of sap that makes them itch like a mosquito bite when they break your skin. + + + + +Retrace your steps past the crumbled remains of brick out buildings, back round the huge dead oak, and you're back in our yard, staring at the bus, thinking, + +*The woods are lovely, dark and deep, +But I have promises to keep, +And miles to go before I sleep, +And miles to go before I sleep.* + +Or maybe that's just me. + +[^1]: I've taken the liberty of swapping common names for the scientific names Bartram actually wrote. diff --git a/jrnl/2021-02-18_oak-grove.txt b/jrnl/2021-02-18_oak-grove.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5472abd --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2021-02-18_oak-grove.txt @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +The [creek](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2021/01/down-by-the-creek) is our favorite spot in the woods. But the creek is a mile walk from our house. On days when there isn't time to get down there we have another spot. A grove of huge, old oak trees that serves as our closer to home hangout for exploring, playing, and relaxing. + +It is quiet and still in here among the trees. Quiet enough that when a pine cone falls, clattering down through pine boughs, there's a distinctive soft crunch when it lands on the leaves and needles of the forest floor. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +It's never silent in the forest, but it is almost always still and quiet. Sitting here it's hard to believe there is anywhere else in the world. Everywhere else feels too distant to be real. All that seems real is this log, the stillness of this winter afternoon, and the birds singing as they flutter from tree to tree. + +A few trees away, a nuthatch calls. Then there's a chickadee dee dee dee. And another. Farther off a crow cries, closely followed by the shrieking of a red-tailed hawk. In front of me an ant picks its way through the layered humus. + +The soft crunch of leaves muted by matted pine needles tells me Elliott is trying to sneak up behind me again. It is impossible to walk silently though, there are too many curled dried leaves waiting to announce your footsteps. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +These oaks once shaded something. Perhaps a small barn. A shed for tractors perhaps. There are the remains of a few small buildings, some rusted farm equipment, and my favorite kind of country trailer -- the bed of a pickup rigged up with a chain harness. + +There's a good bit of rusty barbed wire lying around too. After warning the kids to watch out for the barbed wire, naturally I was the one to finally end up cutting myself on it. I was trying to trace it through the undergrowth -- my guess is this was some kind of paddock area at one point, hogs would have loved it back here -- when my foot found a piece just barely beneath the surface. It gave me a chance to explain tetanus. + + + +We leave education largely up to the kids. Corrinne is a literacy specialist, so she taught them to read. But mostly we let them follow their curiosity, rather than trying to force them to "study" something. + +When they want to learn something we help them with any materials or tools they might need, but mostly we let them explore the world on their own, at their own pace. They like to load up their backpacks with notebooks and magnifying glasses and plant presses and other tools and bring them out here to see what they can discover. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +Just as often though they just run around playing in the woods. Like kids do. Like kids used to anyway. Now more than ever we feel incredibly lucky and fortunate to be able to get outside and enjoy the world. diff --git a/jrnl/2021-03-24_springsville.txt b/jrnl/2021-03-24_springsville.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..079a25a --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2021-03-24_springsville.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +Spring arrives in stages. First there are the warmer days. February sunshine brings a welcome change from the chill of January. Still nothing really changes in the land. Everything is bare, stark, skeletal. + + + +Then the first daffodils come. Spots of green and yellow standing out in a sea of brown leaves and pine needles trampled since last fall. A week passes, the daffodils enjoy their time in the spotlight. + + + +And then without any more fanfare, one day we're walking up the road to visit the cows and the ground is a riot of color. Flowers are everywhere. Blue, purple, white, red, yellow. Tiny flowers, huge flowers. + + + + + + + +
+ + + + +
+ +We celebrate the spring equinox the way most people do easter, with dyed eggs, chocolate treats, egg hunts, and detailed pre-planned fruit plate sculptures of a bunny. The usual stuff. + + + + + +Like everything, spring in the south has one near fatal flaw: pollen. + +Pollen comes like the flowers do, one at time, cycling through oak, pecan, grass, and so on. The one that was new to us this year was one I'd seen once before, briefly, in the [Okefenokee Swamp](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2010/03/so-far-i-have-not-found-science): the pines. Living in the middle of a several hundred acre circle of near monocultural pines... well, let's just say there was quite a bit of pine pollen. + + + + +One day the wind kicked up and started sending it all up in great clouds. We looked out the kitchen window and couldn't see past the second row of trees. The forest was a yellow-green fog with great clouds of pollen billowing off the tops of the trees. Thankfully, none of us are allergic to pine pollen, but this much of anything in the air makes life miserable. We hid indoors for a few days, but eventually the rains came and knocked it down and washed it off. + +There were couple of nice days to get outside and play, but then the next round started. Oaks, then pecans. For most of March, that's just how it goes down here. diff --git a/jrnl/2021-05-23_may-days.txt b/jrnl/2021-05-23_may-days.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a93c13d --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2021-05-23_may-days.txt @@ -0,0 +1,49 @@ +Things have been pretty quiet in the woods lately. We've watched the world wake up from winter, turn green, [pollen-saturated](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2021/03/springsville), and lately we've been getting an early taste of the summer heat and humidity that's still to come. + +Most of May though the weather was pretty near perfect -- 75 and sunny. The kids have had a blast watching all the birds' nests come to life. So far we've seen three Phoebe chicks hatch and make it out of the nest on our front porch. + + + +Currently we're watching some Carolina Wren chicks in what might be the strangest nest location ever. One of my work projects for the spring was testing full size grills. One day five showed up at once. That was a bit overwhelming so two of them got stacked on the porch and covered with a tarp. A couple days later we had a windy storm blow through. The tarp got twisted up and made a little covered space that a pair of Carolina Wrens decided was a perfect spot for a nest. + + + +So now every time we step out the door one of the adult wrens goes flashing by our heads, giving us an uncomfortably close view of their long, needle-like beak. A wren streaking by inches from your face first thing in the morning will wake you up better than a cup coffee. + +Spring is always the best time to get some work done in the bus. The temps are nice, the full force of summer humidity hasn't arrived yet, and the fire ants are still underground, making it the perfect time to crawl under and work on your exhaust system. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +I've been tackling some little projects inside the bus too. I got the walls back together with new wires so we can add some solar panels down the road. I also put in a fancy new charge controller that has a phone app I can use to monitor everything (also have a wired backup monitor because I distrust technology). To give you some idea of how dramatically solar components are dropping in price, this new fancy unit was about 30 percent less expensive than the bare bones unit we bought in 2017. + +One day I decided to finally tackle the passenger windshield wiper motor, which has never worked. I pulled it out, took it apart and quickly realized the motor was so rusted the magnet was fused to the coil. I managed to track down a similar unit though, which is on order. While I was in there I figured I might as well clean out the area behind the glove box. In vintage RV repair that's the equivalent of saying, "hmm, wonder what would happen to this sweater if I pull on this dangling thread?" It's how you go from this: + + + +To this: + + +To this: + + + +It's for the best, but it still makes me laugh every time. Every single project in the bus goes so far beyond the initial scope I think it will have. But, as a fellow Travco owner said of that picture of me under the bus, "better there than on the side of the road." Very true. I'd rather be doing all this while we're not living in it, while the weather is nice, there's no rush, and the rest of my family isn't hot, tired, bored, and waiting on me to make everything work again. + +As you can see from those images there was a water leak that destroyed the subfloor and was feeding the rust on the metal, which is in pretty bad shape. I found and fixed the leak that caused the problem (seal on the back of the headlight). I'll reinforce the seat platform area with some steel bars, then add some well-sealed plywood on top of that (I'd like to have a conversation with whoever thought OSB was a good choice for Travco flooring). Eventually it'll all get put back together better than it was, and that'll be one less thing I ever have to worry about. Hey, maybe I'll even replace the wiper motor and get that working too. + +At some point, after I pull the radiator (pinhole leak from the extension tube needs to be patched), replace the starter, and get her running smoothly again, I'm going to tackle the kitchen. My plan is to put in a new counter top, but somehow I suspect I'll have a photo of the kitchen gutted to the bare walls to post before too long. + +Otherwise we haven't done anything too exciting lately, but it's hard to complain about much out here. At least once a day I'll be outside doing something and all the sudden I'll stop and listen... there's never any sounds other than birds signing and the wind in the pines. It's difficult to convey the peace of mind this gives you. It's like the opposite of that subtle background stress you get living in a city. If it weren't for the humidity and insects I'd think we were still [camped up at Junction Creek](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/07/junction-creek), but without the crowds. + + +Education is one of those topics that come up constantly when people are contemplating a wanderer lifestyle with their kids. I get it. We've been trained for a hundred years to believe that a particular curriculum is needed in order to learn the things necessary to succeed in life. But I think as adults we slowly realize that the important knowledge that we have earned wasn't learned in a classroom with thirty other kids. We also learn that success has many measures. + +Remember that we are adults with a lifetime of lessons learned. We're also learning new things all the time, so long as we don't fall into the "can't teach an old dog new tricks" fallacy. My kids and I learned to scuba dive a few months ago. We've been down about twenty-five times since. We've learned about atmospheric pressure, we've learned new things about different fish and corals, we've learned about buoyancy—the list goes on. + +My point is simply that if you are worried about educating your kids, don't. Whether you call it worldschooling, unschooling, homeschooling, or don't give it a name at all, you will all keep learning. diff --git a/jrnl/2021-11-25_back-to-the-life.txt b/jrnl/2021-11-25_back-to-the-life.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d1ee40a --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2021-11-25_back-to-the-life.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +I forgot. I forgot the Pleiades. I forgot how bright Venus could be on a clear, cold night. I forgot how nice it is to step out into the night to take a leak and stare up at the stars while you do. + + + +I forgot how waking up in the morning and stepping outside first thing completely rearranges the way you see the rest of the day, completely changes how you approach that day. Not in any way you can put your finger on, not in a profound way perhaps, a quiet way, a quiet, *oh, damn it's cold out today, and that's something I have to deal with as I make breakfast and get going* kind of way. + +I had forgotten all these things because when you are not living something you forget it. It no longer imprints on you and something else takes its place and you forget. Or maybe that's just me, maybe I am just forgetful. Not particularly smart and somewhat infantile in my inability to remember things when I stop doing them for a while. + +Whatever the case, I am excited to be doing them again. I am excited to see the Pleiades when I step outside at night. I am excited to head outside first thing in the morning and feel the cold. I am excited to be back. Let's do this thing. Again. diff --git a/jrnl/2021-12-19_perfect-from-now-on.txt b/jrnl/2021-12-19_perfect-from-now-on.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..19ef3b1 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2021-12-19_perfect-from-now-on.txt @@ -0,0 +1,45 @@ +It began the way all Travco adventures should. After the last things were stowed securely away, I fired up the engines, which roared the life. I sat down, grabbed the shift handle, put my foot on the brake... and it went straight to the floor. No brakes at all. Perfect start. + + + +Travco brakes. You either hate them, or you don't have a Travco. Actually they really aren't *that* bad, but they do require regular attention. I knew what was wrong. Whenever I park with the wheels angled too sharply to the right, the driver's side wheel leaks brake fluid[^1]. We'd been sitting like that for five days. I opened the master cylinder reservoir and sure enough, it was basically dry. I refilled it and started pumping the pedal. Still nothing. Well damn, so much for the easy fix. + +I had to run the last of the trash to the dump (where we live there's no trash service), so I did that and used the time to think about the brakes. Probably just need to pump them some more I reasoned, 26 feet of brake line takes a while. I got back and did that, but still had no pedal. Now it was past departure time. Well. Shit. + +It started to rain. I watched the drops running down the windshield and tried to think of what to do. The yard was quickly getting muddy, especially right around the bus. Still, the next step was going to be bleeding the brake lines. I grabbed a strip of sockets and a socket wrench and got down in the mud. Corrinne pressed the pedal, the kids fetched my tools when I forgot them back at the previous wheel, and together we bled the lines all the way around. Wet and muddy, I got back in, and fired it up again. Nice strong pedal. Perfect. We hit the road. + + + +---- + +I've had people ask if I am really as calm and collected in these situations as I make it seem when I write about them and the answer is... usually. I have a natural tendency to remain calm in stressful situations, and in fact I get calmer as tension increases, which even I don't understand, but that's a good starting point I guess. That said, I definitely lose my cool and do some swearing at the bus. + +It's not in the way you might think though. Whenever something goes wrong, the stress for me isn't that something went wrong, I expect that, the stress for me is in figuring out the problem. I used to get very frustrated because I wouldn't know what was wrong with the bus and you can't solve a problem if you don't know what that problem is. When I lost my cool in the past it was because I didn't know what the problem was and that frustrated me. + +When we left on this trip [back in 2017](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/04/april-fools) I knew very little about how an engine works and even less about the nearly infinite number of things that can go wrong with one. I still don't know everything, but after three years of [keep on keepin' on](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/05/keep-on-keeping-on), I've figured out a few things. + +Thanks to my uncle, a mechanic in New Orleans, some [YouTube channels](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9SzQNYLqsPQGY_nbHogDDw), and that very powerful motivating factor -- necessity -- I know more about what might be wrong these days. Whether or not I can fix it is a different story. Not only are my skills limited, the tools I can carry and the places I have to work are also limited. I'm probably not going to be replacing a cam shaft at the side of the road. + +Things I can't fix will probably still go wrong, but at least now I'll know when those situations come up. In hindsight, of the four major mechanical repairs I've hired out in the first three years, today I would only hire out one of them. Even that one I'm not sure I'd hire out. I might at least try to convince a Walmart to let me spend a few days in their parking lot redoing a head gasket myself. + +This day though really was kinda perfect because something went wrong, our plans got thrown for a loop and yet none of us lost our cool. We figured out what needed to be done, did it, and headed on down the road. To me that's what this life is all about. + +--- + +The drive down to Edisto meandered through forests and farms, rolling hills giving way to the flatlands of the Carolina lowcountry. We drove a route that felt a little like going back in time, people sat on porches of what looked like hundred year old houses, waved as we passed. + + + + +It was a stark contrast to the [drive to Edisto in 2017](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/04/edge-continent) when it felt like we were driving through a hollowed out, ruined land. It may be that it was just a difference in routes, I couldn't really say. I've now spent enough time in rural America to know that I'll never be a part of it, and should never try to speak for it. Still, it felt better out there this time around and that made me feel better. + + + + +The rain let up not long after we started driving, and I opened the windows and vents to get some air moving through. It wasn't long before I began to smell burning leaves and trash, a smell that has, for some odd reason, always smelled like home to me, like life. That smoke for some reason always makes me feel like something good is happening nearby. There are people, living, as people do, as people always have. There's a kind of vitality to that smell. It's a smell I associate more with the rest of the world than with the US where such things are usually banned. Out here though, it was happening all over, banned or no. + + + +I somehow take that as a good sign. Maybe that wrecked world is still there too, I don't know, but this drive gave me a sense of hope and peace I haven't felt much in the last couple of years. It may not be perfect from now on, but I think we'll find a way to get by, and that's all you need. + +[^1]: This is something that needs to be properly addressed at some point, I've already had two mechanics try to parse it out, but neither solved the problem. It's been doing this for over three years now, so I don't worry about it too much anymore. In a campground the wheels usually end up straight, it's only boondocking where sometimes the wheels end up cockeyed and I forget to spin them straight. diff --git a/jrnl/2021-12-26_edisto-holidays.txt b/jrnl/2021-12-26_edisto-holidays.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..48e6822 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2021-12-26_edisto-holidays.txt @@ -0,0 +1,60 @@ +Edisto is a great place for the holidays if you're not a big Christmas celebrater, and we're not really Christmas people, so it works for us. You get mostly deserted beaches and sometimes you really hit the jackpot and it's 70 and sunny on those mostly deserted beaches. + +It didn't start out that way though. The day we got here the rain we'd outrun on the way down caught up with us. The cold didn't deter the kids. Spitting rain or no, they were getting in the water. + + + + +The rain went away that evening and it started getting warmer every day until we were all in our bathing suits. + + + + +Although this time around the bus was in much better shape than it was the first time we left (when almost nothing worked besides the propane, I installed the plumbing, solar, even the water tank as we went), we were still missing one key thing: our new refrigerator. + +Yes, it's true, after three years of living with an ice box we've joined the modern world and now have a refrigerator. Except that it was one of those things affected by all the shipping delays you read about so we didn't actually have it when we left. + +It's a 12V RV/marine fridge so we couldn't just head to the local big box store and pick one up. We ordered it through the company, which is in Italy, and had it delivered to the nearest dealer, which turned out to be in Wilmington, NC, about a four hour drive up the coast. + +So one day I got up a bit early and drove up to Wilmington and picked it up. Unlike almost everything else I've ever installed in the bus this was totally uneventful from beginning to end. I picked it without issue, turned around and drove back in time to catch twilight from the Charleston harbor bridge, and then the next morning I installed it and it just worked. As I write this several weeks later, it's still just working. And yes, it is nice to have a fridge. The ice box worked, but it had become a limitation for us, especially on the east coast where block ice is unheard of. + + + +Elliott and I also managed to celebrate our birthday in there. He turned seven and I turned... somewhat older than seven. This was the second [birthday we've had here in Edisto](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2019/12/birthday-beach) and this time the weather cooperated and we got to spend our birthday on the beach. Corrinne's parents came to visit for Elliott's birthday too, so I smoked some ribs and we had a big birthday feast. + +
+ + + + + + + +
+ +And yes, Christmas happened too. We have some friends that have been coming every year for decades now, and we met up with them again for some cookie decorating and hanging out. + + + + +Our neighbors in the campground also gave the kids rides on their trike as a Christmas present, which was a hit. + + + +And then Christmas morning, which I'd been looking forward to because I love watching them open the gifts they get each other. We've had a tradition for a while now of taking them to a store of their choosing (Treehouse in Athens GA the last two years) and letting them pick a present for each other. We have a budget so they don't go crazy, but they don't go crazy anyway. This year the girls got each other the same gift without realizing it of course so I was waiting to see their faces when they opened each others' gift. They may not look anything alike, but they're still twins. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +I always thought I'd left the sunny and 75 Christmas weather behind when I moved out of LA, but Edisto proved me wrong this year, once we'd dispensed with the gifts, we headed out to the beach (with a couple new toys in tow). + + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2021-12-29_southern-summer.txt b/jrnl/2021-12-29_southern-summer.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b3c8d94 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2021-12-29_southern-summer.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +It's strange to spend your December at the beach, lying out in the sun, swimming in the ocean. Not that I'm complaining mind you, but every now and then I did find myself thinking, is it really still December? What if I've fallen into some strange time warp and it's actually April? These kinds of things can happen in beach towns. + +If you popped me in a time machine, set it to random, and pulled me out here I would say it's late March, early April. Or I'd say we were Mexico again. Then again, it's not the first time we've had a [December warm enough for the beach](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/12/funland-beach), and with any luck it won't be the last. + +We took full advantage of it, ignoring everyday tasks like laundry in favor of living in bathing suits. + +
+ + + + +
+ +Mornings and evenings were still cool, but that made them perfect times for a little marsh walking. You can't play at the beach all day. Actually, our kids probably could, but variety is good. + + + +We've always made a trip to Charleston from Edisto, usually to do laundry, but this year we skipped that headed straight out to Battery Park for a picnic. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +Last year, part of what I did while we were holed up at the farmhouse, was to write a historical novel. I wrote it mostly for the kids, about some kids living in the early 18th century. Some of the action, or I guess you would say the climatic scenes, are set in 1710 Charleston (then called Charlestown). It was fun to show them some of the places things happened in the book, in real life. I enjoy overlaying the world in front of us with a good story. + +In the end though, I think the kids were mostly excited about ice cream. History is fascinating, but ice cream is delicious. We've been coming to Charleston and getting ice cream at the same place downtown for years now. It's a family tradition at this point. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +I'd have to say coming to Edisto Beach and Charleston for the holidays is something of a tradition now too. I'm not sure it's one we'll do every year, but it's fun while it lasts. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-01-03_on-the-path.txt b/jrnl/2022-01-03_on-the-path.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dc3464f --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-01-03_on-the-path.txt @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +Now that we are back on the road I've been reflecting on our time off the road. + +Everything out here on the road feels the same, or better, in all the fundamental ways that matter. It's marginally different in minor ways -- it's more crowded -- but it feels like it always did, at least for us. We have our rhythm. We have our adventures. Everything feels right, as it used to, it feels good. + + + +It's left me wondering a little bit what we were waiting for when we were waiting to get back on the road. Naturally we weren't waiting the whole time we were off the road. We were working on projects that were harder to do while on the road. My wife started a business (which has become very successful), I wrote a novel, and am well into a book of non-fiction as well, and even sketched out a sequel to the first novel. We learned new skills, grew in new ways. + +That was all good, but there was that background of waiting lingering about. I feel like everyone I know has been doing a bit of waiting the last couple of years. We've been almost like characters in a Greek play, waiting for something outside to come in and wrap things up. + +If you spend any time looking at history though, you find there's really never a neat tidy ending. When things become unusually uncertain, for whatever reason, as they did, our response is to pull back, we hunker down, we wait -- no one wants to get caught out mid stride when it all comes crashing down. But it never all comes crashing down. Just bits and pieces here and there. And eventually it -- whatever *it* may be, economic crashes, wars, political strife, disease -- eventually we figure out where the pieces are falling, adjust, and then we stop waiting and get going again. + +I feel like that's about where we are right now, collectively. I *know* that's were I am, and I hope you are too. I think it's high time to get going again. + +But where to go? For most people that's metaphorical, and it's that for us too, but for us it's also literal. Where should we go? + +For us the past felt like it was still sitting out there, waiting for us to come back. So we decided let's go back. Let's go back and find the path we had been on, see if it's still there. + + + + + + +That's why we're at Hunting Island South Carolina. This is where we were almost two years ago when we decided we didn't want to get caught out mid stride, when we decided we wanted to wait a bit, hunker down, assess the situation, see where the pieces were going to fall. Now that we've done that, this is where we pick up again. Not to repeat anything, but to start out again on the path. + +I don't know exactly where this path leads (and I have no idea where yours might lead you), but I do know that there is a path out there for each of us. And I don't think the path that's being offered up by our society these days is very appealing. I think that's part of the reason people read this site. Because you also probably don't think we were put here on earth, as part of this grand dance of existence, to maximize our safety and security, to build wealth or amass petty power. + +I believe that we are here to give the gifts that we have built up inside us over millennia of our soul's existence, that we are here to shepherd each other toward our gifts and give to the world those things that we have inside us. + +We are all in the process of maturation. Both as individuals and as a species. None of knows where this all goes, but I think we all know that the current stories don't wash and it's time for something new. I don't know what that looks like for you, but for myself, for us out here, it looks like this. It looks like walks through primordial forests, long afternoons on windswept beaches, evenings around the fire. + + +I believe that you'll know when you are on the right path. You'll feel it. Life will begin to feel like what it is, a gift, an adventure, a joy. You'll feel connection, fulfillment, that deep sense of satisfaction at the end of the day that comes from knowing there is nothing else you would rather have done that day. That is the path. And if you manage to find it, don't stray. Do the work. It isn't always easy. It isn't always beaches and campfires. Sometimes it's engine repair and frustration and despair. But these moments are fleeting, they are the necessary growth, the twists and turns that reveal. Stay disciplined, stay focused, stay on the path. Let go of control and just walk the path. It will reveal itself slowly, only as much as you need to see, just keep on it, and see where it leads you. That's adventure. That's living. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-01-08_hunting-island-storms.txt b/jrnl/2022-01-08_hunting-island-storms.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7a0670 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-01-08_hunting-island-storms.txt @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +The warm December weather was bound to end at some point. We didn't get far into January before that old cold north wind found us. It came roaring in one night, throwing palm fronds and bombing pine cones down on the bus all through the night. The next morning the entire campground was littered with debris. I haven't been up top to inspect yet, but it doesn't seem like we suffered too much damage, aside from some lost sleep. + +Behind the wind came the cold, putting an end to our days in bathing suits, at least for a little while. I know people think we're crazy, being out here in the cold. But I grew up by the sea, and my love of it goes way beyond warm weather. I am happy beside the sea in any weather. The ocean on a cold, windy day is as beautiful and wonderful as a day of sunshine and warmth. The best part is that when it's only 45 degrees and rain is spitting in a 20 knot wind you'll typically have the beach to yourself. + +And cold doesn't mean we don't swim, it just means we get a lot more strange looks when we do. One afternoon I took the kids down to go swimming, but it turned out the beach was completely engulfed in cloud. It only went about 100 yards inland, but once you crested the last dune it was like stepping into an eerie black and white world. + + + + +Since we were in Hunting Island when the pandemic hit and everything shut down, we never had a chance to explore it much. This time around we were able to get out more and do some hiking. South Carolina's coastal state parks don't have a ton of land in most cases, so there's not much hiking in terms of mileage, but very few people seem to do anything but go to the beach, which leaves the trails mostly deserted. + +One morning we packed a few snacks, filled our water bottles, and headed out to do a little hike through the coastal forest. Hunting Island is covered by a dense maritime that's taken root in some ancient sand dunes. That's actually about all the island is really, and it's in trouble as rising sea levels push the water tables higher, but we got distracted from all that when we spied a boardwalk that struck out in the opposite direction, off the backside of the island, across the inland marsh to an island. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +The salt marsh is what's called a Spartina marsh, after the dominant cord grass, various species of *Spartina*. Three things make low country marshes what they are, the Spartina, the oysters, and the salty tides constantly pulling water in and out. Spartina is able to desalinate the water, if you climb down in the pluff mud and run your fingers along the bottom side of a blade you'll find salt crystals. + +Birds love the cordgrass because it provides plenty of places to hide. Walking out on the boardwalk to the island the kids and I spotted almost a dozen species, including clapper rails, which emerged from hiding scold our intrusion in their world. + + + + +The kids are getting to be good birders, they bring their notebooks and write down everything they see, and then later draw pictures of them. + +It was a windy day though, so after a while out in the exposed marsh we decided to head back and duck into the forest for some shelter from the wind. In the parking lot, when we were getting ready to go, we ran into a man who told us how to get to the lagoon using a different route, so we ended up leaving the car where it was and finding the trail down the road that cut across the forest to the ocean. + +Hunting Island isn't very large, and it seems very heavily managed, but somehow it manages to have one of the wildest, more primordial-feeling forests I've ever hiked through. The maritime mix of palms and pines and oaks always has an otherworldly feel to it to me, like you've somehow made it back to the Mesozoic. It probably helps that this little stretch of ancient dunes, which couldn't have been more than half a mile across, seemed to have more bird species in one place than anywhere else we've been. + +And then all the sudden it ends with a salt lagoon emptying out to sea, surrounded by the stark bleached remains of trees that tried to live too close to a shore that's forever shifting. + +The day we emerged from the woods the storms were still hanging around the edges, giving the place a sense of wildness that made it remarkable to think there was a crowded fishing pier less and a mile down the coast. So far we were concerned it felt like we were the only people on earth. + + + + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +The kids ran around playing on the shore while Corrinne and I sat and hashed out some plans for the near future. We're flying a little less by the seat of our pants these days, which means a little more preparation is needed. And these things they call reservations. + +We watched as the clouds gave way to sun for a while, and then moved back in, just like the fog had a few days before. It was almost like Patrick's Point, although not quite that dramatic. Eventually the nuts and dried fruit that was tiding us over ran out, and we headed back. We took the long way, walking the length of the lagoon and back up through the forest, with the kids identifying plants and birds as we went. A good day on the path. + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2022-01-12_hunting-island-sunshine.txt b/jrnl/2022-01-12_hunting-island-sunshine.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..26968a3 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-01-12_hunting-island-sunshine.txt @@ -0,0 +1,49 @@ +The storms that rolled through while we were on Hunting Island thankfully didn't last more than a couple of days. A couple of rainy days gave us time to get some mundane tasks done, like laundry, which feels less like a wasted day when it's raining anyway. + +Fortunately for us once we'd done a little laundry the weather warmed up and we managed to get a little beach time in. It wasn't exactly warm, but the kids and I went swimming a couple times. It is an odd thing to be walking down the shoreline in a bathing suit when everyone else is bundled up in puffy jackets, but honestly, it didn't feel that cold. I sometimes worry people think we're nuts, but if they do they at least don't say it. + + + + +One day we decided to ride our bikes up the beach. The wind was blowing pretty good and a wise fellow cyclist urged up to ride upwind first, which was good advice. We made it up to the lighthouse, though it was a slog. We didn't go up in the lighthouse because they wouldn't let Elliott in (not tall enough) and we weren't going without him. As I told the kids, going up in a lighthouse is counter to its purpose. The whole point of a lighthouse is to stay away from it, not go in it. + +We went swimming instead. And then we road home with the wind at our backs, our bodies like tiny sails propelling us back down the beach with hardly pedaling at all. + +With nicer weather we spent more time out on the beach adjacent the campground, especially in the evening. With the sunset out of view behind the island, twilight on beach turned in soft oranges and pinks and blues. + +With nicer weather we spent more time out on the beach adjacent the campground, especially in the evening. With the sunset out of view behind the island, twilight on beach turned in soft oranges and pinks and blues. It was usually just us and a sky full of colors. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +It's strange how different your experience of a place can be just based on the campsite you're in. When we were here in March of 2020 we weren't really fans. Sure, there was the pandemic, which was just starting and there was lots of uncertainty, but really we just had a not so great campsite. We felt crowded in and somewhat on display. The front loop of sites are cramped together and there's almost no vegetation between sites, and the bus is really one big wrap around window. There isn't a lot of privacy when we're in campsites with some separation. + +This time we were in the back loop campsites, further from the beach, but with denser tree cover, palmetto and oaks provide a barrier, and there's more room between campsites. That meant room for the kids to play and set up the hammock and have a good time. We were also backed right up against the favorite watering hole for a small group of deer that would stop by for a visit every day, including one that seemed fascinated by Elliott. + + + + +The beach near the campground was nice enough, and the long tidal flats that extended back into the marsh made for good birding, but there was something about the dead trees that made me want to go back to what the locals call the boneyard. It used to be a lot bigger, but the state park tore a bunch of it out to shore up the beach, and, the assumption is, because they were worried about being sued should someone get hurt climbing on the trees. + +Clearing out most of the boneyard was [not a popular move in these parts](https://www.postandcourier.com/news/prized-boneyard-beach-bulldozed-at-scs-natural-hunting-island-state-park/article_b86926fe-15f8-11ea-9557-ab79ab5454d6.html), and they did it all sneakily without applying for a permit because they knew they wouldn't get it. It's a good reminder that just because an area is protected, doesn't, unfortunately, mean it's protected from the interests that need to make money off it, in this case, Hunting Island State Park. You'd think they'd have enough money with what they charge for firewood, but apparently not. Gotta have those white sand beaches right in front of the lighthouse. + +Fortunately, as we'd already accidentally discovered, there's more to the boneyard, you just have to walk a bit to get to it. One sunny afternoon I decided to go back and see what it looked like in the sunlight, and see if maybe there was a way across the channel to the rest of the trees. + + + + + +We watched the birds to see where the shallows were and eventually we found a place to cross. The water only came up to my knees, but it was a surprisingly strong current. Squeeze and outgoing tide through a narrow enough channel and you can get a strong river. I ended up carrying Elliott, not that there was anywhere to go really should you be swept away, but the wind made the prospect of being soaking wet very unappealing. + + + + + +The man who'd originally pointed out the trail to us mentioned that he used to have a house out here, which, judging by the ruins of a road we found, wasn't as long ago as I'd assumed. Or the ocean is slower to reclaim asphalt than I thought. Whatever the case, there was plenty of road left, some power lines even still hanging limp from telephone poles. + +I'm not a believer in the apocalyptic fantasies so popular these days (history shows that civilizations don't collapse, they decline), but it was odd to wander around what amounted to ruins of our civilization. A good moment for the kids to connect back to some of the ruins we've seen of other civilizations. Everything ends eventually, best to enjoy it while you can. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-01-17_a-tale-of-two-huntingtons.txt b/jrnl/2022-01-17_a-tale-of-two-huntingtons.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..40bee00 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-01-17_a-tale-of-two-huntingtons.txt @@ -0,0 +1,62 @@ +We left Hunting Island earlier than I'd have liked, but based on our previous experience in 2020, we weren't expecting to like it all that much, a few days seemed like plenty. I'd have stayed another week if we could have, but we had already booked another park up the coast. That's one of the downsides to booking so much in advance, but around here we just don't have a choice a lot of the time[^1]. + +We headed north to Huntington Beach State Park. This was confusing for me because I grew up just down the coast from a Huntington Beach State Park. Throw in Hunting Island and it gets even more confusing. But it turns out there is a much less famous Huntington Beach State Park here in South Carolina, not to be confused with Hunting Island or the Huntington Beach in California. + +Like everywhere we've been lately, we had the beach mostly to ourselves. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +A little bit of internet sleuthing revealed that the Huntington Beach State Park in South Carolina is related Huntington Beach State Park in California. The men whose names grace the parks were cousins. They don't appear to have much to do with each other though. The east coast Huntington dabbled in poetry, married a famous sculptor, and was obsessed with Spain. The west coast Huntington built a trolley car empire in southern California. + +Those not familiar with southern California history might not realize that the area once had one of the best mass transit systems in the world. In part because of Huntington, there was once over 1,100 miles of mass transit trolley track servicing fifty cities in the greater Los Angeles area. Lest you think Huntington was a civic-minded philanthropist, let's add that all these trolley lines were there to interconnect his real estate developments. + +There's a legend that Standard Oil and Goodyear Tire conspired to tear it all out, but that's not true. Those two *were* convicted of a conspiracy to monopolize bus systems, which in some cases did replace trolley lines, but if they destroyed the trolley lines they did it without a paper trail. + +There was plenty of cheerleading against the rail lines from Harry Chandler, owner of the Los Angeles Times and, ahem, member of the Goodyear board at the time (in case you thought big media cheering on industry's deliberate destruction of common good was just a recent thing), but there doesn't seem to have been an actual conspiracy. + +Today there's no trace of the California Huntington's rail lines. All that work has long since been paved over. The neighborhoods might remain in some cases, but the chief legacy of the California Huntington is the city that bears his name. + +The South Carolina Huntington, whose name was Archer, led a more laid back life it seems, based on some books I read in the visitor center one day while the kids were playing with the touch tank animals. Archer liked to write, he liked to tinker and invent thing, and he liked to study all things Spain and spanish culture. + +I have no idea what he was like as a person, but from the outside he seems to have been what's now a lost breed -- a true philanthropist. That is, someone who has money and the good sense to give it to people with more talent than he had. That might sound harsh, but I think we need more people who are able to recognize their own strengths and weaknesses and live within them. Today we get wealthy people so profoundly lacking in self awareness that they think we'll cheer when they build giant cock rockets that can't even make it into space. It makes you miss a man like Archer Huntington, who seemed to have no such need to prove anything to the world. + +The land we're camped on was once part of the Huntington's summer home, which they called Atalaya, after the Moorish castle in Spain which inspired its design. The Huntington's left the estate to the State of South Carolina in the 1950s. Try to imagine Bill Gates, the [largest owner of farmland in the United States](https://landreport.com/2021/01/bill-gates-americas-top-farmland-owner/), donating any of it. Some how I can't see it. Archer Huntington was of a different era. + +The Huntington's left this small state park, along with their completely bizarre house, inspired by Archer's memories of [Atalaya Castle in Spain](https://flickr.com/photos/124338116@N08/35658863184/). If you click that link and look at the image... maybe it's just me, but I don't find the original Atalaya particularly inspiring. Archer did though, which is why this is in South Carolina. + + + +Inside is no less strange. It's a rectangular set of room built around a central courtyard that once housed a water tower. Nothing has been preserved but the walls and few shelves. It's an odd thing to tour. Corrinne thinks that might be how Archer wanted it, obsessed as he was with the Moorish buildings in Spain, which would have been somewhat in ruins even when he was there. Whatever the case, it's a very empty place with a very hollow feel to it. + +
+ + + + + + + + + + +
+ +I was surprised by how much the kids enjoyed it. I didn't even go the first time they went because I just don't find abandoned houses all that interesting, but they insisted on going back with me to show me everything. + +That's when I started thinking more about what Corrinne said, that Archer's plan might have been to recreate ruins. The more I thought about it the more I started to research him, to try to figure him out. He didn't have to work, there was no real struggle for survival in his life so far as I can tell. Once you eliminate that, the world opens up. You can start thinking in longer terms, beyond your own lifespan. You can also indulge whims. Not that he was capricious. Atalaya was not a small undertaking. + +I think that's the thing that bothers me most about our current system. Most of us don't have the luxury of thinking in such broad terms. And our decisions reflect this. There aren't going to be any Atalayas in the future because few of us are able to pursue our idle whims the way Archer did. + +Think for a moment, if you never needed to worry about shelter or food again, what would you do with your days? My guess is you'd probably spend your days doing something different than you do now. And I suspect that thing you would be doing, whatever it is, is what you ought to be doing, is what you *need* to be doing. And not just for yourself. We need more Atalayas. + +We need more whimsy and why not in the world. I think we all would do well to channel a little Archer Huntington. Maybe we still have to worry about shelter or food, but maybe too we can carve out a little space, a little time, and start making our Atalayas, whatever they might be. + + + +[^1]: We were under the impression that we could only stay two weeks at any given park in South Carolina. This is generally the policy almost everywhere we've been. Definitely true on federal land, though we've occasionally bent the rules by a few days. Turns out though that South Carolina doesn't care. Or at least has no hard and fast rules. So we could have stayed in Hunting Island, but we didn't know this until after we'd already left. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-01-23_huntington-beach-birds.txt b/jrnl/2022-01-23_huntington-beach-birds.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..352f41f --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-01-23_huntington-beach-birds.txt @@ -0,0 +1,55 @@ +Long before the [Huntingtons showed up in these parts](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/01/a-tale-of-two-huntingtons), the Carolina low country was full of massive rice plantations. This where Hoppin' John and other southern rice dishes have their origins. + +Part of the success of rice in this area is climate-related, but another part of the local success of rice was an irrigation system that used something called a rice trunk. These were ingeniously designed wooden boxes that allowed just one or two people to control the flow of water into rice fields. There aren't many left these days, but there's a former rice pond here in Huntington Beach State Park and it has some rebuilt rice trunks that still get used (albeit, not to irrigate rice). You can see a video of it in action [here](https://www.facebook.com/SC.State.Parks/videos/check-off-for-parks-help-us-repair-the-rice-trunks-at-huntington-beach/1147180642390192/). + + + +The road out to the main part of Huntington Beach State Park is built top of what was previously a causeway to divide the salt marsh from a freshwater rice pond. The park more or less left the system in place, sans rice, and uses the rice trunks to control water levels for migrating birds. In the winter they drain it down for the migrants that feed in shallower water, in the summer they let in more salt water for the mullet population which feeds other migrating birds. + + + +Our campsite was just a short walk through the trees to causeway so the kids and I spent plenty of evenings watching the birds on the pond. The kids were especially into the Roseate Spoonbill, which has to be one of earth's most awkward looking creatures. + + + + +Maybe they just look strange relative to grace of other marsh birds. + + + + + + +Unlike most places we've been, we were never alone birdwatching in Huntington. In all but the coldest of weather there would be plenty of people out with binoculars, and there was often an army of photographers toting around huge lenses. Sometimes we'd see a cluster of people at the side of the road and now there was something in the trees. It reminded me of the [the traffic jams in Yellowstone](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2010/07/endless-crowds-yellowstone) that tell you there's a grizzly bears somewhere nearby. + + + +I cover cameras for *Wired* and when testing high-end cameras and lenses I often find myself thinking, *who spends this much on camera gear?* Usually I end up deciding that hardly anyone does, but Huntington Beach proved me wrong. I met photographers of all sorts, from professional wildlife photographers to totally self-taught amateurs, but whatever their status they all seemed able to afford really nice, long lenses. Not sure what's wrong with me, but I just can't bring myself to spend $2,000 on a camera lens. + +The funny thing is, in Huntington most of these birds were so close you really didn't need a very long lens. Almost all the images here are from a dinky little (manual focus) 100mm lens. The one time I did take out a longer lens (300mm) half the time I ended up with bird head shots. + + + +It was fun to be around other bird nerds though. I've met a few fellow bird watchers in our travels, but at Huntington birders seemed to outnumber non-birders. Birders are among the nicest people I've met traveling, always pointing me to some thicket where some bird they'd just spotted is hiding. Some people are little wary of the kids, kids do tend to scare off birds, but our kids know better. Unless something comes up. Sometimes when you see the perfect stick you have to go crashing through the underbrush to get it, screw the birds. They are still kids after all. + +The kids know though that often looking for birds leads us to interesting places, like the octopus tree[^1]. + +Corrinne works with students in the mornings a couple days a week, so the kids and I go out exploring. Initially it was pretty cold, so we stuck to the nature center, where I spent time reading about the Huntingtons, and the kids played with the starfish and stingrays in the touch tanks. The next day was warmer so we went for a walk around another pond and stumbled on a huge tree, or group of trees, with limbs going every which way. + + + +The first day we paused for a few minutes, but we wanted to see what else was down the trail so we kept walking. There was nothing else down the trail quite as compelling as the tree though, not even birds, which were mostly hiding from the wind, so we turned around and went back. And we went back the next day. This time we dispensed with hiking and just went to the tree. I brought along a notebook and worked while they climbed and played games in the tree. + + + +This became our mornings for the better part of two weeks. They were good mornings, sitting in a crook of the tree, writing while the kids scampered around me. It was warm in the sunshine, and the wind hardly stirred back in the forest, no matter how much it might be blowing out on the beach. + + + + + +It's a common misconception that living on the road means you don't have to work. I'm sure that is true for some people somewhere, but not any I've ever met. It's definitely not true for us. Living on the road doesn't mean working less, in fact it often means working more, working harder. It does, however, often mean you get to working in interesting places. I've worked beside rivers, sitting on rock outcroppings, picnic tables, beaches, sand dunes, marshes, and now, sitting in a tree. + + + +[^1]: Two different locals used this name. One said there used to be a sign, but we never saw anything about the tree anywhere in the park. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-03-13_more-adventures-travco-brakes.txt b/jrnl/2022-03-13_more-adventures-travco-brakes.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d3f348f --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-03-13_more-adventures-travco-brakes.txt @@ -0,0 +1,68 @@ +I can count on one hand the number of destinations I have picked on this trip. Most of the time, Corrinne figures out the details of our life on the road. + +We generally come to an agreement on a general area -- the gulf coast, or the great lakes, for example -- and then she works out the details. I worry about logistics and repairs, she handles picking where we stay. It's a pretty good system. But every now and then I book something, and, historically, the places I have booked are not, shall we say, our favorites. + +It all goes back to the [Altamaha river take out](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/04/swamped), which I will probably never live down. The experience there was awful enough that I was tacitly relieved of navigation duties. When we were planning this leg of the trip though I was somehow left unattended again, which is how we ended up at Myrtle Beach State Park. + + + +Myrtle Beach is not really our thing. Bumper cars and putt putt is fun and all, but not really what we're looking for most of the time. It's actually about the opposite of what we're looking for most of the time. However, South Carolina State Parks have what they call a "snow bird special" which gets you 2-for-1 camping prices and the ability to stay for a month. Unfortunately it's only at select parks, and the only coastal one this year was Myrtle Beach. Not ideal, but it'll work. + +That's how we came to spend all of February, and then some, in Myrtle Beach. + +We figured staying in one place for so long we could knock out a bunch of bus projects, let the kids take Jui Jitsu, which they'd been clamoring to do for some time, and be in one place long enough for my parents to come for a visit. + +
+ + + + + +
+ + +That is exactly what we did. And while Myrtle Beach still isn't really our thing, we enjoyed our time here. We met a ton of friendly folks, local and snowbird, took care of almost all our projects, visited with family, and dove head first into the world of Jui Jitsu, which turns out to be fantastic, you should try it. + +Our time here wasn't without some downsides though. We've dealt with decidedly un-traveler-like things, like traffic and at least for me, that low-grade background stress you can't put your finger on because if you put your finger on it you'd have to stop ignoring the source of the stress and do something rather than ignoring it and hoping it will just go away. + +But problems don't go away until you fix them. You'd think then, with time on my hands, I'd get right on the fixing. But um, I didn't. *Waves hands* + +
+ + + + + +
+ +For two months we drove around South Carolina in the bus like it was a finely tuned machine. Which is it was, but that never lasts. On the way from Hunting Island to Huntington Beach the engine started to stutter a bit when I sat at a stoplight, my foot on the brakes. Then when I was backing into the site at Huntington Beach it got worse, the engine died about five times before I got the bus where I needed it. + +But then it [turned cold](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/02/ice-storm). I knew I didn't have to go anywhere for a couple weeks so I ignored the brakes. Or rather I thought about the problem, but didn't actually do anything. I knew there was a vacuum leak somewhere. I knew I needed to figure out where the leak was and fix it, but other things kept coming up. + +Then on the short drive from Huntington to Myrtle Beach the brake pedal started to lock up. Well, that's what it feels like, but really it's loss of vacuum. + +The Travco has drum brakes[^1], powered by a single chamber hydrovac booster that adds the pressure you need to stop it without your leg having to do all the work (which would be impossible). On the drive to Myrtle Beach I lost a good part of that assist and learned first hand why the hydrovac system is there. It was a little nerve wracking, but I took it slow and managed to get safely to our campsite in Myrtle Beach State Park. I shut off the engine and breathed a sigh of relief. I wouldn't need to start it up again (except to dump the tanks) for five weeks. + +I promptly pushed the brakes from my mind and went off to do other important things, like sign the kids up for Jui Jitsu and get a ladder and roof rack made. Brakes? Yeah, I'll get to that. Next week. + +I spent a week getting the ladder project off the ground, making Jui Jitsu happen, ordering parts for half a dozen other projects, and generally doing everything I could to avoid working on the brakes because deep down I was worried I wouldn't be able to fix the brakes. + + + + +Finally the low grade stress my avoidance was causing me got to me and I pulled down the shop manual and read through the entire brake section three times. Once I had everything in my head, I started working through the diagnostic steps. I put my vacuum gauge on every hose and pipe I could, and went out bought some adapters for all the fittings I couldn't. Eventually, after three evenings of testing, I came up with the idea that probably something was wrong inside the actual hydrovac booster. I texted my uncle the basics of the problem to see what he thought and with in ten seconds he came right back with the same answer. Experience is a valuable thing. + +While it was some relief to know what the problem was, that was actually only the beginning of the problem. You can't buy a new hydrovac booster for a Dodge M375 chassis. I spent almost an entire day calling around the country to nearly every company I could find that did anything at all to hydraulic systems and no one had anything. Several said they could rebuild it, but it would take, at best 7-10 days. I considered trying to rebuild it myself, I found some rebuilt kits, but that seemed unwise without a reasonably clean shop to work in. This is the one disadvantage of shade tree mechanics -- sand, dirt, dust, gods' know what tends to get in your parts as you're working. You have to be careful and in some cases you really just can't do it. + +At the same time we can't not move for ten days. We do have to dump our black tank. And we had to move campsites. As soon as I pulled off the booster, we were dead weight. Because I'd procrastinated we were right at the edge of the seven day period most places said they'd need for the rebuild. In other words, there was no margin for error, and when it comes to finding and fixing Travco parts, you want a wide margin for error. + +In the end I went with [Precision Rebuilders](http://precisionrebuilders.com/boosters.html) in Missouri because they said they could rebuild it in seven days. When I called back and explained our unique situation to them, Amanda took pity on us and shortened the turn around time to three days. I figured that was the best I could do and I pulled the booster and sent it off to them. In the end they managed to rebuild it and send it back out the same day, for a total turn around time of three days. It was one of the best parts experiences we've ever had. Many thanks to Amanda and everyone else at Precision Rebuilders who really came through for us (and did great work too). + +I installed the rebuilt booster, bled the brakes, and... spongey pedal. I was having to pump three times to get it firm, but that was good enough to dump the tanks and move to our new site (about 20 feet in front of the old site), but not good enough to [keep on keepin on](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/05/keep-on-keeping-on) as we say. + +Unlike the vacuum leak though, now I knew it was hydraulics, most likely my half-ass bleeding job. I went out and bought a proper bleeder hose and Corrinne helped me re-bleed them all the way around again. This time by the end we had a firm pedal and the brakes were back to their old selves. Better than their old selves actually, I don't have to push nearly as hard to brake, clearly the booster had been past its prime for a while. + +We celebrated our new brakes with some sushi, and then it was time to load some new (and old) toys up on the new roof rack, say some sad goodbyes to the kids' new friends at Jui Jitsu and elsewhere, and hit the road for points north. + + +[^1]: Every time I write about the brakes, I get emails and comments telling me how dangerous drum brakes are. As if every single car/truck/whatever made prior to about 1965 didn't have drum brakes. Oh wait, they did. And somehow people did not die in droves. Relax, there's nothing inherently dangerous about drum brakes. They do have a single point of failure, which is something to keep in mind, but so long as you maintain them they'll be there for you. At least that's my experience. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-04-06_all-wright-all-wright-all-wright.txt b/jrnl/2022-04-06_all-wright-all-wright-all-wright.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a133386 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-04-06_all-wright-all-wright-all-wright.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +Somewhere offshore, a few miles south of where I am sitting, the Gulf Stream, a northward current of warm water, collides with the Labrador Current, a southward flow of cold water. That collision of currents creates rough waters, fog, storms, and more often than not, [wind](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/03/whistle-down-wind). + + + +If you happened to be looking for a good place to test a glider, and you poured over meteorological records for the entire country, the Outer Banks would jump out at you. It jumped out at the Wright brothers, and of course Kill Devil Hills is where they came to test their glider. + +The glider, as it turns out, didn't really work. What put the Wright brothers in the air in the end, was partly the wing design they came up with, partly the wind the Outer Banks provided, but also, arguably mostly, the engine they built. + +We headed over to the Wright Brothers Memorial one windy day and had a look at the dunes where they worked, and eventually, flew. The rebuilt plane is in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, but there's a life size model here, and some parts of the engine (which was also destroyed at some point). + + + +
+ + + + +
+ +To me one of the most interesting parts of the memorial, after the engine, was learning that iconic photo below was shot by John T Daniels, a member of the local life saving station who had never taken a photograph before in his life. Local legend says he never took another. Quit while you're ahead I guess, because with no experience and only one shot to get it right, Daniels nailed it. + + + + +We've also enjoyed spending the occasional cold day at the North Carolina aquariums, which aren't huge, but have a enough to keep the kids entertained on a stormy afternoon. The one here has a couple things the one we visited in Pine Knoll Shores did not, like a tiger shark and an albino crocodile. + +
+ + + + +
+ + + +Just in case you didn't get the title, here's the full joke Corrinne made up: What did Matthew McConaughey [say](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuER2Puym4I) when he got to Kill Devil Hills? diff --git a/jrnl/2022-04-13_cape-hatteras.txt b/jrnl/2022-04-13_cape-hatteras.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..41aa055 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-04-13_cape-hatteras.txt @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +We headed south from Oregon Inlet, across Pea Island to Hatteras Island. It's not much of a drive, about 45 miles so we stopped off to play on the dunes and get a feel for Pea Island, which is primarily a nature preserve, before heading on to Hatteras. + + + +It's hard to tell when you're driving -- the dunes have been pushed up to form a tall berm alongside the highway -- but the ocean is right next to the road. And the bay is not far on the other side. These islands are thin strips of sand miles out in the ocean. It's amazing they're here at all when you consider the storms that hit them year after year. + + + + +Frisco campground here on the southern shore of Hatteras is much more our speed than Oregon Inlet. Frisco is more up in the dunes, with junipers and cedars -- even some small oaks -- and plenty of shrubs between campsites. It's more like what most of us think of when we think of camping. Oregon Inlet is more what you think of when someone says "we're going to a Phish show." + +Our site here backed right up to the dunes, near a boardwalk that led over to the beach. A short stroll through the dunes and we were at the water. + + + + + + + +The other side of the campground sprawled up a small hill, away from the dunes, but with a view of the ocean. The kids and I rode our bikes around the loop nearly every night after dinner to watch the sunset from the top of the hill. The sweet smell of cedar and juniper, and the scrub oak undergrowth reminded me of spots we [camped out west, near Canyonlands](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/08/canyoneering) more than anywhere we've been in the east. + + + + +Here though we had the beach, and with the wind finally giving us some breaks, we spent as much time as we could out on the sand. Actually it wasn't so much that the wind stopped, it was that temperatures climbed up into the 70s and the wind died down to the point that it was just a welcome breeze. We still had a few storms blow through, but the temperatures stayed warm enough that most days were were playing in the water. + + + + + + + +When people think of Cape Hatteras, if they ever do, they think of the iconic lighthouse. It's the tallest in the United States and graces countless postcards in these parts. I'm not entirely sure we'd have made it, we're not really lighthouse people I guess, but it happened to be right by the dump station, so one day we stopped off to check it out. + +
+ + + + + +
+ + +More remarkable to me than the lighthouse itself is that in 1999 they *moved* it. Exactly how you move a 4,830 ton brick structure is [detailed on the NPS site](https://www.nps.gov/caha/learn/historyculture/movingthelighthouse.htm). It took almost three weeks to move it less than half a mile from its original location down on the sand, to its current home on more stable ground. + +Unfortunately I agree with the opponents of the NPS plan, it loses something when it's not sitting out there on the actual point, in the sand. I did enjoy seeing it flashing every morning though. To my mind that's how you should see a lighthouse, from a great distance. That's its job after all -- to keep you away from it. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-04-30_ferryland.txt b/jrnl/2022-04-30_ferryland.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cb270fc --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-04-30_ferryland.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +One of the central conceits of the modern world is that we can make things happen. That we can reach into the world as if it were the proverbial watch and we the watchmaker and tinker to our heart's delight. Perhaps more to point that we can make things happen *as we want* -- that we can set things in motion and control the outcome of these things. This isn't true of course. And, helpfully, all of existence is here to disabuse us of this wayward belief. + +Say for instance you want to get to Ocracoke island. It seems simple enough. You drive down highway 12, hop on a ferry, and you're there. Sometimes it is that easy I suppose. Doesn't have to be though. + +Ocracoke is one of the most remote places on the east coast. It is isolated. So much so that there is a dialect of English spoken nowhere else on earth but here, and it came to exist precisely because this island is so isolated. There are no bridges to here. It is a small place. Every resident of this island knows every other resident by name. I'm pretty sure there are no doctors on the island. There is only one grocery store. + +Still, the map says all you have to do is drive down highway 12 and make it happen. + +In the bus the weather dictates our days as often as not. When it's sunny we're out and about, when it rains we're out and about, but wet. Still, despite our relative exposure to, and limitations of, weather, to be honest I didn't give getting to Ocracoke much thought. We got up early, ate some breakfast and headed for the ferry. To make it happen. + +The bus was running well and everything seemed to be going smoothly. If you'd asked me if I was going to make it happen I'd have probably looked at you funny because that's not really how I think of it, but yet, I suppose that's what I was going to do. Right up until I pulled into the ferry entrance area. A ferry worker was standing there to inform everyone that a barge had hit a sand bar and was stuck, blocking the ferry. I leaned out and asked how long it might take to free it and all he said was, *well, it got stuck at high tide*. + +A bunch of optimists had already pulled into the ferry queue, but I didn't want to get the bus stuck in line so we pulled past and contemplated what to do. Just beyond the ferry area is a museum called the Graveyard of the Atlantic that'd we'd been meaning to check out, so we decided we'd do that and see what the status of the ferry was afterward. + + + +The museum was something of a bust. I think we might have spent 20 minutes wandering around, but there wasn't much to hold the kids attention beyond a few interesting artifacts that have washed up here over the years. It was one of those museums, and we've run across a few, that seems to think its subject matter is inherently interesting enough that it doesn't need to bother with pesky details like storytelling. If you want to learn more about seafaring in these parts, check out the maritime museum in Beaufort, or any of the lifesaving station monuments along the Outer Banks, both are much better. + +Back outside a quick glance over at the docks told us the ferries still weren't running. Well, one nice thing about the Outer Banks is you're rarely more than 100 feet from the beach. I took the kids down to the shore for a bit while Corrinne did some research and tried to figure out the odds the ferries would start up again that day. + + + +For most of the history of this ferry it was a short, fifteen minute trip from the end of Hatteras straight across to the end of Ocracoke. That changed in 2006 with hurricane Sandy, which chopped off the end of Hatteras. Nature, now nature can make things happen. Thought there was island there did you? Watch this. + +The missing chunk of island wasn't a big deal at first, there was a slightly longer ride along the same route, but little changed. However, over time all the sand that used to be at the end of Hatteras has been migrating west, filling in and creating shoals all around the cut between Hatteras and Ocracoke. Now, to get through requires an hour long circuitous route, picking and dodging through the ever-shifting shoals. + +We kept an eye on the NCDOT website and just after lunch we got word that a ferry coming the other direction was now also stuck on the sand near the barge. Things were piling up. At that point we figured we were not going to make it happen. We headed back up the island to the other campground to get a site for the night and try again the next day. The Cape Point campground was uninspiring, a grassy, bug-filled field. I drove through twice before we settled on a site that seemed a little drier than the rest. I put the chocks under the wheels and was about to get everything set up when I decided to call the ferry office one last time. Maybe we could still make it happen. + +It turned out that shortly after we'd given up, the coast guard had showed up and managed to free the stuck ferry and move the barge enough out of the way. The ferry was open again. We jumped back in the bus and headed down to get in line. And quite a line it was, we waited a couple hours before they put us on. By this point though no one waiting on the ferry had any sense of making anything happen. It was pretty clear that we were at the whim of nature. Maybe it would happen, maybe it wouldn't. Either way, it would happen on a schedule we had no control over. We bought a big bag of chips at the store and sat back and waited. + + + + + +We'd never put the bus on a ferry before, or at least not one this big (we did take a small [ferry ride](https://luxagraf.net/field-notes/2018/02/ferry) in Louisiana once) so I wasn't quite sure what to expect once we finally got on. It turned out to be a nice smooth ride. There was one moment when we hit bottom, but we never got hung up. + + + + +It was nearly dark by the time we "made it" to the campground on Ocracoke. We were all tired, but there was also a great feeling of accomplishment, of having gotten somewhere, not exactly how we'd wanted, but perhaps how we needed. Somewhere between will and hanging on for survival is where I think adventures, however small, happen. The collision of will and world and then navigating resulting currents and winds by faith, and some degree of grace, literally and figuratively, is the best way to travel the world. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-05-11_ocracoke-beaches.txt b/jrnl/2022-05-11_ocracoke-beaches.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dfe39e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-05-11_ocracoke-beaches.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +From where I lie on the shore it looks like my children are giants wading in watery-green meadows, crests of white foam rolling behind them like mountains upon mountains. The sun is warm on my chest, the water cool on my feet. Everything is as it should be, and there is no need for anything else. + +I'm not entirely sure what I was hoping for when we came to the Outer Banks, but whatever it was, or is, it's on Ocracoke. + +Ocracoke is a tiny strip of sand running about 16 miles, and anywhere from 200 feet to three miles wide, with an official high point of five feet (there are berms higher than that). All total it's only 8 square miles of land. But something about the place, the way the ocean currents move, the collision of air from the land and sea, the history, the isolation, the seafaring, some combination of it all makes Ocracoke very different than the rest of the Outer Banks. + + + +Ocracoke's appeal might have something to do with [the ferry](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/04/ocracoke-ferry). It's that little extra step that makes it better. The harder you work to get something the more you enjoy it when you're done. As my friend Clay used to say when we were backpacking in the Sierras, you have to earn the peaks. + +It might also have something to do with the absence of trucks. Ocracoke is one of the few spots in the Outer Banks where you won't find trucks all over the beach. I know this probably sounds weird to those of you living near other beaches, but out here everyone drives to the beach -- right up to the shoreline. The beach ends up looking like this shot of Oregon Inlet most of the time: + + + +I get the impression that if you want to pick a fight out here nothing would get it going faster than suggesting that people *not* drive on the beach. Still, I've been to beaches all over the United States, and in a dozen other countries, and this is the only place I can think of where the beach has been so completely turned over to the vehicle. Edward Abbey [would not approve](https://images.luxagraf.net/slideshow/2010/4867251305x2.jpg). + +Whatever the case, it was a relief to get to Ocracoke and find beaches (mostly) truck-free. The beaches are nearly white sand, the gulf stream waters clear and cool, and because it's not quite high season yet, we've had them to ourselves most of the time. + + + + + + + + + +Many a ship has run aground off the coast of Ocracoke or in the entrance to the sound on the west end, but no one who met their end here comes close to the most famous: Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. + +Teach is a minor character in the novel I wrote, but a big part of what propels the plot and my kids have been obsessed ever since I read it to them. One day we took a break from the beach to visit the lighthouse and hike out to Springer's Point, which is (most likely) where Teach was murdered by the British. + +We paid our respects by doing a little paddleboarding in the shallow bay. + + + + + +Local stories hold that Teach's body is still out there underwater, wandering in search of his head. Personally I don't think so. From what I've read, Teach strikes me as someone who was willing to take his chances and if he went down swinging, well, at least he went down swinging. The kids want Teach to fight his way out, to live. That would be a more satisfying story, but part of what I like about Teach's story is that he didn't. Because history, and the universe it records, isn't whatever we want it to be. It has its own plan. + +That might be another element in the brew of Ocracoke's magic: a certain sense that when things come, be they hurricanes, sand bars, or murderous Virginia governors, you do what you can, but you have to accept that it might not go the way you want. In the meanwhile, hang on to the helm as best you can, paddleboard while you can, and most of all, enjoy the ride. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-05-18_separation.txt b/jrnl/2022-05-18_separation.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bd65560 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-05-18_separation.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +After two weeks on Ocracoke we took the ferry back over to Hatteras and settled into another two weeks there. After a week Corrinne had to take the car and go back to Atlanta for family reasons. The kids and I stayed behind in the bus. This sounds pretty innocuous, but this is the Outer Banks, never forget that. + +Corinne left on a Friday. I finished up some work that morning while the kids played games, but I took the rest of the afternoon off and we headed the beach. My solo parenting guide starts with: find water, find sunshine, ... Don't forget food and water. + + + + + + +We had a good day at the beach. It would have been a perfect day if Corrinne had been there. As you might imagine, we are not apart much. When we are nothing feels right. Still, we managed. + +The next morning we woke up to clouds. I had checked the weather and noticed that there was a chance of rain. I hate driving the bus in the rain, and we needed to dump and move to a different campsite, so the kids and I got up early and got underway. We spent some time talking with Corrinne over by the lighthouse since the internet is much faster there (there's only one cell tower on Hatteras and it's not far from the lighthouse). + +After about an hour the clouds turned much darker, you might say ominous if you were writing a bad novel, but I'll just say that as the wind picked up and the clouds darkened, getting back to our campsite seemed like a good idea. We did stop off at the store on the way and pick up a few extra groceries and some new books for the kids to read. + +The latter turned out to be an excellent (if unwitting) strategic purchase, because by the time we got back to camp and set up in our new site the wind was a steady 35 MPH and gusting much higher. We spent a few hours indoors, but then we decided to head to the beach and see what it looked like. Less than 24 hours after our near-perfect day of sunshine and light winds, the beach looked like this: + + + +The wind was so strong at the top of the dunes that the kids had trouble standing up. A bit of internet research suggests that would make it around 50 MPH. It didn't let up as evening wore on either. Instead it turned colder. Cold enough to cook inside the bus, which we haven't done since we left Myrtle Beach months ago. That was when I realized that all our winter sleeping gear was stashed in the back of the car, which was now in Atlanta with Corrinne. Luckily we were able to dig up two extra blankets and no one got too cold. + +That night the storm picked up steam and at high tide the ocean washed out the road from Oregon Inlet down to Hatteras. The ferry service was canceled due to wind and just like that, we were cut off from everything. + +Luckily we had plenty of food and water, so we hunkered down the played games, watched a couple of movies, read, and kids drew while I wrote. For four days the bus did not stop rocking with every gust. + +I know I've gone on about the wind once already, but the wind here really is fantastic. It is a thing worth experiencing if you ever get the opportunity. I don't want to sound too enthusiastic about this storm, since it did [wash away several homes](https://islandfreepress.org/outer-banks-driving-on-the-beach/public-invited-to-help-clean-up-in-rodanthe/), I'm not saying that's fun, but if you have a safe place to hunker down, it's a rather amazing experience to be out here in the wind -- to feel what our lovely planet is capable of doing with something as invisible and mysterious and yet powerful as the wind. + +Unfortunately Corrinne's time in Atlanta was over before the storm. She went ahead and drove back, but had to spend an extra night in a hotel in Nags Head before the road opened again. After 5 days of storm it finally let up and the kids and I enthusiastically packed up to go dump and get out of the bus for a while. We were headed up the little hill that leads out of the campground when the bus died. It caught me off guard, the bus has been running so well, but I figured maybe I hadn't warmed it up enough so I cranked it for a bit, but nothing happened. And then it hit me: there's nothing wrong with the engine, we're out of gas[^1]. + + + +Finally the roads are open the storm is lifted, we can get out, and what do we do? We run out of gas. + +Fortunately the very nice camp hosts at Frisco (who we'd camped by way back at Oyster Point) came to our rescue and made a gas run for us with their gas can. An hour after we ran out gas we were on our way again. And at the same time Corrinne was on her way down. Our plan to meet up at the lighthouse and go to the beach didn't work out, but we ended up all back together again, and that's all that matters. + +That turned out to be good timing too, because somewhere back in the Pamlico Sound an undersea cable was cut and Hatteras and Ocracoke lost all communication with the mainland. No cell service, no land line service, nothing. It was fixed about 36 hours later, but it was interesting to see how much of day to day life ceased without that connection. The current world is pretty much the opposite of resilient. + + + +Luckily at least some parts of our current existence are still functioning because someone got out there and fixed the cable. The next day we were in line for the ferry, headed back to Ocracoke. + + +[^1]: For those keeping track at home, that's only the second time I've run out of gas in five years, which is pretty good for not having a gas gauge. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-05-30_seining-with-val.txt b/jrnl/2022-05-30_seining-with-val.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b251c65 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-05-30_seining-with-val.txt @@ -0,0 +1,62 @@ +Most of the interesting things I've ever done have started while I was waiting to do something else. Waiting is possibly the best part of traveling really -- it's how you meet people. You wait for the right weather, you wait for the place to open, you wait for the guy to get back with the thing, there is always some waiting. It's like life moves a bunch of things into position and then hits pause and sees what you'll do with it. + +We met Val waiting for the ferry. To leave Ocracoke you line up along the only road and wait. Our spot in line happened to be right next to a marsh, so I got my binoculars and stepped out to bird watch for a bit. A woman came up and started talking to me, and then Corrinne, about the bus. This isn't unusual really, it happens about every day when we're in the south, where strangers still talk to each other. In this case though we found we had a lot in common, and we just kept talking. Before too long we were making plans to meet up after the ferry ride. + +But then [the weather happened](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/05/separation), and then we went [back to Ocracoke](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/05/back-on-ocracoke). + +It wasn't until we came back up to Oregon Inlet for our last week in the Outer Banks that we finally met up with Val again to go seining. That might sound random, but Val is a marine science illustrator (you can [buy her books from Johns Hopkins Press](https://press.jhu.edu/books/authors/valerie-kells)), and the kids wanted to see what was under the waters they're always playing in. + +We met up at our campsite and headed down to the broad tidal flat on the other side of the Oregon Inlet channel to use Val's homemade seining rig. A seine, for those that have never heard of them, is a fishing net that hangs vertically. Big seines have floats at the upper edge and sinkers at the lower. Val designed and built her own portable siene. It was small enough that it didn't need weights or floats, instead it had a very clever roller system. That way a single person could push through the grass and anything living there would be swept up in the net. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +Once you've pushed it about 8-10 feet you pull it up and see what you've got. Val even built this super clever viewing box, which allows you to see the larger things like fish and shrimp right where you are. + + + +To see the smaller things we collected out in the water, we put them in the floating bucket, and then came back to a dissecting scope we set up on the beach for a closer look. + +
+ + + + +
+ +This kids had so much fun we did it again the next day. This time Elliott had his own setup, consisting of a net he found on the beach and a lot of enthusiasm. The net proved a bust, but the enthusiasm carried him through. + +
+ + + + +
+ +We also did a bit of fishing. The kids pulled in some of the smallest sea bass I've ever seen, but anything is better than nothing -- our usual catch -- so they were excited. + +
+ + + + +
+ + A few days later Val's friend, who's a graduate student at the NC Coastal Studies Institute, invited us to come by the CSI open house. There were all sorts of things for the kids to do including getting some more microscope time with water samples from around the area, and building what amounted to a wave-drive alternator. The girls worked together and managed to generate a bit of electricity with their design. + + + + +A couple of days later we went to check out the sand dunes at Jockey's Ridge State Park. This is the tiny sliver of the island that still looks like what things probably looked like in the Wright Bros's days. It was hot, dry, and barren, but peaceful and beautiful in a stark way. + + + +And then it was time to say goodbye and hit the road. This is the tough part of traveling, having to say goodbye, so we don't. We always say, see you later, see you again, see you down the road. + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2022-06-12_long-way-around.txt b/jrnl/2022-06-12_long-way-around.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1c061ce --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-06-12_long-way-around.txt @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +Somehow, in between all the things we did [with Val around Nags Head](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/06/seining-with-val), I managed to get a little work done on the bus. I replaced all the exhaust hangers, which were just barely holding the tailpipe up, changed the plugs, wires, oil, oil filter and half a dozen other little things that amounted to a good tune up to get her ready the hit the road. + +We came up this way with the thought that we'd continue up the coast into Maryland and then cross over the mountains somewhere in Pennsylvania, head through Ohio, Indiana and up into Michigan. But then we realized if we did that it would be a long time before we saw Corrinne's parents again, and if living this way teaches you anything, it's that nothing really matters much beyond friends and family. So we chose to reverse course and head back to Georgia. + +Still, we left the Outer Banks reluctantly. It was starting to get hot and buggy, which made it a little easier, but we rarely like to drive away from the beach. + + + +The first day we drove to Cliff of the Nuese State Park, which proved to be something of a let down -- there was no swimming in the river, something that had drawn us there. Ostensibly this was because there was no lifeguard, though judging by the smell I would guess it was more likely a raw sewage issue. No thanks. + +We were on the road again early the next morning, bound for Columbia, South Carolina. It was a hot miserable drive. We took the Interstate, something we rarely do, and quickly realized why we rarely do it. If there is a more barren, desolate, lifeless place than the American Interstate highway I don't know of it. It's an awful experience driving them, inhuman was the word that kept coming to mind. + +We made it to Columbia, SC in the late afternoon. It seemed about 20 degrees hotter in Columbia than on the drive. We cranked up the air conditioning as soon as the engine shut off. We kept smelling a strange rotten egg smell. We'd smelled it the day before too, but not enough to be concerned. This time it lingered. + +I went out in the sweltering heat and sniffed around the outside of the bus, pondering what on earth in an engine could have sulfur in it. I was just above the starting battery component when it hit me -- a lead acid battery. Sure enough, when I looked under at our starting battery it was leaking electrolyte. I pulled it out, wrapped it in a trash bag, and went down the local auto parts store to get a new one. Naturally ours was a month out of warranty. I started to buy another, but then noticed that the only one they had sported a manufactured date that was almost a year ago. I went to another store and got a different battery. + +I put it back in and didn't think much of it. The next day we'd scheduled a layover day to do laundry and run some errands, which we did, and then we spent to afternoon at the splash pad. It was hot enough that even the parents were in the water at this splash pad. + + + +The next day we hit the interstate again. We spent most of the morning cutting across South Carolina and into Georgia on Interstate 20, counting the miles until we could turn off, back onto the two-lane roads. About halfway I started to smell electrolyte again. Hmm. That's not good. + +I only have two gauges on the dash that actually work. The speedometer and the Alt gauge, which gives a rough approximation of what the alternator is doing. I never look at it. But when I smelled the electrolyte I glanced at it, and noticed it was pegged over on C, which meant it was sending the maximum possible volts to the battery, which shouldn't have been needed after an hour of driving. It was overcharging the battery to the point that even the brand new one swelled and cracked open, spewing out electrolyte again. + +I pulled over to assess the situation. I read through the M300 manual a bit and came to the conclusion that the problem was either a bad ground or a bad voltage regulator. Or the alternator. I ran a few tests with the volt meter and the alternator itself seemed fine, though the wires coming out of the alternator looked like garbage -- old and cracked with questionable connectors. I figured maybe I had bumped them somehow when I changed the belts back in the Outer Banks, and maybe they weren't grounded properly anymore. I cut the ground wire near where it came out of the harness and put on a new connector and did the same for the field wire. I figured I could re-run the entire wire later on, but this might do for a quick fix. + + + +As a side note, I happened to be right by the road to Raysville when I noticed the problem, so I got off the interstate at that exit. Three years after [we were last there](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2019/10/back-to-raysville), the road is still under construction. Half of the two lane highway was still closed and made a great place to get the bus out of the way so I could work on it in peace. Exactly three cars passed in the half hour I was pulled over, and every single one of them stopped to see if I was okay. This is why we spend so much time in the south. Just preferably not during the summer. + +I was feeling pretty good about the ground wire theory, but there was only one way to test it, so I packed up my tools and hit the road again. It was pegged over to C again as soon as I hit 50. Damn it. It was getting hot and I only had a few more miles of interstate driving so, against my better judgement, I pushed on. I didn't want a bus breakdown to prevent seeing family. Some times you just have to [push on through](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/10/through). + +Something weird happened though, after about five minutes of being pegged over at C, it dropped back to the middle and the rest of way it was fine. About five minutes after that we finally got off the interstate and back on the back roads, rolling through the Georgia countryside. + + + + +We made it to the campground and settled in. I was pretty happy with my fix, though I wasn't sure how I was going to convince the local shop to give me a new battery. I unhooked it and put in the car. I figured I'd play dumb as much as possible. It comes naturally. Unfortunately that didn't really work because they tested the battery and determined it was fine. They also told me I had an overcharging issue. You think? + +I set the problem aside for a few days. We weren't going anywhere and the best way to fix things is to think about them for a very long time. You have to have an idea of what to do in your head before you can do anything. In the mean time we spent some time with Corrinne's parents and her sister who flew in from Dallas to visit. There was air conditioning, relaxation, sleep overs, ear piercing and all sorts of family fun. + +
+ + + + + +
diff --git a/jrnl/2022-06-19_prairie-notes.txt b/jrnl/2022-06-19_prairie-notes.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6871b76 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-06-19_prairie-notes.txt @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +The wind is soft and cool, the twilight sky banded in pinks and yellows and blues. Frogs sing in the culvert in front of me, a killdeer plucks unlucky beetles and flies from the grass. Fields of green seedlings I don't recognize stretch in every direction and there is little else, save a distant clump of trees and power lines strung along the horizon. + + + +I love the plains. There's hardly any prairie left out here, but even as farmland there is something about the middle of America that I love. It's as if you can still hear the echo of the prairie -- this vast, open space with a kind of silence you don't find other places. + +This, perhaps more than any other landscape, feels foreign to me. I have spent time in the mountains, the deserts, the sea. I know forests and rivers and beaches. But I know next to nothing about farms. It's a kind of endless mystery to me. What lives in these culverts between fields? What are these frogs I hear? What else is out there? What's it like to grow up here? What's it like to live here? This vast open sky. What is the character of the land? + +I like it. We never stay long, but I am endlessly fascinated by this ecosystem. + + + +When we left Georgia early in the morning several days ago we had no intention of coming here to central Illinois. The first day's drive was hot and brutal. The alternator was overcharging again, which added to the stress of the heat. Then the engine started vapor locking. In its defense the temperature was over 100 plus humidity. When we planned our way through the south we weren't counting on a heat wave, but these things happen. That first night out we punted, it was just too hot to cool the bus down by the kids bedtime so we checked into a hotel. + +The next day we hit the road early again. We hadn't gone more than a hour when we realized the rear hatch door was gone. Corrinne and the kids drove back to see if they could find it. I moved everything from the hatch into the bus (somehow we lost nothing out of the hatch), and hit the road again. They never found the hatch door, but by the end of the day we'd passed through four states into Illinois where it was at least a bit cooler. + +We camped at Fort Massac State Park, which backs up to the Ohio River, adjacent the town of Metropolis, Illinois. Once upon a time, in about 1995, on my very first extended drive around the United States, my friend Mike and I came upon the giant statue of Superman in Metropolis in the wee hours of the morning and... I remember nothing else about that day, just peering up in the darkness at this huge statue. + +I took the kids over to see the Superman statue while we were there, but the more memorable statue this trip was Big John, who presided over a store of the same name. The park also had a statue of William Clark, which felt curiously lonely -- where was Lewis? + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +We had reserved two nights at Fort Massac to avoid getting to St. Louis on the weekend, which turned out to be handy because I spent the extra day making a new hatch for the back of the bus out of plywood. At some point I'll probably give it a coat of resin and some paint, but for now the wood at least gets us down the road again. I'll miss that original hatch. + +Unfortunately the heat wave would not let up. The forecast for St. Louis was in the triple digits and we decided we'd rather get north to some cooler temps. We changed plans and headed straight up Illinois, landing here, in farm country for the night. + + + +In some ways I wish we'd had an extra day out here, but we were off again the next morning, bound for the cool waters of Lake Michigan. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-06-22_illinois-beach.txt b/jrnl/2022-06-22_illinois-beach.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6591a5f --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-06-22_illinois-beach.txt @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +I think it's important to remember that it's fun to do something for no reason at all. That is, not everything needs a reason beyond simply the freedom to do it. + +This is what Sir Edmund Hilery was hinting at when he was asked, *why do you want to climb Mount Everest,* and he answered, *because it's there*. Because the freedom of the will to choose and act and do, the freedom for you to do something for no other reason than you happen to want to do it, is the irreducible, unassailable base on which all human delight is built[^1]. + +That has nothing to do with how we came to be at Illinois Beach State Park, on the far northern reaches of Chicago, or what we did there, but I think it's worth saying things from time to time about the meta-journey if you will. One of the things I've learned from this adventure is that life isn't so serious as it seems, perhaps especially when it seems most serious. It's okay to do things just because. The universe is a whimsical place after all, how else do you explain the giraffe? Or this strange, abandoned concession center in the middle of Illinois Beach State Park looking for all the world like it was plucked out of a 1950s Soviet seaside resort and plopped here in Illinois? + + + + +One of the things I was most looking forward to about coming back to the Great Lakes area was replicating the day we [drove out of the heat and into the wonderfully cool summer of Wisconsin](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/06/wisconsin). Alas, that did not happen this time (you can [never go back](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2008/06/you-cant-go-home-again)). + +The heat wave followed us up through Chicago, where I stopped off at the Zipdee factory to pick up two awnings we'd ordered several months ago. With the giant, fifteen foot tubes on the floor of the bus, I hit the road again bound for Illinois State Beach, on the shores of Lake Michigan. + +Thankfully the heat wave only lasted two more days, and we had the nice clear, icy waters of Lake Michigan to keep us cool in the mean time. Almost any day spent on the water is a good day in my book, though the temperature extremes were more than we're used to -- 100 in the air, 53 in the water. Stay in for more than a few minutes and you're shivering, but by the time you're out two minutes you're ready to cool back down again. + + + + +Fortunately after the weekend the air temp settled back down to a nice 80 degrees, making it a bit of fun to sit (and play) on the beach. + + +
+ + + + + + + + +
+ + + + + +The abandoned concession stand wasn't the only odd thing in Illinois State Beach, in fact there were quiet a few oddities. My favorite was the pair of Sandhill Cranes that strolled through the campground every day utterly unconcerned with any humans that might be around. In fact they would march right up to people, looking for food. I saw one sneak a hot dog off a picnic table and proceed to eat it before any of the people around it noticed. + + + +While I was photographing the birds a ranger pulled up in a truck behind me and said, "don't be bothering my chickens, now." I learned from him that while there's been a pair of cranes that have nested here for a few years, this year there are seven pairs. No one knows why they stopped here, and no one knows why they seem utterly unafraid of humans. Maybe they just wanted to. Because they can. + +The oddities of Illinois Beach State Park were perfectly suited to the real reason we came -- to install our new Zipdee awnings and get rid of our old. It's an odd thing to do in a campground full of people enjoying their weekend. But no one complained about the sawing and the remains of the old awning fit nicely in the dumpster. In the end rain stopped me from getting the big awning installed here, but I got our new side awning on at least. + + + +It keeps the afternoon sun out of the window and allows us to have the window open even if it's raining, but really we just like it... because it's there. It makes the bus a little more fun, a little more delightful if I do say so myself. + + + +[^1]: I am indebted to author John Michael Greer for some of this idea. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-07-01_hello-milwaukee.txt b/jrnl/2022-07-01_hello-milwaukee.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..30d7127 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-07-01_hello-milwaukee.txt @@ -0,0 +1,81 @@ +The drive up to Harrington Beach State Park wasn't far, about 50 miles, but somehow that 50 miles changed everything. Once we were past Milwaukee (Harrington Beach is about 30 minutes north of Milwaukee) the last traces of heat disappeared. There were cheese curds at every gas station -- a sure sign you're in Wisconsin -- and the world felt quieter, more relaxed, more natural. Even the lake seemed somehow wilder. + + + +Last time we were here I [wrote about the yellow warblers](https://luxagraf.net/dialogues/yellow-warbler) that were everywhere in our campsite. This time was no different, one even came in the bus to check it out. + +
+ + + + +
+ +We came back to Harrington because it's a good place to camp and access Milwaukee. We don't spend much time in cities anymore. We avoid them actually, especially large cities. Driving into the Chicago to get the awning was a nightmare I'd just as soon never repeat. Smaller cities like Milwaukee are more tolerable, though still not our thing anymore. + +That said, we made an exception here because we actually like Milwaukee and we have some friends living here that we wanted to catch up with, however briefly. We had also promised the girls we'd get some sushi and cupcakes, and then go to a museum for their birthday since we'd be spending their actual birthday somewhere without sushi. + +We started with cupcakes of course. + +
+ + + + +
+ +Then we had a sushi lunch and popped into a bookstore that was pretty amazing, but, despite having a seemingly endless number of books, did not have the one that the girls wanted. + +
+ + + + + + + +
+ +The next stop was the Milwaukee Public Museum, which is such a vague name we didn't really know what to expect except that it had some dinosaur exhibit of some kind. I think that was a good way to go in, not knowing anything (the opportunity for you to go not knowing anything is about to be ruined) because now that I've been, I am still not totally sure what the Milwaukee Public Museum is, beyond, the very generic: really fun. + +The specimen collection in the lobby area reminded me of [La Specula in Florence](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2011/06/natural-science), which makes sense because that collection was designed to show off the original Milwaukee Public Museum exhibits, which date from very near the time of La Specula. But even the "modern" parts of the museum weren't very modern. And I mean that in a good way. + +The Milwaukee Public Museum is a throw back the museums of old: big dioramas, lots of signs and welcome absence of any screens or QR codes or any of the ridiculous digital gimmicks that pass for content in modern museums. Instead it was interactive in the original sense -- the kids could touch the buffalo fur, peddle a penny farthing, and even let butterflies in the butterfly exhibit land on them. + + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +The natural history portion of the Milwaukee Public Museum was extensive and full of great dioramas, though I have to take some exception the tiny little section devoted to the south. The south is apparently little more than a footnote here and can be adequately represented by a banjo, a musket, a few ears of corn, and a flag none of us recognized. + +
+ + + + +
+ +What the Public Museum understandably does a far better job with is the history of Milwaukee. There's a huge exhibit called the Streets of Old Milwaukee with a life size replica of the streets of Milwaukee through the ages. Most of it seems to be roughly the late 19th century, complete with lighting that replicates the look of old gas lamps. It really did feel a bit like walking the evening streets a century ago, peering in shops and homes at the various scenes. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +We met up with our friends later that night for some dinner before driving back out to Harrington. The next day our friends drove out to hang out at the beach for the day. There was a lot of driftwood on the beach, which the kids wasted no time in turning in to a little village. + + + +Unfortunately that was all the time we got in Milwaukee. Harrington's proximity to the city has a downside, it fills up quickly, especially the weekends. We managed to get four days midweek on short notice, but with fourth of July rolling around we had leave for more obscure parts of Wisconsin that don't see the crowds. We had a nice rainbow send off on our last night at least, and the next morning we hit the road again, headed north. + + diff --git a/jrnl/2022-07-06_4th-of-July-2022.txt b/jrnl/2022-07-06_4th-of-July-2022.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8ddcae9 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-07-06_4th-of-July-2022.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +We would have stayed longer at Harrington Beach State Park, and we would have loved to head up into the Door Peninsula, but we were facing every full time RVer's least favorite holiday: Fourth of July weekend. Everything was booked. So, we loaded up our still-not-installed awning and headed north, where the crowds are fewer and we knew of at least one first-come first-served campground. + +You can't just show up at a first-come first-serve campground on the Friday of fourth of July weekend though. Corrinne does 90 percent of the camp planning and she, marvel that she is, found a campground somewhere in the middle of Wisconsin that was somehow not already booked for the fourth and was on our way. We had reservations the day before and hit the road Friday. + +Now, you might be asking yourself, what sort of campground *isn't* full on America's most popular camping weekend? How awful is it that no one wants to go there? Actually it was quite nice. I think no one wants to go there in part because it's in a very rural area and when you have wild acreage, camping isn't really something you care about as much. At least that was our experience living in a 300-acre pine forest. Whatever the case Governor Thompson State Park was nice and we were happy to have a spot to park for the holiday weekend. + +Admittedly, there wasn't much to do at Governor Thompson if you don't have a boat (it's on a lake). One fellow vintage camper owner we met ventured over to the swim beach one day and called it the saddest little thing he'd ever seen. We never went to find out for ourselves. We just relaxed, did a lot of reading, and finally had the space to get our new awning installed. + + + + + +After putting on the window awning on the other side I was dreading the full size patio awning. Fortunately for me, the installation process was different, so my fears proved unfounded. In some ways I think it was easier to install the patio than the window awning, though there were a couple of awkward moments. But now have plenty of shade to sit around and relax (and work, and play) in. + + + +I'd forgotten how nice it is to have that under the awning space. We used to live in that shade, but we stopped using our old awning because it was so beat up and gross. Sitting under it was not a pleasant experience the last few months. With the Zipdee we've reclaimed that space. We have a wonderfully warm yellow light bathing the bus from all angles, and we've been spending a lot more time outside. Zipdee awnings aren't cheap, but well worth the money in my opinion. + + + + +With the holiday weekend behind us we continued north, bound for the shores of Lake Superior. We stopped off at a place called Copper Falls for a couple of nights. It's supposedly one of the highlights of the area, but our experience was that it's buggy and there's not much to do other than hike to see the falls. They are nice waterfalls, but you can't get near them and the mosquitoes and black flies were bad enough that it would have made Yosemite miserable. + + +
+ + + + +
+ + + + + +I never like to complain too much about anywhere because it's an incredible experience to be able to live the way we do and a few bad nights for us is a tiny price to pay (and Copper Falls wasn't even that bad). I only really ever write about places we don't like much when they're very popular online, with the thought that maybe I can temper expectations and improve someone else's experience. Whatever the case, I was glad to hit the road again. + +And our plan worked. We pulled into the first-come first-serve campground in Washburn, WI on a Thursday morning, snagged the best site, and settled in for the summer. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-07-10_washburn.txt b/jrnl/2022-07-10_washburn.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..72581d0 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-07-10_washburn.txt @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +We pulled into Memorial Park Campground in Washburn, Wisconsin just before lunch on a Thursday and grabbed one of the few spots left in the campground. It was just a few sites down from where we [stayed four years ago](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/08/island-golden-breasted-woodpecker). We love a good first-come, first-serve campground, especially one with no stay limits. We unfurled the awning and settled in for the summer. + + + + +For us, these days, settling in means signing the kids up for Jui Jitsu, getting library cards, and figuring out the best places to get in whatever body of water is nearby. Washburn, and nearby Ashland, provide all that and more, perhaps most importantly, reasonable temperatures all summer, little in the way of crowds, and the kind of hospitality you really only find in small towns anymore. + +At their first Jui Jitsu class one of their classmate's mother invited us to a midsummer party. Summer is bigger deal up here than it is in say Florida. When something is so fleeting you appreciate it more I think. Whatever the case, we showed up and had a great time. There was music, flower wreaths, comedy, even sack races. The kids danced late into the night. It was a good way to celebrate midsummer, something I've never celebrated before. + +
+ + + + + + +
+ + + +While Jui Jitsu, libraries, and swimming holes are all we really need, we do appreciate there being good Mexican food, and as of this summer, Washburn has that. All this corner of the world needs now is for the shifting climate to mellow out the winters a bit. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +I think if we'd been closer to Washburn in 2020 when the U.S. shut everything down, we'd have rented a place around here. But of course that's not where we were so we'll likely never know how we'd handle a winter up here. For now though, it's a pretty great place to spend your summer. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-07-13_ten.txt b/jrnl/2022-07-13_ten.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..91d6507 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-07-13_ten.txt @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +I was thinking the other day about some friends I haven't talked to since I left Los Angeles for good in 1999. I was thinking how astounded they would probably be to know that I had managed to keep two children alive and well for ten years now. What they would probably say is, *I think you mean your wife has managed to keep two children alive and well for ten years*. And of course they'd be right. + +Whatever the case, somehow, our twins are ten. Double digits. A decade old. + +
+ + + + + +
+ +At least with a decade behind us I feel better about the fact that I can’t remember what I did without you. And I stand by the fact it couldn’t have been much fun. No offense to those friends back in LA. Whatever it was, it wasn't this good, I know that for sure. + +
+ + + + +
+ +
+ + + + +
+ +One of the things the girls really wanted this year were cameras. When I got them I was mostly thinking about how cool it would be to see the world through their eyes. I wasn't really thinking about that fact that one of the things in the world as they see it would be, um, me. + +
+ + + + +
+ +I think it was the gifts that made my realize my babies aren't babies anymore. You don't give cameras and knives to babies. Well, we didn't anyway. Then again, while everything is always changing there are still constants. There's still no oven in the bus, and everyone still wants [chocolate waffle cake](https://luxagraf.net/essay/waffle-world). + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2022-07-20_around-washburn.txt b/jrnl/2022-07-20_around-washburn.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..883819a --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-07-20_around-washburn.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +One weekend I took the kids over to Madeline Island again. The museum was having a trading post-style reenactment, and we are suckers for a good reenactment festival. + + + + +We got to see some real birch bark canoes, and some artifacts like trade blankets, early compasses and navigation tools, even early pharmacy tools, including a pill-making board the kids got to try out, making some playdough pills. + + + + +Most of the reenactment stuff was things Voyageurs would have used in the fur trade, though there were a couple of people there representing local tribes. One man in particular was really great at showing the kids various tools and demonstrating how they worked. He was so good I forgot to take any pictures, which I realized later is kind of the highest praise I can (accidentally) give. + +The reenactment was a cool bonus, but really the museum there has enough that it's well worth the trip even if you've already been. But then I am deeply fascinated by the tools and techniques of history. I like to see how people solved problems, what tools they used, how the approached problems. Like this toaster, which really isn't all that different from today's toaster, and in some ways is better (if it were repaired to good working order). Certainly it has lasted longer than any toaster made to today is likely to last. The glass rolling pin though, that one I am not so sure about. + + + + +While we have been to Washburn before, we were only here a few days and we didn't get to do much other than going to Madeline Island. With more time this time we've been able to explore the area some more. One of our favorite things we've found is Little Girl Point, a popular swimming and agate hunting beach about an hour away, on the other side of the bay. + + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +When we don't want to go as far as Little Girl Point, we head up to Long Lake, just outside of Washburn. The water is much warmer water than Superior, and it makes a good place to do some paddleboarding. + + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2022-08-24_august-jottings.txt b/jrnl/2022-08-24_august-jottings.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..689d6e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-08-24_august-jottings.txt @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +***August 2*:** Already I feel the end of summer heading toward us. There's a fleetingness to the warm days now, an inevitability to the cold that comes in the evenings and is slower to go again in mornings. + + + +I miss the merlins. Every morning since we arrived the first thing I heard in the morning was five or six merlin chicks shrieking and playing in the pines around our campsite. Today I heard nothing. They've gone. Or they all died. Either way the bird life here as changed. The small birds are back. Nuthatches and chickadees are the morning sounds now, with occasional crows and blue jays. + +The pileated woodpeckers were through again this morning, you can never fail to notice that flaming-red crest streaking through the trees. It sounds like a jackhammer when they beat on the bark. Such a massive bird for something that spends most of its time clinging to the side of a tree. This morning there were three. One stayed on the ground, which I had never seen a pileated do before. At first I thought it might be injured, but eventually it took off to join its fellows in the trees. + + + +***August 6*:** Strange mayfly hatch this morning. The bathroom building is completely covered in mayflies. Thousands of them, inside and out. Camp host tried blowing them with a leaf blower but it didn't work, they hung on. Reminded me of [the night in New Orleans when the termites hatched](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/05/new-orleans-instrumental-number-2), (which I didn't actually write about in that post, not everything makes it out of the journal). Fortunately we were far enough away this time that nothing ended up swarming in the bus. + +***August 8*:** The kids started sailing camp this morning. I picked them up at lunch time and managed to see the girls sailing, Elliott was already in. Their first day on the water and it was probably the windiest we've had in quite a while. Can't reef an [Optimist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimist_(dinghy)). I guess you just go fast. They spent most of the day practicing knots and righting flipped boats so they knew what to do, but according to them no one flipped in the stiff breezes. + + + +I've been challenged to many a knot tying contest this afternoon. I have lost almost all of them. I used to be able to tie a bowline one-handed without thinking about it. Now I have to sit there and tell myself the rabbit story to get it right. + +***August 12*:** Final day of sailing camp featured a sail-by for the parents followed by a potluck lunch. Unfortunately there was very little wind so it was more a drift, crank-the-tiller-back-and-forth by. Still, it was good to see them out on the water, having fun and making new friends. + + + + +
+ + + + +
+ +***August 13*:** Heading to the county fair later today. We're suckers for a local fair, but we're used to fairs in October. Yet another reminder that cold comes early up here. + + +
+ + + + +
+ + +Years ago at the [Elberton Fair](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2019/10/elberton-county-fair) Elliott was too short to ride some of the rides with his sisters. This year Olivia was too tall to ride some of the rides with her siblings. We can't seem to completely win. At least there was a lumberjack show, complete with crosscut saws and log rolling exhibitions. + +***August 18*:** Cooler this morning. 54 on the gauge. Blue-gray fog bank on the far shore enshrouds the hills. The crows are unhappy about something this morning. Red-breasted nuthatches seem unconcerned. + +Signs of winter are increasing. The weather has shifted, more birds are passing through. Cape May warblers are already headed south from wherever they've been north of here. On the way to the store today I saw the city had pulled out its snow plows and was giving them a wash. Seasons remain a strange thing to this Los Angeles native. I like the idea of them, I like the transitions between them, but we are not sticking around to live with winter. Two weeks more, maybe three. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-08-31_grandparents.txt b/jrnl/2022-08-31_grandparents.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..15ee223 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-08-31_grandparents.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +My parents flew out to visit us in Washburn. Somehow they managed to find a rental house outside of town (there isn't much besides hotels and camping in the these parts) with a spectacular garden. + + + +We took them out to Madeline Island for the day, which meant the kids got a second trip on the ferry, always a popular way to spend the day. We'd do it more regularly if it wasn't so ridiculously expensive. + + + + + + +Mostly we had nice weather while they were here, but one day while we were parking to get some ice cream up in Bayfield it started to rain, so we ducked into the nearby Bayfield Heritage Museum. If we hadn't recently been the Milwaukee Public Museum, I'd say the Bayfield Heritage Museum is the best museum we've been to. As it is, it's pretty close, for one simple reason -- the kids could touch everything. + +The woman working even came over and told the kids to open the 1890s oven, the dresser drawers, the kitchen cabinets and the rest. That's really all it takes to make children totally enthralled by anything, just let them do what they want. + +Down in the basement there was a very detailed model of Bayfield at the height of the timber industry. There was a scavenger hunt that involved finding ten little scenes in the model. We found everything but the "happy hobo." Damn itinerants, always hiding out at the edges of town. + + + + + +One of the great things about having visitors come is it gives you a reason to do some of the things you just never seem to get around to otherwise. Houghton Falls is less than two miles from the campground where we've been all summer, but for whatever reason -- maybe because it was too close by -- we never made it until my parents came. + +It turned out to be a great little trail. Judging by the wood planks on the trail, it is probably boggy and miserably buggy in the early season -- maybe it's a good thing we waited until August -- but it was dry and nice when we went. After wandering through the forest for a quarter mile, the trail drops down to the river bed which has cut a deep gorge through pre-Cambrian sandstone. The result is a wonderland of caves and pools with plenty of climbing to keep the kids busy. + + + + + +The namesake falls are a bit back from the lake, but there was no water anyway. The trail ends at Lake Superior, just beyond a shallow bay where the river finally empties into the lake. There's a little rock outcropping about 10 feet off the water that looked pretty good for jumping. I actually would not have gone if the kids hadn't been gung ho about it. But then they were less so after I jumped and they saw how far down it was. I ended up being the only one to jump. Pretty sure the eagle up the tree was laughing at me. + + + + +My mom celebrated her 80th birthday the day before they left. The kids helped bake the cake and decorate the house for her. And then, sadly the rental house turned back to a pumpkin, and their grandparents headed back to California. It's always hard to say goodbye. But we're thankful for the time we have with friends and family, and that's part of why we never say goodbye, we say "see you again soon." diff --git a/jrnl/2022-09-06_porcupine-mountains-backpacking.txt b/jrnl/2022-09-06_porcupine-mountains-backpacking.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d4a0e20 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-09-06_porcupine-mountains-backpacking.txt @@ -0,0 +1,76 @@ +There are only a few small stands of old growth forests left on this continent. I have been to couple of smaller old growth stands -- one in the west, one in the south -- but I've never really spent much time in them. When I found out that the Porcupine Mountains were the second largest old growth Hemlock forest left in the U.S., I knew we had to go. + +This time I wanted to spend some time, so I put together a another family backpacking trip. We left the bus in its site in Washburn and headed up into the mountains of Michigan[^1]. Well, elsewhere they might be called hills, but up here they're mountains. + +We drove a couple of hours around Superior to the Porcupine Mountains, picked up our permit, and hit the trail. + + + +The kids were able (and wanted) to carry more weight compared to [our last trip in North Carolina](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2020/10/walking-north-carolina-woods), but of course what they think they can carry and what they can actually carry depends on the distance. + +We wanted a destination to hang out at, so we opted for the [trail around Mirror Lake](https://www.michigantrailmaps.com/member-detail/porcupine-mountains-north-south-mirror-lake-trails/) -- three miles in from the east, three miles back out to the west. We started with the eastern portion of trail, which went over Summit Peak. We wanted to get the hard stuff over with at the start. For about a half a mile it was straight up -- about half of that was stairs -- to a tower that brought you above the tree tops for a view of Lake Superior. + + + +
+ + + + +
+ +It wasn't until we were almost to the lake that we finally stepped into the old growth Hemlock. Much of the old growth forest in the Mirror Lake area was knocked down in a storm in 1953 when 5,000 acres of old growth forest -- thousands upon thousands of trees -- came down in a matter of hours. Two high school kids out fishing near Mirror Lake got caught in the storm (and lived), which must have made for an exciting morning. Wind shear like that is not unheard of up here, but that's a pretty extreme example (that is weirdly undocumented online, you can read about it at the visitor center though). + +It was dark and cool in the old growth, little sun made it down to the forest floor, which was a deep bed of needles. The thing that really jumped out about the old growth though was how quiet it was in those portions of the forest. I noticed the silence before I really registered anything else. I'm not sure why, but I have never been anywhere so utterly silent. The birds were mostly gone, headed south for the winter, that was definitely part of the silence, but it was also just quieter among the Hemlocks than in the younger stretches of forest we passed through. + + + +We made it to camp by mid afternoon. I will confess I am fascinated by the modern hiking crowd who seem to love nothing better than 20 mile days. If the people I see on YouTube and Instagram are in fact representative of modern hikers. I am just about the opposite. Even if I didn't have kids... I like three mile days and lounging around camp, swimming, fishing, birding, cooking. The walking part? Meh, it's fine, but it's not why I am here. Walking is just the necessary ingredient to reach the last few spots on earth with some solitude. + +Whatever the case, we set up camp, and spent the afternoon lounging around. + + + + + +I have two regrets from this trip. The first is that we did not bring the hammock. Always bring the hammock. Well, if there are trees around. + +My second regret is that we did not bring more real food. Five steaks really would not have added that much weight to our pack and would have 100 percent been worth that added weight. I am done with the whole dehydrated food thing. Some is fine when you're doing longer walks, but there's nothing like a steak in the backcountry. At least in my imagination there is nothing like a steak in the backcountry. Which isn't to say that we ate poorly, just that, well, steaks and bacon and eggs would have been better. Next time. + + + + +At least we got to have fires, something that's increasingly rare, not just in the backcountry, but everywhere. Long periods of poor forest management, combined with dry weather, have left much of the west forced to ban open fires. I am working on a longer piece about the importance of the fire, especially the outdoor fire, but suffice to say that it was very nice to have one in the backcountry. We even almost got something like a decent family photo. Almost. + + + + +The next day we did a little day hiking around the lake and a little swimming when we got back to camp. + + + + +
+ + + + +
+ + + + +The next morning we packed it up and hiked out via the other half of the loop. This time the trail followed a stream that wound through a lot of country that looked very much like the alpine meadows you see in the Sierras or Rockies. A little reminder that in the absence of altitude, high latitude creates a very similar ecosystem. + + + + +Before we headed back to the bus we did a quick drive around the rest of the park, to check out the larger, more famous, Lake of the Clouds. We ate lunch at the overlooks and then two hours later, we were back at the bus. + + + +It was a good trip overall, though I think I lost my enthusiasm for ultralight hiking somewhere out there. Next time we go backpacking there's going to be hammocks and steak involved. + + + +[^1]: We originally intended to go canoeing in the Boundary Waters, but couldn't get the permits for the areas that were doable with kids (everything was booked). In hindsight, I am glad we didn't. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-09-14_goodbye-big-waters.txt b/jrnl/2022-09-14_goodbye-big-waters.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..648b894 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-09-14_goodbye-big-waters.txt @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ +Leaving is always a bustle of activity. We go from spending our days relaxing in the sun to frantically making lists and scrambling to get everything done before we hit the road. You'd think by now we'd plan ahead and know how to do it well, but not really. I always end up with a task list that's far more than I can possibly do in however long we have left. I think this is my way of dealing with pain of leaving somewhere -- overwhelming myself with tasks so there's no time to feel. + + + +Because yes, there is always a pain in leaving. Heading toward new possibilities, while exciting, still means closing off old ones. This isn't something that's unique to travel, all of us are always changing, always leaving things behind. New jobs, new homes, new grades in school, something is always left behind as we move down the river of time. + +For reasons I have not completely figured out, we seemed to have sunk deeper into the life of this place than anywhere else we've stopped in our travels. In all we were here nine weeks, which is actually less time than we spent in the Outer Banks, but I felt more a part of this place. Perhaps it is the open and welcoming people of the area, the [giddiness of summer](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/07/washburn) up here, or maybe we're getting better at settling in. Perhaps some combination of these things and more. + +We are making a bigger change than we have yet on this leg of our journey (which I count as starting when we left the [100 acre woods]()). For ten months now we have lived by the water -- [coastal South Carolina](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/02/ice-storm), [the Outer Banks](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/05/ocracoke-beaches), and now [the shores of Lake Superior](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/08/superior) -- and now we're headed west to the plains, mountains, and deserts. + +It wasn't all frantic work and packing though. After [our backpacking trip in the Porcupine Mountains](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/09/porcupine-mountains-backpacking) we had two more weeks in Washburn, which we spent visiting with friends we've made, hiking up to a waterfall in the hills, re-visiting Little Girl Point, stocking up on local favorite foods, and readying the bus for the next leg of our journey. We even found time to play with a cool telescope I was testing for work. + + + + + + +Leaving is always bittersweet. The kids will miss their new friends, and so will we. Up here the pain of leaving is eased by the fact that few of the people we met spend the winters here anyway, so everyone is leaving soon. We will also very likely be back next summer, so this time around while we did say our long midwestern goodbyes, they were really see you next years. And then we hit the road. + + diff --git a/jrnl/2022-09-21_ease-down-the-road.txt b/jrnl/2022-09-21_ease-down-the-road.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e72fad2 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-09-21_ease-down-the-road.txt @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +We set out from Washburn, bound for Arizona via North Dakota. We wanted to see Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and then we figured we'd head south and maybe catch some of the fall colors in the Rockies on our way. + +It's pretty rare for us to drive more than 200 miles a day. We're not in any rush and that's about how far you can go in the bus before it starts to feel like a chore. That said, we decided to blast our way across Minnesota and North Dakota doing back-to-back 300 mile days. We spent the night at a city park in Fargo the first day and then pushed on for Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It was a lot of driving, but there just weren't many places to stop in between. + + + + +Theodore Roosevelt has a fairly nice campground, but we opted to stay at a more remote boondocking spot in the Little Missouri Grasslands. Although it was well outside the park, and off by itself, it was actually closer to town and made a good base for exploring the area. + + + + +The Grasslands themselves were in some ways more interesting than the national park, though if you want to see bison you have to go into the park since a fence keeps them in. The kids loved having some badlands for a backyard. They'd disappear up into the hills in the mornings while Corrinne and I worked, returning only for food. + + + + + +The kids and I hiked a ways out on a trail that runs through a petrified forest. We were mostly looking for birds since the petrified forest was farther than anyone wanted to walk. The kids had been looking over the bird list we picked up at the visitor center, deciding ahead of time what they wanted to see -- the Sharp-tailed Grouse was their top pick. I gave them the usual caution that one doesn't really pick which birds they're going to see, to have patience, and so on. + +Naturally, the first thing we see, after less than 10 minutes of walking, was a Sharp-tailed Grouse. It reminded me of the time I explained to them that fishing requires patience and then less than two minutes after casting [Lilah was reeling in a fish](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/01/almost-warm). Maybe it's just me. Maybe everyone else is always seeing birds and catching fish. + + + +We're not just bird and fish people these days, we also go in for rocks. Some of us anyway. Whatever the case there's a river just over the Montana border that is the place to find eponymous agates. We made the hour long drive and came back with more Montana agates than anyone living in a 26-foot bus should really have. + +It was nice to spend a day beside the river though. The current was pretty strong, but we managed to get a little swimming in. + + + +And yes, we did drive into Theodore Roosevelt National Park one day. The kids like to get junior ranger badges whenever we're anywhere national, so they did that while I wandered around the visitor center. Men like Theodore Roosevelt aren't very popular these days, but it seems to me that might actually be most of our problem. We could use some leadership just now and boy it's been a while since politicians were leaders. Try to imagine one of our current "leaders" taking a bullet and then refusing to stop his speech just because he'd been shot. + +We also wanted to see the bison herd that lives in the park. Our best view though turned out to be this one, which was off by himself, standing right beside the road. Maybe, I thought while I was taking the picture, if you can't be a leader, at least don't be a follower. Maybe just stand off by yourself, mind your own business, eat grass, and stare at the tourists. + + + + + +We also made a stop at the cowboy museum in the nearby town of Medora, where the kids learned a little about rodeo culture. + + +
+ + + + +
+ +Mostly though we spent a lot of time just hanging out at the campsite. The landscape here is such a stark contrast to the last few months that we were all happy to just wander around under that vast, seemingly endless western sky. + + + + + + +Part of what made our campsite nice and our time in the grasslands so enjoyable was that we happened to hit a gap between storms. For five days we had virtually no wind. On the sixth day though we got a taste of what this place is like most of the time. With a 20 MPH wind blowing dust around all day, and a storm bearing down on us that promised a 40 MPH headwind for our next drive, we decided to it was time to hit the road again. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-09-28_under-the-bears-lodge.txt b/jrnl/2022-09-28_under-the-bears-lodge.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8504063 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-09-28_under-the-bears-lodge.txt @@ -0,0 +1,59 @@ +From Theodore Roosevelt National Park we headed south. Originally we'd planned to go through South Dakota and then down into Colorado, but the day before we left we noticed that if you go west around the Black Hills, instead of east like we'd planned, you pass right by a place none of us had ever been -- Devil's Tower. + +I'll confess that my chief association with Devil's Tower is *Close Encounters*. And yes, we made mashed potatoes the night we arrived. I mean, you have to right? + +
+ + + + + + +
+ +Devil's Tower is either a poor translation or a deliberately wrong translation of the local name, Bear's Lodge Butte. That name comes from the fact that it really does look like a tree that bear has gone to town on, and the constellation of the bear is always nearby, above the butte. + +I don't see a bear when I stare up in the sky, but then I don't think I'd see a dipper either (the big dipper is part of the bear) if people hadn't been pointing it out all my life. Constellations aren't my strong suit. Whatever the case I think Bear's Lodge is a better name for this place. It stops me from confusing it with [Devil's Postpile](https://www.nps.gov/depo/index.htm). + +
+ + + + +
+ +There were a couple of trails, one of which ran around the base of the butte, and then a couple others that headed up into the bluffs and "backcountry", though this monument isn't really large enough to have what you'd really call backcountry. Still, it was a nice hike up into the grasslands. It's unreal how silent it can be out there. The only thing I heard -- besides the kids -- was the wind, and the occasional scream of a hawk or eagle. + +
+ + + + +
+ + + + + +We'd planned to just stay a night, maybe two, but then we ended up staying a week because we liked it. It's always interesting to stop for a while in places that most people come, see the thing, and then leave. Every morning the campground would empty out, but then every night it was full again. When that happens you notice the people who don't leave, and those often turn out to be people in the same situation -- people who aren't seeing the sights, but are just living out here, like we do. + +We ended up running into our friend Pete, who we met way [back at the beginning of summer](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/07/4th-of-July-2022), and we met several new friends. It might sound strange to call people you only spend a few days with friends, but that's one of the wonderful things about travel -- you makes friends fast, and become fast friends. I am still friends with and regularly talk to people I traveled with in [Laos in 2006](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/laos/) (hi Debi!), and I have no doubt the same will be true for our newer friends. + + + + +One of the great things about living this way is the fluidity you can bring to plans. If we like a place we might stay longer than we plan. If we don't, we might leave early. That cuts both ways though. Sometimes you *have* to be flexible. Sometimes you *get* to be flexible. The flexible part is the constant. Fortunately in Bear's Lodge we *got* to be flexible. Though we also got a little hint of how we might need to be flexible soon. + + +The day we arrived I noticed the check engine light in our Volvo was on. I didn't think too much of it, it happens when you don't properly tighten the gas cap. Usually it goes away when you re-tighten the gas cap. I did that and forgot about it for a few days. + +But a few days later I went to get some groceries in a town down the road and the light was still on. Damn. Well then. + +I stopped for gas and opened the hood to see if anything was amiss. It took me a minute, but then, next the oil filler cap I noticed a plastic hose that had cracked. I wasn't sure what it did, but after tracing its path I figured out it was probably involved in the vacuum system somehow. I figured I could either tape it or glue it back together. + +I took a closer look when I got back to camp and the plastic hose promptly disintegrated when I touched it. So much for patching a crack. Now I needed to rig up some kind of temporary hose or we were stuck. I dug through my considerable collection of hoses and came up with some fuel line that fit at both ends, and then I telescoped that up to some extra PCV valve hose I had lying around. I anchored it all together with hose clamps and wedged it in place with another hose clamp at the bottom and some blue RTV gasket maker at the top. Then I waited 24 hours. + +The next morning it started up fine and seemed to run, so we hit road with it, figuring I'd pick up a replacement hose at the next Napa. About 3 hours into the drive, the check engine light went off, which I considered a kind of success. We made it where we were going anyway, and some times, that's enough. + + + diff --git a/jrnl/2022-10-05_broken-down-in-lamar.txt b/jrnl/2022-10-05_broken-down-in-lamar.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..117e81d --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-10-05_broken-down-in-lamar.txt @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +From Bear's Lodge Butte we continued south, bound eventually for Tucson though we had a few weeks to get there. Unfortunately there isn't much between northern Wyoming and New Mexico. Or, let me rephrase that. Taking into account that the bus doesn't climb mountains, and Colorado is ridiculously expensive and crowded, there isn't much between northern Wyoming and New Mexico. + +The first night out we spent at a random fairground in southern Wyoming. I like places like this. They're cheap stopover spots and sometimes you meet interesting people. The next day we drove onto to Brush, CO were we camped in a city park for the night. We were having flashbacks and realized that we once camped in a city park in nearby Limon that looks nearly identical to this one. + +From Brush we had originally planned to head to Trinidad to camp and then maybe take a day trip into the Rockies. As we talked about it though we realized our heart really wasn't in it. We decided to cut east, then south down into New Mexico via Texas. + +We were just outside of Lamar CO when the bus suddenly lurched and hesitated. At this point that's happened enough that I immediately knew the fuel pump was shot. Again. I pulled over and confirmed that there was air spitting into the fuel filter. I don't know if it's poor manufacturing, the amount of ethanol in gasoline or what, but I've been through three fuel pumps in five years. These days I carry a spare. I got under the bus and half and hour later we were all good. + +I've realized I can tell you where we are from under the bus with a high degree of accuracy. If every single car that passes stops to ask if everything is okay, we're in the south. If most cars stop to ask if I'm okay, we're in the midwest. If no one stops, we're in the west. + + + +When I was changing the fuel pump I noticed the wind was blowing much harder than I thought and we were headed straight into it. According to the local weather it was blowing 25 miles an hour. There wasn't much we could do about that of course, so we hit the road again. + +About ten minutes later I smelled smoke. It was the smell of burning oil. I lifted up the doghouse and sure enough there was smoke coming out the valve cover vent. I pulled over again. When I opened up the air filter I found a good bit of oil, along with an oil soaked air filter. I try not to jump to catastrophic conclusions, but at this point I know this engine pretty well, and this had happened once before, when we blew our head gasket. + +We were about 20 miles outside of Lamar CO, but the next town was a good 60 miles away and it was already 3:30 in the afternoon. I hated to do it, but we had to turn around. We found an RV park in Lamar and pulled in for the night. + + + +The next morning I got up and started troubleshooting. I like to be optimistic so I started by replacing the PCV valve, which vents the crankcase. It also costs about $2 and was the simplest possible fix. Unfortunately, the new PCV valve did nothing. At least I have a spare PCV valve now. + +I moved on to a dry compression test. The results were... not good. Not only did I have two adjacent cylinders with compression at 65 PSI, which is a pretty good sign of a blown head gasket, not a single cylinder was actually at the compression it should be. As my uncle put it when I texted him the results, "your cylinders are rattling around in there like a bunch of old coffee cans." + +The fact of the matter is this engine is worn down and needs to either be rebuilt or replaced. + +Unfortunately now is not the time, nor is this the place to do either of those things. Every mechanic I talked to was slammed busy. I couldn't find a anyone will to even look at it for two weeks. And that mechanic was in Amarillo. I told him I'd see him in two weeks and decided it was high time I took this thing apart myself. + +Unfortunately work got in the way for a week. My job is extremely flexible most of the time. However, there are about three weeks a year when I have to be in front of the computer 9-5. As luck would have it, the week after we broke down was one of those weeks. So I set aside the bus and worked. As I mentioned in my last post, some times you *get* to stay somewhere, other times you *have* to stay somewhere. + +Lamar, CO does not seem to be a top of anyone's list of destinations. The vast majority of people who pull in to the RV park where we're staying pull out again the next morning. A handful stay for the weekend. We've been here for two weeks. We'll likely be here two more. If the thought of that raises your blood pressure, long term travel is probably not for you. + + + +The secret to these little moments, whether your bus breaks down or your plane is delayed or whatever else happens is to relax. Remember that there actually is nowhere you have to be. You're just here on earth, hanging out really. Unless you live in a war zone, just suffered a natural disaster or have a loved one in some kind of distress then chances are whatever plans you had aren't that important. Let go of them and relax. That's all there is to it. Making good food helps too. + +
+ + + + + +
+ + +Once you let go of your agenda, your plans, your vision of what the world is supposed to be, you can look around and access your situation with a clear head and open mind. You might notice simple things, like the moon is huge and beautiful, the rodeo is due in town next weekend. You might realize the most important trading post on the Santa Fe trail is just down the road. You might realize there's the ruins of a Japanese internment camp just over the hill. + + + + +There are things to do everywhere, just because they aren't the things you were planning to do doesn't mean you can't have fun doing them. So we relaxed and settled in to spend some time in Lamar Colorado. diff --git a/jrnl/2022-10-19_rodeos-and-fur-trading-posts.txt b/jrnl/2022-10-19_rodeos-and-fur-trading-posts.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..45b0d89 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-10-19_rodeos-and-fur-trading-posts.txt @@ -0,0 +1,64 @@ +Three weeks flew by in Lamar, Colorado. It took a week just to figure out what we wanted to do about the engine and find someone willing to do it. Every mechanic was booked at least two weeks out, so we had plenty of time on our hands. I got caught up on work (and this site), but we also got out to see some of the local sights, like the local end-of-the-season rodeo. + +The community college in town has a rodeo team (natch) and hosts this rodeo, which pulled in competitors from all over the place -- Wyoming, South Dakota, there was even a contestant from Australia. We missed the first day, but Saturday I took the kids over to watch their first rodeo. + +We saw everything from goat tying and barrel racing to bull wrestling and riding, but I think the favorite was the bronco and bull riding. There's something about watching someone try to stay on a bucking animal that I think everyone can relate to, at least metaphorically. + + + + + + + +It had been a long time since I'd been to a rodeo and forgot how physically brutal it is -- by the end of the day my spine was hurting from just watching those guys get thrown around like rag dolls. + + + + + + +The first day we went no one managed to stay on a bull for the full 8 seconds. We had so much fun the kids insisted we go back Sunday morning to watch the final rounds of all the events, where the top three finishers from Fri and Sat squared off. This time one young man -- and only one -- managed to stay on for the full 8 seconds and went home with a trophy. + +--- + +The next weekend we headed about an hour west of Lamar to see something called Bent's Old Fort. Fort is a bit of a misnomer though, it was really a trading post, the largest on the mountain branch of the Santa Fe Trail. The only really. From the last signs of city in Missouri, to well into Mexico, Bent's Fort was the only permanent settlement. + + + + + +The fort was abandoned in 1849, primarily due to a bad cholera outbreak. The original adobe structure long ago crumbled to dust, but at one point it housed a young man who recorded all the dimensions and architectural details in a journal. That was used as the basis for rebuilding the structure for Colorado’s centennial in 1976. There were only two when we were there, but much of the year it's well-staffed with historical re-enactors as well. + +I am going to sound like a broken record here, but once again what made Bent's Old Fort such a great experience was the fact that it isn't all roped off. The kids could touch things, feel the furs, try on a hat, pick up the super-sharp two-tined fork, walk up to the stove, work the blacksmith's bellows and loads more. + + + + + +
+ + + + +
+ + + +It was quite a contrast to our other recent historical building visit, which was in Theodore Roosevelt National Park where you can walk in Teddy's original cabin and... look at all the stuff behind the plexiglas walls. That was so uninspiring I didn't even mention it. Apparently it pays to come to out of the way places if you want to interact with them. + +I particularly enjoyed the kitchen, the blacksmith's shop, and the carpenter's shop for this reason. All the tools were there, or in the case of the blacksmith, the tools to make the tools. The kitchen actually incorporated the original limestone fireplace stones into the floor, which were worn smooth from years of cooks working over them. + + + + +The spider pans and cast iron pots were mostly period correct, though I did notice a couple of Lodge brand skillets. Cast iron hasn't changed much over the years though so there isn't much difference between what they had in the 1840s and what I have in the bus right now. + +The other room I found fascinating was the council room, the room you would have been taken to when you first arrived at the fort, especially if you were from a local tribe or up from Mexico. The purpose was to sit down and present gifts to the visiting traders. This was expected, though where that expectation comes from I'm not quite sure. I assume it was just how the tribes had always done business. The purpose was to establish at least a business relationship, but often, from what I have read, friendships. + +It reminded me of some of my experiences in [India](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/india/) and [Nepal](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/nepal/), and for that matter much of the world. Commerce is not just an exchange of currency for goods, but a kind of relationship. You go in a shop in India or Nepal and you will have to bargain to establish a price, and you usually bargain over tea. If the shopkeeper thinks you might spend a lot of money you might also get some bread and chutney. + +These days it's very fashionable to hate capitalism, and I am not here to defend the current brand of capitalism, especially in the form of online commerce, but I do think it's worth remembering that where we are isn't the only place we could be. The free market was absolutely the driving force behind any frontier trade (the nearest regulatory body being thousands of miles away), and yet somehow what seems to have emerged is a system of exchange that had elements of a gift economy and elements of more traditional barter. Personally it sounds a lot nicer than what we have. I'd rather sit around a fire on bear skins talking than stare at a screen, clicking buttons until a bunch of plastic crap is delivered to my home. + +My contention would be that we will get back to Bent's Old Fort style trading sooner or later. The totally lack of humanity in today's commerce makes it deadening to our souls. That's usually a sign of something that's not long for the world. In some ways there are aspects of the old ways lingering in our current system. A lot of the hardware stores and auto parts stores I end up at have a bunch of older men sitting around on stools, talking. I've always preferred Napa auto parts for exactly this reason, you come in and pull up a stool. That's inviting. Except in smaller communities most of the stools are taken. There's a gathering of some kind in progress whenever I come in. Perhaps those men came in to buy some little thing, but I think mostly they're there to talk. I imagine those relationships may have started a little like the old council room gatherings at Bent's Old Fort, where there may have been a commercial origin to the relationship, but it didn't have to end there. + +Of course while musing on all this I ordered a bunch of engine gaskets from Rock Auto rather than going to the Napa just down the road. In my defense, Napa wanted almost double what I paid, and for inferior gaskets. But even in the old days, I'm sure some traders never made it past the council room. Not every deal is a good one. Still, after our trip out to the trading post, and thinking about these things, I started buying what I could locally here in Lamar, sitting on a stool in Napa. Sometimes I know I did pay more, but it was more enjoyable and if we want to find our way back to commerce with a bit of humanity, we might have to pay a little extra. I mean, who really wants to win a race to the bottom anyway? diff --git a/jrnl/2022-10-26_going-down-swinging.txt b/jrnl/2022-10-26_going-down-swinging.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7217cd7 --- /dev/null +++ b/jrnl/2022-10-26_going-down-swinging.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +When we broke down in Lamar I kept thinking about a book I read almost a decade ago: *[Shop Class as Soul Craft](http://www.matthewbcrawford.com/new-page-1-1-2)* by Matthew Crawford. The gist of the book is that the only way to escape a dependency on stuff is to be able to take it apart and repair it. There is empowerment in knowing how things work -- your stuff will never fail you because if it does break, you can repair it. + +Crawford calls this person who wants to fix their own stuff, The Spirited Man. Crawford writes: + +>[The Spirited Man] hates the feeling of dependence, especially when it is a direct result of his not understanding something. So he goes home and starts taking the valve covers off his engine to investigate for himself. Maybe he has no idea what he is doing, but he trusts that whatever the problem is, he ought to be able to figure it out by his own efforts. Then again, maybe not—he may never get his valve train back together again. But he intends to go down swinging. + +I kept staring at the bus's valve covers thinking about that line. Could I get my valve train back together again? There was only one way to find out. Still, I don't think I would have done it if Corrinne hadn't insisted that I could do it. The kids also seemed to think I could do it. You can do a lot more when people believe in you. So I decided I had to try, to go down swinging at least. + +After a week of thinking it over, weighing other options, and realizing no one else was going to do it for me, I dove in. The valve covers came off. + + + +Well, first I messaged my Uncle Ron and asked for advice before I dug in. He gave me some helpful pointers -- take lots of photos, label everything, keep track of where each rod came from, clean it all up with soap and water, coat it with a light coat of oil. Check. The best mechanics he told me are the ones that were patient and methodical -- take your time. Patient. Methodical. Check. + +I grabbed the four wrenches I'd need and started taking things apart. I pulled off the electrical components first. That's when I remembered the alternator problems I'd yet to deal with. Since I had to drain the radiator anyway, I decided to pull it out completely which would give me easier access to the alternator. I removed the alternator (the most difficult, stubborn bolt in the whole job) and had the local Napa bench test it. Dead. I ordered a new alternator. If you're going to go all the way, you better go all the way. + +Then I pulled off the carburetor and then the valve covers. I took a lot of photos, I cleaned and labeled everything. I pulled off the intake manifold (which was so much heavier than I expected), and then I took out the valve trains (the bus's are all on a long rod, which I took out as a single piece, so they stayed together nicely). Finally, the only thing left was the head. Ten more bolts and then I'd know. I won't lie, I was a little scared that I'd find a blown cylinder in there, but I didn't. The head came off and there was the gasket burnt through in pretty much the exact same place it blew last time. + + + +That told me something was wrong with more than the gasket. + +At Ron's suggestion I tested it with a feeler gauge, which is just a bunch of strips of metal of precise thicknesses, and discovered that the head and the block are each slightly warped in that spot. That's why we blew the gasket again, and it's why we'll blow the new one I installed eventually too. If there'd been a machine shop around I might have pulled the other head and had them both ground down, but there wasn't. Machine shops that were over 200 miles away in big cities told me it would be at least two weeks before they could get to it. + +All I wanted to do was get us back on the road and keep us there for a few more months. I *do* plan to rebuild or replace the engine next year, but now that I've done the head gasket, I feel like I want to do a rebuild myself too. But I want to do it where I can work on it without being stuck somewhere we don't really want do be. In the mean time we just need to squeeze a few thousand more miles out of it. In the end I put some copper coat on the block, the gasket, and the head to help seal it a little better and hoped for the best. + +Once I had everything I needed, I reversed everything I'd done, working from my notes, photos, and some videos, to get it all back together. It took me three days to get everything back in, though I imagine I could do it in two now that I have a better idea of how it all works. + +Then came the evening when I first fired it up. Deep down I knew it was going to work, but it was still a stressful moment. Especially with the amount of oil that had to burn off... so much oil... for a moment I thought we'd failed. It was too windy that day to go for a drive, but the next day after work I drove into town and filled up the tank before going down the highway for about 20 minutes. Amazingly, everything seemed to work. Well, almost everything. I must have bumped a wire somewhere because the headlights don't come on anymore, but if that's the only thing I screwed up... I can live with (and fix) that. + +Two days later we hit the road south. Unfortunately we had to abandon our plans to go to Tucson. There are too many hills between here and there. We didn't want to push it. If we're going to squeeze more life out this engine as it is, we're going to have to stick to the flat areas. So we pointed south, to Texas. It was a long drive to Amarillo, probably the longest, most nerve-wracking drive I've ever done in the bus. Dead into a 20-30 mile per hour headwind the whole way, with me obsessively opening the doghouse hatch, sure I would see the telltale smoke blowing out again... but I never did. We made it to Amarillo. We checked into The Big Texan RV park and took the kids to swim at the indoor pool. It was almost like a normal day on the road for us. + + + + +With more wind in the forecast the following day we got a very early start, hitting the road when the light was just enough to not need headlights anymore. We got three hours of driving in before the wind came up hard again, but by then we were only an hour from Lake Arrowhead State Park, where we planned to spend the weekend. I managed to relax a little, I only lifted the doghouse half a dozen times on the drive. There was never any smoke coming out. So far so good. A few thousand more miles and I'll start to trust myself. + +We set up camp at Lake Arrowhead State Park, which was deserted, and settled into something we haven't had in a long time: silence. There was just the wind in the trees and the sounds of the kids playing. A huge white-tailed buck wandered by. I forgot how peaceful it could be out here. It's good to be back. + + -- cgit v1.2.3-70-g09d2