Spring Maiden Moon
Ancientrails posting now from Songtan, South Korea. Pics, later words. Sorry about the inverted picture. I’ll fix it later.
Category Archives: Travel
Almost
Spring Maiden Moon
The last or next to last North American post until the end of April. My laptop rests between layers of clothes in its foam sheath in the big red suitcase. Due to arthritis I’m making my carry on, a backpack, as light as possible and the laptop adds too much weight. So, I may not post anything until Korea after this one.
Nothing says I’m getting ready to go like a medical conundrum. Over the last couple of days my blood pressure has chosen to go up and down, labile. If we were staying here, I could just go in and get it dealt with on Monday. But, no way am I staying home, especially this trip. So, we’re going to have to do something today. Not sure what yet. We’ll decide when Kate gets up.
I woke up this morning wondering when Santa Claus was going to come. That’s how excited I get before a big trip. Everything’s packed, arrangements are made. All that remains is this untoward medical insult. Sigh.
Going Away
Imbolc Maiden Moon
I’m in pre-big trip mode. My sibs, Mary and Mark, have made international travel something like grabbing the Greyhound from Chicago to New York City, but I’ve done far less, so each time I go there seems to be a lot to consider. Here are a few.
What to pack? Always, less is more, but still even the less has content. Less of what should I take? Solved one problem by having Seoah find me a place to rent a tux or a suit. Still. The plan right now is to take what can fit in the big red suitcase and one carryon. The big red suitcase we bought for the Latin America cruise. There are some packing tips that I have saved and a checklist of necessities I made several years ago and update from time to time.
How to get money? In olden days cash or traveler’s checks. Now there are options. A debit card for a cash draw each day gets a good exchange rate and eliminates the need for protecting a large stash. A credit card is useful for bigger expenses: hotel bills, fancy meals, tuxedo rentals. One site I read recommended keeping one one-hundred dollar bill somewhere apart from everything else. Think I will.
(the wedding will be in Gwangju, near the southern tip of Korea.)
Jet lag. Easier going east to west than the reverse, but still a factor. Melanin. Change sleep patterns in advance. Get sunlight as soon as possible in Korea. Helps the inner clock reset.
Illness, even death. Aging adds another frisson to international travel. Have to get up and walk during the long flight to avoid deep vein thrombosis, not to mention oiling up the creaky joints both of us have. A supply of medications. Travel insurance. In the past I would avoid this, but repatriation of a corpse is expensive and, well, death happens.
Emergency preparedness for home. We live in a fire-prone habitat, so it’s not impossible that our home could burn down while we’re gone. Unlikely, yes, but not impossible. So, we need to gather the documents necessary for modern life, including photos of all of our stuff. Once they’re in one portable file holder we’ll ask Holly and Eduardo to keep them for us.
The car. I know about the park and ride services in the Twin Cities, but not here yet. We have, once again, positioned ourselves in the furthest point away from the airport while still nominally in the broad Denver metro. Far cheaper to park near the airport, but those sites have to be found.
And of course, as Donald Rumsfeld famously said, there is, too, the unknown unknown.
Today
Imbolc Valentine Moon
Tai chi finished up today. Just in time, I think I got it. Still plan to use the form I’ve learned as a mid-morning break from work. Gotta get it into my routine though. Not yet.
Vega continues to get better, move around more. She’s not drugged up and that helps a lot, but she’s also determined to get things back to normal. Her spirits are wonderful, tail thumping, her signature move.
Kate and I have sleep deprivation from the last week plus. Long nap this afternoon, more sleep tomorrow, too, I imagine.
Beginning to get an Asia focus, thinking about Korea, Singapore. Mary has found a place for us to stay at the Raffle’s Town Club. This is an offshoot of the larger, historic Raffles Hotel in downtown. The Town Club is close to her home.
Live in the Whole Ocean
Yule New (Stock Show) Moon
“Kay Cottee AO is an Australian sailor, who was the first woman to perform a single-handed, non-stop and unassisted circumnavigation of the world. She performed this feat in 1988 in her 37 feet yacht Blackmores First Lady, taking 189 days.” Wikipedia
When Jessica Watson, in 2009, set sail for her southern hemisphere circumnavigation of the world, she was 16. I don’t recall how, but I found her website on which she posted as she sailed alone in her boat, True Spirit. There was something about her, something fresh and brave, youth, yes, but something more, perhaps it was true spirit.
Since then, I subscribed to her facebook page so I can keep very loose tabs on her as she grows older. Just curious about how true spirit manages adulthood. Wonderfully, as it turns out. She’s inspirational to Australian girls, an advocate for sailing and a modest celebrity down under.
She posted this quote from her idol, Kay Cottee. She means us to take it, I think, as literally intended, a comment on the nature of voyages alone. It is, however, too, a way of understanding the ancientrail we call life.
Where They Know My Name
Mabon Moon of the First Snow
Lonnie and Stefan came to Shadow Mountain yesterday. We had a nice visit, showed them around the homestead and had a deli lunch Kate gathered at King Sooper. In correspondence with Stefan later I gave a voice to a recent recognition about friends:
“I’ve been thinking about making new friends out here. At first, it was a high level need. I jumped into a sheepshead group, tried to connect with the Sierra Club and a group called Friends of the Mt. Evans Wilderness. Then I realized that the friends I made in Minnesota like you and Lonnie have a depth, a history that I will never replicate here. Not enough time.
So, a high priority for me is to maintain face-to-face contact with as many of you as I can. The Woolly retreat is one way and I hope to make it back for the Nicollet Island Inn dinner in December. That way, combined with trips like yours and Lonnie’s, I can stay in relationship with those I love in Minnesota.
I’ll make new friends here, too, eventually, but these will be third phase friends. They can’t share the second phase time I spent with all of you in Minnesota.”
This might sound dismal. But it simply recognizes the truth of the friendships I found in political work with the Sierra Club, among the docent corps at the MIA and in the Woolly Mammoths. These are not to be left behind, but nurtured still. The times of being with many of these friends was episodic even while in Minnesota. So the duration between face-to-face moments may increase, but it also may not.
Martian Meteorites, Dinosaur Skeletons and Peyote
Lughnasa Elk Rut Moon
The Denver Gem and Mineral Show. “Largest in the nation.” I believe it. Vendor upon vendor occupying all the audience circulation area around the seating in the Denver Coliseum (where the hot dogs and beer get sold. And big on its own.) The coliseum floor and the circulation area around it, plus tents in the rear parking lot. We ran low on energy before we could get outside.
Spoke with three vendors, each unique. One wore a t-shirt that said Save Our Sacrament. He’s part of a church in Arizona that considers peyote its sacramental substance. His church welcomes all races, so they’re not covered like the native americans though he claims using peyote as a sacrament is legal in five states (actually 6 according to the churches website): Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, Nevada and, drumroll please, Minnesota.
Second guy was a Colorado rockhound who clearly loves rocks. He told us about geodes with water inside (think how old that water is), how to tell jade from other rocks that look similar (put your hands on it. if it’s heavier and cooler than its neighbors, probably jade) and showed us his personal pendant, a space owl, a piece of agate (I think.).
Meteorites were the domain of the third guy. eegooblago meteorites. I asked him what an ungrouped meteorite was since a row of small pieces were labeled that way. He started slow, but got excited as he moved into his explanation. It involves an organization that is the only official meteorite naming authority. They have lists of meteorites by type, a sort of “canonical taxonomy”, great phrase. If, after a lot of checking a chunk doesn’t fall with the canonical taxonomy, then it’s ungrouped.
He went on to show us the Martian meteorite, the only one certified and named by the authority. (see picture) Not cheap. But, to own a piece of Mars? Wow.
I learned from him that deserts are great places to find meteorites and the Maghreb is one of the best. “Morocco,” he said, “has a very sophisticated meteorite market. The Maghreb itself not so much.” He and his partner do occasionally hunt on their own, but mostly they go to rooms in which many collected rocks have been gathered.
In the Maghreb they rely on the folks who travel the desert regularly. They pick up various rocks and bring them back to a collecting spot. Then, using a handheld device that can “read” elements, he and his partner decide which ones to buy.
There were things I wanted to buy. The Dinosaur Brokers had a very nice fossilized skeleton of a small meat eating dinosaur for only $4,200. Another outfit had a huge Woolly Mammoth tusk, gorgeous. $14,000 plus but they were willing to wheel and deal. Their words. Fossilized fish, Woolly Mammoth teeth and vertebrae. Dinosaur tracks. Most well out of my price range. Didn’t buy anything though Kate got a number of things for grandchildren gifts, including some coprolite, fossilized poop. For Gabe, of course.
Went West as an Old Man
Lughnasa Elk Rut Moon
Drove home Monday night, got in around 10 pm. Pretty whacked out from the drive and whatever is bugging my left elbow. The elbow made sleeping difficult to impossible. No sense paying for a bed I couldn’t sleep in.
On previous driving trips turning north marked the turn toward home. This time it was heading west. A different feeling. Turning north meant lakes, pine trees, wolves, a border with Canada, 40+ years of memories, cooler weather. Heading west conjures up wagon trains, First Nations people, the plains, aridity, mountains, elk, mule deer, moose, mountain lions and black bears. And less than a year’s worth of memories.
When I hit the Denver metro, an L.E.D. highway sign reminded truck drivers that they had to have chains with them from now until May 16th. The folks installing the generator wanted to get it done in early October because it’s possible to have thick snow cover soon after that.
Altitude makes a big difference. The aspen have begun to turn up here on Shadow, Black and Conifer mountains. The effect is subtle, but beautiful. Various stands of aspen, small compared to the lodgepole and ponderosa and Colorado blue spruce that dominate the mountains above 8,000 feet, turn gold, accenting the evergreens. It’s a sort of arboreal mimicking of the gold rush as the color of the precious metal shows up, fleetingly, on mountain sides.
While I was gone, Jon finished five more bookshelves and put doors on the lower unit I’ll use for coffee and tea among other things. That means today I’ll start installing shelving and books. This should be enough to get all the remaining books onto shelves and off the floor. Organizing them will be a task of the fall.
Kate goes in for thumb surgery on Friday. That means three months or so of one-handedness, a long time for a seamstress/quilter/cook. The gas stove gets hooked up tomorrow and I’ll head to the grocery store for the first time in quite a while on Saturday. I’ll be at home on the range. Looking forward to it. She’s lost a lot of weight so one of my tasks will be to help her gain weight. An ironic task if there ever was one.
In further organ recital news I have yet another visit to an audiologist tomorrow. We’ll see what the new technology can do for the deteriorating hearing in my right ear. Kate’s hopeful they can do something for my left (deaf) ear, but I’m doubtful.
Straight Across the Middle
Lughnasa Labor Day Moon
Just realized this is two months post surgery. A good sign, I imagine. Forgetting. Not dwelling on what was, but living. Yes, there’s that super sensitive PSA next week, but I can’t change what it will be. Right now my gut tells me it will be fine. That’s enough for now.
Tomorrow morning the little gray Nissan Sentra will shift drivers from Kate to me. She’s on her way home right now from Tetonia, Idaho. The reunion for the Alexandria High School class of 1965 starts on Friday and it will take two days to get there. I-70 runs from Denver through Kansas, then Missouri and Illinois. It hits Indiana at Terre Haute, home of Larry Bird and the Federal Penitentiary where Timothy McVeigh was executed and where Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will die, too. After that the memories just keep on coming.
The drive, a long one at 17 hours, is the same duration as a drive from London to Budapest. The hours on the road are a time for contemplation and listening to audio books. Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana do have a subtle beauty, but it is scenery I’ve seen many times before.
These are the years of memory and so many in that little town. So many.
They Say It’s Her Birthday
Lughnasa Labor Day Moon
Kate leaves tomorrow for Driggs, Idaho. Her sister, BJ, and her long time s.o., Schecky, have bought a house outside Driggs. BJ’s living there this summer while she plays violin at the Grand Tetons Classical Music Festival in Jackson Hole, a short drive away in Wyoming. She’s played this festival for several years. Schecky and BJ currently live in the Beacon Hotel on Broadway in NYC, not far from Juilliard and Lincoln Center where they met. They’ve lived in the Beacon their entire professional lives. Rent control.
Driggs, then, will be quite a downshift in terms of people and energy. Schecky is originally from the west and they’ve both done extensive backpacking. He plays the cello and has a solo career in Europe and Japan. In the U.S. he plays for the New York City Ballet and the New York Symphony.
BJ turns 60 on the 8th, so this is a birthday trip, but a quick one, since I’m leaving Wednesday for Indiana. With the dogs it’s difficult for Kate and me to travel together on these shorter journeys. Since we bought the Rav4, we’ve only had one car, so we rent from Enterprise and leave the Rav4 for whoever’s at home.
Kate’s taking her featherweight sewing machine and will help BJ with window treatments. She made her chili and cornbread for me yesterday, as well as a peach pie from Colorado Palisade peaches which are now in season.