Lughnasa Recovery Moon
August So Far
Category Archives: Travel
The Lure of Yesterday
Summer Recovery Moon
NYT had a video and an article, 36 hours in Siem Reap. This type of article is a regular feature and one that gives a wonderful, quick entré to a particular locale. My visit in 2004 is now 11 years ago and the Siem Reap of this video has many upscale tourist options that didn’t exist when I was there. The Siem Reap of 2004 was a sleepy village though studded with many smaller hotels and one big one, the Hotel D’Angkor. Hostels were as evident as tourist hotels. But the building boom had already begun and the Siem Reap of 2015 had its roots in 2004.
As such articles do, it featured a wide array of things to do from shadow puppetry performed in front of a fire and screen to dining in upscale restaurants, tours on tuk-tuks and shops featuring Cambodian village crafts. I suppose the article does its job as a teaser, a what if I were there, even briefly fantasy, but it glossed over, very lightly, the primary reason Siem Reap has become an international destination. Quite a feat, really, in a country ravaged by years of the Khmer Rouge and corrupt politicians.
Angkor. Angkor is a site containing over 70 temples, each built by a different ruler of the Khmer, and extending over many square miles. It is much more than Angkor wat, the supposedly eponymous temple. In reality Angkor wat just means Angkor temple. That direct translation does not differentiate the best preserved and fascinating temple closest to Siem Reap from all the others. Ta Prohm. Bayon. Banteay Serai. And many, many others.
Angkor is a built space that has carried the Hindu culture of the Khmer deva-rajas, god-kings, who ruled between 802 a.d. and 1351 a.d., into our time and will carry it far into the future. The intricate bas reliefs, the monumental four-faced sculptures with the classical Bayon smile, the elephants carved in stone, the florid decor of Banteay Serai require time and reading to appreciate. Ta Prohm, an often photographed temple, has been left as the forest has reclaimed it, with kapok trees growing through doorways and over roof tops.
Outside many of the temples small bands of Cambodian musicians play traditional music. My first reaction was oh how wonderful, authentic music played among the temples of this ancient culture. Then I began to look closely at the band. Most were missing a foot or an arm or a leg or carried other scars from the many landmines that continue to plague the Cambodian people.
One of my most memorable travel evenings was spent on the outer stone wall of Bayon, watching the living temple across the way as monks clad in saffron and maroon hit gongs, lit incense Bayon and prayed along with passers by who came to worship. The sun set and the shadows changed the expressions of the four-faced sculptures said to be the likeness of Jayavarman VII, the last deva-raja, who converted to Buddhism. The monkeys howled, insects chirped and the deep bass of the temple gong reverberated. Incense scented the air.
Week II Post-Surgery
Summer Recovery Moon
Week II post surgery. My energy improves daily though I’m not back to full stamina. The surgical stigmata, six wounds where the robot’s arms pierced my skin, are healing nicely. It no longer hurts to lie down on them. An unpleasant, but anticipated side effect of the surgery, temporary incontinence, seems to be clearing up much more rapidly than I’d imagined it would. And, most importantly, I’m presumptively cancer free, the only question being possible microscopic metastases. I test for that in early September.
The tomorrow wall has crumbled. I can now see into the future again. Yesterday I made Amtrak reservations for my 50th high school reunion in September. The overnight California Zephyr runs from Denver to Chicago and then a short ride on the Cardinal to Lafayette, Indiana where I’ll pick up a rental car and drive the rest of the way. I do it this way because the Cardinal gets into Indianapolis after midnight and this allows me a good night’s sleep, plus I can gradually re-enter Hoosier space driving familiar highways back to Alexandria.
Again this time, as I did for the 45th, I plan to stay at Camp Chesterfield, a Christian Spiritualist center. It’s a quirky, old, interesting place. And, it’s cheap.
The loft is ready for its second round of construction, more shelves, then more shelving. I’ve abandoned my attempt to get the books properly organized as I shelve them because I need to clear space for more shelves. I can sort and organize as much as I want come fall.
My psyche has not caught up to my body’s healing pace. Though the tomorrow wall has fallen, I still find my days somewhat chaotic, not sure what to do, then what to do next. We’ve had a continuing drip, drip, drip of other matters: cracked tooth, dying boiler, Kate’s very painful back that contribute. All those seem to be moving toward resolution. I’ve even found a plumber for the generator install, a niggling thing still hanging on.
I’ll find my psyche back to its usual eagerness over the next week or two. I look forward to it.
Again, gratitude to all of you who sent notes over the cancer season. It matters.
For Mary
Beltane Closing Moon
Golden
Beltane Closing Moon
To the Colorado Geology Museum on the Colorado School of Mines’ campus. Introducing Mary to the geological and mining heritage of our new home. Struck up a conversation with the clerk in the gift shop, always a School of Mines’ student. She was a geological engineer and headed for work in a petroleum or mining related job.
“Both are cyclical,” she said, in response to my question, “But both are at the bottom of their cycles right now.” She has no job and her geological engineer spouse does. “But,” she said a tad ruefully (they both graduated last month), “teaching middle school science.” In St. Louis.
I’ve not yet raised the question about environmental effects with any of these students , still feeling my way into the local culture. But, I intend to.
After the Geology Museum we went into downtown Golden. It has this odd theme: Denver stole the title of capital from us and we’ve been working ever since to bring you things worth seeing. Snarky, a self-put down and, to me, unpleasant.
We had some yogurt. Kate and Mary went to the quilt museum which apparently had a wonderful exhibit while I wandered the main street poking my head into shops. None of them really grabbed. The art galleries were full of yesterday’s ideas and tomorrow’s kitsch. The gift shops had the usual assortment of inexpensive gemstones, bottle cap openers with your name on the handle, hats and t-shirts and sweatshirts with Golden somewhere written on them. I did see one piece I liked. A pillow with a hand sewn Colorado flag featured an elk in the lotus position. Sounds cheesy, but the execution was good.
Eventually I sat down in the shade. Just another 68 year old guy waiting for his wife to come to the quilt shop.
Laissez bon temps rouler
Spring Mountain Spring Moon
Yesterday I discovered a restaurant in Littleton, Nono’s. It has the most authentic New Orlean’s cuisine I’ve tasted outside of New Orleans and Savannah.
Red beans and rice has been a dish I’ve loved since first encountering it in 1978.
After the red beans and rice I ordered two beignets, the signature dish of Cafe du Monde. Expectations low the smell of the hot, obviously just cooked dough made me adjust. They were wonderful. I did not order the cafe au lait made with chicory coffee, but I will the next time. The only thing missing was the water glass with beads of moisture on the outside. And the glass walls of Cafe du Monde.
Lucky We Live Hawai’i
Spring Mountain Spring Moon
Several years ago Kate and I took advantage of an after conference package in Hawai’i. The conference itself was on Maui, Kaanapali Beach, but the package allowed a three day extension at the Mauna Kea Resort on the Big Island, Hawai’i.
The Mauna Kea is unusual for several reasons. First, its location was a gift to Laurance Rockefeller for taking the risk, in 1965, of starting the resort business on the Big Island. He chose a site with a beautiful crescent beach of white sand. Second, Rockefeller had it designed by famous modernist architects from Chicago, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.
Rockefeller went on an art collecting trip along the Pacific Rim and brought back works he instructed the architects to use as the center pieces of their overall design. The result is a mixture of Hawai’ian island romance with clean simple lines and materials used honestly. It is a beautiful place, one of my favorites.
Interestingly, very close to the Mauna Kea is a heiau, a Hawai’ian temple built by the powerful King Kamehameha, and named Pu`ukohola. Pu’ukohola is dedicated to the war god Ku. It is a site where human sacrifices were made and was built when Kamehameha wanted to unify the islands under one monarch.
Just a bit on down the road is a small restaurant where Kate and I ate a modest lunch. I had a local favorite, spam fried rice, which was delicious. We talked with our waiter who said, about living in Hawai’i, “Lucky we live Hawai’i.” I heard it other times, but that afternoon, after breakfast overlooking the white sand beach, a late morning visit to the temple of Ku, the war god, and a tasty basic lunch it seemed very true.
When I hear the islands call, and I do from time to time, what always comes to mind is “Lucky we live Hawai’i.”
Getting There
Spring Mountain Spring Moon
To get to the seder we left Conifer at about 3:30 and drove into Denver, ignoring I-70 traffic, “that I-70 mess” as our mortgage banker called, we stayed on Hwy 285 to Monaco and drove up through the city from south to north. This has the additional advantage–to my sensibilities–of seeing the city as it changes from southern suburbs to its northern most neighborhoods, passing on the way through an area with streets named Harvard, Yale, Bates, Vassar, then Wesley and Iliff. This last is also the name of a Methodist seminary located on the campus of Denver University.
Going further north Monaco bisects the Cherry Hill neighborhood, a 1% enclave. Further on housing changes from low rise apartment complexes and condominiums to ranch style, one story smaller homes, but with big yards. Then Monaco becomes a four-lane boulevard with a park-like central strip and brick homes, some resembling small castles, others futuristic. Here the flowers bloom. Finally, we get to Martin Luther King, which extends to the eastern edge of Denver through the Stapleton new urbanism development. But we’ll turn on Pontiac, well before that.
On Pontiac we enter a predominantly African-American neighborhood, a couple of blocks west of Quebec, formerly a boundary street for the old Stapleton Airport and along which hotels were built to accommodate air travelers. Behind the hotels grew up a community filled with one story homes with little square feet and often desperate looking lawns, sometimes littered. It includes, too, the same homes with neatly groomed topiary, lush grass and, on Jon and Jen’s block, some older two-story homes, residue of an era before the airport was built, probably of an era before Denver reached this far toward Kansas and Nebraska.
Jon and Jen’s home was, according to house lore, originally a residence for a local farmer. Could be. They’ve done a lot of rehabilitation, adding on a new kitchen and dining area, plus a bedroom for themselves above. Jon’s done the bulk of the finishing work including tiling and plumbing two bathrooms. Outside Jon has several garden beds, fruit trees, a grape arbor, a tree house and a work shed where he produces hand-built skis.
Tourists
Spring Mountain Spring Moon
Gabe and I had an adventure yesterday. We went to the Agro Mine Tour, ate lunch at Beau Jo’s Pizza in Idaho Springs and finished off the day with a soporific soak at the Indian Hot Springs, also in Idaho Springs.
The mine tour itself is a cheesy, tourist-trappy thing with a clunky video, corny presentations and a self-guided tour after that. Still, the Double Eagle Mine, Gage is at its face (end) in this photo is remarkable in that it was dug by hand, by two men over the course of one year. About three hundred feet long, maybe five and a half feet tall and about 4 feet or so in width, it’s a monument to persistence, if nothing else.
The rest of the tour focuses not on a mine, but on the Agro mill, which in its prime, produced $100,000,000 worth of gold when gold was at $18-35 an ounce. It was fed by the Agro tunnel, a 4.5 mile tunnel dug through solid rock to remove waste water from various mines and to create a small railroad to deliver ore buckets to the Agro mill.
The Agro mill closed in 1943 when, on the last blast of the day, four unlucky miners 
dynamited a wall holding back water filling up an abandoned silver mine. The resulting flood geysered water from the tunnel for 9 hours. In addition to killing the miners the flood weakened walls and caused cave-ins along the tunnels length making the railroad tracks no longer usable.
The mill itself went down in stairstep like levels since most of the work proceeded through the aid of gravity. The Agro tunnel fed ore in from the top of the mill and the processing went in stages toward the bottom. A structure made of wood it looked like an unsafe place to have worked.
Idaho Springs is about 30 minutes outside of Denver to the west and well into the mountains. The Colorado Mineral Belt, which begins in the San Juan Mountains in the far southern part of the state, makes an arc up through Leadville and finds its terminus just a bit further north from Idaho Springs. Along this arc lie most of the mines in Colorado, many of them producing, like the mines the Agro Mill serviced gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc. Some have molybdenum and other metals. There’s a big, working molybdenum mine outside of Leadville.
Idaho Springs is a tourist town, primarily, located on either side of a long main street paralleling I-70. It has some residential housing, but not much. Service stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants, curio shops, a knife shop, a hardware store which sells gold panning supplies, that sort of thing.
And the Indian Hot Springs. The facilities, both the main building and the adjoining motel, saw their better days many years ago. The springs, though, deliver. Gabe and I swam in a large pool of water, 100 degrees +. There are, too, hot springs caves, a men’s and a women’s cave where clothing is optional. Kids under 16 are not allowed in the caves.
After all that, it was back to Denver and a quick exit so Grandpop could beat the rush hour traffic on the way home.
Why I Still Don’t Own Any Nihau Jewelry
Imbolc Settling Moon II
From this day a while ago:
Why I Still Don’t Own Any Nihau Jewelry
WRITTEN BY: CHARLES – FEB• 17•08
Clouds with sun. Kauai weather has more fluctuation than Maui’s. I like it. Rain, sun and volcanic soil are a potent combination for plant growth. The evidence is everywhere.
Kate and I noticed an egret in a profuse plant. He stood on a branch, launched his sinuous neck down, into the foliage, as if he were hunting in a pond. He came up with a white wriggly something caught in between two orange halves of his beak.
I had ahi sashimi last night, the third or fourth time I’ve had this treat. The Garden Salad had jicama and grapefruit with peanuts. Tasty. And plenty. Yet, we went ahead and ordered pad thai, which we did not need. It came wrapped in a flattened, cooked egg. Most of it came home to our in-room refrigerator.
The Big Save market in Port Allen was interesting. Grocery stores always reveal the culture as clearly as any other institution. Here you could find Korean and Japanese foodstuffs, plenty of fresh produce, lots of beach paraphernalia and an interesting collection of fresh fruits: papaya, ron baton lychee nuts and apple bananas.
I had forgotten how curvy the road up to Waimea Canyon is. Fun to drive. The view coming back down lays out the Pacific for miles and the small communities that about it.
We passed the Waimea Plantation Cottages on our way yesterday. We stayed there in 1998. The cottages are old plantation homes made by sugar cane workers and have a unique single board construction. Kate said she’d go back there if they added air conditioning.
At the Waimea General Store I admired the Nihau jewelry. Lei’s, necklaces and earrings made from tiny, tiny shells and matched for color. I remembered wanting some of this, but I forgot why I hadn’t bought any the last time we were here. A nice lei, the lady told me, was 19.95. I thought, great. I’ll buy that one, then. She turned it over and the price was $1,995.00! Oh, yeah, now I remember.
We’re headed for a day exploring in a different direction from yesterday.
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