Category Archives: Travel

Family, Feelings, Friends, Poetry, Third Phase, Travel

Three Things

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Beltane                                                                         Emergence Moon

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.                                  Mary Oliver, Blackwater Woods

This life here. This land. These friends. The memories. All mortal. And I love them all. For forty years I have held this life, in its glad moments and its sad ones, against my bones, knowing I did depend on it. For twenty years I have held this land and the life here with Kate against my bones knowing I depended on both of them. For twenty-five plus years I have held the Woollies and Kate against my bones knowing my life depended on them. The dogs, too. Later, the docents, friends from the Sierra Club and elsewhere. All against my bones.

Now, and here is the gray cloud lying close to my mental ground, the ravens and the crows flying there, the catafalque. The weight. The heaviness. The mudstuck boots. Now, the time has come to let them go. All but Kate and the dogs.

No, of course there will be times. Times back here. Times together. Moments driving down the same streets, sitting in the same homes. But then as a visitor, a man from far away. No longer here. But there.

Mary says when the time comes, let them go. Yes. I’m doing that. She didn’t say anything about being glad. And I’m not. I’m sad in the deepest reaches of my bones. But, it is time, and I will let them all go.

 

Aging, Colorado, Retirement, Third Phase, Travel

Journey Before Destination

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Beltane                                                                        Emergence Moon

A book I’m reading has these phrases: life before death, journey before destination. An adequate life philosophy and not far from the one I try to represent here at ancientrails. Which, in fact, emphasizes the journey. As does the Malay saying which I got from my sister, “Welcome to the journey.”

Kate and I now have a destination that reaches out from the future and pulls us toward it, yet we must go on the journey first. That journey involves preparation, execution, leave-taking and much more before the destination. I like the emphasis on the journey. Slow travel makes so much sense to me: car, train, ship. Slow by twenty-first century standards.

When the journey is as important as the destination, then a trip becomes whole. It is not a disjointed transportation from one locale to another with no appreciation of the changes along the way. Of course, slow travel is just that, slow, and often times cannot accomplish what our life demands. But, more often than not we can go slower than we think.

I want getting ready to move to Colorado to be as pleasurable as we imagine our life there will be. Journey before destination.  And always, life before death.

Colorado, Feelings, Travel

Still No Wind

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Beltane                                                                 Emergence

In spite of what I said yesterday I’m still in the doldrums. Still feeling out of touch with now, wishing for some magic transport portal that would accomplish this move in a flash. The resistance I have is not about the decision, that makes sense, feels good. Moving. And prior to moving, culling, sorting, packing, staging, selling, buying. I’ve done it, more times than I care to count, but it’s been 20 years and that’s a long, long time. Longer than I’ve lived anywhere. All that time to accumulate. Stuff.

And the resistance is, as I said the other day, premonitory. What can I do today? Gather all the garden tools, put them on a tarp and divide them into keep and donate. After that’s done, I can plant the onions and leeks. Then, we can go into the garage. Same discipline. Sort. Divide into keep and donate. That’s what I can do now. I can’t hunt for land or property. I know that. So we can do the incremental things that will make it possible for us to move forward.

Imagine those pioneers faced with a homestead full of things and a Conestoga wagon to put them in. That must have been a challenge. Or, all those nomadic peoples who pick up and move every season. Packing light’s a necessity. So, it can be done. I know it.

Art and Culture, Travel

The Monthly

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Beltane                                                                    Emergence Moon

A sickle Emergence Moon has risen in the west, just behind a tall poplar. Above it is Jupiter. A month plus a little ago, March 27th, I was on the road out of Holbrook, Arizona at 4 am. The mesa country was cold and the night was deep. Up in the sky hung a crescent of the Hare Moon and in its cusp was Venus.

(Spring Scattering Stars, Edwin Blashfield,1927)

Crescent moons are among the signal aesthetic gifts of the universe, especially when combined with a bright planet, especially Venus or Jupiter. The heart that cannot be moved by a black sky, a silver sliver of moon and cradled within its arms a fellow traveler, is a heart that has lost its wonder. I recall thinking as I drove on I-40 that morning last March that much of the beauty of southwest Native art came from clear views just like the one I was seeing.

It’s not hard to imagine those early ancestors of ours, on their trek out of Africa, looking up in wonder at the very same sight.

Sport, Travel

Sombra a Sol

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Beltane                                                                      Emergence Moon

Le Plaza del Toros. When I sat down in the red and blue wooden seats, the heat from the sun was profound even though I had purchased a sombra seat. The tickets were sold sombra a sol. Beer vendors placed blue and gold buckets filled with ice and Dos Equis up the steep aisles of the Mexico City bull ring, more buckets on aisles closer to the ring, fewer on the ones further up. Another vendor had a long pole from which hung straw hats, mine sits now atop a bookcase over texts devoted to modernism and the enlightenment.

Supposing that the arena would be full early, I had come about an hour ahead of the march of the toreadors, but I was wrong. My seats, the ones in blue near the ring itself and on the sombra side, didn’t fill up until about 10 minutes before the music started.

4:30 pm “I have seen one kill. Took photos, felt my stomach turn and felt a fascination, too.”

“1st a few (two) go at el toro with capes, then the picadors, mounted on padded horses, pierce the bull’s shoulders. Blood streams. The matador does a few passes, then another, much thrusting of hips.”

“A fight between toreadors. The crowd yells at the hero of only a moment ago. Feedback is direct, intimate, abusive. Banderilleros put in their colored lances, banderillas, again into the bull’s massive shoulder muscles. Death has a festive, colorful air.”

“Ole’s reward skill; whistles express displeasure.”

4:40 pm. “There is music for the entrance of the bulls. The crowd first cheers the bull (and in the case of a poor toreador may choose to continue cheering the bull over the matador.), then the picador’s go in and do their ugly task. They look comic, almost pathetic. All the while jets fly overhead.”

“I don’t understand the exchange of the first sword for the second. Matador got gored! Got up. Going back. The crowd loves it. His leg bloody he seems more determined now. Now he seems braver, more confident. (just macho?)”

“Down on his knees, working closer, in the spot where he was gored. Now, the moment of truth. The bull won’t come. He charges the bull, sinks the sword in the first time. Crowd cheers. He walks, starts in front of the bull as it goes down and looks pleadingly at the crowd, then gets up. A last sword has a small horizontal piece near the tip, with it the matador flicks out the the sword he plunged in, then strikes with the odd sword. (a descabello which kills by a thrust through the spinal column rather than to the heart as with the rapier.)”

“Toro has personal attributes. He wants this, does this. My seat partner talks about toro as a person.”

(this is material I wrote back in 1993.)

 

 

 

 

 

Colorado, Family, Feelings, Friends, Third Phase, Travel, Woolly Mammoths

The Circus Is Leaving Town

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Beltane                                                            Emergence Moon

A slow moving mountain. Or, a slow move to the mountains. Sitting here contemplating my study, its hundreds of books and file folders, computer equipment, desks, chairs. I feel overwhelmed at the thought of pruning, organizing, decluttering for selling the house and actually moving. That’s one reason we’re giving ourselves two years or so to move.

Two years might encompass the remaining lifespan of Vega and Rigel. We really don’t know since they’re hybrids, but we suspect 7-8 years and 2016 is 7 years plus. That’s a factor though not a determining one. Hell, who knows, it could encompass our lifespan, too, though I don’t imagine it will.

Talk about liminal space. Between now and then we are no longer fully here and definitely not fully there. I imagine a huge circus tent with many ropes and stakes and poles. Each stake must be pulled.  Each rope removed. The poles must be taken down and the canvas rolled up. The canvas is our life in Minnesota and its attendant material possessions.

The stakes are friends, the MIA and the Walker, the Sierra Club Northstar Chapter, the background relationships developed over years of work in the church and in politics and in neighborhoods. The ropes are the emotional ties that bind us to places, to our years lived here, to our sense of ourselves as Minnesotans. The poles are those key relationships like the Woolly Mammoths, Anne, the docents, the folks Kate and I have worked with in multiple capacities: our vet, our doctors, our financial consultants.

All this must, in some way, be stored and the canvas packed. All these things will change once we reach our new destination. Our life will no longer be a Minnesota based life, but a Colorado based one. The friends will remain, of course, as will all the institutions and professionals, the places and their attached memories, but we will have stretched the ease and physical distance with many beyond the breaking point. It will not, of course, be possible to know which ones will suffer the most until time has passed. But all will suffer some, most will suffer a lot.

Feeling overwhelmed, of course, comes from imagining that the tent and its supports must be packed and moved for a train leaving tomorrow. That’s not the case. We have time and will use it well. It’s just that, well, right now, it’s a lot.

 

Travel, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Wet

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Spring                                                                       Emergent Moon

Pulled into the garage at 8 p.m. last night.  We were tired, but had had a good trip, our first together driving to Colorado in a very long time. It was rainy during much of the drive though our time in Denver was largely dry.

Minnesota is pushing toward our wettest April on record. Go team rain. Fall today. Many of our spring ephemerals are well out of the ground but only the crystata Iris are blooming so far. We need the warmth to open up leaves and flowers. Sun. We’re ready for the growing season.

My unusually heavy travel time will take on another chapter the third weekend in May with the 26th? annual retreat of the Woolly Mammoths.  This year we’re at Frontenac’s Villa Maria retreat center.

During this retreat, the theme, What is your walk, should bring up conversation about the next few years for each of us. We’ve supported each other for more than a quarter century. That’s really something.

Family, Feelings, Travel, Weather +Climate

Winter Storm Warning. 6-8 Inches of Snow. Oh, joy.

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Spring                                                                 Bee Hiving Moon

A cool morning in Wall, South Dakota. 37 and wet. Last day on the road for this trip. About 8 hours to Andover. Last posting for this trip. Just looked out the window. The Rav4 is covered in, of all things, snow! Winter just will not let go this year.

Traveling puts us in a liminal zone, neither at home or settled elsewhere. Liminality has long interested me. The liminal zone between ocean and land, lake and shore is often where the most abundant life thrives. The liminal zone between forest and meadow provides refuge for predator and prey alike. The ‘burbs are a liminal zone between rural and urban.

We’re most familiar of course with the liminal zones of dawn and twilight, but fall and spring are actually long liminal zones between the cold fallow time and the warmer growing season. Those strange interludes between sleeping and waking are, too, liminal.  The Celts believed the liminal times of day and night were the most potent for magical working.

Liminality puts us between familiar places, neither wet nor dry, city nor country, day nor night. In these spots we have the most opportunity to discern the new in the old, the possible in the routine. It’s not surprising then that Kate and I will approach the question of where we will live our third phase life from a different slant while on the road.

From this vantage, neither Minnesotaheim nor Mountainheim, we investigate the terrains of our heart, let the rational mind float, or stay tethered perhaps in Andover. The heart says family. It also says friends. It says have people close to us when vulnerable, which argues for both Minnesota and Colorado. It says memories; it says grandchildren. The heart pulls and pushes. We’ll mull our decision over the growing season, see how it flourishes or wanes, see what the heart says at home. Listen to friends and grandkids. And each other. Those dogs, too.

Family, Third Phase, Travel

Driving

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Spring                                                                 New (Emergent) Moon

Leaving for home in an hour or so, traveling north on Hwy. 25 into Wyoming, beyond Cheyenne to Wheatland. Hopefully we’ll be able to see staghounds at the Wavin’K Ranch there. Wyoming is the 10th largest state and the U.S. and the least populated. Least dense in the lower 48, only Alaska has fewer people per square mile. Then across South Dakota toward Minnesota.

Last night Jon and Jen and I went to Foga de Chao while grandma got her last kiddie fix of the trip. It sounded like a good idea, but by the end of the evening all three of us felt this was an experience to have once every few years. Even so, I like to have adult time with them on each visit. It gives us a chance to stay connected as individuals, not as parents and grandparents. That’s important to me and to them as well.

The lure and logic of Colorado came up again this trip. Ruth and Gabe are growing fast, 8 and 6 now. Jon and Jen have expressed their desire to have us live out here and have committed, with touching kindness, to see to our care as we age. Minnesota is home for now, but that may change. It’s a topic I want to discuss with my friends.

This is a very difficult quandary for me with 25 years of Woolliness in place and so many memories and ties in the Twin Cities. The homeplace, too. The question, however, only seems to get more persistent. A third phase event, no doubt.

Family, Travel

Gabe’s Birthday Party

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Spring                                                             Bee Hiving Moon

A year ago I promised Gabe I would be here for his birthday. Promise fulfilled at the Bladium, a repurposed airplane hangar from the former Stapleton Airport.  This large rectangle has been divided into a hockey rink, a soccer/roller hockey arena, a multiple purpose area and a cross-fit workout space.

The birthday party consisted of several six-year olds roaming at a fast pace through a large quasi-castle with an interior sort of basketball gym and a second obstacle course of pylons and tunnels. Both of these were inflated and encouraged jumping and diving and screaming. The screaming was like feral cats, the energy expended prodigious. It wore me out just watching.

Gabe, near the end, became attracted like a tycoon in his vault, toward the various sacks and boxes wrapped in gift paper. He would shake the boxes, rearrange them, smile and guess. What’s in that one, I asked. Legos, he said. When the party finished, Gabe commandeered a wagon, loaded his loot in it and initially insisted on supervising Grandma as she rolled the wagon out to the car.

At home, opening the presents, it turned out that many of them were, in fact, Legos. They were so interesting that Gabe chose to stay at home and work on them over coming to the hotel.

Tomorrow Ruth and I are going to Wings Over the Rockies, an Air and Space museum. A lot of activity crammed into a small amount of time.