Category Archives: Travel

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.

 

 

Family, Travel

Room 409

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Spring                                                                      Bee Hiving Moon

Here we are in Room 409.  Grandma. Grandpop. Ruth and Gabe. This is a ritual, the grandkids sleep over in the in the hotel room. Grandma has them trained so they don’t fuss. It’s a good experience for all of us.

We went to Ling and Louie’s for dinner. There I asked Ruth if she wanted to have an appetizer as her dinner. No, she said, you order an appetizer, then you order your meal. Oh, sure. Forgot that. 8 years old.

Gabe chose Rio 2 as the movie he wanted to see. This continues a story that, improbably enough, starts in Mooselake, Minnesota. It features Blue, a blue Macaw and his journey to Rio where he meets Jewell who becomes his significant other.  In Rio 2, which starts at the huge crucifix and features a very realistic rendition of the crucifix and its surrounding area, ends up deep in the Amazon with a struggle between birds and loggers.

There’s a lot of music, comedy and intrigue. I can recommend it, even for you grownups who might read this.

Gabe’s 6th birthday begins tomorrow at 4. Big fun in Colorado.

 

Dreams, Travel

Manitou Spring

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Spring                                                                           Bee Hiving Moon

Drove up to Manitou Spring. This a long, spaghetti like town winding along Colorado 24. Pikes Peak overlooks it and the Garden of the Gods sits just north of town. Over the years it has become a haven for certain kinds of seekers, some New Age, but others of the Buddhist and Christian persuasions.  The downtown has that headshop feel, scented with patchouli and Grateful Dead tunes playing everywhere. At least it felt like that.

There are lots of different shops, inns, motels and hotels. Amazing to me, we happened on the Cliff House Inn. My jaw dropped. This very building featured itself in a dream of mine a year or so ago. In my dream the entire building was made of stone, instead of just the first story as here, but otherwise it fit.

This was a strange moment, standing in a real place I’d never been, seeing a building I already knew. This is not deja vu, this was a memory, a dream memory. Very odd. But it felt good, as if I was supposed to see this now, for some reason.

Kate and I drove back and are now about to take our regular afternoon nap.

Family, Travel

The Family

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Spring                                                                 Bee Hiving Moon

Jon has been out here 13 years. Hard to believe. He and I drove out here with a trailer attached to the Tundra just a month before 9/11. He’s taught at the same school for all 13 of those years, art to elementary kids and he likes it. His 15th year as a teacher.

When I asked him if it was usual for the peaks to still have snow this far into April, he surprised me by saying that the peak of the snowpack is April 26th.  The snow doesn’t leave completely until June or early July. The Rockies are visible out of the room’s window, stretching north and south as far I can see. Some of the peaks look like shots of the Himalaya’s, high and white.

Granddaughter Ruth couldn’t come for dinner last night because she’s participating on Tuesdays and Thursdays in an after school program called science for girls. She’s very good at math, has superior spatial skills and is a quick learner. Her grandma’s a science and math whiz, so she has the genes to develop as far as she might like to go.  Of course, there is the fact that she’s in the second grade. A lot of territory between  a white coat and a lab somewhere.

Gabe, the birthday boy, is a sweet kid. He ran to grandma, “Grandma!” A big hug. Later on he came over and leaned his head into my shoulder. 6 years old. He and his sister’s birthdays are two weeks apart.

Today we may go look at staghounds, a breed I think I mentioned here, a cross between a Scottish deerhound and a greyhound, only so long ago that the genetics are no longer separable. Not an AKC breed, they’ve been bred since the early 18th century, but not many of them are in the U.S. Mostly in Great Britain and Australia.

We passed several places with Retail Marijuana signs. Still a bit of a shock to this 60’s kid.

Travel

Rocky Mountain High

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Spring                                                                                           Bee Hiving Moon

Mile high. On the high plains on the Front Range. The Rockies themselves are not far from here, a drive west, then up, up, up wending between 13ers and 14ers, past Rocky Mountain National Park. They serve residents of Denver as a handy directional system.  See the mountains? That’s west. Makes it easy to navigate.

But, a tricky matter. Having gone to the wrong Doubletree on the online reservation I was careful to reserve a room at the Doubletree on Quebec. So I went to the Doubletree on Quebec closest to Jon and Jen’s home. I wasn’t in the reservation system. Hmm. So I looked on my phone where I always hold reservation confirmations. But, I couldn’t find it.

The clerk made a call, gave my name. Yes, I was registered there.  Another Doubletree. Where is it? On Quebec. Only four blocks from where I stood at the Doubletree reservation counter. For some reason Doubletree has two large hotels within four blocks of each other and both on Quebec. How bout that?

We got there. It used to be a Red Lion and it seemed like it was up until yesterday. The desk clerk said it had changed two years ago. Oh. Well, what do you know. I missed that change.

Anyhow we’re here, a west facing room., toward the Rockies. The grandkids are coming over tonight for a meal here. Then we’ll see what happens next. The party for Gabe is on Saturday.