Beltane Waning Flower Moon
Westin, Port Royal Plantation, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
First night in a non-moving bed since Friday. Slept fine. It is gray and 60 degrees here this morning. The Atlantic broods nearby, gray and pondering the upcoming hurrican season which begins on June 1, just as I arrive back home in the center of the continent.
Headed downstairs to the California Cafe for breakfast.
Beltane Waning Flower Moon
The Silver Meteor delivered me to Savannah, Georgia at 6:30 a.m. this morning. The train station was not, as I had imagined, in downtown Savannah but well out of town, about 20 miles from the airport where I had to pick up my rental car.
Lester, the sleeping car attendant, woke me at 6:15. I wake up slowly so I had not yet begun to take in the whole world and there I was in the humid Savannah morning. Kudzu vines enveloped trees, creating a tree-shaped outline made of the vine. Spanish moss hangs from trees and there are low places and swamps dotted throughout.
The drive to Hilton Head takes about an hour and I surprised myself by driving straight to the Westin. A navigational highlight of the day followed by many wrong turns later on this oddly organized island.
Instead of municipal governments the Island has plantations. The Westin, for example, is in Port Royal Plantation on the heel of the Island. When Kate and I took off for lunch at Crazy Crab, we had to go to Sea Pine Plantation on the other end of the ocean side of Hilton Head. Sea Pines has a gate and charged us $5! to get in. That explained the Crazy part.
After proving several times that finding the Westin was a fluke, we made it back where I took a long nap and Kate went to get educated.
The Atlantic,at least today, is gray and has a forbidding aura, quite different from the placid Pacific I know better from Hawai’i.
Kate and I walked the beach and while. We came upon a beached jelly fish. It felt like jelly when I poked it with my finger. The lifeguard said they were cannonball jellies or jelly balls. They don’t sting.
I learned about sea oats and the protective nature of the dunes on which they grow. The dunes are not play areas and their vegetation has legal protection since they hold they dunes together and the dunes buffer the insistent work of the waves.
The Westin serves a grits and gravy dish with flash seared shrimp that made me happy. Low country cooking is tasty.
This whole area, the low country, gets its name from the era of the plantations. Early on white settlers discovered malaria made growing the indigo and rice crops impossible them. Thanks to the sickle cell trait, however, many Africans have total or some immunity.
Hurray! During the growing season white plantation owners would retreat to the highlands of South Carolina and leave the plantation in the care of their slaves. The slaves worked the land, brought in the crop and got crummy accommodations, no wages and oppression as thanks.
It is more than a little peculiar that this Island organizes itself around the notion of plantations. I find it distasteful.
Over and out from the Atlantic Coast.
May 16, 2009 Beltane Waning Flower Moon
The Capitol Limited Somewhere outside Cumberland, Maryland
9:30 a.m. EST
Slept last night very well. Early to bed around 10p.m. Tired from early rising and a full day of travel. The train rocked me to sleep as lightning flashed across the northern sky. I went to bed in Elkhart, Indiana and woke up in Pittsburgh.
In a tunnel right now. I’m not sure if this is the one but somewhere along here the ends of the tunnel are in W. Va. and the tunnel itself in Maryland. I have no idea.
Took a shower on the train. It was an ordinary enough shower except it moved like an LA bathroom in a mild tremor. There’s a small area with a seat, two hooks for clothing and a mirror, then a shower stall with non-skid plastic. I took my sandals with me, but habit took over and I was in the shower in my bare feet before I remembered them.
I ate breakfast this morning with a couple from Idaho who have a small hotel near Jhallus, Idaho, the Holiday Lodge. They were nice folks. May go visit since I’ve never been to Idaho.
I’m writing this in my roomette as we travel slowly through the Appalachian range. \I believe we passed through the Cumberland Gap about 15 minutes ago. A lot of history on this route. After a stop in Cumberland, Maryland we head for Harper’s Ferry. Two stops after that and we’re in D.C.
The layover in Washington will be 4+ hours. I plan to have a walk around with the camera, then back to Union Station. No museum on the way down. On the way back I’ll have 6 hours and I’ll hit the Freer and the Phillips.
5:30 p.m. First Class Lounge, Union Station, Washington,DC
We got in a little late, but no worries since my train, #97, the Silver Meteor, does not leave until 7:30 p.m. I’m not sure, but since this is a southbound train starting in Boston, it might be an agist pun. If not, it oughta be.
Louisiana Avenue runs at a diagonal away from Union Station toward the National Mall. I walked in the heat, keeping to the shade of trees and buildings, taking the occasional shot of the Capitol building and angling toward the National Gallery of Art. Along the way I began noticing what is very old news to inside the beltway folks, but struck me with force. Every Federal building has barriers to car and truck bombers. I took some photos and when I get home I’ll add them back into this post.
They struck me because their defensiveness could not be more apparent. They seem look like Lilliputian threads tieing down the outsized force of Uncle Sam.
On the way into Washington we stopped at Harper’s Ferry; John Brown’s body is still a’moltin’ in the grave. (what is molting anyway?) I got to thinking about approaching D.C. It would be the same as approaching, in different eras: London, Rome, Istanbul, Baghdad, Xian, Beijing, Mexico City in the time of the Aztecs. No matter how the US goes down in the annals of future centuries it will still be a colossus that strode, for awhile, as the world’s hegemon. Its capitol, where I write this, may provide future history channel specials: Washington in the Time of the Presidents!
Those of us who live in the Midwest come to the Capitol as country folks, far away from the deal making and policy wonking that creates buzz here in D.C. We might have a few clods of earth stuck to our shoes, perhaps a straw struck in our mouths. At least I hope we do, not because we lack intellectual or cultural sophistication, but because agriculture and care of the land is our heritage and if we do not come to power as our true selves who can replace us?
I’m gonna stow my bags again and wander around in the Station for a bit. Talk to you later.
Beltane Waning Flower Moon 9a.m.
Made it to the station at 7:30 a.m. this morning. Kate pulled away in the tundra while I checked my bag through to Savannah. The ticket agent put SAV on my bag and stapled a tag with SAV onto my ticket. I asked about a roomette to Chicago, $196, I said no thank you.
After 5 minutes of waiting, the conductor called Chicago. I went to the small makeshift wooden cart, Amtrak blue, handed my multi-ticket folder to a man with a real conductor’s hat. He looked at it and said,. “Chi.” The man next to him in a red vest handed me a peach colored piece of paper about 2 inches wide and 8 inches long. On it in block letters is CHI.
“Second car to your left,” he said and pointed out toward the platform.
There was a man in all blue standing beside an open door on a train with several cars. “Put the chit over your seat, please. This is very important. Up the steps to your left and take a seat up above.”
I found a seat, dutifully put my CHI above a window seat on the east side of the train and sat down. I knew from the past that this would put the Mississippi River outside my window.
Until the train started I read World Without End on my Kindle 2. After we began the slow roll away from the station,.I put the Kindle away to enjoy the trip through St. Paul from an unusual perspective. We rolled past the new High Bridge, then passed under the bluffs on Irvine Park, my old home.
The call to breakfast came as we left St. Paul. I shared breakfast with a gap toothed retired farmer from Alberta who kept alerting me to the fact that we don’t know what hardship really is. Our other table mates joined us in a round of why we don’t like to fly anymore and why we were all so wise as to choose the train. The food was good and the menu had all the items available, unusual in my recent experience, but welcome.
Since breakfast I have sat here in my window seat watching the unglaciated Mississippi River valley, its limestone cliffs and wide waters a visual treat. I look forward to this part of the trip each time.
4:15 p.m. Metropolitan lounge Chicago Union Station
Got in early. I discovered the first class lounges when I went to NYC a year and a half ago. This lounge has wi-fi, great cell phone reception, drinks, temporary bag storage, plug-ins, free drinks and comfortable chairs scattered around a pleasant room. It has dark wood railings on the walls, dark wood pillars, subdued but adequate lighting and comfortable chairs and couches.
When I checked in, the woman behind the desk took my reservation for dinner on the D.C. train. It leaves at 6:50. The lounge provides a porter and a guide to the train. All these services reduce the hassle of lay-overs and make the experience more enjoyable.
After I checked my bag, I went upstairs and out into a chill, wet Chicago Friday. People hurried past on the sidewalk, umbrellas tilted against the slant of the incoming rain. The rain fell on my bald head and ran down my neck. It felt great after 6+ hours on the train.
The next two segments of the trip, Chicago to D.C. and D.C. to Savannah, I have a roomette. I prefer the privacy and the opportunity to spread out.
Beltane Waning Flower Moon
Last day at home. Got up and put the snowblower in the truck. Then I roughed up the area around the fruit trees and sowed clover seed where I had killed the quack ten days ago. Planted the remaining hydroponic plants, five cucumbers. They went in along a drip line. They will get a trellis this year.
When the cucumbers were tucked in with a bit of composted manure per each, I hopped in the truck and took the snowblower over to Beisswinger’s Hardware. “I thought we were done with snowblowers,” the guy behind the service counter said. “I like to get mine done in the spring, then it’s ready for the winter and I don’t have to compete with other folks who’ve just decided to do it.
Mark Nordeen plans to stop by around noon. I imagine we’ll add a second hive. Then, one more later. After that, the supers go on and honey production can start in earnest.
Well, off to the library to return some books. Then, packing.
Beltane Waning Flower Moon
Ancientrails will hit the road on Friday. I’m not sure about wireless connections while I’m on the train, though I’m guessing they exist in the First Class lounges where I’ll wait between trains. At any rate, I may be down for a day or two, but I’ll start posting for sure in Hilton Head on Sunday.
It’s strange, doing so much earth connected work: planting, moving daylilies, tending bees then getting on a train and riding away from it all for 18 days. Travel during the growing season has definite windows and I’m just touching one, the average day of the last frost in our area, May 15th. That’s this Friday. That means I’ve planted a tiny bit ahead of the average date, but the overall weather pattern looked favorable.
I do have other planting that needs to get done, but I can’t do it until our number of available beds increases with the work of Ecological Gardens that can not happen until May 26th and May 27th. I’ll be back shortly after that, so I’m not missing much.
We’re hiring some neighborhood help with weeding. That’s the primary challenge while we’re gone, not letting the weeds get ahead of the vegetables.
Travel is a part of my Self, a way I work on who I am and what I mean. It’s been that way for so long that I can’t recall which came first, travel or working on who I am. It may be that the journey toward Selfhood never ends, or it may end with definite suddenness at death, but in either case it lasts a lifetime at least. We need all the tools available to us.
Beltane Waning Flower Moon
I’m going to help Kate take down the garage sale. Then, if it has not started raining, I’ll move yet more daylilies. Daylilies are the plant that goes on giving. They will be here long after we are, in fact, they may be our most permanent legacy.
As the date of the Hilton Head trip comes closer, my thoughts turn to sitting on the train, Kindle 2 in hand, reading as the Midwest, then the east coast and finally the deep south pass by. I love every part of traveling as long as I’m not flying.
Beltane Full Flower Moon
As I move into the week before a trip, I begin going over my check lists, things to take, things to stop, buy fewer groceries, get all necessary work around the house done. On my to take list are wheeled luggage (for those long trips from the first class lounge to the train), netbook, deet, camera, Kindle and my passport. Yes, clothes, too.
On the to do list is gathering necessary passwords and usernames in one place, stop the mail, stop the newspaper, get all the baby plants in their new beds, check the bees one more time, finish moving the day lillies.
There is, at least for me, the inevitably of forgetting some task, some essential item. Over the years I have become familiar with my habits, the kind of things I tend to forget or misplace, so I tend not to lose or forget my wallet, glasses, tickets, camera and Dopp kit. Maybe this will be the trip where everything gets done and nothing forgotten. No thing left behind. Hey, could be an educational program, too.
Today in specific I’ll move all the indoor plants outside, work some more on the day lillies and set my baby plants outside for 5 hours. Gotta groceries, too, and cook dinner. Then, there’s workout. Ready. Set.
Beltane Full Flower Moon
A week from tonight I will be asleep or almost so on an outbound train from Chicago to Washington, D.C. After several hours during the day on Saturday in D.C., the train for Savannah leaves Union Station, arriving around 6:30 a.m. the next day. Slow travel seems to fit with the life I’ve come to lead, one that waits on the natural rhythms for flowers and vegetables, fruit and honey.
Travel became a family insignia, we should have trains, planes and ships, buses and taxis on our family crest, the Ellis family crest that is. We are a peripatetic group. Mark travels regularly around Southeast Asia, frequenting Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam while basing himself in Thailand.
Mary will travel sometime this year to Athens from Singapore where she will present the results of her Ph.D. work. She gets to England now and again in addition to returning to the US. She will not, however, be able to come this year because the Singapore Government has banned official travel to the US due to the H1N1 flu. Her travel is official because the university for which she works pays for her ticket and the university is an arm of the government.
Beltane Waning Flower Moon
And on the second day of May we turned our garage into a retail establishment.
This reminds me of my first ever off the continent trip to Bogota. The neighborhood of our small hotel was residential, living areas above garages, sort of like the San Francisco versions. A middle-class to affluent neighborhood, not poor.
I went out one morning for an after breakfast walk, just to take in the unusual experience of a people who lived in a country in South America, who spoke Spanish. I was not at home and loving it. As my walk went on, the neighborhood began to wake up and the garages, too. Doors slid up to reveal small businesses. This one had groceries, that one had cleaning supplies, another with snacks and pop. The neighorhood was one giant, apparently perennial garage sale.
They had to do better than we did. You’d think with a recessionary economy that people would turn out in large numbers. But they didn’t. The day was slow. None of our big items the telescope, the dining room set, the bed sold. It was a nice day, too.
The only significant retail moment for me came when I sold a Che Guevara t-shirt to a Mexican family.
Onions got planted today, a large bed weeded and prepared for peas. The hive came open, too. Inside the bees had gathered all at one end, working furiously on something, what I could not tell. The smoker, filled with wet hay, smoked and the bees remained calm. The white bee suit and mesh head covering worked. No bee got inside.
Did they accept the queen? Couldn’t tell. I’m glad Mark plans to come tomorrow. We’ll look together and he’ll help with what I need to see.