Monthly Archives: April 2014

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.

Faith and Spirituality, Woolly Mammoths

What Is Your Walk?

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Spring                                                         Bee Hiving Moon

What is your walk? How would you answer? It’s the theme for the 2014 Woolly retreat, our 25th or so yearly gathering.

Ancientrails is a record of my walk, meandering here, walking quickly there, taking a rest at this point or that. It shows the divergent paths, sometimes down the writing trail, sometimes down the scholar trail, sometimes too melancholy to do anything but shuffle along.

It’s a good question, an important one as our lives have taken the third major throughway of our lives, call it the path triskelion, third of the three broad ways down which we stroll from birth to death. Maybe an inflection of it would be, What is your walk now?

More on this to come.

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.

 

Travel

The Sun, The Sun!

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Spring                                                                Bee Hiving Moon

Fog over the Platte, now being disbursed by a rising yellow star, one invisible all day yesterday as we drove in the gray and drear. Breakfast here overlooking the sloping front lawn, watching the birds come and go.  Mahoney is not very lively on an April midweek, which is just fine as far we’re concerned. That meant we ate breakfast in an empty dining room, a big one, reminiscent of our first breakfast at the Station Hotel in Inverness 24 years ago. Their tables were set up in an old ballroom and we were the only diners. I had blood pudding that morning.

It’s good to be traveling with Kate. We travel well together.

Today on to Denver. On my first trip out to Denver, over 10 years ago, I took Jon to his new home on High Street near Cheesman Park. He had just obtained a position teaching art in the Aurora School District, in fact in the very school where he still teaches today. On that trip I realized the Rocky Mountains were the boundary to my homeland, for me the Midwest ends at the Front Range.  The Upper Midwest ends somewhere in or at the Iowa border, but Colorado feels like it fits in with it, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan.

Well, the bus is leaving.  See you in Denver.

Travel

Night. The Plains.

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Spring                                                                               Bee Hiving Moon

Night on the plains. The Platte River, wide and shallow even now, runs not a quarter of a mile from here. I’ve seen it much higher, filling out its broad bed, roiling with the muddy redness of its banks and bottom. The big noise here comes from the trains, coal trains, I imagine, headed from the Powder River Basin coalfields in Wyoming to the hungry generating plants in the east.

Even with the whistles and the low rumble of cars moving over metal rails the night manages a sense of isolation.  We are after all in a state park, well off the highway and out of metropolitan Omaha.

The big restaurant here has huge plate glass windows that overlook the Platte. Bird feeders dot the wooden walkway just outside the windows. Kate and I watched redwing blackbirds, grackles, rose-breasted grosbeaks, sparrows and goldfinches swoop down, dine together for a moment, then fly off. We dined on the inside, the birds on the outside. Just creatures, needing to eat.

After breakfast tomorrow, Kate and I will pack up and head out for Denver, arriving sometime in the afternoon. More later.

GeekWorld, Travel

In Nebraska

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Spring                                                                   Bee Hiving Moon

We have landed at Mahoney State Park about 10 miles outside Omaha. This is a favorite place of mine to stay since it’s cheap, $60, has a restaurant and the rooms come with balconies overlooking the Platte River.

The drive was uneventful, which is good.  We drove from dry to wet, then wet to dry and back again. That’s the cool, humid east. Soon we’ll be in the arid west where any rain is a blessing.  Fortunately, the Rockies had a great snow pack this year, so problems for some states will diminish.  But not vanish. The drought in the southwest is brutal and continuing.

Kate drove the whole way. It helps her back. She got out and was not in too much pain.

I’m writing this entry on my new Lenovo laptop, the first time in 8 or 9 years that I have not used my netbook.  It ran windows XP and since Microsoft shut down securities releases for XP this month I decided to get a more up to date laptop.  This one runs Windows 8.1. I’m not a touch screen guy but we’re living in a touch screen world now. Fortunately, for those of us retro folk who still use mouse and keyboard, it’s possible to revert to the former connection methods.

I had no trouble getting the wifi connection here and, as I usually do, I have my own keyboard and mouse with me. That makes typing so much easier.

Dogs, Travel

Plain

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Spring                                                                    Bee Hiving Moon

The dogs have gone to the kennel, a place they enjoy.  Vega, though, our biggest and 07 10 10_Vega in the holesweetest, was hurt when we left them for 40 days and 40 nights while the good ship Veendam cruised around South America. It took her a few days to warm back up to us. Since you can’t tell a dog how long you’re going to be gone, she might expect equally long stays each time she goes now. I hope not because hurting her hurts me, too.

I stayed behind while Kate handled the dogs because I had to bring all the bee hive woodenware into the garage. I didn’t have the heart to do it when I investigated on Monday. So all we have left is loading the truck when Kate gets back, then its scenic Iowa and Nebraska. Be still my wanderer’s heart.

The flipside of the flat and somewhat monotonous nature of the plains is the ease with which they’re driven. I feel a bit traitorous calling them monotonous anyhow. Yes, south of here, down into Iowa, the land evens out.  And, yes, it stretches flat for a long enough time to be called a plain. But its beauty opens itself only slowly and to one willing to look for it instead of just wanting to be done with it.

Especially in the fall, when the grains have not yet been harvested and the fields are golden against the blue skies and especially in the summer when the fields are green and the thunderheads mount the horizon like bulls about to ride the cowboy, the plains can reach the deepest levels of beauty. Winter is not their best season when the fields are brown, the trees leafless and the livestock huddles around water and food stores. Then, they look forlorn, abandoned, perhaps a place best gotten through quickly. In early spring, now, when the field have just been plowed, there is a furrowed beauty, too. In spite of what I know about traditional agriculture.

Well, soon. We’ll be in it ourselves, headed toward the outer limits of our great Midwest, the Rocky Mountains.

Family, Poetry, Woolly Mammoths

The Ancientrail of the Grandparent

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Spring                                                               Bee Hiving Moon

Ancientrails hits the road again today, heading back to Denver for Gabe’s birthday party on Saturday.  Kate and I are driving out.

Forgot to mention in the post below Charlie Haislet’s wonderful “32 Ways to See A Mammoth,” an homage to Wallace Stevens’ “13 ways to see a blackbird.” It was funny, quirky, profound, moving. A memorable work.

 

Friends, Woolly Mammoths

A Group of Mammoths Walk Into the University Club

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Spring                                                            Bee Hiving Moon

The Woollies met at the University Club in St. Paul, a fine location with a quiet room, attentive service and lots of laughter.

We marveled at Tom’s fingers wriggling out beyond the stylish black cast that immobilized his recently operated thumb and his dexterity in grasping with no opposable thumb. We heard Bill talk about his numbness in his left shoulder, the moments just after he woke up at 4 am and his quiet acceptance that this was o.k. Except instead of dying he went back to sleep. Of course, we don’t know the number of people who do the same thing and then die. In Bill’s case a number of tests ensued and he learned he’s quite healthy with the exception of some calcium in his high vertebrae.

We discussed Frank’s ongoing recovery from his back surgery yesterday.  Pain manageable and up and walking today or tomorrow.

The retreat brought up a lively discussion, as always.  We settled on a topic/theme, What is your walk? This inspired by Tom’s reflections on a book he’s currently reading on the philosophy of walking. The retreat will involve excursions to Red Wing, possibly to Wabasha and hiking in the area around the Frontenac Retreat Center where we will stay.

Warren spoke about an adjustment to retirement that he’s been making. And we all helped him. Ha.

It was a lively, engaging evening. One interesting discussion came up about the issue of cooking for one. Bill raised it. Charlie suggested making something really tasty in a crockpot, or something else and then eating off it for three or four days. We looked at the idea of a meal and how a meal may involve at least two people. Otherwise you’re just eating. This is a matter widowers and singletons know intimately.

We went out to a clear night, stars bright and a cool breeze. An excellent Minnesota evening.