Blown head gasket without regret...you just have to go

“I think that it is time for you to wander. The essence of wandering is that the exact outcome of it cannot be known…Though the geographic destination is not clear, the purpose of wandering is very clear….
“To bum around. To hitchhike, ride freighters, do odd jobs, wash pots and pans, pick fruit, clean fish, be a deck hand, work on the railroad, all the time watching the world and observing the rootedness of others, watching the backyards with their laundry on the lines drying in the sun, walking the aisles of the train, waiting to meet strangers….
“What do you know of your father's life? Is there a period that he sometimes refers to, a period of restlessness or trouble, when he did not know where he was going? Does he sometimes get this look in his eye, like whatever it was he set out to do is not completely finished, like there are things he's not telling you? Maybe there are mysteries of pain he wants to protect you from. Doesn't he know that's not possible or desirable? Perhaps he himself did not complete his wandering, and is protecting himself against the truths that emerge when we wander and give ourselves over to the forces of soul.
“Some people look back on such times-wandering-as dark times. And they may be dark. But they are also essential. It is not by accident that we get into trouble, that our lives are not beautifully ordered.
“It doesn't seem very grown-up, this wandering business. And yet it is essential to full maturity.
“I remember when the idea of "the road" arose in my heart. "The road." Bob Dylan and the road. A man on a highway with a guitar. A man on a road. Highway 61. Somehow in my adolescence I became aware that there was a road and I had to be on it, and the fact that I had no idea where the road led was part of the fascination. And this was a distinct change. This was not childhood. This was not a childish wish for ice cream. This was the call of the wild...
“[So]when I was 15 or 16, it became important to find a road and travel it. There was Bob Dylan with his guitar on the road, discovering poetic mysteries in the clubs of New York; there was Bob Dylan who'd come from Minnesota, a nowhere place, such as where I was from.
“So there was this urge to find something real. To be real, this thing had to be unknown; it had to be discovered. It could not come easily or as a gift. It could not be bought. I had to go on the road to find it.
“I remember a banquet. It was like we were in Beowulf. We had a banquet at Tracy Wald's house in Miramar. Mike Sirola and I were like kings and brothers, going out into the world in his Dodge van. We were going to discover what was there. We were going on the road.
“The road was quiet then. There were no cellphones. When you were gone you were gone.
“So we got gone. We made it maybe 75 miles and blew the head gasket.
“That's another story.
“It all fits. It's so clear. I know when you read this you will realize that what you are feeling is natural and good. You can't know everything that you have to do. You just have to go."

-Cary Tennis

The picture is from somewhere in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, I forget exactly where I was, but the clouds were in the meadows that day, too.

Picture Lake earns its name...

One of the most photographed spots in North America is 120 miles northeast of Seattle: a small alpine lake about 5200 feet up Mount Baker. (This factoid about the lake's 'photographability' comes from Life Magazine, and I guess they oughtta know.) It's one of my favorite places on the planet. I've photographed this lake in spring, summer, and fall. I've picnicked on its banks, plucked huckleberries for ice cream and pies from its fragile meadows, and imbibed intoxicants to the point of roaring drunkenness on the dock you see here on a variety of national holidays, including Labor Day when I watched snowboarders in cut-offs haul themselves further up snowpacked cliffs for a day of play in bright sunshine. It's a beautiful spot.

Aside from its showy prettiness, another reason I like going to Heather Meadows is that I never know what the lake will be like when I make the drive, which is exquisite itself. It's a place out of season, just as likely to be frozen over in July as October, and about half the time I've tried to get there, I couldn't make it--roads will be closed to vehicles without chains or piled so high with snow they are impassable in June. I'm not sure why I went this day, except that I recalled once I had gone on October 31st-precisely-in 2004 and found brilliant scarlet, orange and yellow woods filling with delicate snowflakes as they danced in the woods all around the lake. It was one of the most sublime and beautiful spectacles I've ever seen, and I saw it alone. The picture shows I was rewarded today. By chance. Just above the lake, literally just above, the snowline is creeping down. Another week, the possibility of seeing it this way will likely be gone, and I was reminded again at how brief are the opportunities life affords us sometimes.

It's hard to imagine sadness in such a spot, but that is how I felt. I'm a brooder sometimes, I guess. Today, I kept looking at the empty dock and thinking it should not be empty. A thermos of hot coffee and a friend to share this with me would have been nice. Ah, well. This shows the spot along with some additional facts, proof that while I might have been lonely today, I'm not alone in my fascination with this tiny, unpredictable spot tucked in the northern Cascade mountains.

Imagine the waste...

Imagine - four years you could have spent travelling around Europe, or going to the Far East, walking Africa or India, meeting people, exchanging ideas, reading all you wanted to anyway, and instead I wasted them at college. -- Shel Silverstein

One thing I know is that journeys begin in the mind before a step is ever taken. Whether that’s an eight year old drawing pictures of Berber goat-herders as she imagines obscure villages in the Atlas Mountains north of the Sahara or a thirty-something woman perusing pictures of India’s Holi, coming to believe the festival followed by a trek through Tibet would be the perfect antidote to a gloomy Pacific Northwest winter, the journeys I’ve made began first in my mind. Some journeys are a long time coming and some never happen, I suppose, no matter how much we might want them. An unused and quite beautiful visa to India is still in my passport, since expired, but the intent hasn’t left me. I wrote here first that I am still confident I shall go to India some day and drown in color, but I had to revise this, for it was a lie. I am no longer confident. And more and more the trek through Tibet—with a bum knee and difficulty traversing even the hills around Seattle, much less the highest plateau in the world—it seems unlikely. But I had a heart that wanted it is all I can think to write, and wanted it badly, even if it hasn’t happened and never happens. That is all I can think to say about it right now.

I quit writing because things became too hard to express. My mother was failing—I felt this—I have a photograph of her in front of a crumbling, old building in San Antonio as she looked away from the camera and into the distance. It was the last picture (except for her cat) at her memorial, so I am glad I quit my job to take her to the sea and glad, I guess, I didn’t wring that laundry out in public, even though some of it spilled here. And I wrote nothing of Africa, even though I went and remained there for some time. I was ambivalent about a lot of the trip, but there are sweet memories I have.

But of Africa…The house I was staying in and the bedroom I slept in opened over extensive and lovely gardens the likes of which I had never seen at a private home. Below the opened windows was the aviary. I’d lay in bed there feeling warm, loved, content and hear the caged canaries and finches, begin an aubade as the sun rose, their song mingling with the cheeps and chirps of other birds that lived freely among the trees in the garden there, and realize I was not home. Africa sounded so very different, so sweet and exotic behind those high, thick stone walls that guard the home. I could have dreamed in the warmth of that bed, the smell of those gardens and the bird song through those open windows forever. But it was seductive and lulling. Sometimes I felt like, I guess, I could have sank into it, but…it was disturbing in a way that I never quite understood at least then. But there is more I want to say in practicum about Africa, rather than ruminating.

So going to Africa, other than the getting there, is quite inexpensive. Most of the safari packages sold to unsuspecting Americans and Europeans are a complete rip-off as I know now. Game park entry fees are nominal, hiring guides into the bush inexpensive, and even staying inside the parks, almost free if you go for modest accomodations. If you see game outside a park, it’s even less expensive. The truth is these packages are bundled up for those overwhelmed and unfamiliar with Africa and desirous of security that in most instances isn’t needed, depending on where you go. You could pay 3-4,000 USD for something that might cost you $300, if that, once you get there. I did have the opportunity to go to a couple game parks and photograph big cats. The one above is my favorite. I wasn’t quite as close as this photo makes it appears. Cheetahs are an animal I’ve always been fond of, starting with Cheetos. Now how strange is that?

I’ll keep writing. Or start. Love, Beth

Blogs coming, I promise

1) Getting stranded at 5 AM in Madrid airport with no plane ticket to South Africa.
2) Having the door slam open while negotiating the toilet on a high-speed train (the caboose of "luxury class" whatever that is) to Fes where there was a) no toilet paper b) the water pump was on one side of the bathroom and the flush pump was on the other, both of which had to be operated with your feet while trying to get some water to clean up only to see c) three guys smoking outside and yelling loudly "Sorry, sorry, sorry!"
3) The young, fearless woman who jumped the crap of a taxi-driver who was trying to jack us at the train station and who launched into a harangue of an entire group of half a dozen taxi-drivers in Arabic to the sheer bemusement of both J. and I, who now have come to understand how bargaining is in the soul of Arabic trading. One must fight goodnaturedly--even over the price of meals. It's a cultural ritual and is only considered polite. They need this the way we need to hear, 'Hello' when the phone is picked up before a conversation ensues.
4) Not escaping Morocco without buying a carpet. How could I? It was impossible.
5) Tired, really tired, gratified, happy, full...oh traveling. Can work be far behind? I will make it to South Africa in November. I owe blogs, many numerous blogs, but they don't write themselves. The pic above is from a rest area, somewhere in the United States, out of 100s I have taken over the past months.

Tangier

From now on, I shall think of my travel fantasies as having the possibility of being pipe dreams. Morocco so far has been trying, fascinating, and exhausting. I chose to stay in the old town market of Tangier called the medina for the first three days. What a lot of characters and incidents I have to write about when I have time, but I do not right now. I will mention the smells of this city--the aroma of spices and meat cooking, the perfumes of musk and sandalwood--the sounds of it when the islamic call to prayer echoes in a haunting reminder call and response over the rooftops and the melange of tongues--Spanish, French, , Arabic, Portugese, English--the sights--1000 year old labyrinthian paths up and down the steep streets were an overwhelming experience,

Today it is on to Fes. The pic above was taken during the evening call to prayer. Our riad looked out over the mosque and the harbor. 20 dollars a night for such riches as these.

Morning Train - Algeciras

The 6 hour train from Madrid through Andalusia down to the busy port of Algeciras where northern Africa becomes accessible via a 2 hour sail across the Strait of Gibraltar winds through mountainous gorges, and past Spanish olive, grape, and sheep farms that look as though they've been operating the same way for 100s of years, if not thousands. The colors of the landscape until one reaches the Mediterannean are ochre and brooding, olive green, and the mountain vistas are forbidding and hot, if one must pick only a couple adjectives.

But they're fascinating, the journey revealing small towns in the back of nowhere in the Spanish countryside that appeared as though they've only the train station and around 100 inhabitants, if that. Twenty times today I wished I could emerge from the train to photograph this or that sleepy, isolated village. The houses with their red-tiled roofs and whitewashed, open walls look exactly the way one would expect them to were they transplanted into Daggett, California for example. Overall, I had a day of astonishingly unfamiliar sensations, buses crowded full of people arguing in numerous languages--mostly Spanish--accented by Tom Jones' music played loud, and then an entire school of British Catholic young girls piling on, cramming the port bus so full, I doubt another person could fit on, the driver shouting at us as we reached our hotel, so we could get off, then climbing a steep road to reach it...bus stops where horses and chickens gathered around the waiting kiosks and views of granite hills spilling over with row after row after row of whitewashed boxes that look as though they are about to fall into the blue sea. Everyone is so brown and so astonishingly "cosmopolitan" to pick another term. Languages seem to be interchangeable and come easily to the tongue, nationalities unimportant, and mostly good natured attitudes abound. The UK passport control folks didn't even bother to examine the passports of most people I saw, but only boredly waved us on. J., who is shockingly proficient in Spanish, fits in amazingly well here, floating from language to language with an ease that is barely recognizable in the person I've known who I've never seen in these situations before. He also exhibits an amazing street sense, navigating odd situations with an ease and sophistication that is surprising.

As I type this, I realize how exhausted I am, from the heat, and from the crowds, and from the unfamiliar languages and from the adventures still ahead. But I'm having the most wonderful time--the time of my life. It's all wonderful and so unfamiliar. The picture here was taken earlier from our balcony, which is far from being the Madrid dive, now. This hotel is first rate. You can see the coast of Africa, so very close now.

Segovia in the Rain

I am not much of a happy crier. Really. I´m a pretty emotional person, but happiness does not make me cry, and I can recall only once or twice this has ever happened to me. It did yesterday, however. J. and I were sitting in a park outside the Prado, having spent the morning looking at the Goya and Velasquez inside. The temperature was perfect, the leaves were falling, he was laying on the park bench with his head in my lap where I was sitting.

He was holding forth, as he is wont to do, about the real Goya. The Prado is full of Goyas and other wonderful things, and we had just seen his favorite painting, The Third of May--the one which is his background on his cell phone and the one which it doesn´t take much of a leap to understand gave him strength while he was in Iraq. We were drinking perfect iced lattes, and everything felt so wonderful. He seemed so happy, so healthy, so whole...he´d gone running earlier that morning getting ready for Soweto, and his leg hardly pains him at all now. It was such a beautiful day. I did cry.

Today we went to Segovia, which is another beautiful Castillian town with steep, narrow streets and built on a 1000 years of history. I got pictures of the cathedral and quite a bit of the architecture. The picture above is J. in a gazebo at Pl. Mayor we ducked in to avoid the rain. I highly recommend Segovia...and iced lattes and Madrid in October outside the Prado with someone you love. Tomorrow we leave for Morocco.