White Rim Trail

Our mountain bike ride began in a thunderstorm as we descended 1,100 feet on the Shafer Trail. The guidebook describes the switchbacks as "dangerous or impassible when wet." Though cold and mud splattered, we evaded the instant waterfalls pouring off stone ledges. We made all the sharp turns but brake pads thinned rapidly. At the bottom of this initial trail, faithful Dave had set up a soup kitchen in the support vehicle. I tried to shake the cold by draping myself across the still warm car engine. Then we headed out ten more miles to set up our first camp site. So began day one of our ride on the White Rim Trail in Moab, Utah.



We were on a 92 mile, three and a half day mountain bike trip, riding across one of the earth's most spectacular landscapes...the series of deep, arid canyons whose deep formation go back 280 million years. These canyons follow the course of the Colorado and Green Rivers which join just below the White Rim Trail. Once joined, they move as one to carve out the Grand Canyon further south.

The scale of the landscape creates miniatures of our selves and bikes and tents. As in "Can you find the biker in the picture below?" Or " Find Bob standing on the rock rim" or "See the group of bikers resting on day two of the ride."







There they are!



The white rim rocks reveal another scale. Here the occassional downpours form small pools. The wind and water push soil into shallow hollows. Here plants take root and form diverse desert colonies of goosefoot (once collected for their edible seeds), yucca, saltbush, and Indian ricegrass. So the trail exists on both a macro and a micro scale...the latter being harder to find but just as satisfying as the depths and distances of the canyons and mountains beyond.





And then the human scale. The trip was organized by the PEDAL club of Loveland, CO on a volunteer basis (the chief volunteers being Ed and Dave....Dave the cook, support vehicle driver, chief transport official, water and snack supplier, and general bon vivant and Ed the chief financial and administrative officer). Eight cyclists (some occasionally falling off their bikes and some more commonly pushing their bikes up hardscrabble hills) followed the jeep trail made by ranchers and uranium miners.







So the joy was to be in this landscape with friends who cared about each other's welfare and who experienced this wide space in his or her own way. So we rode the final miles to the edge of the Green River, camped for a final night at Potato Bottom (oh, the ice on the tent on the cold, damp last morning), and rode (or pushed) up 1,000 feet of switchbacks back to the top of the mesa.



We shared the long car ride back to Loveland and Fort Collins, bikes strapped to the back of our SUVs, our heads filled with memories of these vast lands and the beginnings of plans for our return.

Back porch stories

The back porch of Oak House at Valley View is a platform for hanging out...watching clouds across the valley, reading one of the books from home, playing music, drinking a cup of tea on a cold afternoon. You meet people hanging out. You hear their stories. The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.

A long-haired man in his early 60s saying that the first time he came to Valley View was in 1957 when he was 10 years old. He came up riding on a horse with his Dad from the valley below. The area around the hot springs was deserted. He most distinctly remembers that his new Levis chaffed his legs badly against the horse's back on their return to the valley floor. His parents had first come here on their honeymoon in 1935. He remembers his Dad playing the piano at the small ranch where they stayed. The ranch couple dancing to his music.



The back porch, the hot springs' pools are places of stories from folks coming here for decades and folks coming for the first time. The land itself holds stories. The canyons are filled with crude, stone artifacts made the small hunting and gathering bands that first sought game and plants in the valley wetlands. The Orient Land mine is over the next ridge, its gaping mouth the result of a huge explosion in 1893 in which a dozen miners died. The stones and the mine tell silent stories. The couples in the hot pools speak of more current stories: of their comings and goings, their wounds and their healings, the beginning and the end of relationships, their memories and their imaginations.

And from the back porch, the clouds tell their stories...across the valley, evening storms compete with the dying sun in a thunderous struggle of light and darkness. Ben builds a bonfire by the large pool up the creek. Folks gather to soak under the stars. And to tell old stories and create new ones while the earth and sky continue to create their own, long narratives.

Valley View

The Oak House at Valley View had only one dorm bed available last night, so I took it. The cabins and private rooms were all taken...somewhat surprising this late in the fall. Arriving in the late afternoon, I did some hiking, a bit of mountain biking, but mostly soaked in the hot tub and baked in the sauna. Had a simple meal, read, went to bed early. Got up around five...one of the dorm mates snored insistently.

This part of the earth curved toward the sun around 7:00. I was having coffee and doing some e-mail as the dark night lifted. I got on my bike, took my camera, and rode up the trail to the old Orient mine. The clouds formed and reformed in horizontal lines along the San Luis Valley floor. They rose high over the far San Juan mountains. Toward Poncha Pass in the north the clouds dipped low and filled the valley. In the south, the clouds stayed above the fields and wetlands...perhaps a stronger wind was blowing from the southwest. The sun rose higher striking the upper rims of the clouds and slowly, as the earth rotated, sunlight filtered lower to the valley floor.



The wind came up; my hands got very cold. I got on the bike and rode down for another cup of coffee. Early morning at Valley View and the Orient Land Trust.

New landscapes

So the marmot was wondering why we were there...on top of Flattop Mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park referred to by us locals as simply "the park." Well actually Patrick, my neighbor and friend, and I had climbed the trail to explore the landscape before winter closed in with its deep snows. Patrick had been here before and had taken refuge in the rock pile that is home to this marmot. So we had kind of come back for a visit.



Flattop rises about 12,000 feet, 3,000 more than the lakes which lie at its base to the east. The trail up is somewhat steep, rising through the alpine forest and then through the transitional stunted growth of small, wind blasted trees to the world above treeline. This world is an alpine tundra...tundra, a word from the Sami language of the peoples living in the north of Norway, Sweden, Russia. It means "wide, treeless plain" and is found where cold temperatures, wind and short growing seasons limit plant growth.



The morning was bright sunshine...no wind. The silence on top, only the chirping of marmots and pikas, occasional whirl of helicopter blades flying materials into the park on a maintenance project, and our own spoken words. We were partly on a search for the blinds and game runs that the Utes built to capture the game that still wander up to the tundra in summer, following the ripening short grasses. But it started to rain and, then, hail. We strode through two inches of hail on the trail on the long way down...arriving soaked and cold at the car. But, then, that's high country weather in mid-September: some sun, some rain, some hail. The snow not far behind.

And so, at the end of a journey....

Since coming back home, I have been trying to find a picture or set of pictures that summarize our trip. And, of course, the experience is just too diverse for that. And yet, there are a few.



Having breakfast at Erik and Helga's farm house in Nørre Alslev, a kommune in Falster, one of Denmark's major islands in the south of that country. Staying with cousins...the trip was about our families in Norge and Danmark...and about art...and about food.






And it was about history and landscapes...varied landscapes but usually with the ocean...these are maritime societies with strong farming, business and energy economies.



And it is a journey, a moving through space and time and culture, navigating places and relationships, crossing the currents of oceans and lands.

But mainly, like all journeys, it was about us...finding more about the world, our past and our present, and our place in it.

Two sides of København

We spent our final three days in København, also known as Copenhagen. Because of a contact made through Craig's List, we shared an apartment in Nørrebro. Nørrebro is located outside the historic central city, the area in which the main palaces, museums, and tourist attractions are located. Nørrebro is a multi-ethnic, diverse community living in large apartment buildings with small appartments that are affordable and increasingly hip. The area is noted for a series of riots, mainly inspired by left-wing activities, over the years that continue to give, particularly to Danes who do not live there, the region an edgy character. As opposed to the downtown public art which tends to follow a classic format (isn't that David supposed to be in Italy?), public art veers strongly toward graffiti.





But Nørrebro provided us with a much fuller sense of the city than had we stayed only within the confines of the canals, the packed streets and bars of Nyhavn, or the city's monuments. It provided a sense of a vibrant city, struggling with issues of diversity and giving voice to those who would question if Denmark is really the "happiest country" in the world. Denmark is a dynamic and changing country with some, if not all, of the tensions that arise from being part of a global world while trying to maintain one's sense of the village. Beyond the monuments are the people: brides celebrating marriage at the new opera house, commuters on the "S" train with their bicycles, couples rowing across the canal to grab lunch at a restaurant...all these form part of the fabric of which we, for a short time, have been part.

Castles

Bodil, another of Charlotte's cousins, took us to visit Frederiksborg, a castle complex built for the most part in the 17th century. It served as the palace for Danish kings until plague, fire and "rampaging Swedes" moved the seat of power to another site, Fredensborg which is still in use by the royal family. Frederiksborg was restored in the past century with funds provided by the head of Carlsborg beer (ahhh, the importance of breweries in Denmark stretches far) and then it became a museum of national history.



The architecture and the art are stunning and overwhelming. But the experience provides a sense of the historical continuity that Danes must possess. The monarchy stretches back to the 10th century and, in spite of wars and the country's small size, it has survived and prospered, defining its own place in the world. The churches, the museums, the castles and the present monarch herself, Queen Margrethe, all symbolize but are also in and of themselves the continuity that forms this nation. And portraits of the Queen on the castle's third level provide a visual link between past and present...just as her children and grandchildren point to the future of the state.

On the farm

We arrived at Erik's farm on Falster during harvest time. Erik and Charlotte are cousins; Falster is one of the larger Danish islands in the south, across a stretch of the Baltic Sea from Germany. Harvest time is determined on a daily basis by the absence or presence of rain. And the sun was out and the ripe grain was dry.After all, Denmark is not just landscape and castles and trains that run on time and social programs. Denmark is about work. So Erik and Mikael, one of his workers, were preparing the combine to harvest the wheat.



But still there was time for talk and for art, visiting churches and the new art museum, Fuglsang (Birdsong), that Erik had helped to build on a nearby island. So we drove pasts fields of grain and berries and hops to see the museum. A fine structure. But the museum windows open out onto those same fields of wheat and grains which have been the basis of the island's prosperity over the centuries. Providing the wealth for the creation of its churches, its people, and its museums.

North Sea

The North Sea forms the western coast of Jylland (Jutland) and we drove out one day to see the coast. The water is cold and very rough. Danish and German tourists seldom venture into the waves, but on the few sunny, warm days sunbath on the beach. The high dunes that border the sea have a wild, natural appearance. Small towns cluster on higher ground; summer cottages fill on the land side of the dunes.




The first jetties were built to protect the shore line in 1875...currently beach replenishment takes place every fall and spring to keep the sea from flooding the low lands just behind the dunes. I had always associated this kind of long term struggle with the sea with the Netherlands' dikes. But it has taken place all along the Dutch, German, Danish coast...the North Sea is a dangerous part of the Atlantic.

Yet here we found small museums, art galleries, sculpture gardens. A festival was coming to an historic lighthouse which now serves those purposes. Tourists were being given a chance for a fee to rappel down the light house tower while a folk song and dance troup were rehearsing for the circus that was to take place the next day. The light house museum cafe had superb open face sandwiches and a good wine list (excellent cafes are standard in almost all Danish museums). It is as if a line of culture presents a brave face to the wilds of the ocean.

Interiors

There is a well-known sense of Scandinavian design of buildings, houses, homes and furnishings. It is said that some Scandinavian architects work first on the chairs and tables and then design a home around them. An exaggeration, perhaps, but still there is a clear sense of design...after all, that is what IKEA is about, no?





In looking just in the homes in which we have stayed, there is a sense of order, of clean lines, of large glass windows or walls opening to the outside (light is important especially in winter when there is little of it), a few, not many, fine pieces of furniture, art, pottery. And, of course, books.



The current house we are in is an apartment in Norre Bro, a densely packed, diverse neighborhood north of the central tourist district. We are staying with Peter who with his girlfriend has just combined two small units into one...even here with a lot of work ahead of them, the apartment reflects color, light and humor in its furnishings and art.

Farmily

So, yes, our voyage is about family, about genetic, historical and emotional connections, both in Norway and in Denmark. There are the immediate generational connections to cousins (coming from the same parents two or three generations back) and to cousins' children. Kinship is traced through pictures, through memories of previous visits both here and in the United States, through forebears who immigrated and forebears who immigrated and then came back. So we count the genealogies linking Charlotte to Erik and his wife Helga, to Bodil, and to their children and to their children's children.

But then there are also new links to families we just begin to know to Lene and Joern (with whom we have exchanged houses and neighbors) and to their siblings Annette and Henne and friend Karin. New connections...which given time may expand also and grow. These are the connections that deepen with time and go far beyond the impressions of cities and towns and landscapes and weather. And which make voyages lasting parts of who we are.

Rain

I'm not sure that I mentioned before that it does rain in Denmark. But rain does not interrupt the flow of the day. In Arhus when it rains, the clothing stores on the main streets do not bring the outside racks in except for a truly heavy downpour. After all, prospective buyers need to see how the clothes will look when they are wet. And, perhaps like the Pacific northwest in the winter, one lives with the expectation of rain...we've learned to carry umbrellas and raincoats when we set out on the brightest and sunniest of mornings. Rain may dampen spirits, especially in summer when the wheat needs to be brought in (more on that later), but it does not get in the way of outdoor activities nor the laughter of children playing in it (in their rain gear of course). Or from standing under umbrellas or on the very front of the small ferry as we cross from one island to another.