Fish Camp

Charlotte and I drove down to East Texas, the Piney Woods, to stay at a fish camp on Lake Fork.  Lake Fork is known as a major bass fishing lake.  I spent time talking with a guide who knows the lake…the places where the bass and rich guys from Dallas congregate or where you can find all the croppies you could eat that evening even though 18 people were living in your house. Times are hard.  Families have to double up. 

Janice, mother of Halie (Tom’s wife), turned 60.  From Washington, Halie orchestrated a surprise party for her mother…over 40 (almost all local folk) attended…Halie and Tom flew in from DC…Halie’s brother Drew and wife Stephanie from Chicago, Roger's brother Willey was up from Houston with a huge amount of fresh seafood…and we drove down.  Held at the Lake Fork Marina.  We held the party in the upper balcony of the maria’s dining room and dance floor.  Karioke (like really, really good singers) pros sang country songs; people showed their pleasure by getting up and dancing (the two step).  

And East Texas, well, kind of hard to figure out.  Flat…piney woods… it has its own culture…like the more well-known Cajun culture of southern Louisian.  In some ways, the piney woods represents an extension of that Lousiana west-ward movement.  It is a place of small houses, lots of trailers, and, then, every once in a while, you see a castle, a huge private residence, down a long, dirt driveway.  But mostly it is low-lying pine scrub land...good for some patch farming...and lakes for fishing.  

Like popular Cajun culture, much of life is enjoyed in the company of food.  Mostly fried.  Breaded oysters…OMG…just the right amount of spice to make you reach for a glass of brew…  Breaded fish.  Breaded mushrooms.  Breaded bread.  All good.  Lots of peppers on the side (grilled peppers).  Red skinned potatoes, yellow corn on the cob, small onions.  And cooking.   Timing is critical in the art of the boil…timing when you put the potatoes, the shrimp, the onions into the boil.  And sensing when it all is ready.  And having the tools to make it all come together.  

On the way home, back onto 287 that stretches from Port Arthur, Texas to some obscure town in Montana, the landscape is elemental.  As you head north toward Oklahoma, though, the flat plains (pancakes) give way to canyonlands where seasonal streams have cut deep canyons. Small low hills appear…scattered at first…sometimes in the form of a spire, sometimes a long tableland…then it breaks up even further.  Underneath lies one of the earth’s largest fields of natural gas …first exploited in 1917.   

So the landscape exists on parallel lines…the scape that we see and then the one underneath where the geologists map out hidden ridges and pools.  Then a long patch of dry (but not quite desert) lands before hitting I-70, 79, 52,I-25 and the more populated higher plains.  Small low hills appear…scattered at first…sometimes in the form of a spire, sometimes a long tableland…then it breaks up even further.  Underneath lies one of the earth’s largest fields of natural gas …first exploited in 1917.  So the landscape exists on parallel lines…the scape that we see and then the one underneath where the geologists map out hidden ridges and pools. 

And then 2149 miles later, home.  

Jul

Ok.  I have decided to write again after way-too-long away.  About Jule.  Because I used to be into Christmas, this one day spiritual focus on birth (of all of us, of god, of God, or all in the past) that took place At One Moment In Time, after which all time was changed.   You know.  And, then, we get all this stuff.  Amazing amount of stuff.  Made mostly in China.   I mean, has anyone noticed the mixed message. 

But Yule (or Jul in Norwegian, the pronunciation is the same) is a pre-Christian concept.  Jul is the period of celebration that the Germanic peoples held when the sun began to return north...having reached the furthest place away...but it was a somewhat unbounded period.  A Danish Jule song goes: "Now we have Jul again...Jul goes until Easter."  But the second verse states: "Not true.  First comes the fast." (meaning Lent).  So there is this ethic ambivalence.  During the 13th and 14th centuries, the Church (ruled from Rome by the Pope) tried to change the name of the holiday from Jul to "Kristmaas" or something like that.  But it never took. 

So Jul is an extended season of being with family and friends...it goes on and on as long as the relationships last.  People come, people go, people remain.  Our cousin, Sally, came for a few days before joining her daughter Erica's fiance's family in Denver.  Sally lightens our life. 

We held a few parties...our friends from the Key of Joy (Mason and Lauren) did their jazz for an early audience.  Then the DJ arrived and a Latin Dance Party emerged and took over space.  Dancers formed a circle...then took turns letting their stuff show in the middle.  And (what was his name?) in his turn, he came to the center, estimated the radius of the encircling dancers, jumped in the air, and did a complete back flip.  Twice. No picture. It was that kind of party. 

But the season is also the time to go to the mountains, to find snow to play in, to watch that incredible interplay of snow and sun that form Colorado's winter.  So there is celebration out of doors also...I mean, after all, it is the sun that is returning north.   It takes a while to get back.  And a good part of that while is Jul. Enjoy.

boston - end of east coast swing

So at the end, we came up to Boston...another train, another bus, another shuttle to the hotel.  In the morning we went to the JFK Library.  IM Pei designed the building set on the waterfront of Boston Bay...on University of Massachusetts landfill...across from the center of the city.  Charlotte went through the exhibits while I spent time in the atrium, under the US flag, reading the day's New York Times.  And watching visitors as they came from the museum areas (JFK's inauguration in 1960, the Cuban missile crisis, the civil rights movement...remember integrating the University of Alabama?..."segregation now, segregation forever" George Wallace said, and his death), they would come into this high atrium, overlooking the bay and the city.  And pause and reflect...under the huge flag hanging from the roof. 

In the afternoon, we went to the Institute of Contemporary Art, also on the bay, also overlooking the city center, also mixing inspiration with reflection.  In this case, Mark Bradford, an LA artist working with paper, old billboard materials, found objects to create vast "maps" and patterns.  Some of his work can be found at: http://www.pbs.org/art21/slideshow/?artist=172  Like the JFK Library, the ICA combines the interior exploring our human experience and the exterior exploring our relation to the world, the water, the larger city. 

 

This has been a good swing east.  Tomorrow we fly west, far from the sea, close to the mountains.  

The Cape

On Sunday, we drove over to the Quaker Meeting House in East Sandwich.  The current Meeting House was built in 1810 still with separate entrances and sides for men and women.  The Meeting, however, was established in 1657...it's the oldest continuing Quaker meeting in North America.  Ten members gathered around the wood burning stove during worship...the previous Sunday was a "work day" in which they came to chop wood for the winter services.  

So while we think of Thanksgiving and Pilgrims at Plymouth...just up the road from East Sandwich...the traditions are found all over the landscape.

After Meeting, we drove back to Sandwich to a Catholic church (built in the 19th century) and now converted into a bistro with Sunday brunch....another way of preserving tradition...using the soft light coming through stained glass...to fall on glasses of mimosas and plates of brunch fare.  Cheers.

Thanksgiving

So Thanksgiving...my favorite holiday...it's about being with others, making food (a new generation of "foodies" to make the fixings), eating food, drinking drink, reinforcing and reinventing our ties to one another.  No presents to open...just time to spend with one another.

 To eat together and, then, to recover together.  Did I mention drinking together?

And the requisite family photo...my how we have grown.

Cape Cod

We swung back north on the train to Providence and, then, by car to Cape Cod...a kind of separate state of geography and mind.  A canal linking the bay with the Atlantic cuts the Cape off from the mainland...the canal is crossed by three bridges, the most spectacular of which is for trains (the mid-section lowers to the land-based tracks when needed).









I was in a lobster market in one of the small towns along the canal.  The owner was talking to a friend, one of the customers who lined up to get fresh seafood, and asked, "So where're you going for Thanksgiving."
"We'll be home."  And later added, "We're going to Falmouth" (a small adjoining town).
"I thought you said you were going to be home."
"Well, I'm not leaving the Cape."  That is, not going to cross the canal.  

The lobster mart was located one of the Cape's "working" harbors, filled not with sailboats and yachts, but with fishing boats with nets, pulleys, and gear for bringing "home" food from the sea.  The towns along the canal are working towns with year-round residents, not like the beach houses which seemed at this time of year to be empty of their owners and renters.

A quiet time for celebrations of family ties. 

robwergeontheroad: Philadelphia

http://www.philamuseum.org/

Philadelphia

Heading south, we rode the train to Philadelphia to visit friends, Brad and Pat, in their town house just across the river from Central City.  I walked across the bridge early in the morning, capturing a painter, his easel and brushes, and his bike...he intent on capturing the boat houses along the Schuylkill.  "to capture"...hmmm...is that why we take pictures...to capture what can not really be captured?  to make permanent what is impermanent?

On the other side of the river are Philadelphia's great monuments...including the Museum of Art at the end of a long boulevard.  The boulevard was full on Saturday morning with runners about to start an 8 K race.  The lights of the police cars blocking the road and the roar of the loudspeakers sent the pack off with a great start.  I did not stick around to see who came in first...clearly it was a morning for outdoor exercise.

   In the afternoon, I went back to the museum.  I love the interaction of art, architecture and people.  The way in which they dissect or just glance at the paintings, pinned to the walls, or sculptures, placed in the center of halls is a kind of discourse on reality.   So what does the artist mean?  And why is it in this room?  And how do I feel reacting to what is put before me?   I guess it is a kind of question, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"  "What is the meaning of this painting if no one sees it?"  So it is the interaction, the point of contact, taking place in a stage-managed setting (the museum is, after all, the sister of the theatre), that most engages me.  On a sunny day in Philadelphia.

And then you step outside...looking the other way down that long boulevard, into the center of the city.  The runners have run home.  The sky is darkened...traffic has thinned...and it is back across the bridge, back to Brad and Pat's...we are going out for dinner.  Lebanese food. 

Side Trip to New York

I took a day off from staying with family in Connecticut and took the commuter train down to Manhattan.  My initial objective was the renovated Morgan Library on 36th Street.  Its three buildings had been recently tied together by an open Scandinavian atrium designed by Renzo Piano, the architect, and Morgan's library and study had been restored to their original brilliance.  Alas no photograps allowed, though I did sneak one of the Morgan Dining area (ahhh...the marriage of art and food).

 And the treasures Pierpont Morgan had stored for himself and, now, for us.  In just one display case in the library were the following:

• a letter from Elizabeth I of England to her stepfather telling him, ever so gently, to "buzz off" - 1538
• a letter from Galileo declaring his innocence (you know, that the earth moving around the sun was not heresy but that was the way the planets did move) - 1635
• first draft of Alexander Pope's "Essary on Man"...."know thyself, presume not God to scan/the proper study of mankind is man" - 1733

and later, Bob Dylan's first draft notes on the words to "Blowin' in the Wind" (acquired long after Morgan's death)...but it shows the library is not a tomb but a living institution.

The most interesting encounter in the library, though, was in Morgan's study...walls draped in heavy red velvet with Renaissance paintings, brilliant in their coloring and composition, all around.  I asked the guard what his favorite painting was.  He looked around and pointed out one with several saints, including Saint Barbara holding a replica of a tower in her arm (she had been locked in a tower but had become a Christian.  She refused to marry a pagan chosen by her father and was murdered by him but the father, in turn, was killed by a lightning bolt accompanied by a loud clap of thunder).  The guard explained that she was also identified as Shango, a West African (Yuroba) goddess, who is identified with thunder.   And he had studied African religion at times...so he identified with her.  His favorite painting.  And clearly one of Pierpont Morgan's also. 

East Coast Swing

We are riding the trains on the east coast...visiting friends, families, museums and city streets along the way.  Charlotte has figured out that if we buy small bottles of wine before getting on the train we could save large amounts of money...given the inflated prices of Amtrak club cars.  

The itinerary is: Boston, Providence, Westport, New York,  Philadelphia, Annapolis, then back to Providence, Thanksgiving on Cape Cod, Boston....then home.  

But some of the best time is on the train...watching those marsh lands and coastal towns speed by.  As you can tell by Charlotte's expression.  

Providence

Providence was founded by Roger Williams as a refuge from the intolerant Puritans of Massachusetts. So there is the First Baptist Church founded by him in 1638…right next to the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University…the present church having been built the year before the Revolutionary War began. Sculptures in the university gardens; students studying sort of. Lots of good energy in the damp morning air.












Student energy. Providence is home to Brown University...a sunny day, studying on the garden wall, studying the statue's contours and feeling the sense of late fall.



One of my favorite places around Brown is the Athenaeum, one of the first lending libraries in the colonies, founded in 1753. Its rooms are lined with books, ahhh books…such portals to other worlds, with desks and chairs scattered about for study and reading or just looking at pictures. Or just sitting down and thinking about all the books yet to be read.

Short journey

Don and I arrived at our campsite in the late afternoon, just after a front of rain and cold temperatures had pushed through from the northwest. A few RV campers had parked nearby but most of the sites were empty...this being a weekday in late September as the weather was turning. As we set up the tent, a brilliant rainbow formed...its northern end settled into the low hills at the edge of the lake. Rays of the setting sun hit the rainbow, lighting the mountains in a brilliant yellow haze.






As the rainbow faded, we set up our tents, unpacked a tablecloth and some food, sat in the tents to get warm, told stories. We half-planned some hikes for the next day. But in the half-light of the next morning, we spent several hours watching a bald eagle hunt for fish in the lake...swooping down from his high perch, sending the ducks squawking in a frenzy, hitting the surface with his talons extended, and heading off....if he took off down the lake flying low we assumed he had made a catch, if he soared easily back on high, we assumed he had missed. Only he know.


'

Joyful Journey

The San Luis Valley has at least three established hot springs, but I suspect there are others hidden away on private lands here and there. Joyful Journey is located on the valley floor just off Highway 17 south of Villa Grove. Water comes from the spring at 140 degrees Fahrenheit and is cooled by water from other wells. It has three main pools set out in open space on a 500 acre ranch. The pools are oriented east, toward the eroding western slopes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.



In the afternoon, a sudden storm…harbinger of a cold front…rushed down the valley from the north. The rain and hail pitter-pattered and sometimes slammed on the canvas roof of the yurt I had rented. But when the rain (and hail) stopped, the earth was quiet. Large clouds (and probably some snow) remained on the high mountains…looking like vast wooly herds of sheep driven down to the valley pastures by an advancing winter.





Other travelers stopped to the ranch’s small cluster of yurts and teepees. A couple from Boston built a fire; another couple from Denver lit a bowl of “mother’s finest” and passed it around. Then folks went off to soak in the hot pools (open til 11:00). The moon came up from behind the clouds…looking for a moment as if it were caught in the teepee’s lodgepoles. The earth became very quiet.

Creede

I came down to the San Luis Valley thinking my journey would then move onto Lake City, Silverton. But time unfolded its bedspread here so I stayed. The Orient Land Trust Hot Springs , filled up over the weekend...they keep their human carrying capacity low so that people do not get in the way of the natural surroundings.

So I headed cross the valley floor and up a side canyon to Creede, former mining town….the largest silver mine going when the silver market collapsed in 1893. In ’93, the Federal Government decided to no longer use a silver standard. Washington would no longer buy the metal at a fixed price. Ahhh…government intervention in the market place…my, my…sometimes we forget that the current recession/depression is simply part of a cycle of capitalism. Towns and lives often twist in the wind. When it was going strong, Creede had over 10,000 residents. Today it is just a tad above 350.



Steep cliffs, remnants of an ancient caldera, rise up at the end of Creede’s main street. A 17 mile loop road goes past some of the main mines but the regrowth forests cover many a forgotten entrance to the smaller sites. The road made for a good morning bike ride. The main business in town during the summer, though, is the repertory theatre…they put on a very funny production of the “Putnam County Spelling Bee” on Saturday night. And tourism. And tourists sunbath beneath the cliffs that hold inside dark abandoned tunnels in which so many thousands of miners labored to make other men rich (as long as it lasted).

Valley View

The dirt road stretches east across the San Luis Valley floor...leads up to the hot springs in the foothills...always gives me pause as I take those final miles. The road reads like a thin introductory chapter in a book read many times over. A collection of short stories, pieced together from people sitting around the pools, from the hiking trails ranging around the old mine and miners' camps, from the formations of the clouds at dawn and at sunset.



Yesterday I hiked past a small memorial to the miners who died in a collapse of a tunnel (tunnel number four)at the Orient Mine, a mile or so from my cabin. The memorial is a recent one, composed of a tin marker and rocks, bones and random small objects left by visitors. In 1893, the roof of the tunnel fell on six workers...their bodies were never found but in 1893 they perhaps did not search as diligently as they might today. Foundations of the miners' homes (it was a company town) line the slopes below the mouth of the mine. The mine continued to operate until the 1930s, sending some 2,000,000 tons of iron ore to Pueblo during its time of operation.



At sunset, Brazilian free tailed bats - as many as 250,000 - fly out of the mine from a vast hole in the side of the mountain. The hole was created by the collapse of another section of tunnel after the mine had been abandoned. The bats mainly feed on insects on the agricultural lands on the valley floor. The bats bring new life to the old, cold, dark tunnels under these warn foothills.