Freya and Family

This February has been about family as much as snow.  Family and friends come to share time skiing, going to the hot springs (Mt. Princeton is particularly popular this year), walking through town, and, well, just hanging out at this townhouse on the upper Arkansas River.

More specifically the hanging out during Ingrid and Geoff's visit was hanging out with Freya, now six months.  She turns up in all the photos of people during the time she was here.  The rest of us simply became adjuncts...attending to her moves, her interests, her interactions and her head cold.

She is almost crawling...doesn't quite have the muscle development to get onto her knees.  So she pushes herself with her legs or arms, rolls over, makes swimming motions, grabs for toys, shoes, people.  Clearly a gifted athlete...ready for skis in a few more years.  She can keep herself amused for long stretches without intervention from adults. 

But with a four or five adults to one baby ratio, there is lots of intervention.  "Here let me pick you up,"  "Maybe she wants something to eat." "Let me wipe your nose." "Here, Freya, grab this toy."  "Here, Freya, let's go outside and listen to the sound of the river." "Let's go for a walk."  "Let's wake up Mormor."

 So hanging out with Freya (and giving her parents a chance to snowboard or go to the hot springs) was a gift this month.  Seeing her develop day-by-day, each day a little more agile, each day moving a bit further off the carpet, each day playing with those round plastic toys...or someone's shoes even better...more precisely....this came to represent much of our time.  Freya is progressing so much faster than I am on the moguls at Monarch...But, then, that is why we hang out...seeing where one another is at and getting to know who we are.  Just being.  

Perspectives

 

The mountain landscape through the upper Arkansas Valley is one of open wide vistas and great distance.  It reminds me of the lines of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay...."the world stands out on either side, no wider than the heart is wide....above the world is stretched the sky, no higher than the soul is high."  These land forms force us to extend ourselves beyond the confines of streets, towns, highways, buildings...the structures of daily life.  

But the mountains also contain intimate spaces...below tree line are dense forests, places to lose oneself in micro-climates where sight lines are limited.  Sometimes these are in juxtaposition to one another.  I was cross country skiing on a mountain road, enjoying the silence, watching the tread of my skis as the layer of new snow was thin on the gravel surface.  As I came around a bend, I looked up and saw a high mountain wall above the forest...defining the edge of the canyon where I was skiing.  

  This brusque convergence of small-scale and large-scale perspectives is one of the on-going joys of this mountain valley...narrow canyons leading away from the broad ranches on the valley floor. 

Across the River

Across the river from our winter rental is a large industrial building, falling each year into further disrepair.  The building was an engine maintenance facility for the Denver-Rio Grande Railroad.  Salida was founded by the railroad in 1880,  Shortly thereafter, the town became a central transfer and repair center for trains heading south to New Mexico, north to Leadville, west into the San Juans, and east down the Arkansas River canyon to the mills and smelters of Pueblo. 

The texture of the metal sided building, the clerestory with its broken panes, the contours of the water tanks, the colors as they change with the angle of the sun,  these features have always captured me.  An abstract of form, texture, color and shading.

 

 This remnant of the industrial past is a healthy tonic for those who come to Colorado and look at the mountains and who believe that skiing and ranching is all that happened here.  The energy, the smoke, the rail yard rhythms of metal being beaten, of engines being torn apart and being put back together, of workmen and passengers crossing over tracks to change trains...that sense of energy and capital coming together to move, to move, to move people, freight, minerals across the State, the continent.  All that is missing. 

Salida's library has a book on railroads containing a painting of the scene as it looked in the last century.  A train engine running at a good clip past the repair yard.  But now it is quiet on the opposite shore...the only sound is that of the Arkansas River still flowing down to Pueblo and beyond.  

Bike Ride

 

Salida Bike Trail

Yesterday unfolded slowly so in the afternoon, I went for a ride down new paths, new at least for me.  Out into the fields, alongside new developments  ("Craftsman style from the $290s),  along an old ditch carrying water to the farmstead below.   The path was a straight line...cutting west for the Sawatch Mountains...defining connections between places,  people, birds, mountains...

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The Canada geese fly by into fields, recycling their turds back into the soil, taking off to swirl in the skies, looking, always looking, for that greener pasture...all now just shades of brown.  

On the way back into town, I study the wind blowing through the passes on the Sangre de Cristo Range south of town.  Watching the clouds that form as the wind whips through its passes and encounters the warmer air on the eastern slopes.  Feeling glad not to be climbing their heights in this wind.  

Then biking back to town...back to my own species...not unlike the birds...walking through the streets...older folks looking out for younger folks...making them fit for the world.  

And, finally, at not quite the end of the bike ride...just before getting milk at Safeway...sitting for a while over a latte...contemplating how "local" coffee can get given its origin in the tropics.  Some say that roasting at this high altitude gives the beans a certain zipp.  Am not sure about that...but when I got back on my bike, it was with a new clarity as I headed around the block for that milk.  

Flash from the Past

 

 

Working on the Yearbook

OK so it's senior year at North Bergen High School.  I'm sitting around with susan, Iris, Carol and Leslie....are we doing layout or just b.s.ing.  Don't quite know but we do seem to be having a good time.  As we are now planning our (hold your breath) 50th class reunion...you have to be really old to go to one of these.  But it is still fun...albeit a bit more long distance.  Am going to scan more pictures...more from the high school and then from the reunion itself, but I will not bore you with more of these.  Will keep this photo and the others in a more personal account.  All of this is quite before I went on the road.  

Leadville

View from Mineral Trail

Through the 19th century slag heaps above Leadville winds the mineral trail...a bike and cross-country ski loop that takes in the town's mining history.  Leadville is one of the few towns in Colorado that started out as a mining site (gold, silver, lead) and has continued to be a mining town (molybdenum)..  Early morning customers in this coffee shop include mine administrative folks who are heading up to the Climax Mine at Fremont Pass. 

Mining Camp in the 1880s

Sellers Mine in Leadville 

 

 

 

 

 

The town has a sense of authenticity missing from places like Vail with their ersatz European veneer.  It is cold here at 10,150 feet; life is hard.  Leadville has never really recovered from the closure of Climax Mine in the early 1980s.  Winter and summer sports (bike races, ski joring, skiing at nearby Ski Cooper) can only bring in so much.

When I pass through town, sometimes staying a few days, I stay at the local hostel, run by Wild Bill and his wife.  They run a "tight ship" and there are always interesting folk sharing the ample space (a woman getting "in condition" for a five month trip to Nepal, an African doing work at Colorado Mountain College, men doing temporary work with road crews)....a cross section.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Road Sign Outside the Hostel

Bric-a- Brac in the hostel living room 

  In Norwegian, "kosilig" means cozy, warm, friendly.  Doubt that term would have applied to this town during its early mining days.  Still the hostel, just down the street from the mine ruins,  has that feel after a day of exploring the winter snows. 

Trees

So off we went, Kris Turner, a UK visitor living with us for a while, to the Roosevelt National Forest to get a Christmas tree.  The Forest Service opens up a section each year for two weekends for folks to come and cut their own tree.  The SUVs and four wheel drive vehicles make a long parade on the county roads to get "the perfect tree." 

Joining the parade of cars in search of The Tree

 We found a small tree (to walk around when we sing "Nu hav jul igjen"...a Danish tune stating that "Now we have Jule again"  and a 14 foot one to fill the front of the living room with light and decorations. 

The Small Tree

And the Big Tree

So we bring it home on top of the old Ford Explorer, up it goes in the living room, and then out come 35 or more years worth of globes, baubbles, bangles, beads, garlands, figures, dolls, strings of lights, and one angel.  They don't all go on, but most of them do. 

In the Living Room

So what does it mean, this form of installation art?  Once a year, transforming our ordinary living spaces into colorful dens, magical places?  A custom inherited from Germanic tribes centuries ago....celebrating the solstice, infusing the dark winter with light, creating a festive scene to counter the cold...   Perhaps it is just a way of saying that, whatever the change in season, we are here, we will create our own space, we will find our own joy and peace. 

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year

Museum day

On the roof of the Museum of Contemporary Art on 15th Street

My friend, Patrick, and I went down to Denver last week to check out a couple of museums.  The Museum of Contemporary Art is a fine piece of architecture with a great roof garden and cafe.  It was hosting a series of exhibits on the folk arts of the "counterculture" communes and collectives which sprung up in the late 60s and early 70s throughout the west.  These included light shows, psychedelic paintings, costumes, performances, posters, and inflatable sculptures. 

Inflatable sculptures from the Ant Farm Collective

Having seen the documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, we spent some time in the museum's gift shop.  I came across a book, Huerfano, written by Roberta Price, a memoir of her life on a commune in southern Colorado.  A copy of the book was given to me by my son's college roommate some years ago.  His parents were part of an adjacent commune...after its dissolution, they stayed on and worked a wholesale nursery.  Roberta, now an intellectual property rights lawyer, is coming up to Denver for a panel discussion at the museum in a few weeks. 

Cover of Roberta's Memoir

Patrick and I then crossed over downtown and went to the new Clyfford Still museum.  Still was an initial founder of the movement of abstract expressionism in New York in the 1950s.  His will stipulated that on his death all of the works in his possession would be given to a city that built a museum solely for his paintings.  Denver finally won the right to build the museum.  It opened a few months back.  Four of his paintings, donated by his wife,  had been sold in New York for $114 million to support the operations of the museum. 

Galleries at the Still Museum

So this clearly is not folk art but rather the rarefied "high" art of billionaire collectors, glossy art magazines, and auction houses.  No inflatable sculptures here.  The contrast between the two museums' shows was stark.  And, yet, both come from the same desire to create, to express one's self or a collective's spirit, and to share that by interacting with an audience.  Or at least with two guys on a day trip down from Fort Collins...expanding their sense of the world they live in.   

North Bergen

So the home town...about half way between Washington and Providence...high on the Palisade Cliffs overlooking the Hudson River and "the city"...as we refer to Manhattan.  The cliffs rise some 300 feet over the river front.  They were a playground, a place for exploration and "dares," such as swinging from a rope tied to bridge girders...swinging some 50 feet over open space.  In quieter moments, the cliffs were a place to find a convenient rock ledge or cave and sit there reading a book, looking up from time to time to note the ship traffic on the river.  As kids, the cliffs were a big part of our "open space."


I had gotten the train into "the city" in the morning, then caught the bus (through the Lincoln Tunnel and along Blvd. East).    It had been decades since I'd ridden that bus route and, somewhat embarrassed, had to ask how you request a stop.  The cord that passengers used to pull to ring a buzzer for the stop was missing.  A woman in the seat in front pointed to a small, red button over each row of seats.  I got off at 74th Street and walked up the hill.  According to Wikipedia, North Bergen, after San Francisco, is the "hilliest" municipality in the United States. 

Robert Fulton Elementary School

101 74th Street North Bergen NJ

So there they all still are:  my old apartment house (101 74th Street, apartment 1A), Robert Fulton Elementary School....two blocks further up the hill..., Woodcliff Community Church....further up the hill and two blocks over on 77th Street...the buildings and institutions that structured my early years. But what came into my mind as I walked (a beautiful fall day) were the names of old neighbors, family friends, and kids with whom I went to Robert Fulton.  Agnes Wright who had worked with my mother as a secretary in New York before my mother had to leave since she had gotten married...couldn't be married and take the bus every day into "the city."  Agnes had remained single.  Astrid Johnson...a Norwegian woman who spoke Norsk with my parents after a few highballs.  June Shanloogian (we got caught by a policeman picking flowers in the park when we were about seven...."How would you like someone to take off YOUR head."  Ted Doll....his father was Mayor; his Mom taught our cub scout troop.  Never made it to boy scouts. 

But it was not memory that had me catch the 166.  Or was it?  I had come to have lunch with some of my kindergarten friends...friends whose old apartments, like mine, still hold multitudes.  Well some of us actually had single-family houses...funny but I never sensed any class difference in this.  We were all part of the same neighborhood, often the same "block."  When we were kids, the bar on 75th Street was called the Colonnade, an Irish pub.  Now it was The Havana Mambo.  A happening spot.

I am not certain that we (Sheila, Nancy (who still lives off 78th Street), and Bernadine) added to that sense of "happening"....but we were loud in our laughter.  Sheila is going to host a 50th Class Reunion (of our high school not the kindergarten class....that would make it the 62nd Class Reunion) in June.  We met to "plan" the occasion but really we just shared our lives to date...what we'd been doing, what we'd come to believe, and who knew what about our classmates. 

So the quick trip to North Bergen was about the present and the future, as much as it was about the past.  The neighborhood is vibrant, as it was when we were young.  And, somehow, we are still vibrant along with it. 

Portraits

When you go to the National Portrait Gallery, you meet all these people.  People you might have known before.  Like Pocahontas.  Painted 1616 from an engraving.  But there she is.  You wanna say "hi" or something, but you feel she has other things to think about.

And then, around the corner, John Singleton Copley, the early American painter who made this portrait of himself.  Somehow I imagine him holding a cell phone, stretching out his arm, snapping a photo, and sending it up to Facebook with a note "Decided to move to England...wish me luck."  Which, of course, he had for a while.  I wonder "Who does his hair?"

And, then, not really a portrait (don't know how it fits into this gallery) but a detail of a painting by Ryder of Jonah, about to be swallowed by the whale.   Now he looks scared....   So it's not just all portraits...it's people in all kinds of situations. 

And, then, around another corner, new acquisitions.  Bill and Melinda.  Looking good.  No worries about whales here. 

Still the best portraits are of our own.  Tom, home after a long day at the magistrate's judicial offices, a good-bye luncheon for one of his colleagues, a happy hour for an intern leaving next week, interviews with new intern applicants, telephone calls from clients, an evening visit from Rob McDowell, an old family friend, and, finally, just a moment to sink back into the couch before packing for a flight tomorrow....well, all portraits of people at a time in their lives.  And all of them in my life too. 

Meeting in the gallery

Fine, well bred museums abound in Washington.  Aside from being with family and friends, one of my joys in visiting the city is to wander rooms and galleries filled with painting, sculpture, video projections and other works that stimulate the imagination.  A favorite so far on this trip is a portrait of Gertrude Stein made out of spindles of colored thread hung on long chains suspended from the ceiling.  Gertrude would have loved it.

Besides the interplay of light and shadow in long corridors, I love the interaction of museum-goers with marble figures and sculpture...the way the present and the past juxtapose one another.  People moving among these immovable objects and, in some way, communicating with them.  Communicating with the figures itself.  "Who were these people?"  "Who are these people?"  An idealized beauty alongside our ordinary beauty. 

And is the message between these marble figures and ourselves?   It could be a message of beauty alone, of harmony or, equally, of disquiet and protest, of love or violence.  This communication is what touches us, causes a reaction, brings us toward the object or away from it.  Perhaps it is a form of communication not that far off from the early cave paintings....leading us to reflect on something quite beyond ourselves.

But even in these galleries and rooms, we are drawn back to our daily lives....a cafe set up amidst the elegant figures attunes us more to the possibility of food than of a deeper communion.  And that is part of the fun of these museums....the way the timeless interacts with the present moment.

traveling

Snow fell in the "high country."   Most of the ski resorts had not opened but with cross country skis all you have to do is park your car and head out onto a trail.  I skied at Berthoud Pass and at Cameron Pass...snow still being spotty lower down in the Middle Park valley.  At Cameron, I took the short trail up to Zimmerman Lake, skiing along its shoreline, looking up from time to time at the Medicine Bow Mountains in the not-too-far-away distance.

Yesterday I arrived in Washington at Dulles Airport...far from the wide spaces of Zimmerman Lake into a different scene.  But this man-made landscape was also filled with light, an interior illumination designed to move people between airline planes, between arrivals and departures, between countries and continents.  On the lake, I had to move myself though a "natural" space (though the lake is actually a man-made reservoir)...at Dulles, I was moved by trains, escalators, moving sidewalks. 


Both of these were experiences with space, with movement, both of them visually stimulating, both of them liberateing in a sense.  But vastly different in how my individual energy at the lake was not channeled to become part of a vast, collective energy system structured by architects and engineers hired by governments.  And how the private experience at the lake (no one else was on the trail that day) became a social experience shared by thousands of fellow travelers.  Interesting how we can move between these zones, these geographies and somehow remain the same.  Or do we?