Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Day Off
It’s Labor Day today and we have the day off, so we are still up at the lake. There will be a tiny bit of work done, to bring in the rafts and deflate them for storage. Other than that, we will just soak up the last gasps of summer here before heading home and returning to the weekly grind. It is 11 days from our scheduled departure for Portugal. From one paradise, to another. I don’t know if I can stand it, but I’ll try.
Flowing Thoughts
I apologize in advance for my decision to allow some words to flow unabated, but this is one of those times when I haven’t come up with a specific subject worth writing about and so as an exercise in freeing myself from the logical center of my thinking and all the usual censors of common sense for communicating in a conventional manner, I allow the words to tumble out in a stream of conscious flurry that for some reason involves a distinct aversion to happening in concise, pleasing-to-read sentence structure. It brings to mind the fact that it reflects all of nature and time in that none of that ever pauses in the way we do with our little dot at the end of each grammatical phrase. The earth just spins and spins and light fades to dark so fast sometimes it boggles my mind and then in a blink it is daylight again and critters and little children are skittering about with irrepressible energy to explore their world as if this might be the last chance to do so, probably sensing that for centuries people have been conjuring ideas that our existence is doomed and some apocalyptic event will unleash horrific wrath as if something we earned or at least somehow deserve and it may just be thoughts like that which allow entire tribes of people to become so fixated on their fears and hatred that they will do everything in their power to avoid peace settlements which normal logic sees as twisted because peace makes so much more sense in the way that a calm sunny day compares to a dark and stormy one. Do you see how an untethered mind will wander to the angst which can be the wrong place for a mind to dwell and therefore effort does need to be made toward correcting the path of the stream of thinking toward a plane of hope that allows for a vast landscape of happy, healthy ideation in which possibilities abound and where reality is still well within grasp so that it doesn’t turn out to be some frilly false front of fantastic, but a seriously great accomplishment of truly healthy being and that is something that can be managed on an individual basis and with some luck there are moments when enough healthy logical individuals come together to impact our world in a way which adds value for the masses and not just in the way a group of athletes do when they surmount all obstacles and beat the odds to triumph and claim the top prize in their sport, but in a way that entire nations succeed in doing right for all citizens and supporting the human rights of people and animals and when doing so finding that everyone wins, not just the greedy financial wizards who devise ways to dupe the system… oops, there it goes again. See what I mean? So much for that exercise. I’m considering going back to normal sentences. As if that will solve things. I suppose it can’t hurt. Hope that was relative something. It’s what I am offering today. It is Labor Day weekend here and I am up at my favorite place. I’m going to go see what the day brings. Thanks for stopping by. Happy Sunday to you!
Happy September
I know I’ve talked about the magic of the changing of seasons before. It is happening again. Magic. I truly believe that even if there weren’t harvested bounties to be celebrated at this time of year, nor anticipation for the start of a new year of schooling, this time of year would still feel magical.
Whenever the August humidity breaks, the crisp evening air quickly evokes the first sensations of the change. By September the sunrise and sunset have moved in noticeably, effectively increasing the impact that the hours of crisp air have. It is heavenly.
This is my favorite time of year (along with my other favorite, winter), and yet I will be leaving soon to travel across the ocean to visit Portugal. On one hand, the pending travel adventure lends more spark to the excitement of this time of year for me. On the other hand, I’ll be leaving home at the time when the weather is just getting to my liking.
I like this time of year so much, I picked the month of September to get married. Cyndie and I will celebrate our 29th wedding anniversary this year by traveling together to Portugal.
I couldn’t be more pleased, regardless the weather waiting for us at the forest garden estate of our destination.
Friendship
Much as it may seem that the miracle of friendship is manifest in the way our friends support us in times of need, the bigger miracle worth noting may occur at the moment we allow ourselves to actually ask our friends for help. I think most of us recognize the difficulty in determining when it is time to ask.
I’m reminded of a thought that occurred to me last weekend when I was biking with Jack through the woods in Wisconsin:
How do you know when you are carrying too much speed into a corner?
The answer is, you don’t know you have too much speed until it is too late and you are unable to stay on the trail through the end of the turn. “Oops, should have applied the brakes a bit there!”
How do you know when it’s too late to ask a friend for help?
It is never too late to ask.
Weekend’s End
Well, well… Monday has arrived. Ask me if I am exhausted. Go ahead, ask me. Absolutely! But it is a good exhaustion. It is an every second of the weekend used to the fullest kind of exhaustion. Even given the fact that some of those moments of the weekend involved lounging luxuriously. You see, even simply lounging, when in the sun and wind of an absolutely beautiful day, tends to take something out of you, at the same while it is rejuvenating you in other ways. So, I am energized to exhaustion. Is that even possible?
It may have something to do with having stayed the entire day yesterday, soaking up every last-minute of breezy summer sunshine, before hitting the road just as the big ball of fire dipped below the horizon. It being a 3-hour drive back to the cities, we got home a bit after the bed-time hour that allows for optimal liver happiness. However, driving home after sunset means we reduced the mosquito population by a significant amount, based on how nasty the front of Cyndie’s Mustang looks.
Over the weekend I found myself sharing with Cyndie’s cousins, the story of how our upcoming trip to Portugal originated. As I write this, I’m noticing that doing so has really amped up my excitement about the trip. Adding to that, yesterday morning, while browsing through my online ‘virtual community,’ Brainstorms, I discovered that my connection in Portugal, Ian Rowcliffe, had posted messages indicating he is thinking about us and our pending arrival. It is nice to see the preparations are happening on both sides.
What an amazing opportunity has developed out of my participation in the discussions of Brainstorms. It is nice to be able to share it with my readers here. As I have done for most of my other trips since I started this blog, I will pre-post something for the days I am in Portugal, and plan to post descriptions of our adventures after the fact, once we have returned to the stability of my internet connection at home. I remain open to the possibility that I will get a chance, or two, to post something directly during our trip, but I don’t plan to depend on it.
In the mean time, boa semana! (That’s “Have a good week!” in Portuguese.)
Woodland Biking
Yesterday was a blue-sky day if ever there was one. With all of Cyndie’s cousin’s families reuniting together up here at our lake paradise, there was a huge variety of options for activity. I volunteered to take cousin Heather’s husband, Jack, out biking in the woods. Here is a picture of what I saw while following Jack through the woods:
You may notice he is not visible. That’s what I saw of him most of the time we were riding. Finally, I would catch up to Jack at the major crossings, where he was nice enough to wait for me so we wouldn’t have any confusion over which option of route we were choosing. He was always smiling and far from short of breath. I was quite the opposite. 
In contrast, here is the view that Jack had of me, when he paused to glance back before beginning to pedal. We had an absolute blast together out there. The woods of Wisconsin were in particularly fine form. Never mind the mosquitoes.
Paradise Improved
There is little time to write this Saturday morning. I enjoyed the pleasure of sleeping late this morning. It was an incredible treat, sleeping in the cabin of our next door neighbor up here at our lake place. The different perspective of views of this place we have come to know so well over 30-some years time lends a magical touch. It makes a place that we know as special, even more so.
Add to that, special people; relatives whom we normally see for one afternoon a year, now spending enough time to connect in a much deeper sense. It takes our little paradise here up to another level of incredibly great.
I must go delve into more of that greatness. I’ll tell you about it later… if I can find words to describe the indescribable.
Numbers, Again
Number of mosquitoes swatted in the house last night: 6
Mosquito count outside the house lately: Googolplex
Seconds until hoards of mosquitoes descend on my exposed flesh in the garage: 6
Amount of bug repellent I like putting on my skin: 0
Amount of day being worked today: 1/2
Hours to be driven out of town: 3
Number of mosquitoes waiting for me up north: nevermind
Related families uniting for the weekend: 9
Family reunions so far this summer: 2
The unqualified answer to anything: six
Number of kids who know what that’s all about: 2
What that has to do with anything right now: nothing
Number of ideas I had when I decided to create this list: 0
Number of times numbers have been repeated in the answers above: 3
Significance of that: come on, it’s a numbers list!
Number of times the State Fair was brought up at work yesterday: way too many
Calories in an order of cheese curds at the fair: 1,140
Miles of walking the fair grounds required to burn that many calories: 11.5
How much less that makes me lust for fried cheese curds: zilch, zippo, hardly at all
How fond mosquitoes are of fried cheese curds: now that’s just plain silly
A Calamity
Two days ago I was thrown back to memories of my travels in Nepal when I learned that Jim Klobuchar’s Adventures has scheduled another trip to the Himalayas for April, 2011. It is tempting to think about the possibility of returning to that place of my greatest adventure. Then, yesterday’s news alerted me to a tragedy that just occurred there, related all too closely to those same memories I was just enjoying.
One of the small planes that shuttles trekkers and mountain climbers to the high peaks, crashed, killing all 14 people on board. They had taken off from Kathmandu, headed for the crazy landing strip at Lukla, and were forced to turn back when visibility diminished. The first day that my group was scheduled to make that same flight, back in 2009, the group just ahead of us had the same experience. They were in the air, but had to turn around and come back. We never even boarded a plane that day. If they aren’t able to fly, you go back to a hotel and try again the next day.
We luckily made it out the very next day. While it was happening, I experienced brief moments of trepidation, but the glory and wonder of the Himalayan Mountains and the sheer excitement of the exotic adventure overruled any fears I was experiencing. But our flight didn’t have any problems.
Having made that very same flight, I am experiencing a deeper sense of mourning for their loss. I can visualize all too well, being able to see the pilots in action and the view out the front window revealing where we were headed. I remember the one young woman flight attendant who passed out cotton for our ears and little hard candies. Then she sat in the very back seat during the flight. They make this flight so many times, I imagine they were able to sense the trouble before the tourists from USA (4), Briton, and Japan. The impact was so intense, none of the remains were intact, making identification of the victims difficult.
In an instant, their adventure is over. Their lives ended.
It is always a risk. The whole trek is fraught with potential for calamity. But it seems like a calculated risk. For those of us on the 2009 trek, we escaped serious harm. The tragedy that just occurred to the 14 souls who lost their lives in that crash, serves to alert us to the grace we experienced, being able to return alive and again hug those who love us the most.
I am feeling more satisfied with my likelihood of not participating in the 2011 trek now. I had a good adventure to that special place once already, and am home, safe and sound.
As if I am any less likely to experience life-threatening calamity in my life here, on any given day…
Temptation
I have yet to write very much about the planning we have been doing for our upcoming travel to Portugal, but with departure now less than a month away, Cyndie and I are daily making decisions related to preparations for that adventure. With the majority of my attention being funneled toward that trip, I was entirely unprepared for the email I received yesterday from the conductor of my favorite travel club.
In April of 2011, he will be guiding another trek in Nepal. I cannot describe how tempting that is to me. As I read his description of the trip, memories of my adventures there in 2009 came flooding back. Knowing what I now know about the whole experience feeds my thinking about how much more I might be able to get out of such a trip, the second time around.
I am remembering the Sherpa people who I came to know so well. They are a major part of the draw I feel to return. It feels uncomfortable to know that another group will be going over without me. It doesn’t feel right. I belong on that trip. I remember meeting Rosemary on the long plane flight out of Los Angeles, and her descriptions of having trekked in Nepal before. At the time, it seemed a little extreme to me. Now I understand it entirely.
I am so tempted to return.
For now, I have a whole ‘nother trip to distract me. We leave for Portugal near the middle of September. I will need to save temptations of the Himalayas until I return. But for a few hours yesterday, my mind was all Nepal, baby. All Nepal.
It is tempting.
