20th Century Woman

A little island news

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Old Woman

It’s February again, and the world, including Lummi Island, is waiting for spring. Here in the Pacific Northwest the green never goes away completely. The grass is a brilliant true green, the roof moss is a shiny yellow green, almost chartreuse. The leafless trees are gray and black against the blue sky (when it’s blue) but their trunks have a greenish tinge. There are some yellow crocuses blooming in the debris of the garden, and there is promise of daffodils and tulips.

crocus

coming daffodils

The Heritage Trust had its annual meeting. I skipped Mah Jongg to go, and I forced Jerry to go with me because I was told a wonderful speaker would talk on ecology. We were a bit late, so we managed to sit in the back and miss a lot of the business meeting, and we came in to hear Becca thanking us all for supporting the Trust’s purchase and maintenance of precious undeveloped farm and forest land on the island. Our financial contributions would keep Lummi Island a beautiful, wild place for unborn generations to enjoy.

Then Becca introduced the speaker. A philosopher – I glanced nervously at Jerry, the down to earth engineer. But she had academic credentials and had written a book on the ethics of ecology and had articles in some good places. Kathleen Dean Moore as a pleasant looking middle aged blond lady, a bit plump and apt to giggle. Her message was a lot like Becca’s, only more elegant and poetic. She read long excerpts from her book. They were supposed to be inspiring and funny. Jerry looked at the floor and squirmed in his seat. He whispered that his bottom was sore from the seat. He wanted to go. I said just a little longer; it would look rude to leave before she had finished. After a little more reading she said she was sure everyone was sore from sitting in hard seats and she would be happy to sign copies of her book.

It’ll be a while before I get him to another meeting.

The ferry chugs back and forth across Hales Passage, but it carries fewer and fewer cars and passengers. When Jerry and I walk we are less bothered by cars flying past us to catch it, and in general the island is oddly quiet. The fares have gone up so much that islanders are avoiding going to the mainland whenever possible.

Sometime last year I wrote about the dispute Whatcom County is having with the Lummi Indian tribe about payment for the lease of Lummi owned tidelands that the ferry crosses to get to the mainland dock. The ferry dock is on the Lummi Indian reservation, but Lummi Island is not part of the reservation. The county pays almost $17,000 a month in rents for the lease. The independently assessed value of the lease is about $65,000 a year, so the Lummis are getting a pretty good deal. But apparently they don’t think so, since now, for the third time in 15 months they have threatened to shut down the ferry service in 2 months if the county doesn’t come up with sums of money it simply doesn’t have.

For us islanders the problem is now complicated by the fact that the county council is hostile to Lummi Island. In the recent country wide sweep by conservatives the council became dominated by conservatives, and Lummi Island is known as a liberal bastion (though this, too, is changing). The council would like to wash its hands of the Lummi Island ferry.

The people who suffer the most from this are those who work in Bellingham and have to cross the water every day to earn a living. They have lived for 2 years with the stress of wondering whether they will be able to get to work, and this is made worse by the county’s policy of constantly raising the ferry fares. A month ago the council imposed a $3.00 surcharge on every vehicle and passenger riding the ferry. When I first moved here 11 years ago the ferry fare for a passenger was $1.00. Now it’s $7.00. When Jerry and I go to town together it costs us $21.00 for the car and both of us. No wonder we try not to go often.

Although the issue could be quickly solved by action from the Federal Government, since the tribe is regulated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, our representative and our senators have steadfastly declined to interest themselves in our plight.

Other things here are changing as well as the ferry. We have a small inn and restaurant on the island, The Willows. When I first moved here it was closed and for sale. The owners of a nearby organic chicken farm bought it and for a long time it limped along, serving overpriced tough chicken and buffalo and overcooked salmon. It got a bit of a boost when it introduced prawns served on the deck, which has a magnificent view of the sound and islands and sunset. Recently it acquired a new chef and a couple of consultants. Suddenly it was written up in the New York Times as one of the 10 best places in the world to eat. I hear it is booked up for a year – no chance for us islanders to stop by for dinner.

This island will change. It used to be a haven for hippies, then a haven for aging hippies. There is still housing here for middle income families, but the logistics of travel, together with uncertainties about funding for the school are making it a place not friendly to families. I think it will become a haven for the rich, especially for those rich who have yachts. There used to be an airstrip here, but it is only a cow pasture now. But who knows, perhaps someone will revive the airstrip. That will be the coup de grace.

Written by Old Woman

February 17th, 2011 at 9:44 am

Posted in Day to day, Island life, Uncategorized

Tagged with Lummi Island, Lummi Island ferry, Lummi Island Heritage Trust, The Willows Inn, Whatcom County

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Endings — a P.S.

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Old Woman

There were a lot of interesting comments on my last post about endings. I invite my readers to look at those comments. I see now that what I wrote had some (at least partially) unintended interpretations. I believed I was writing about what everyone knows to be true – at least all rational people in contemporary life. We know that the body dies and decomposes. We know that nothing of this world is forever, that cultures disappear, that ecosystems change completely and that one day
both the earth and the sun will be gone.

I myself, as many of my readers and family know, do not believe in an afterlife. But I know that many people do, and that includes some who are near and dear to me. I think that the Catholic Church has accepted Darwin’s idea of evolution as science, and that the Church’s metaphysical explanation is that at some point in the evolution of humans God inserted a soul. I certainly could be corrected on this; I don’t pretend to know much theology. At any rate, I think the idea is of a soul which has an eternal existence quite separate from the material body and the material universe.

I suppose there is some ambiguity in Christian theology about whether or not it was actually the physical body of Christ which was resurrected and rose into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father. But I presume that most people these days believe it was his soul. And I suppose that those who believe in life after death do not think that their physical being will be somehow reconstituted. What lives on would be some inner essence of consciousness: the soul.

When I wrote about the attempts of humans to perpetuate corporeal existence and earthly memories of it I was arguing that such attempts must be futile; that our bodies and our world (with all its history) will, in time, disappear. I think this must be true, and I myself think that is all there is. But I am just a human, just a speck in the vastness of space and time. I certainly don’t have all the answers, and I hope I am wrong. At least I think I hope that.

I have never yet heard or read of a kind of heaven that I would prefer to being alive as I know it here.

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Endings

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Old Woman

Jerry took me and the poodles to San Juan Island this weekend. That is where he lived before we were married and he has friends there he likes to see. He also checks his brother’s property — a little house and airplane hangar beside a private airstrip at Roche Harbor. The property is near a mausoleum and an old grave yard that has been designated a National Historical Site. Jerry said I should see it and I reluctantly agreed. The word mausoleum has an unpleasant sound — it has sounds like the words nausea and maul and it brings to mind coffins and dead bodies. It was a wet, chilly, dismal day. But the poodles needed a walk so we set out through the woods of the old grave yard to have a look at the mausoleum.

The woods had that extra dead look they sometimes get just before spring begins. The graves were littered with sticks and branches that had blown down in winter storms. They were surrounded by little picket fences with peeling paint. Some graves were missing stones. There were grave markers of young children that said “Asleep in Jesus;” one of a woman who had died at 39 years of age which said “Gone, but not forgotten.” Many were too worn to read. They were all more than 100 years old.

I had no idea what the mausoleum would be like and I was slightly apprehensive. It turned out to be sad and rather silly: a rich man’s eccentric reach for immortality. It was a lime-stone cement construction, built in the 1920‘s, I think. It is a memorial to the family of John McMillin, the founder of the lime kiln and cement factory in Roche Harbor.

Steps led to a raised round pavilion with a cement canopy open to the sky held up by seven fluted columns. One of the columns was incomplete, and this was supposed to symbolize man’s unfinished work on earth. A cement table in the middle of the pavilion was surrounded by cement chairs, each with the name of one of those buried there. The cement had been colored. The colors were fading and the cement was chipped and cracked. There were names of 2 women and 4 men carved into the chairs. The women’s chairs had only their names and dates on them, but the men’s had, in addition, carved into the chair backs the things (a metal plaque informed the visitor) they believed in and thought were important: things like “Elks” “Sigma Xi” “Methodist” “Knights Templar” and “Republican.”

I had been thinking about writing a post about endings. Seeing the mausoleum fit right into my train of thought.

When Jerry and I go to bed at night I read to him until he gets sleepy. The book we are reading now is Age of Wonder. It is a history of science in the romantic era, the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. It combines a discussion of scientific discoveries with biographies of important scientists of the time in the cultural milieu of romanticism. That time is past, those people are gone.

Just before we get in bed we sit together on the sofa, with our poodles, and watch a lecture from the Teaching Company. Almost all the lectures are about the past — the history of the earth, the history of science, the history of countries and governments, of culture and art. It’s all about beginnings and middles and ends. About origin, growth, decline, collapse and death.

Our current lecture series is called the origin of civilization. It is about vanished civilizations of the past. Nothing is left of them save the artifacts that archeologists dig up and study. Some of the cultures the lecture course covers lasted for a thousand years or more; even so, now they are gone. The people left their houses, abandoned their gods, neglected the lessons of their ancestors, forgot how to write, and died. Many things happened to bring this about, some known, some only guessed at. Volcanoes erupted, droughts and famines arose, pestilence came or war broke out. Perhaps there were earthquakes and tsunamis. Perhaps dictators’ rule elicited civil unrest; perhaps the land was exhausted by intensive farming.

But no cultures survived.

Oh, certainly, some people survived. There are Mayans living today on the Yucatan Peninsula. But the Mayan culture is long dead.

Then I think about the dinosaurs. The books and lectures we went to sleep on a few months ago were about the history of the earth and the history of life. What happened to the dinosaurs? Was it a meteor, climate change, disease? I look out the window as I sit at my computer, see my bird feeder and wonder whether birds are the tiny survivors of the dinosaurs. They probably are, and if so, should I think of them as dinosaurs, or have they changed so much that they are completely different entities. Well, they are what they are. Hans Larsson is trying to reverse engineer chicken DNA to make a dinosaur. We’ll see.

What about woolly mammoths. Did the people who migrated across the dry land of the Bering Strait in the ice age kill them off? Could somebody get mammoth DNA to grow, say, in a buffalo’s egg ,so we could see a real live mammoth?

Everyone is aging. Everyone will die. Now that I am in my late 70’s I see changes every day, and I know the end is not far away. The substance of my body is atoms and molecules in a particular relationship to each other. The atoms will still exist when I die but their arrangement will change. They will find their way into other things; the atmosphere, the water, the soil, perhaps some other creature or plant. What makes me an entity is the particular relationship of my molecules to each other, and their history; that is, the life I have lived has been imprinted on those molecular arrangements as memory, as usage, as wear and tear, as habit, as consumption and elimination.

During my long life many, if not most, of my atoms have been replaced, exchanged, reorganized, rearranged. But there is a core relationship, DNA, present in most of my cells, that remains a constant. In addition, there is an identity of me, Anne, that is not reproducible. Even if my DNA were re-grown into an individual identical to me it would not be me. It would be my identical twin. There is no way to reproduce my experience or consciousness. When I die what will be gone is the sum of my experience together with the arrangement of my molecules.

Life perpetuates itself. It just works that way. It’s natural to ask why, as if there must be a conscious purpose to keep going. The teleological question — why — has no answer, however, because questions of purpose make no sense scientifically. Someday, perhaps, scientists will understand the physical force that makes life self-perpetuate — or maybe that will be part of the unfinished business of humanity when it vanishes from the earth as it inevitably will. Because, of course, life will lose the struggle in the end. It will cease to exist on this planet. The earth will end. The sun will die.

People have purpose, however. They try in all sorts of ways to outwit fate and convince themselves that death is not an end. They try with mausoleums, embalming, ceremony, sacrifice to the gods and prayers.

The Incas embalmed their dead rulers and the ruler’s wealthy descendants served as his courtiers, displaying his mummified body on ceremonial occasions. Over time there came to be many of these mummified individuals, paraded about in a ritual display with many followers. A living ruler had to amass enough wealth in his lifetime to do the same after his death. By the time the Spaniards came to conquer them the Incas were weakened by the economic drain of having to maintain courts for all those dead mummified rulers. They were trying to outwit fate. Trying not to be forgotten. The Spaniards destroyed the mummies and their trappings.

In one way or another the end is there from the beginning. Last night Jerry and I began to watch a new lecture series about evolution, and it starts with a discussion of deep space and deep time. Deep time refers to time spans so vast as to be incomprehensible compared to a human lifetime.

Life evolved over time, and in time everything ends.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged archeology, dinosaurs, evolution, Inca ritual, Roche Harbor Mausoleum | 18 Comments

Travels with Ben

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Old Woman

I am back on my island.

I flew to Atlanta and stayed at my son’s house for a day before starting off on the long drive across the country.

Ben reading to Jameson

We drove south from Georgia, through Alabama to the Florida panhandle, then west. The south was wintry brown, poor and sad. As we approached the Gulf of Mexico things began to green up.

We drove because Ben won’t fly. Because of that he hasn’t visited the island in 5 years. Now he is having something like a mid-life crisis. He wants to change professions. He is a chef but feels that the restaurant business is incompatible with a family life. He has a wife whom he has loved since he was 14 and she was 12 and they have 2 beautiful children. His wife, Katie, has just qualified as a nurse anesthetist. This is Ben’s chance to change direction, but he is fighting depression and is not sure what he wants to do in a new career. We all thought a trip and some time to think would do him good.

Ben is my youngest. I was 40 when he was born, and when he was 3 I drove him with his oldest sister (who was then 21) via almost same route from Florida, where I had finished my Ph. D. to California, where I had a post doctoral position at the University of Southern California.

On the present trip Ben didn’t let me drive at all. He said he couldn’t stand to be in a car with someone else driving. I worried that he would drive too fast for my old lady nerves, but it turned out that his driving was skillful and, though a little fast, was careful and safe. I worried that the car would break down or that we would have a flat tire. Those things did not happen. But here’s the rub. He said he couldn’t drive without music. He absolutely required loud rock and roll music most of the time.

When the music was not playing he talked to me animatedly about his interests. Ever since he was a small boy he has been fascinated with snakes and reptiles. He told me what sort of reptile life could be found in each region we passed through. Much of that I found interesting. We talked about geology, and I was surprised by how much he knew about the earth’s history.

He commented on passing cars: he has become an auto enthusiast. I was required to look at many sports cars, although they seemed a blur to me. I thought one looked pretty much like another, save for color. We talked a little about family, a little about cooking, a little about his future, but not as much as I had hoped. Then we talked about snakes. And as we passed from one landscape to another we talked again about snakes.

In Florida he took me on a detour along the gulf coast. It was in the region where the recent oil spill happened but I saw little evidence of oil. These are favorite haunts of Ben’s. We walked a board walk through a sand dune reserve where the indigenous flora in that delicate ecosystem is being preserved and protected.

Sand and shadows

The sand was soft yellow and white, with blue-green shrubs and rust red grasses. The undulations of sand and silhouettes of bushes and trees were accented with the long shadows of late afternoon sun.

Condos on the dunes

That night we stayed at the edge of Florida and ate dinner at a sushi place. Not bad.

The next day we went from the bayous of Mississippi and Louisiana to the dry, live oak studded hills of east Texas.

Bayou

East Texas live oaks

When we stopped for the night we grocery shopped and Ben cooked an excellent dinner of chicken thighs, rice and chick peas. I think I have perfected easy cooking in almost any motel room. All you need (which fits into one grocery size bag) is an electric frying pan, a spatula, measuring cups, small cutting board and knife plus a couple of dishes, bowls for salad and eating utensils. Glasses are not really necessary unless you object to drinking wine out of the plastic cups the motel provides. It was good to relax with the TV news, a bottle of wine and my own traveling chef.

Next day we passed through Austin; I had hoped to stop for a visit with Ruth Pennebaker of The Fabulous Geezersisters, but it was her moving day (poor thing) and she couldn’t fit it in. We stopped for breakfast in Fredericksburg, which seemed to have a German theme, where I had a good breakfast of country ham and eggs. The rest of the day was Texas all the way. I remembered a ditty told to me years ago by a friend from Texas:

The sun has riz;
The sun has set.
And here I is
In Texas yet.

The next day we passed through southern New Mexico and into Arizona. The landscape was desert, dry and rocky. There was prickly pear and yucca and sage and tumbleweed.

Ben looking for snakes

The rocks were monumental.

Monumental rocks

We saw the new border fence, and we were stopped at a check point on the road where a well armed, uniformed guard looked us over and asked if we were citizens. Ben said “Yup” and the guard said, “Have a good day,“ and waved us on. It reminded me of crossing borders in Europe when I was a child before the second world war. It had a chilling feeling.

In Tucson I had arranged to meet Darlene of Darlene’s Hodgepodge. We stopped first at the Saguaro National Park. There you drive an 8 mile circuit through the Sonoran Desert where you see a wonderland of desert plants, dominated by the huge saguaro cactus.

Saguaro National Park

Ben looked for snakes.

Later we sipped wine with Darlene, a charming, intelligent and articulate lady who lives independently and copes with serious deafness (though she converses easily with hearing aids and lip reading) and a damaged hip that limits mobility. The three of us had dinner at a Mexican restaurant. That visit was a highlight of the trip. Ben was full of admiration for this brave woman.

The next day we drove on to San Diego. My sister lives there, and I have spent many days there with my mother who lived in La Jolla until she was 97.

Ben found a hummingbird nest in my sisters yard

Ben and my sister’s husband David cooked dinner. We had roast chicken with a chicken liver gravy that Ben has invented. It was really good. My sister’s son John, my dear nephew, was there.

My sister and I have different fathers. She is 10 years younger than me, and sometimes there are tensions. We are very different. But I always find her to be a loveable person without guile or pretense. She has been married to the same man for 47 years. She has three children and has devoted her life to bringing them up. I, on the other hand, have had 4 husbands and 5 kids, and have gone to school or worked most of my adult life.

Things seemed to be going well between us, though I am always cautious. She unexpectedly started weeping and saying that I had offended her at some time in the past; she claimed I had said she was an underachiever. (At this point Ben raised his hand and said in a jolly sort of way, “I’m an underachiever!” — then John said, “Well, who isn’t”) I said I didn’t remember saying that but if I did all I meant was that she had more abilities than she had used. She said darkly that she was sure I had meant something worse. Then she told me to say I was proud of her for being so brave as to confess how I had hurt her after so many years. She cried some more and said that I always acted as if I knew more than her. I laughed and said, “Well, I do.” But then I hugged her (though Ben said he could tell I didn’t want to). We ended the visit affectionately and without more problems.

Ben and John -- cousins

I had wanted to meet another blogger in San Diego, Mage of Postcards. But I was running out of energy and time. Ben and I left the next morning before the others were awake. North of Los Angeles we decided to take route 1 up the coast for one last dawdle to look at scenery.

Ben was enchanted. He said he felt as if he was driving through a painting. There was the rugged coast, blue water, white sands, rocky cliffs, yellow and orange flowers. There were sea otters and elephant seals and many birds.

Female elephant seal

Male elephant seal

Duck in the water

Beach birds

There were mountains in the background. We cooked shrimp and rice and beans that night in the motel.

The next day, the 7th on the road we both felt the urgency to rest and to reach the island. I was missing Jerry, Ben was missing his wife and kids and knew that he wouldn’t get home to Georgia for a week or so more. We just drove, no lingering, for another day and a half.

The road home

We stopped for the night in Roseburg Oregon and had Chinese take-out for dinner. Ben really wanted Chinese, and I didn’t, but it turned out to be some of the best Chinese I have had in many years.

We stopped at Barlene’s fish market on the way to the island and bought 3 dozen huge luscious oysters. We had shrimp for Jerry who doesn’t eat oysters on the half shell.

It was a feast.

Ben

Posted in Day to day | Tagged cross country driving, elephant seals, sisters, travel cuisine | 24 Comments

The inner eye

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Old Woman

I have had a couple of quiet weeks at home since returning from New Zealand. It has alternately snowed and rained. The world is soggy; the llamas in the field down the road look soaked and sad. The grass is limp and frantically green. The roofs and trees are coated with lime green moss and the deck and patio have a coat of slippery greenish black algae. This will have to be dealt with, all in good time.

There are hopeful signs. On our dog-walks I noticed a blooming bush with tiny, frilly lemon yellow flowers. On the way to town yesterday I saw a group of trumpeter swans on the Indian reservation where they stop for a while in winter on their way north. Soon many more swans will join them.

In the mean time I have played Mah Jongg twice and made pavlova twice. We continue to watch lectures on ancient civilizations, I do laundry, Jerry chops wood. I read The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes to Jerry at bedtime. I read old issues of Science, the journal of the AAAS and remember my former life as a scientist.

A snippet of news in Science brought back an old memory. It told of the increase in population of the endangered Florida panther through hybridization with panthers from Texas.

I encountered this beautiful animal once in my life.

In my late 30’s I taught biology at Florida Southern College. A colleague of mine who taught microbiology invited me to go on an little expedition with him and an executive from Park Davis (a long since vanished pharmaceutical company) to the Florida Everglades to collect soil samples. Park Davis was hoping exotic soils would yield exotic molds and miracle antibiotics. The trip sounded like fun, and I got paid the amazing sum of $25 for my “assistance.”

Though the mists of time have blurred the memory, some parts of that adventure I remember in vivid detail. The microbiologist pulled a camper-trailer that he called “The Scamper”. The Park Davis man went with him. I had a VW mini-bus and I took along my teen age son and daughter, my youngest brother and his wife and my father, a lean, wiry 60 year old. Were there others? I seem to remember my son’s friends, Steve Cummings and his girlfriend, and some ambiguity about whose girlfriend she actually was. It was spring vacation and the kids were out of school.

We drove first down the center of Florida to Lake Okeechobee, a huge shallow lake that is the headwaters of the Everglades and camped there before going on to the Everglades. My group stayed in a public campground in tents. The Scamper parked in the KOA campground where there were excellent showers that we all used.

Arrangements were made with a US park ranger to visit an Indian mound near the lake. I think only the three official members of the expedition went (the microbiologist, the Park Davis man and me). The mound was not known to the public and the ranger said the park did not want it overrun with souvenir collectors.

The sky was blue and cloudless. We walked along an old road, hardly traveled anymore, past a derelict farm, its windmill still standing, still turning, softly clacking in the hot wind. Alone.

The mound was surrounded by scrubby pine woods. It was a hill that must have been many hundreds of years old. We climbed to the top. The ranger said he often found teeth in the soil there and I looked around but saw only leaves and pine needles. I thought about the people who had lived there so long ago.

The next day I stopped at a roadside stand on the way to the Everglades and bought a bushel of grapefruits to take home.

We camped in the shade of tall palms in the Everglades. We had a couple of tents, but my daughter said she preferred to sleep under the stars. Though there was a warm breeze rattling through the palm fronds, I noted the presence of mosquitoes and opted for the tent. The doors of the VW were open as we made camp in the twilight. I heard a noise and went to the van to investigate. Seven or 8 large raccoons rushed out the side door. There were grapefruits all over the place. The raccoons had taken a bite of each one of them and rejected it.

The next morning my daughter said she had awakened in the night to see a circle of raccoons around her, the tapetum of their eyes shining in the faint glow of the campground lights.

My kids and my brother and wife had their own agendas. I think they rented canoes.

My father went along with me and the microbiologist and the Park Davis man to collect samples. We had passes to go into parts of the park not open to the public and we took a boat out into open water and then back amongst the mangroves. The microbiologist thought that would be a good place to get soil. A network of blue salt water inlets separated the mounds of dark jade swamp. The mangroves were dense. How would we get from the boat to places where we could collect samples? There were 3 large men to accomplish this and me, a small woman. Perhaps I could wiggle my way into the tangle of tough leaves and branches of the mangroves. There was also the fact that only my father and I could swim. I was elected.

I could barely scramble my way into the dark lattice. The plants grew out of a wet black ooze and I had to move through them by walking on the arched roots that rose up from the mud. I was met by a cloud of voracious mosquitoes. I suppose there was a scarcity of warm blood in that isolated place and a relatively hairless creature in a bathing suit must have been a heavenly gift to the hungry little whining devils.

I filled the plastic bags with soil, sealed and labeled them and clambered out as fast as possible. It felt wonderful to plunge into cool blue salt water and swim to the boat. I had a lot of mosquito bites.

I put on a shirt and some jeans and we took the boat along a river in the glades. The banks were lined with palms and vines and here and there orchids hung from tree branches. Ibises and roseate spoonbills were feeding in the shallows. The Park Davis man was an orchid enthusiast. He stopped the boat and pulled a small orchid from its growing niche. My father sputtered. “You can’t do that. It’s illegal!” The Park Davis man shrugged and popped the orchid into a plastic bag. “Despicable!” muttered my father, “Utterly despicable! Stealing from a wilderness!” Nothing more was said, but the microbiologist looked nervous.

Later I asked the Park Davis man if he didn’t want his grandchildren to be able to enjoy the park. He said it made no difference to him. He’d be dead.

That evening I walked alone past a barricade that said “not open to the public.” I had my pass, you see. It was not a particularly interesting area. There were low bushes along a dusty dirt road. I had walked a short distance when I saw the panther in the road just ahead of me. It was a soft tan color, about the size of a medium sized dog. A beautiful creature, lithe and silent. It paid no attention to me, loped along briefly and disappeared into the bushes.

After 40 years I still sometimes walk with the panther in memory.

Posted in Day to day, Memoir | Tagged antibiotics, Camping, Florida Everglades, Florida panther, wilderness theft | 19 Comments

Borders

Posted on January 8, 2011 by Old Woman

Jerry and I have been “taking a course” (watching a series of lectures on DVD) about the origin of ancient civilizations. We see one half hour lecture each evening and we take the DVD’s with us when we travel so as to maintain our evening routine. Variety may be the spice of life, but in old age it’s routine that keeps you going.

These courses are said to be college level. They are not really, because their rigor and context are so different from that of student days. You needn’t keep your mind on the material because of the possibility of an exam. You are not required to read a supporting text and therefore not expected to have any prior knowledge of the subject; no references are made without explanation. Many of the courses are long on repetition and short on detail. Still, they can be full of interest and are without the strut and show of similar TV presentations. Ideas are stressed.

In a recent lecture on the early Egyptian and Mesopotamian states the professor discussed state boundaries. In the ancient world, even in Egypt where there was definitely a strong central government, the outer limits of states were not well defined and clearly demarcated boundaries as we know them today did not exist. In the outlying areas there might be a no-man’s land, or perhaps more realistically, every-man’s land, a region of overlapping spheres of limited control between territorial or city states. These often were places of lively exchange in culture, luxury goods, foods and new technologies. They might be areas where nomadic herdsmen of the hills met and traded with the farmers of the river valleys.

I was thinking about these things as we prepared for the journey home from New Zealand. New Zealand’s boundary is well defined, of course, by vast oceans. Not so the border between the US and Canada, which we would have to cross since we were flying into Vancouver. Before we left we had arranged with Jerry’s son, Pat, to pick us up in Vancouver. Pat was making his annual trip from his home in Texas to see his father and friends in the Seattle area. Before we left New Zealand we wanted to confirm with Pat that he would meet us. Pat is a modern person. He keeps his cell phone with him at all times and only answers if he knows who’s calling. Since we were calling from New Zealand his phone would say “out of area.” After repeated phone messages and emails he finally he emailed saying, “I can’t pick you up in Vancouver because I forgot my passport.”

I worried because the bus we would have to take left the airport 5 hours after our arrival at noon, and in addition to getting home after 10 PM we couldn’t pick up the poodles from the kennel on our way home.

Albert, my cousin’s husband, suggested we take a taxi to the border, walk across and have Pat pick us up there. Pat agreed.

In New Zealand we passed through border control easily, except that, as usual, Jerry had to be prompted to remove his hat “for the camera”. In the departure lounge we each had a glass of wine. I was unsure about which wine to order and a woman standing beside me at the bar pointed to a red on the list ($14.50 a glass) and said it was one of the best and that she always took a bottle with her as a present when traveling. I ordered 2 glasses.

There were flights going out to places all over the world: to the south seas, to Singapore, to Buenos Aires, to London, to Sydney and there were crowds of people in lines waiting to board planes. I saw the woman who recommended the wine standing in line to Buenos Aires; she signaled a question — was the wine good? I gave an enthusiastic thumbs up.

Thirteen hours later, in the Vancouver Airport, we were again passing through border control. Hundreds of people from another set of world wide flights snaked through the line to passport control. When we finally achieved the moment of entry into Canada the control agent asked where we lived. When we answered “Lummi Island,” which is just below the border, she said, kindly, “Welcome home!” Then she asked Jerry to remove his hat, “For the camera.”

But we weren’t home yet. The next step was to get a taxi that would take us to the border. More lines, herded along by a taxi dispatcher. I asked the Pakistani driver, tentatively, if he could take us to the border.

He looked at me blankly, “What border?”

When I explained he said, darkly, “That’ll be $100.”

On the way down (about a 25 minute drive) the driver recommended that we cross at the truck crossing. There would be a place where he could turn back to Canada and we wouldn’t have too far to walk with our baggage to passport control. He let us out on the road in the truck area and pointed to a place where we could cross the street and then walk back to the control point. As he drove away a man directing truck traffic showed us a way through the trucks that would involve less walking with baggage.

We weaved our way past lines of huge slowly moving trucks with wheels taller than our heads. Jerry said, “We need to stay where they can see us.” I thought of how we would look in a bird’s eye view — tiny figures dragging bags in the midst of rows of massive freight carrying trucks.

We finally made it to the passport control office where various people were being detained and questioned because of some irregularity in their papers or cargo as they tried to enter the US. There were Mexicans and Chinese and people with turbans, beards, tattoos and saris. It took a long time to get to the counter. The officer, whose hair was almost as gray as ours, looked at us doubtfully and said, “Where do you want to go?”

“We just want to go home.” I answered, wearily.

We explained about Pat and the passport and walking across the border. I said I wasn’t sure where Pat was. The officer asked if he had a phone and Jerry provided the number. The officer called Pat, who answered!

He said, “This is Officer Cramer at passport control. Were you wanting to pick your parents up?”

He got an affirmative.

“Well, I have them here and I am about to release them,” he said and gave Pat directions to a place to pick us up, and then gave us an orange post-it note which he stamped with his official stamp. “Keep this,” he said. “You’ll need it to get out of here.” And we did.

As the barrier bar closed behind us and we crossed unequivocally into the US I began to relax. We collected 2 ecstatic poodles, who became even more excited when we got to the ferry because then they knew they were really going home. Jerry and Pat and I had a pizza for dinner at the Beach Store Café on Lummi Island.

It was thousands of miles in distance and thousands of years in time from the days when the Levant was the busy crossroads between Egypt and Mesopotamia. The borders now are set; control is complete.

The Beach Store Cafe from the ferry

Posted in Day to day | Tagged ancient Egypt, Beach Store Cafe, Lummi Island, Mesopotamia, Passport control | 12 Comments

The holidays and after

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Old Woman

We traveled back to Pukekohe from Napier just before Christmas.

Seen from the bus

On Christmas morning we opened a few jokey presents. We gave Joc and Albert Alaska socks with moose on them (made in China, of course.) I got covers for ice-box dishes and Jerry got a New Zealand calender.

The tree and presents

In Pukekohe at Jocelyn and Albert’s Joc and I cooked Christmas dinner for four of us. Here are 3 of us. I am behind the camera.

Christmas dinner -- roast chicken

On Boxing Day all of Albert’s and most of Jocelyn’s progeny came for a cook-out. Jocelyn met her newest great-granddaughter, Georgine who was 5 weeks old and already had a passport because she came with her parents from Australia for the holidays. Joc has 4 greats now, 2 boys and 2 girls.

Jocelyn and Georgine

We arrived home on the 29th (another story). On New Years day my grandson James, his wife, Maria and son, Julian came for dinner.

Maria and Julian

Julian takes after his father in food preferences. He likes red meat and smoked salmon dip with chips. I made pavlova which he ate a little bit of.

James and Julian

The new year rolls on. The mountain is still there.

Mt Baker, seen from Lummi Island

Posted in Day to day | Tagged great-grandchildren, Mt. Baker, New Zealand | 12 Comments

Gannets, Marys, tractors and rocks

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Old Woman

In Napier, on the east coast of New Zealand in the Hawk’s Bay region, we stayed in the same motel we were in last year. It isn’t a high end motel (“flash” is New Zealand slang for upmarket). There are a lot of flash motels in Napier along the waterfront, but we like the British couple who run the McLean Park, and it is clean, well equipped and inexpensive. Besides, I had to see the carpet one more time in case I had dreamed it.

Our motel

Albert had told us we should be sure to see the gannet colony at Kidnapper’s Cove, so after we shopped at the Pak-n-Save for dinner makings (most motels in New Zealand have cooking facilities) and a bottle of wine, we went to the tourist information center by the sea to inquire. There were 3 possibilities. We could walk the beach and climb the hill (20 kilometers round trip); we could take a bus. Or we could take a “safari”– a van would take us to the beach access point; we would mount an open trailer pulled by a tractor (along with 20 or so other people) which would transport us down the beach. The driver would provide commentary on the wildlife and geology along the way. After 10 kilometers we would climb the high hill and see the gannets. Then reverse the journey.

Jerry was unenthusiastic about gannets; he was wandering around looking at travel brochures. I gave him the choice of bus or safari (I thought 20 k’s of walking plus the high hill would be a bit much for us). He looked at the prices and immediately chose the safari because it was cheaper than the bus.

The next morning at 8:15 a van picked us up at our motel. The trip was timed with the tides because the tractor could only get along the beach while the tide was low. The driver, Colin, chatted with us on the 10 minute ride to the beach. He was the owner of the “safari” company and he explained that the day before the trip had been canceled just after it started because of high winds and a recent rock slide from the cliffs above the beach. Some rocks had been cleared away overnight. He hoped the going would be better this time. He was a good-looking young man in his late 30’s. His business, though seasonal, was a good one. He had been going up and down this beach all his life, on foot or by one sort of motor or another. He loved the beach and knew every inch of it. He had 4 employees and all of them loved going to work every day.

Riding down the beach on those trailers was the most fun thing we did in New Zealand. Looking back I think that the best part of the trip for me was not the part that interested Jerry the most. But we both had a fine time.

We both enjoyed the somewhat makeshift riskiness of the ride — as the tractors rumbled over big rocks and into the water around the rocks too big to ride over.

Riding down the beach at low tide

On the way out Jerry and I sat on the ocean side looking out at the sea, I didn’t think about the possibility of rock-slides from the towering cliffs on the land side. Coming back I did think of that.

Seen on the trip out

For Jerry the real interest of the “safari” was the geology and the tractors.

For me the highlights were the two Marys and the birds.

The cliffs were spectacular.

The cliffs

You could see fault lines, the results of earthquakes (Napier had a killer earthquake in 1931 and the whole city was rebuilt in Art Deco style). There were rock formations from volcanic action, erosion, compression and the inexorable movement of tectonic plates. Jerry and I decided that we had forgotten so much of our geology course that we should go through it again.

Rock patterns

The tractors were Minneapolis Molines, dating from 1949! Colin told us that they were mechanically simple and easy to repair. He was actually able to get unused parts and that he and his employees did all the repair work themselves. I thought they were cute; Jerry was fascinated.

Colin with his tractor and his dog

The two Marys were a lesbian couple in their 30’s. They decided we needed to be looked after, and immediately took us under their wing, got us good seats on the trailer, worried that we didn’t have water, offered us apples and waited around at the end to see that we had a ride back. I loved them. The white Mary was from Maine, but living permanently in New Zealand and studying early education, writing a dissertation on language difficulties of young islander children in New Zealand schools. She had a tattoo of Captain Cook’s vessel, The Endeavour, which extended from her knee to her ankle. The black Mary was from Kenya, and was also studying at the university. They had been on the aborted gannet trip the day before and had camped out on the beach an extra night to take the trip again. I am really sorry that I didn’t get their last names and addresses.

Mary and Mary

The walk up the hill to the colonies was steep, and it was a hot day. Jerry and I were probably the slowest walkers as we were certainly the oldest in the group. But we got there.

Cows on the hillside we were climbing

The view from the top

The gannets were a wonder. The colonies consisted of hundreds of birds nesting equidistant from each other.

Gannet colony

They are big birds, mostly white with a soft yellow tint to their heads. Their eyes, wings and bills are elegantly lined with black, and their feet and legs have green stripes that outline the shapes.

Gannet

Gannets belong to the booby family.

A gannet, showing the green stripes on its feet and legs

Gannets live from 25 to 40 years. They mate for life and lay one egg a year. The minute the young bird learns to fly it leaves for Australia and stays there for 3 years. Then it returns to New Zealand and finds a mate, never to return to Australia.

Parent birds with chick

Their only real predator is sea gulls, which stand around at the edges of the colonies waiting to grab a newly laid egg or a newly hatched chick.

Riding back on the cliff side I thought about rock slides. They often happen, and the rocks are huge.

Looking up on the way back

The safari lasted half a day. The two Marys made sure that Colin came to take us back to Napier, and he and Jerry chatted about tractors all the way.

Posted in Day to day | Tagged gannets, Minneapolis Molines, New Zealand, tractors | 17 Comments

A ramble in New Zealand

Posted on December 22, 2010 by Old Woman

An easy flight, and now 3 weeks in New Zealand. The trip, as always, is a mix of memory (I spent a year here when I was 13), family stories (my mother was a New Zealander), wilderness wandering and getting to know how old New Zealand

Old New Zealand

has changed into new New Zealand.

New New Zealand

Jerry and I are visiting my cousin Jocelyn and her husband Albert.

Albert and Jocelyn

Our mothers were sisters. They looked alike, both had thick black hair and widow’s peaks, but they were unlike in many ways. They started school at St Hilda’s girls school in Dunedin, South Island. Jocelyn’s mother, Freda, was 4 years older and finished school at St Hilda’s. My mother, Marion, went to a state school, Southland Girls High, for high school. Both Freda and my mother agreed that they learned nothing at St. Hilda’s except table manners. Marion believed that she was lucky because she got a good education at Southland Girls High.

Marion was restless and curious, tended to worry and feel insecure. Freda was calm and self assured. Freda took a secretarial course, went to work in Auckland, and soon married an eligible bachelor. She settled down to live a comfortable conventional life in New Zealand. Marion left New Zealand as soon as she finished the University of Otago to go to graduate school in England where she married my father, an impractical intellectual.

Jocelyn and I are different too. She has spent a quiet life in New Zealand. She married Paul and had 3 children. A few years after Paul died she married Albert. My life has been a voyage, sometimes through rough waters, sometimes with smooth sailing. Despite our differences Joc and I have some inner affinity. She has a core of pure goodness. She loves people. The basic interest of her life is her family and her friends; she loves the beauty of her country and wherever she travels she takes a lively interest in her surroundings. She is cheerful, efficient and sociable.

Jocelyn’s politics are conservative, she is quietly religious and goes to church regularly. Albert is conservative and religious as well and has strong opinions on many subjects. Religion and politics are two subjects that Jerry and I avoid discussing when we are with them. Joc and Albert are endlessly generous with time and effort to entertain us. Last week they drove us down to New Plymouth for four days where we were able to indulge our liking for long walks. Joc and Albert are not walkers but they waited for hours in coffee shops or in their car while we scrambled around on many of the walking tracks around Mt. Taranaki

Mt. Taranaki

The start of a walking track on Mt. Taranaki

(formerly Mt. Egmont and the site of a lot of Lord of the Rings action.) We did a little walking together on the city walkway that goes along the waterfront in New Plymouth for about 10 kilometers.

New Plymouth promenade

New Zealand is full of fine places to walk, in both the city and the wilderness. New Zealanders maintain their fitness by a fanatical interest and participation in all sports and by utilizing these beautiful outdoor parks and camping places.

along the promenade

Before New Plymouth the 4 of us had driven up to Whangerei in the north of the North Island where Joc and I have an aunt, our mothers’ younger sister Pat.

Pat with cat

Pat lives in a retirement village. She has significant problems with memory but in other ways is still a sharp thinker. At the age of 91 she has found a boyfriend, Tom. In our comfortable motel (2 bedrooms and sitting-dining-kitchen) I cooked a roast pork dinner for us all, including Tom, who turned out to be a lively and interesting guest.

In Whangerei Jerry and I walked a strenuous track up a high ridge and a more gentle one that winds along a river.

Mountain track in Whangerei

Along the river

As a change and contrast Jerry and I set out on our own for a few days. First we went inland, to the Pohangina Valley. Because Jerry and I are both nervous about driving in New Zealand (on the wrong side of the road,) we traveled there by bus. We were met in Palmerston North by Pohangina Pete, a blogger I have been looking forward to meeting.

Blogger Pete

We stayed in a place he recommended, far out in the country. It is a lovely spot, at the end of a long winding gravel road in high hills. It is surrounded by well kept gardens and wilder places, next to some well maintained trails that go up the mountains of the Ruahine Forest Park. There we had a pleasant cabin with eccentric décor — the ceiling of the sitting area was hung with dried and artificial flowers –and there was a view, over green, sheep studded hills, of the valley.

Songbird Gardens

Flower hung ceiling

Overlooking the valley

Sheep on the hills

The way to the bathroom and toilet was outside. We didn’t get a chance to hike the trails because it rained, but Pete kindly took us on a tour of the valley he loves.

Pete and I talked and talked. Since our politics match I enjoyed the opportunity to express my opinions freely. He is an ecologist and expert in the environmental issues that face New Zealand. We passed by a huge wind farm and talked about the pros and cons of wind farms. We talked about blogging. Pete said he tries to avoid writing about himself; he likes to write about ideas. I have been thinking this over. I have nothing against ideas, but I think that, like poetry, there are a lot of mediocre ideas circulating on the internet. Ideas work better when lightly seasoned with detail and example, best taken from personal knowledge. So I choose the personal in blogs. The only thing I am really expert on is my own experience. That is what I believe I can speak about with confidence.

Next we took the bus to Paremata, a suburb of Wellington. Here we visited an old friend, Hugh, the son of my mother’s best college chum and life-long friend Twinx (Anne). That’s where I got my name. We called on Hugh’s sister, Jan, at her house perched on the side of an almost vertical hill with vast views of the surrounding towns, hills and bays. Jan found some pictures of her and me when we were teenagers. She is recovering from a broken femur; she looked pretty but frail.

It was still raining in the morning, but as we began our drive into Wellington the sun suddenly came out and we decided on our original plan to take a ferry to Somes Island (with Hugh as our guide) in the middle of Wellington Harbor.

Jerry, me and Hugh

Somes Island has been used in the past as a place of quarantine, sometimes for people, sometimes for animals. It is not now used for either, but is a pretty wildlife refuge with the ever welcome well maintained walking trails. High on a hill on the island is a sad little memorial to people who died there while being quarantined. There were babies and others who died during the influenza epidemic of 1918, some Italian war prisoners who died while being interned, and one unfortunate man, thought to have leprosy, who died after a year of quarantine on the island. There were seagulls nesting on the craggy rocks,

Seagull in flight

sailboat races in the harbor,

View from Somes Island

sheep grazing on the hills and aggressive Canada geese with goslings walking the trails.

Goslings on the run

Later we had a drink outdoors along the waterfront in Wellington, my favorite city in New Zealand. The waterfront has been developed as a city playground, with skateboarders, cyclists, roller skaters, sculptures to climb on, eateries and pubs.

The view from our cafe

These are the streets I walked along coming home from school when I was 13 — how they have changed.

I lived on the hill above the monestary as a child

Next we took a bus to Napier. The bus driver (who had a Russian accent and a scowl) was determined to keep to his schedule, and he commended his passengers to be quick with their luggage and punctual with their rest stops like the captain of a brigade. The route passed through a deep river gorge, with the road hugging the side of the gorge hundreds of feet above the swift river. There was a white van in front of the bus which was not moving as fast as the bus driver desired, and he tail-gated it mercilessly until it pulled off at an overlook to let him pass. We got to Napier right on time.

In Napier we had the biggest adventure of the trip. We took a “safari” to see the gannets of Kidnapper’s Point. That’s an after Christmas post; in the meantime, a happy Christmas (as they say here) to all!

Posted in Day to day, Memoir | Tagged Mt Taranaki, New Zealand, Pohangina Valley, Somes Island, walks, Wellington | 25 Comments

Speed bumps

Posted on November 26, 2010 by Old Woman

Sometimes life is like a parking lot: full of speed bumps.

Three months ago I bought tickets to New Zealand for Jerry and me. We plan to spend Christmas with my cousin there. It seemed a bit crazy, since we were going to Alaska, coming home, the next week having Thanksgiving here on the island, and a week later setting out for the Southern Hemisphere. But that’s what I planned.

We came home form Alaska; all was going well when it turned out that the house sitter I had arranged for the New Zealand trip was not what we wanted. She came well recommended from a friend on the island, but he had revised his opinion while we were in Alaska. He is missing valuables from his house. He couldn’t get her to leave his house when he got home from his trip, and had to pack up her belongings and move her to a hotel. She has made herself a reputation on the island for being extremely odd and difficult to get along with. I tried to find a substitute, but ultimately had to book the dogs into a kennel.

I got an email from a dear old friend (and long ago a lover), Richard. He has an inoperable cancer. I am a few years older, so he is in his early 70’s. Not ready to go. He says he feels fine, appears in perfect health but has overwhelming anxiety. He says, “ Had the members of my church gather around with their hands on me and they prayed. If God is listening a crowd should have more impact. . . . If you have any spiritual inclinations I can use all the prayers I can get.”

I will do my best, but I think I am not the right sort of person to be of assistance with prayer. My problem is that I don’t believe in a god, and certainly not Richard’s God. I think this universe, though deeply mysterious, is mechanistic. If there is a god, which I doubt, he would be as mysterious as the universe itself. How would I address such a god?

And how would I pray? Would I say: please don’t let this disease kill my friend? Let him be taken at some later date by something else. Or perhaps I should pray that he not suffer, or that he accept his destiny and trust in — Who? What?

I wrote an email to my lawyer daughter, a devout Catholic, who understands prayer better than I, and asked her to light a candle and say a prayer for Richard. And you, my friends and readers, will you say a prayer for Richard? He is a good man, and has more good to do in this world before he passes on to the next (?).

Thanksgiving came. My grandson, his wife and baby all had bad colds and couldn’t join us as planned. Besides, there was a heavy snowfall all day on Thanksgiving. The drive from Seattle would have been awful. The dinner was good; I had 7 people at the table and a mountain of left over food, all of which I persuaded my guests to take home. Since we plan to be away for a month I don’t want food in the house.

We had a pleasant, low-key afternoon, but I was disappointed not to see the baby. I enjoyed my almost 13 year old granddaughter, Clare, and so did the dogs. She petted and played with them. We laughed together about my all black cat’s one white whisker that sticks straight out like a long tusk.

Heloise with her white whisker

Clare is a sweet tempered, well behaved child who loves all animals.

Our big problem now is that Jerry is experiencing a recurrence of cluster headaches. These are excruciatingly painful headaches that center around his left eye. He is having 2 to 3 episodes a day and they interfere with his sleep. The sharp, stabbing pain is brief, usually lasting less than an hour, but it leaves him feeling wiped out and there is a residual ache.

I am starting to pack and wondering whether we should go. I think we must consult the doctor, but naturally he is not available because this is a holiday weekend.

In the meantime the temperature has climbed to 40F and all this snow is turning to mush. A week ago there were still leaves on the trees. Now they are scattered in rumpled confusion all over the wet dirty snow, along with twigs and branches blown about by the storm. The outside world looks dismal.

A flicker comes to the suet feeder. As he flies, orange feathers under his wing and tail flash for a moment in the dull November scene, but when he folds his wings just a sliver of orange can be seen. The sun shines briefly.

Flicker at the feeder

I’ll do some packing, and some hoping.

Posted in Day to day, Island life | Tagged black cats, cluster headaches, dog sitters, flickers, prayer | 17 Comments

A little island news

Endings — a P.S.

Endings

Travels with Ben

The inner eye

Borders

The holidays and after

Gannets, Marys, tractors and rocks

A ramble in New Zealand

Speed bumps

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories

Meta