Patrick Egan's Blog, page 38

My MRI: The Awful Truth

SONY DSC [Image from Wikipedia]

I have lower back pain.  I’ve had it for years.  Many of my readers will be saying:

“What’s he complaining about now?  I’ve had it for years.”

Point taken.  But, I moved to the North Country for a reason…I wanted to hike and climb more mountains.  Now, this back pain makes those dreams a bit unattainable.  And, besides, I already had back surgery for spinal stenosis back in December of 2013.  So, why the pain now?

I can think of several reasons:

-I lean too far forward when I change the spark plugs in my Ford Escape. (Joke)

-I spend too much time on my knees, with a hand lens, bending over in my small Adirondack lawn, and examining the next insect that will bite the crap out of my forearm and make me bleed like a leaky garden hose. (Joke, but our hose does leak)

-I spend too much time sanding the back deck in order to paint it, yet again, with a paint that is guaranteed to last at least five years. (True)

-I spend too much time bending over, when I visit New York City, to read the headlines of the New York Times without having to pay $2.50 for a copy. (Pretty much true)

-I spent too much time sitting behind the wheel of our Ford Escape on the recent 13,589 mile road trip and not enough time hiking in the Mojave Desert or Joshua Tree National Park. (True, but if you haven’t read all those blogs, then shame on you)

-I spent too much time bending over my laptop writing about forty blogs about the trip. (True)

So, I make an appointment with my neurosurgeon in Manhattan to get an MRI to see if my left side needs surgery to repair the damage from whatever.

On May 18th, I went to my appointment at Mount Sinai to get the truth, the truth that only an MRI can tell you.

I was laid out and tucked in on the moveable bed.  I looked up and saw how much smaller and narrower this “tube” was than the last time I had the procedure done.  I knew I was going to become like a Coney Island Kielbasa or a Nathan’s Hot Dog.  That is, if this thing had a mind of its own and somehow squeezed in on me.

The technician asked if I’d like to hear anything on the earphones.

“Anything but JZ or Big Daddy”, I said.  “How about some Mozart?”

“Fine”, he said.

“I’d like to hear Mozart.  Can you find Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Adagio and Fugue, KV 546?”, is that possible?”, I asked.

“Not a problem,” he said.

And I began to feel the bed slide me inside the stainless steel tube.

I heard the opening notes…and then all I heard for the next ninety minutes was either a soundtrack from Star Wars or a Phillip Glass piece…repeating chords and noise.

When it was all over, the guy helped me stand up straight, which was nearly impossible, and informed me where the nearest bathroom was located.

I knew that my Neurosurgeon was going to see me in several days to discuss the results.  Well, I demanded to speak with the Radiologist on duty that day…I wanted a quick read of the images so I could make future plans, if I had any to make.

Once he heard my name, and that I was a famous blogger from Owego, NY, he readily agreed to give me a quick summary of what he had on his computer monitor.

“Well”, he said, “see these little pinches in between your L-4 and L-5?”

[This is not my spine.  Image from Wikipedia]

“Of course I see them”, I said looking at a screen that resembled a NASA image of the far side of Charon, a moon orbiting Pluto.

“But, something worrisome is showing up here,” he said. “See the area just to right of my pencil point?”

“I see,” I said.

“Well, right down here near the end of your endothelial membrane, I see a disturbing sequence beginning to take form.”

“Give it to me straight, Doc, I can handle it.”

“Well, I see a growing sense of self-doubt and insecurity,” he said. “See here?”

I looked and said “yes”.

“Over here, near your Lumbo-sacral spine, is a large mass of guilt and misgivings.  Alongside that is a well of worry and loneliness.”

“I think I see,” I said.

“But there is also a distinct lack of morality, pleasure and sincerity,” he said, “and over here, see, there is growing sense of self-doubt, a mass of existentialism and nihilistic thought, as well as an approaching feeling of fear and trembling.”

He glanced at a copy of Kafka in my shoulder bag.

“But, I care about people,” I protested.

“You’d never know it from this,” he said, leaning back on his IKEA office chair.  “But, there’s more. Can you take it?”

“Hit me, Doc,” I said.  “Give me your best shot.”

“There is a large mass of growing dread and fear over here near your nerve-fibrillae.  You fear that your real active life and vigor of youth are gone,” he said.  “Am I right?”

“But, I’m going to be celebrating my 69th birthday in a few days…people will send me cards and letters.”

“Cards and letters? Where have you been, guy, off in a desert somewhere?”

“Actually, yes,” I said.

“You’ll be lucky if anyone notices your Facebook page at all.  And, your blog site? Well, I’ve seen it.  Nothing but pictures of cacti and sand and you posing in a cheap cowboy hat with the Queen of the Sonoran Desert at some rodeo in Yuma.”

“Hey, that hat cost me $14.95 (+ tax)”, I retorted.

“Well, happy birthday, dude, want the real medical story now?”

“Sure.”

“You have age appropriate degeneration of the lower spine.  Live with it.”

“Gee, thanks Dr. Oz.”  I got up to go.

“Oh, one good thing, Patrick, you’re covered by your AARP.”

 

 

 

The Challenge Is Over: An Update On 583.74

I’m composing this post in a loud and crowded pub on W. 30th Street in NYC. And I’m using my iPad instead of my trusty laptop.

I’m going through this tortuous experience to lessen the anxiety in my readers lives who have been waiting for the Answer to my challenge about the meaning of the 583.74 sign on the wall of the Shamrock bar in Saranac Lake, NY.

To my astonishment, it was solved in a couple of hours by a Carol F. She says she went to school with my wife in Queens, NY.

583.74, my friends, is the Dewey Decimal number for the plant group that includes the Shamrock. I should have known this…I’m Irish, for heaven sake!

Another woman, a friend of ours, also came through.

My daughter, Erin, you know, the mother of my grandson, Elias, didn’t read the post until the next morning. She said she had the answer before she finished her morning coffee.

It’s all so depressing in a strange way. I feel like an undereducated senile guy with gray hair and an aching back…let’s not go there, ok?

But, dear friends and readers and followers, don’t give up on me.

I am planning a breath-taking blog in the planning stages right now…it’s a detailed account of my two-hour MRI at Mount Sinai a day ago.

I’m sure you will be riveted to your Barcaloungers, or the 19th hole somewhere in North Carolina or Boca.

There is not enough being written about MRI’s these days. Steinbeck barely touched on it and it’s mentioned in Shakespeare only twice.

Love to you all. Follow me and share the love.

583.74

This post is a puzzle for my readers who want a challenge or something to keep them busy if they have too much time on their hands.  I suppose that the former is what they want.  So, anyone out there who is up to the challenge?

Last week, or perhaps it was the week before…or maybe it was about a month ago, I happened to stop in at our most local pub, The Shamrock.  It’s about five miles away from our house so I wouldn’t exactly called it a “local”…but, up here in the North Country, “local” can mean someplace within a sixty mile radius.

This isn’t Manhattan.  Ok, we got that..

As I was sitting and chatting to the bartender of this, our local, (Mina is her name), we began to chat about a bit of paper that was pinned to the walled behind the bar…along with the signed dollar bills that were signed and tacked to the wall.  My guess is that there was al least $300. in inked notes..

Now, when we bought our house up here in 2001, this pub didn’t exist.  I finally stopped by the place and enjoyed a beer.

There was a small note (in a frame) behind the bar. On it was simply:

583.74

I asked the bartender, Mina, what that meant.  She suggested I guess.

As a geographer and a person who has some kind  of working knowledge of GPS, latitude and longitude and Mercator Projections polar centric maps and satellite imagery,  I told Mina not to tell me what the numbers meant.

She obliged and said it was up to me to figure out what that number meant. I thought and tried to find the significance of that number, I came up empty.

So, after years (and spending not a great deal of time thing about this number), I finally asked her what it meant.

She told me and it made perfect sense.

The name of the pub is the Shamrock.  Is that a hint?  If you think you know what that number means, offers your answers in my email or in a response here on this web blog.

If you’ve ever been in the Shamrock or know me, or know the answer already, then don’t be a spoiler.

Otherwise, it’s not much fun.

If you solve it, and you’re local, the round is on me.

In case you don’t have my email…it’s pegan7@roadrunner.com.

I hope to hear from you, and laugh silently at how wrong your guesses are.

 

Gathering Dust

I was dusting some items in our home the other day.  If you find that unusual, you should see the amount of dust that can accumulate in a house that was empty for almost six months.  We weren’t even here.  So, where did it come from?  And, it’s not that we keep an unclean home.  I can’t tell you how many boxes of Swiffer Sweeper we have been through. (I can’t tell you how much we recommend this state-of-the-art product!)

That’s another story.

I ran my finger along the top of one the most precious items I own.  It’s an ice axe.  I bought it in the spring of 1964, when I was getting ready to join my brother on the Juneau Icefield for the summer.

I found a bit of white…a bit of dust on my finger.  How could I have not attended to this most coveted item…in my cleaning?

You must understand something.  You can’t get these ice axes anymore.  Oh, maybe in some tiny Swiss alpine shop in Zermatt, but not here…unless you’re willing to pay an outrageous price.  This ice axe is made of ash (maybe hickory), the kind that Edmund Hillary used on Everest in 1953…on the first ascent (maybe).  What you get today, if you find yourself ordering an ice axe, it will be made of anodized aluminum or carbon fiber or some sort of alloy devised by NASA for the International Space Station.

But, my ice axe (note to reader:  it is not called an  “ice pick”.  That is so gauche a term.  It’s an ice axe…so no further discussion here, ok.) An ice axe of an old classic style that you see now in Museums of Alpine History.

Yes, I ran my finger along the top and found dust.  Not so surprising, unless you’re like me…items from earlier years rarely collected dust.  Once I put away the toys of childhood, they stayed mostly out of sight…and therefore out of mind.  There is an exception or two: my Lionel locomotive and a Lone Ranger lunch box.  But, the ice axe was somehow different.  It represented a transition from youth to adulthood and I often would stare at it, up there on the wall reflecting back on the times that were brighter, better, more youthful, full of energy and promise.  I climbed nameless peaks with it in my right hand and even saved myself from falling into a crevasse on a July day in 1964.

This was a special item I owned. I even went into my fathers forbidden workshop and wood burned my initials into the shaft:  P.J.EGAN.  My childhood girlfriend stood by be as I did that.  She kissed it for good luck (al least in my memory she did).  Later, I rubbed boiled Linseed Oil into the wood until my forearm ached.

It was an object of utility, craftsmanship, art and beauty.

Then, when my wife and I moved to the Adirondacks in 2011, I took the ice axe and mounted it on the wall.  It was several weeks until I realized what it was that I had done.  I hung up my ice axe.  This is the ultimate “well, I’m done with that stage of my life” moment.  It’s like when you hand your car keys to your child because you can’t drive anymore…safely.  But, I wasn’t that old…was I?

I walked over to my “alpine bookshelf” and looked at the titles and saw the hardware: the pitons, carabiners and chocks…tools of a rock climber.  I was fairly good in the 1970’s.  They were coated in a thin layer of dust.

I picked up Direttissima, by Peter Gillman and Dougal Haston (someone you should google someday when it’s raining and you want to read about a tragic, enigmatic person), and, again, I blew enough dust off the top pages that I began to sneeze like it was a late summer day in a field of ragweed.

So, this was my past?  This is was what I have left of my glory days on the glaciers, in the bars of Juneau…and watching Eagles soar at 10:00 pm when I was fishing out of Auk Bay?

Dusty books and a very special dusty ice axe…mounted on a thinly paneled wall in our home?

This was me once:

Are the glory days really behind us…gathering dust?

 

 

 

I Married An Armenian Chess Shark

It was a perfect night in the Adirondacks, in April, when the gentle showers promise to bring the lovely early blooming flowers of May.  Ok, it was snowing just a little–maybe 5 or so inches were predicted for tonight, and the temperature was hovering around 19 degrees.

Like I said, it was a perfect Spring night to have a fire and settle in with a hot toddy–and play a game of chess.  Yes, it was a perfect night.

My wife claims to have little knowledge of the game.  She has spurned my many attempts, offerings, begging to play a game with me.  After all, we have several chess sets.  One is a small magnet item that you play when you’re on the road. I’ve had it with me for at least four European trips, but we never played a game.  Maybe the fact that the size of the pieces were so small that I needed a magnifier to see and determine whether I was moving a pawn or a king.

But, I knew the game.  I had been playing since the 1960’s.  I played at least one game against a friend by sending moves on post cards.  It was a long game.  But, that was back in the days when there were Post Offices, and blank post cards.  Now, I have an App for chess, and I usually win–but I set the level at the lowest skill available.  Ok sometimes I win.

So, Mariam agreed to play a game.  I was elated.  Finally, a chance to win at something.  (She kills me in Scrabble, but so does everyone else).

I won’t list every move like they do in the New York Times.  Let’s just say she beat me in our first game.  She went to bed and I dug around for my Chess Bibles.

I found it: Chess For Dummies!

I usually opened with Pawn to Queen 4. ( I’m using an older notation..haven’t figured out the new one yet. )

This was our second game since 1994, and I felt I was in trouble by the mid-game.

[Mariam is white}

I studied her face.  She was a model of composure.  But, something suggested to me that she knew more than she was letting on.

I tried the Sicilian Defense.  I went for the Philidor Defense (but it was too late).  It was too late for the King’s Gambit, the Double Stonewall Formation, the Scheveningen Formation was clearly out of the question.

I ended up losing to Mariam in a classic pawn-king kill.

That’s when I went online, to see who I was actually playing.

There she was!  Listed in the International Chess Federation rankings.  She was just behind her legendary uncle, Hampartsoum Haroutunian, a math and philosophy professor at a university near Istanbul.  The Turks tried to poison him during the Armenian Holocaust.  Something the Turks won’t admit to, even to this day.

I was surprised to find that Mariam was listed just above Kim Kardashian, known around the world for her chess brilliance.

I guess I just have to read more Chess For The Complete Idiot books.  Maybe then, I’ll stand a ghost of a chance to check-mate her.

 

Roadside Attractions From The Rearview Mirror

I feel like I’ve driven half-way around the earth’s diameter.  Actually, according to the odometer on the red Ford Escape, we did indeed travel that far.

Our total distance driven, including side trips for sight-seeing, came to an astounding 13,589 miles!  If you’re into engine care and maintenance, that’s would be three oil changes (and filter, of course).  And, as we pulled into our driveway, we were overdue for a fourth change.

I walked into the kitchen and saw the calendar next to our Samsung refrigerator.  Take a look:

That was our departure date, October 15.  I see it was a Thursday.  I took the calendar down (I was thinking there was something superstitious about leaving old calendars on the wall.  I only see them in Auto Repair Shops and they have Betty Page photos and the dates are around 1956 and the guys that work in some of these places often have seen times of hard luck).  It took me a day to locate the 2016 calendar I bought (20% off) at a Barnes & Noble store in Texas.  The theme is Circus “Freaks”.  Changing calendar themes from Vintage England Travel Posters to The Circus Sideshow must say something about my change in tastes.  The sideshows are vanishing from America…but there will always be an England.

Unusual things and marginalized people have always fascinated me.

Don’t ask.

So, here’s the new calendar:

In case you can’t read the dates very well, we got home on April 1.  I was so exhausted and sore from driving that I didn’t find anyone or anything to play a prank on.

But, the Tattooed Girl will brighten that corner of the kitchen until May 1!  This brings up an interesting thought…this sideshow girl was once considered an oddity…she made her living exhibiting herself in a circus.  At least half the baristas in the Starbucks I visited had tats far more artistic, exotic and erotic than our Miss April, 2016.

Culture changes…but, as I said, there will always be an England.

So, let me run the numbers.  Using the above dates, we spent 169 days out there…somewhere out there, driving, camping, hiking or just sitting on a beach.  This come out to 40.6% of a year.  Nearly 41% of a year of my life has just been spent looking at things.

We emptied the r-pod (we’re going to sell it, but it needs a few repairs first) and I piled our guides and maps and memorabilia on the floor.  Of course, I arranged everything to look haphazard and casual, but every pamphlet and sticker and book and CD is carefully placed to give you an idea what we accomplished.  I probably should mention that I couldn’t find most of the guide books and National Park maps and tee-shirts that we purchased along the way.  They’ll show up sometime in late July.

I even re-highlighted my route on our Rand McNally.  Here it is:

I’m aware that it’s hard to see clearly, but you only need to see the orange line and the green/blue line.  The orange line was our route to Palm Desert, California.  This is where we made a turn on a highway that was surrounded by wind-mills, and began to set our course eastward.  That’s the green/blue line.

Far be it for me to brag, but I do think we took in a pretty good chunk of the lower part of the Lower 48.

If you’ve been following the many blogs I sweated and struggled to produce for your entertainment, you will know that I did accomplish quite a bit more than just fill up the memory chip in my digital camera.

I became certified in sailing (any keel boat up to 30′).  I posed with Miss Sonoran Desert Queen (and she put her arm around me willingly and eagerly…as she thought of her long deceased grandfather).  I saw my first rodeo, an American child’s dream (if you were raised in the 1950’s).  I saw the graves of dead outlaws and B & B’s that were former brothels.

I drank Tequila in a bar in Juarez, Mexico…the same bar where Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean and Steve McQueen drank.  I tried to feel their spiritual entities, but looking for the nooks where they sat and kissed and drank, only led me to the men’s room.  We crossed the International Bridge from El Paso.  I looked down at the line of defense our government has built to deter (read ‘keep out’) illegals.  The trenches, fences, walls and razor wire reminded me of the Berlin Wall or the Maginot Line.  I was struck by the seven inches you unknowingly step across that separates two cultures that are so close yet so far apart.  I also did this on a day when I was in constant FB messaging with my son Brian.  I pleaded with him to dig into his iTunes for Bob Dylan’s “Just Like Tom Thumbs Blues”, so he could, somehow in the cyber-world, be connected with me as I walked across the border bridge…and he would, at that same moment be listening to:

When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez and it’s Eastertime too.  And your gravity fails and negativity don’t pull you through, don’t put on any airs when you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue, they got some hungry women there, and they really make a mess outta you.”

We crossed the bridge.  Brian said he listened.  But it wasn’t raining and there’s no Rue Morgue Avenue in Juarez.  I did find a Mexican busker who sang Cielito Lindo for us, but no hungry women.  But, I’m not such a dreamer to believe that there are really no hungry women in Juarez…or hungry children…or hungry old men who sit and smoke and drink and think.

Sometimes facts get in the way of a good story.  For me, I have to immerse myself in a landscape, get my hands dirty, my mouth full of dust, get pricked by a cactus or bitten by a scorpion to fully understand where it is that I am standing. If I’m in Mississippi, I listen to Delta blues, if I’m in Texas, Bob Wills goes into the CD player.

Anytime on this trip, “Happy Trails” would be a welcome tune.

I drank a Lone Star beer at the Broken Spoke in Austin when Mariam, my friend William McHone and myself took lessons in the Texas 2-Step.  I even bought a pair of cheap cowboy boots for that night.  I didn’t do very well.  I have no sense of rhythm…only the desire to move around the dance floor to the sound of Texas Swing…and hold my honey in my arms.  I still have the boots, but I still can’t dance the Texas 2-Step.

I saw things that made me cry.

I saw acres of cattle, with no place to graze, penned and waiting to be herded to the killing rooms.  The miles I drove past these death-camps smelled of cow shit.  I wondered if it was their diet…or their fear.

I saw shanty-towns of the most squalid poverty and hopelessness.  I saw Native Americans reduced to playing “Indians” for the tourists…like me.

When we entered a National Park, I flashed my Golden Pass, which allowed us, as seniors, free entry.  I pondered the situation of an average family with four kids paying close to $100 to see the extraordinary landscapes that really belong to all of us.

I laid a flower at the grave of a prostitute in Dodge City, Kansas…a luckless young woman (somehow, I prefer the term “Soiled Dove”) who died from an infection caused by bar-room brawl over a cowboy, or was it Bat Masterson, or a banker, or a lover.

I placed another flower at the grave of an old friend of mine who died forty-some years ago.  He died and I lived.  We were hiking the same trail in the High Peaks.  I lived to return to his grave and place that Adirondack wildflower I had picked months earlier.  Now it was dried and withered from months on the road.  A flower from the mountains that were his last views of his life on this earth.

I saw an elderly man after he tripped on the curb outside a 7-Eleven.  He was bleeding.  The EMT’s were all over the situation.  But…was I seeing myself in fifteen years?

I saw a woman crying while she sat an outside table at one of the thousand Starbucks we visited.  She was alone in whatever sorrow had overcome her.  It took me days to get the image of her heartbreak out of my head.

I saw another woman crying in a bar.  She was with a male friend.  What happened?  Was she leaving him?  He leaving her?  I couldn’t tell, but the scene made me turn away.  I sat in her seat more than once in my life.

I cried one afternoon in the countryside outside of Dallas.  It didn’t have to do with the trip, directly.  I was driving to visit a large cemetery about fifteen miles southwest of the city.  I was listening to NPR and I sat up straight in the seat of the red Ford when the radio host announced that David Bowie had died.  I mulled this over for a few miles.  I realized I didn’t have any Bowie music on any of my playlists.  Then it happened.  They began a segment of “All Things Considered” with the opening riffs…the soaring chords of  “Let’s Dance”.

I didn’t dance.  I pulled over onto the shoulder and wept.  I wept for the lost talent, the lost beauty, the lost art…and another lost member of my generation’s music.

But, I saw sights of jaw-dropping beauty.  Rainbows that lasted over an hour.  Rock colors I never knew existed.  Canyons and valleys and washes and rivers, many that are famous and many that are unnamed.  Actually, I think nearly everything in the world has a name, I just didn’t have the right map.

When you travel, always have the right map.  It doesn’t have to be of any place you’re planning on visiting, but it’s good to have the map anyway.

There are maps of the wild and empty deserts of Arizona and California.  And, there are maps that exist only inside one’s mind.  These are usually the most interesting ones to use as guides.  Landscapes, towns, roads, Interstates, trails and horse paths can change with a sudden rainstorm.

But, the map that has your heart and soul and restless spirit as the compass rose…those are the maps to carry.

You can’t buy them on Amazon.  You were born with them deep in your chromosomes.

Measuring The Final Miles

[Divider antique tool provided by D’Arcy Havill. Used with permission}

“Why”  That seems to be the operative word rolling around in my mind as I sit and write this post, this nearly final post of our Epic Trip of 2015-1016.

We’re at our friend’s house in Camp Dennison, Ohio.  I’ve written of D’Arcy and Judy on several occasions.  They have a summer-house on our road at Rainbow Lake.  We stopped here in the last days of our first trip to Orting, WA., in 2013.  If you’ve been following me, faithfully following my blogs, this is the place where I helped to win an election and the place where a yellow house (across the street and apparently still haunted) is where we park our RV.  Their house has big rooms and wide driveways–unlike all the other places we’ve stayed since mid-October of 2015.  We’re more than grateful for their friendship and hospitality on both trips.

This afternoon I stood in the showroom of Road Rivers and Trails, an outdoor/gear/clothing shop in nearby Milford.  I was drawn to a wall mural map (by the National Geographic Society) of the U.S.A.  My eye drifted to the NYC area and, naturally, began, on its own, to trace our six month road trip.

Why?  What would prompt me to undergo such a major undertaking, at our age, in an r-pod that was too small for two…for that long?  What was I thinking?

A distant memory came to mind.  The more I gave the recollection some mental fertilizer, my desire to be on the road and discover new places…the more the memory became clear.

It was September of 1960.  I was  beginning my eighth and final year at St. Patrick’s School in Owego, New York.  But our classroom had one empty seat that fall.  It belonged to my childhood friend, Peter.  He wasn’t present for the first attendance call.  And there was a very good reason.

His father was, probably one of the last, I might add, of the generation of family doctors who actually made house calls.  Dr. G., (we eighth graders were told) had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.  He chose to close his practice and take his rather large family on a cross-country road trip–to see America–to show his children the Grand Canyon and all the sights that Americans should see in this unbelievable country of ours.

So, was that why I was on the road?  I think that a little bit of that memory of Peter and his family, drove me to make a grand loop through the amazing landscapes.  For sure, I wanted to see these places for myself, and to share the experiences with my wife, Mariam, but Peter’s childhood adventure–with its sad ending–was deeply buried in my psyche all the time.

We’re sitting on the Havell’s patio.  D’Arcy is burning brush and a rotting Adirondack Chair (here in Ohio…Ironic?).  I’m reclining on a chaise ( I had to blow away the ashes that had drifted down from the small bonfire).  I dozed.  It was warm.  I had unzipped my fleece vest and I dozed.  The last things I heard were the cardinals, taking the seeds at the feeder.

I dozed and began to see maps in my dreamy visions–maps–I had maps, more maps than the law allows.  I had studied the details of the maps for months…I had maps that had imbedded their images into my brain like the word food embeds into a dog’s brain.

I began to see routes, roads, byways, highways, scenic byways and unscenic thruways.  I began to recall the towns, the cities, the rest stops and the tourist traps I had seen and stopped at along the way…

There was the beginning:

The two months in Floridia, where I learned to sail and Mariam lost ten pounds from sweating in the heat and humidity in the first two months:

And, the points west, first in Natchez, Mississippi, where we attended a Baptist service on a Sunday morning and still get mailings from the members of the congregation.  Then, Vicksburg, where I met the wonderful Malory, at the Tomato Place…and toured the Battlefield, wondering why the deaths in those clay hills had to happen–onto Monroe, Louisiana, where I laid a flower on the grave of my very good friend–who died too young and too close to me:

Then driving west and south to Dallas, Austin–where we spent time with Madeline and William and where I bought a pair of cowboy boots just to take lessons in the Texas 2-Step:

Then to El Paso, and further west:

And, further into the Great Desert:

Then, the turn-around–eastward:

Finally, the last leg–the ending of an adventure that I may never have the chance to do again.  Oh, the places I’ve seen! Oh, the places where I could call home…

I regret missing the Canyonlands, Mesa Verde, hiking the Vermillion Cliffs, getting lost in the Superstition Mountains and finding destinations I haven’t even seen on the map yet.  Do I have time left to do all these things?

I know the country was there for Peter and his family to explore in 1960.  Fifty-six years later, it’s still there…but so many grey-haired guys like me are there too.  Where is the solitude?  Where is the real wilderness?

It’s all there, it’s all still there.  It’s just harder to find.  It’s so much much harder to find the kind of desolation and isolation I crave at this time in my life.  The quiet and unpeopled places are out there.  One just has to hike that four miles beyond the last signpost…that place beyond the last ATV track…that place where the old grey-haired guys like me are still looking for.

This post is loaded with maps and I hope you enjoyed them.  But, even as I say I love maps, I understand they are of limited use.  They show me where the roads are and where the paths end…but they don’t show where my own trail leads and where it will end.  Sometimes there are no maps where you need to be…where you should be and where you want to be.

I just hope I have the time and quality of life to go and discover.

[Map photos are taken from the National Geographic Mural Map of the U.S.A.]

 

The Warm Moon, Our Sixth Moon…The Hidden Moon

I waited until after midnight to go out of our r-pod to look up at the sixth full moon of our trip.  My weather app was correct, there would be a thick cloud cover tonight.

And there was.  For me, this was a first.  Since October, we had been favored by a clear sky.  The western sky is usually cloudless.

Last nights moon is known as the “warm moon.”  We just welcomed spring a few days ago.  There is warmth in the air but, for me, a certain sadness covers my thoughts.  Soon, we will be unpacking the RV and most likely prepare it for sale.  Our life, our days that have been unfolding with a new landscape with each new highway and each new town will now be as predictable as…the rising of the next full moon.

That will be on April 22.

We’ll be home and I will be watching, waiting for the Pink Moon.

Where will you be?

Has Enough Been Said About Burlap?

I would like to think that burlap is the next nylon.  True, no woman will get “oo la la’s” from sporting burlap, but let’s face it…nylon is so ’40’s!

I will also admit that burlap was never part of the black market trade during two World Wars, at least not in the books I’ve read.

But, one can do so much more with burlap than nylon.  And, I for one, think it’s time that this humble fabric got its just desserts.  You can haul around a sack of potatoes, or ears of corn in a burlap sack.  Try that with hosiery.  I, myself, have seen fifty pound bags (burlap) of peanuts in a little vegetable stand in Vicksburg, Mississippi.  It was quite impressive.

A little background: Burlap is made of the skin of the jute plant.  Sometimes, its origin is sisal fibers.  Someday, I’ll look up the difference.  Another name for burlap is Hessian.  If you’re think of soldiers right now, your right on point.  It seems to have been used in the uniforms of the army of Landgraviate of Hesse.  (Germany, I would suppose).

Often its been described, rather crudely I may say, as a “coarse piece of cloth”.  Perhaps, but there’s so much more.  It’s very simplicity is the root of its attractiveness.

And, its uses?  They are legion.  As I’ve said, large quantities of things can be carried around in burlap sacks.  If a flood has been predicted, its burlap sacks of sand that are used to stem the overflowing rivers.  Coffee?  Take a look around at the wall paper in the next Starbuck’s you sit in.

I found an indie coffee shop in Dodge City, Kansas recently.  (This is where I got the idea for writing about burlap, just in case you wonder where I get my inspirations).

Which bring me to Durango, Colorado.  I was searching for a real coffee shop (one that had burlap sacks stacked in the corners) when I chanced upon a touristy tee-shirt shop.  One hoodie that had “Purgatory, CO.” on the back simply had to be mine.  Now, being raised as a Catholic, I was taught by the nuns that everyone except saints, had to spend time in Purgatory for a final cleansing of our soiled soul. (I’ve been letting cars go first and slowed for pedestrians many times, hoping for a little time to be shaved off my bazillion year sentence).  I even thought of wearing a hair-shirt, a coarse garment, a sack-cloth…something made from…you guessed it.  Burlap!

There you have it.  In addition to a penitents outer wear, you can use burlap for wall coverings, table cloths, place mats, napkins and even shoulder bags.

What else can one say about burlap?

You can order some on Amazon, I’m sure.

Shot Out Of A Cannon/Driving Until The Wheels Fall Off And Burn

[The first day of Spring]

Lately, I’ve felt like I, the r-pod, the red Ford, Mariam and life in general have been shot out of a cannon.  Our departure from the desert southwest happened so fast, I somehow missed the line that I could point out, photograph, and say: “Well, there goes the desert…we’re in the midwest now.”

Indeed, the world of this:

…changed into this before I could think of something to say:

Yes, I missed that line that separates the two geographic anchors of my life.  My home in the North Country of New York State–and the engaging, terrifying and empty beauty of the arid lands.  I’ve said it before–The Empty Quarter.

So, I’m sitting in the r-pod, on the first day of Spring.  In two nights, I will see the fifth full moon rise–the fifth time I’ve looked eastward and waited for the big orange orb ascend.  I don’t think I’ll have time to write a killer blog on this fifth moon (we will be on the road) so I’ll just say that it was close to full the other night I took this:

In this way, with the setting sun at our backs, we crossed the Missouri River just after leaving Kansas City.  After a night in Columbia, Missouri, we finally caught sight of the Arch of St. Louis.  The Arch represents the Gateway to the West, but we were coming out of the west.  So, for us, it’s the Gateway to More Familiar Terrains–home.

We visited Union Station, once the largest train station in America.  When I was there in 1989, the interior was a bustling and crowded shopping mall.  Now, the stores were empty and yellow tape blocked the escalators and hallways.  I asked someone about what happened and was told that it was going through a renovation.  I hope so.  The interior is stunning.  There is a Doubletree Hotel located in the front portion of the terminal.  The grand hallway, that now serves as a spacious lounge and bar, was jaw-dropping in its beauty.  I saw stained glass:

…a ceiling that had a fabulous light show every hour…

I looked up at two statues, females that held lamps, high and proud…

I wondered if her bronze arms ever tired of holding the lamps so majestically…

I wondered if my arms will cease feeling the grip of the steering wheel.  I wondered if I will sit on my back deck in a few weeks and be thankful for where I am and for what I’ve seen…or will I yearn for the Yucca and the Joshua tree?  Will the Adirondack trees push in on me?  Will I wonder what the heat of Death Valley will be like in June?  Will I swat the infamous Black Fly and wish for a scorpion instead?

Will I ever be satisfied standing still?

Part of me wants to turn around and drive back into the desert, face my worries, think my thoughts and sing:

“Tumbling Tumbleweeds…..”