We were at the top of the world. Alpine tundra stretched out all around us. As always, Rocky Mountain National Park was a place of renewal for us. A balance between spectacular views and the tiny little plants that covered this meadow far above the tree line.
A conversation broke into my reverie. A mother was bending over a little girl, probably five or six years old. In the little girl's hand was a tiny purple flower. Her upset mother said in loud tones, Letty you can't pick the flowers here. You will go to jail! I suspect her loud voice was not just for Letty, but for everyone around the little girl.
Fortunately, Letty's father was the more reasonable parent, intervening in the conversation between Letty and her mother.. No Letty, you will not go to jail. But you shouldn't pick the flowers in this Park. Especially up here so high - the flowers are very fragile and precious. They take a long time to grow. If everyone picked flowers, soon there would not be any left for others to enjoy. The family drifted away, Letty still holding the tiny flower that had captured her attention.
No Letty you will not go to jail. I wonder if her little heart thumped fast in her chest with the threat of jail time. A tiny flower that so transfixed her attention will remain an image in her memory for a very long time.
Small, but life changing events in our lives. Sounds of a police siren you think might be for you, and your relief as the patrol car whizzes by - intent on something else. The faces of hungry children. The splendor of places like this park that I so love. The Western forests decimated by pine blister beetles. The first tulips bulbs to push through still frozen ground in the spring. My daughters just emerging from my womb. The aftermath of a flood or tornado. The sight of ice floes in the North Pacific. My husband's serious face as we pledged our vows to each other.
Memories fixed in our minds - some beautiful, some tragic, and some calling us to change. And now Letty's little hand. I never did see her face. But I will remember for a long time this little girl who had fallen in love with a flower just an inch tall.
Friday, August 8, 2014
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Why Does Your Town Look Like My Town?
One of the attractions of travel is experiencing how people live in other places. A place's unique sights and sounds give us pause and take us out of the little boxes in which we live from day to day. We all need to be shaken loose from our own little worlds. To see things through other peoples' eyes. Perhaps breaking down some of the we-they barriers between us.
When we were tent-camping, we used to go to grocery stores whenever we emerged from wilderness places and needed to restock our traveling pantry. Grocery stores also were great places to see what the "locals" ate and how they constructed their little boxes in ways that differed from ours.
Or we ate in small cafes and listened to the chatter of people talking about things that make up their lives. Nothing like being in a cafe where ranchers all wore baseball hats advertising products needed to make their ranches work. Now it is Mac and Don's, Subway, Perkins et al.
Local newspapers were a good source of the fabric of how lives were woven together. Even when I couldn't read the language, the photos told me a lot about how life happened in a particular place.
Not anymore. It is as if all the places I travel (and beyond) have been dumped into a huge blender to homogenize life everywhere. Folks eat the same things I can buy in my local supermarket chain - maybe a little more spicy or less spicy, but generally the same food products produced by just a few mega-corporations.
Turn on the TV in a motel or hotel room. Thanks to the "miracle of cable," we all watch the same stuff and hear the same homogenized versions of political issues. Whether it is war in Gaza, Putin's latest audacities, or Washington's paralysis. Doesn't matter whether I am in New Mexico, Maine, or Oregon. Same old, same old news. Local papers are hard to come by - replaced by USA Today. And universal evening programs are even at the same time as they are at home. PBS, the Discovery Channel, or National Geographic anyone?
Walk down the street. People wear the same things they do at home, with only small regional differences. Even when I travel to countries beyond the one in which I live. Thanks to Target, Walmart, or other chains. Do you realize when you buy an article of clothing that you think is unique for you, these chains are dictating how you look - just like all the other folks in the country?
Only languages differ - and with the universality of English, only local accents tell me (sometimes) I am from somewhere else. Even if I watch BBC, where Brits still sound like Brits, the accents that once told me what part of England they might be from are disappearing as folks speak "perfect unaccented English."A treasured memory was when we walked into a restaurant in Germany and were handed a menu in German. Only when I asked the meaning of a word on the menu did the wait-person exclaim Oh, I thought you were German! and rush off for the English version.
No longer do I need to travel away from home to enlarge my worldview - because your town is just like my town. What a loss for us all!
At least the mountains and the seas retain their distinctive characteristics. The horror of the thought of dumping the Rocky Mountains into the blender with the Smokies. Or the Mediterranean with the North Pacific! Wild places still manage to push back against all this cultural assimilation and sameness!
When we were tent-camping, we used to go to grocery stores whenever we emerged from wilderness places and needed to restock our traveling pantry. Grocery stores also were great places to see what the "locals" ate and how they constructed their little boxes in ways that differed from ours.
Or we ate in small cafes and listened to the chatter of people talking about things that make up their lives. Nothing like being in a cafe where ranchers all wore baseball hats advertising products needed to make their ranches work. Now it is Mac and Don's, Subway, Perkins et al.
Local newspapers were a good source of the fabric of how lives were woven together. Even when I couldn't read the language, the photos told me a lot about how life happened in a particular place.
Not anymore. It is as if all the places I travel (and beyond) have been dumped into a huge blender to homogenize life everywhere. Folks eat the same things I can buy in my local supermarket chain - maybe a little more spicy or less spicy, but generally the same food products produced by just a few mega-corporations.
Turn on the TV in a motel or hotel room. Thanks to the "miracle of cable," we all watch the same stuff and hear the same homogenized versions of political issues. Whether it is war in Gaza, Putin's latest audacities, or Washington's paralysis. Doesn't matter whether I am in New Mexico, Maine, or Oregon. Same old, same old news. Local papers are hard to come by - replaced by USA Today. And universal evening programs are even at the same time as they are at home. PBS, the Discovery Channel, or National Geographic anyone?
Walk down the street. People wear the same things they do at home, with only small regional differences. Even when I travel to countries beyond the one in which I live. Thanks to Target, Walmart, or other chains. Do you realize when you buy an article of clothing that you think is unique for you, these chains are dictating how you look - just like all the other folks in the country?
Only languages differ - and with the universality of English, only local accents tell me (sometimes) I am from somewhere else. Even if I watch BBC, where Brits still sound like Brits, the accents that once told me what part of England they might be from are disappearing as folks speak "perfect unaccented English."A treasured memory was when we walked into a restaurant in Germany and were handed a menu in German. Only when I asked the meaning of a word on the menu did the wait-person exclaim Oh, I thought you were German! and rush off for the English version.
No longer do I need to travel away from home to enlarge my worldview - because your town is just like my town. What a loss for us all!
At least the mountains and the seas retain their distinctive characteristics. The horror of the thought of dumping the Rocky Mountains into the blender with the Smokies. Or the Mediterranean with the North Pacific! Wild places still manage to push back against all this cultural assimilation and sameness!
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Toothpaste . . .
Toothpaste is not like skim milk or orange juice - items requiring frequent trips to the grocery store. A tube of tooth paste goes a long way. Hence, changes in your favorite brand are likely, since the last time you went toothpaste shopping.
This past week, I used up the last of our toothpaste. Off to the grocery store I went, (for milk and orange juice and other items that had gone missing from our pantry and refrigerator) to investigate my options. When I came to the toothpaste department, I was overwhelmed. I was astounded at the technological improvements that had been made since I bought my last tooth paste.
What product might best suit my needs - my old brand nowhere to be seen?
Rows and rows of toothpaste - all touting their particular value for your pearly whites. And all the boxes were big - nothing that would allow me to fly on an airplane. Did I have sensitive teeth? No, an occasional bowl of ice cream was never a problem - nor a tall glass of something cold and refreshing on a hot day in July. Or hot soup in January.
The various boxes raised other existential questions. Did I want to whiten my teeth, remove plaque and tartar (is there a difference?) or prevent cavities and gum disease? Or simply freshen my breath - which I assumed was fresh enough because people did not back away when I opened my mouth.
Feeling overwhelmed by all the choices, I moved on to the hand lotion department. At least there, I was clearer about what I expected the stuff in the bottle would do. And I did not have high expectations that a particular brand would make me thirty years younger and sexier.
However, there still was this matter of toothpaste. So I returned to the plethora of products. For starters, I asked myself if was there anything I didn't want my toothpaste to do for my teeth. And I forgot to mention - what flavor did I want to invite my mouth to enjoy.
Lacking a computer with sophisticated statistical analytical tools, I was forced to collate the various factors in my head. At least I could be methodical about scanning each row of large boxes.
Finally, I reached out and plucked a box from the shelf. I hoped it was a good choice - because the size of the tube meant I would be living with it for some time to come.
Unless that is, I booked a plane flight - and needed toothpaste that met TSA requirements. Wouldn't want someone flying with me who used a toothpaste tube to carry a bomb. Bad breath is enough of a problem, given the increasingly smaller size of seats.
Life is so complicated these days.
This past week, I used up the last of our toothpaste. Off to the grocery store I went, (for milk and orange juice and other items that had gone missing from our pantry and refrigerator) to investigate my options. When I came to the toothpaste department, I was overwhelmed. I was astounded at the technological improvements that had been made since I bought my last tooth paste.
What product might best suit my needs - my old brand nowhere to be seen?
Rows and rows of toothpaste - all touting their particular value for your pearly whites. And all the boxes were big - nothing that would allow me to fly on an airplane. Did I have sensitive teeth? No, an occasional bowl of ice cream was never a problem - nor a tall glass of something cold and refreshing on a hot day in July. Or hot soup in January.
The various boxes raised other existential questions. Did I want to whiten my teeth, remove plaque and tartar (is there a difference?) or prevent cavities and gum disease? Or simply freshen my breath - which I assumed was fresh enough because people did not back away when I opened my mouth.
Feeling overwhelmed by all the choices, I moved on to the hand lotion department. At least there, I was clearer about what I expected the stuff in the bottle would do. And I did not have high expectations that a particular brand would make me thirty years younger and sexier.
However, there still was this matter of toothpaste. So I returned to the plethora of products. For starters, I asked myself if was there anything I didn't want my toothpaste to do for my teeth. And I forgot to mention - what flavor did I want to invite my mouth to enjoy.
Lacking a computer with sophisticated statistical analytical tools, I was forced to collate the various factors in my head. At least I could be methodical about scanning each row of large boxes.
Finally, I reached out and plucked a box from the shelf. I hoped it was a good choice - because the size of the tube meant I would be living with it for some time to come.
Unless that is, I booked a plane flight - and needed toothpaste that met TSA requirements. Wouldn't want someone flying with me who used a toothpaste tube to carry a bomb. Bad breath is enough of a problem, given the increasingly smaller size of seats.
Life is so complicated these days.
Friday, July 11, 2014
Urban Crane Watching
Note: After a sabbatical of rather considerable length, I have returned to contributing to this blog!
During springtime, we often go crane watching in central Nebraska. Across a sixty-mile stretch of the Platte River, most of the sand hill cranes in the world congregate. There they fatten up for their long journey to nesting grounds that stretch from eastern Siberia across northern Canada.
Since it now is mid-summer, we have turned to another kind of crane watching. This past week, we watched a huge crane "fold-up" after completing whatever it was doing at a construction site near us. The height of this crane seemed a bit of over-kill to us. But what ever - the crew seemed to think this behemoth was necessary. Slowly, the huge creature telescoped into smaller and smaller sections until it fit on the flat-bed of a vehicle designed to transport it from place to place.
The procedure was elaborate. Many pieces were stored in place, parts chained down so they could not move and cause damage, leg-extensions that prevented it from tipping sideways were slid into slots within the interior of the vehicle- and finally chocks the size of railroad ties were removed from its fourteen huge wheels. Then off it went - toward the freeway and some other project.
We marveled at this elaborate invention and wondered how much money it took to make it. It did not originate from some factory assembly line mass producing such an ingenious creation. Rather, it likely was custom-made.
Our appetite whetted, we went to the third floor of a building in the center of the city and stood on a balcony overlooking the biggest construction project in our city. Here multiple cranes slowly danced across the sky. Choreographed to move materials from one place to another on the construction site without colliding with each other. Back and forth they went, giving a new perspective of our much smaller mobile crane of several days earlier.
Most of the time, the cranes lifted dark unidentifiable objects. Somewhere, there must have been someone directing the traffic, someone who responded to recess to move a needed part from one place to another.
However, it was our lucky day. As we watched, the biggest crane plucked two Porta Potties and moved them from one side of the work in progress to the other. fortunately the crane did not either one while it was in transit.
What can you say?
During springtime, we often go crane watching in central Nebraska. Across a sixty-mile stretch of the Platte River, most of the sand hill cranes in the world congregate. There they fatten up for their long journey to nesting grounds that stretch from eastern Siberia across northern Canada.
Since it now is mid-summer, we have turned to another kind of crane watching. This past week, we watched a huge crane "fold-up" after completing whatever it was doing at a construction site near us. The height of this crane seemed a bit of over-kill to us. But what ever - the crew seemed to think this behemoth was necessary. Slowly, the huge creature telescoped into smaller and smaller sections until it fit on the flat-bed of a vehicle designed to transport it from place to place.
The procedure was elaborate. Many pieces were stored in place, parts chained down so they could not move and cause damage, leg-extensions that prevented it from tipping sideways were slid into slots within the interior of the vehicle- and finally chocks the size of railroad ties were removed from its fourteen huge wheels. Then off it went - toward the freeway and some other project.
We marveled at this elaborate invention and wondered how much money it took to make it. It did not originate from some factory assembly line mass producing such an ingenious creation. Rather, it likely was custom-made.
Our appetite whetted, we went to the third floor of a building in the center of the city and stood on a balcony overlooking the biggest construction project in our city. Here multiple cranes slowly danced across the sky. Choreographed to move materials from one place to another on the construction site without colliding with each other. Back and forth they went, giving a new perspective of our much smaller mobile crane of several days earlier.
Most of the time, the cranes lifted dark unidentifiable objects. Somewhere, there must have been someone directing the traffic, someone who responded to recess to move a needed part from one place to another.
However, it was our lucky day. As we watched, the biggest crane plucked two Porta Potties and moved them from one side of the work in progress to the other. fortunately the crane did not either one while it was in transit.
What can you say?
Saturday, May 17, 2014
WHAT YOU SEE DEPENDS ON WHERE YOU STAND . . .
Minnesota has thousands of lakes. For many years, car license plates
carried the slogan "Land of 10,000 Lakes." The DNR states there are
actually 11,842 lakes 10 acres or larger. Each lake has been given a
name with some of the "names" being simply numbers . . . like Lake
22 or Lake 23.
The lakes sometimes share the same name. For me, amount all the 154
lakes named "Long", one Long Lake will always be special.
It was where I saw a Cerulean Warbler for the first time.
Cerulean
A small flutter of a bird
traverses tree tops.
Part of springtime passing through
to elsewhere.
I lift my eyes skyward
hoping to glimpse
its ethereal, sky-blue back.
But see only
a clear, white breast.
Next year, I will walk
along a high-ridge trail,
to look down on
tree tops.
carried the slogan "Land of 10,000 Lakes." The DNR states there are
actually 11,842 lakes 10 acres or larger. Each lake has been given a
name with some of the "names" being simply numbers . . . like Lake
22 or Lake 23.
The lakes sometimes share the same name. For me, amount all the 154
lakes named "Long", one Long Lake will always be special.
It was where I saw a Cerulean Warbler for the first time.
Cerulean
A small flutter of a bird
traverses tree tops.
Part of springtime passing through
to elsewhere.
I lift my eyes skyward
hoping to glimpse
its ethereal, sky-blue back.
But see only
a clear, white breast.
Next year, I will walk
along a high-ridge trail,
to look down on
tree tops.
Saturday, May 10, 2014
BLUEBIRDS REMEMBERED
They turn in lilting flight,
descend to trees and fences and
begin a gentle conversation.
In loose clusters, never alone
as if they have
a fondness
for each other's company.
Always in my memories,
their graceful flight
and soft calls
always -
turning blue skies
more blue.
descend to trees and fences and
begin a gentle conversation.
In loose clusters, never alone
as if they have
a fondness
for each other's company.
Always in my memories,
their graceful flight
and soft calls
always -
turning blue skies
more blue.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
May Day ! ! May Day ! !
I remember a May Day in London. Elizabeth and I had just visited
Westminster Cathedral and out in front was a significant gathering of
people watching a circle of young girls dancing, holding ribbons, and
twining the ribbons around a May Pole. I had heard about May Poles . . .
but had never seen one. And here I was watching it all happen!
But, that wasn't all.
The group invited me to join them. Now . . . I'm not a "dancing type"
person, only having danced once with Elizabeth at our high school prom.
But, there I was dancing. I will never forget that day in London with
Elizabeth.
I can hardly wait to see what special thing Elizabeth and I will do
on this May Day!
Westminster Cathedral and out in front was a significant gathering of
people watching a circle of young girls dancing, holding ribbons, and
twining the ribbons around a May Pole. I had heard about May Poles . . .
but had never seen one. And here I was watching it all happen!
But, that wasn't all.
The group invited me to join them. Now . . . I'm not a "dancing type"
person, only having danced once with Elizabeth at our high school prom.
But, there I was dancing. I will never forget that day in London with
Elizabeth.
I can hardly wait to see what special thing Elizabeth and I will do
on this May Day!
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