11/1: End of the Rainbow: Last Post

The last stop on my Grand Tour was where I began, at my friend Annie's in Brunswick, Maine. You can compare the two pics of the Androscoggin River ramp to see how long it took -- from high summer to autumn.

Annie was there when I arrived, reading her email. She'd had the other hip surgery and while still limping a bit, didn't seem to have to use the walker.

We had a quiet evening. I was pretty tired from all the driving and looked forward to a long day the next day, when I would try and make it all the way home, especially so as to get there before what's now been called post tropical storm Noel got to Halifax.

I'd been speaking with Zeb nightly via Skype video conferencing, way cool, I have to say. He was somewhat worried and wanted me to get home sooner than later and I wanted to get home before winter.

However, nature had one little fillip left for me to see. An amazing full rainbow appeared over the house next door to Annie's with a beautiful autumn amber light. These two pics show one look at what came out from the camera and one after I photoshopped it with "auto levels." The red one looks extra-terrestrial, I must say. And one little one with a plane going through the rainbow.

I woke up at 7 am and got my earliest start for the whole trip.

I had to take a few snooze breaks, but was able to make it back home by 7 pm that night. Needless to say, I was quite wiped out.

Turns out I made it in time to help Zeb prepare for Noel. Because we live in a hydrostone, built after the 1917 Halifax Explosion (here's a website you can look at about it: http://www.halifax.ca/community/explode.html. And a CBC website that has a few photos: http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-70-971/disasters_tragedies/halifax_explosion/.

As you can see, we didn't suffer too much damage from the storm. That's Zeb on our deck. The other pic is of a tree down across the alley from us on Stanley Street. It was gone in about three days. As you can see, the roots are really shallow, so the whole thing toppled down, luckily for the neighbors, it landed right in between their houses, only trashing their fence and a bit of the roof of an entryway.

We went over to Anita and Wayne's the next day when the electricity went out. They have a wood stove and very sweetly made us a hot breakfast (as well as brewed some tea for their 92-year-old next door neighbor). But, we were back up to speed by evening.

I ended up getting this weird thing happening with my balance -- when I turned my head, especially if I was lying down, I'd get incredibly dizzy like I was spinning around. The doctor said this happens to people who drive long distances, as the car jiggles, something flakes off in your inner ear and as it settles and swirls in the liquid in there, you feel on a more macro scale the motion. It was fairly intense, though once I'd been up for a few hours it wasn't too bad. Took about a week and a half to go away. So, that's why I didn't get back to the blog as quickly as I might have.

This will be my last post for this adventure. It's been really amazing and well worth it and I deeply thank everyone I met on my journey for their unstinting generosity and cheer.

Signing off for now,

Carol (aka Fearless Wildflower)

10/31-11/1: Halloween at Jan's

Halloween. Woke up at the hotel in Binghamton and dawdled some because I thought I was pretty close to where Jan lived in Mt. Tremper (if I have the name right), near Woodstock, where if you blinked, you might end up in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or Manhattan. But, of course, where someone like myself could get lost, or, as is more the case, not go quite far enough. Looking at the map in retrospect, it looks like the name of this river is the Beaver Kill, believe it or not -- a roadside view along route 30.

I did pause here and there for pics this time as the Catskills were rather autumnly pretty.

It took me a frazzelled while, but I finally made it to Jan's place. She was still at work finishing up some of her earrings. She makes really cool jewelry, using this special glass that's made in a vacuum, so that when you look at it one way it's one color and when the light shines through it, it's another. She also makes small plates, and these really neat glass wall hangings (about 6 inches square) that have a very small vase worked into it, where you can add water and a small flower. Of course, I didn't take any pics of them. Gad. Her business is called "Luminosity Glass," and she has her things in a myriad of stores around the U.S.

Here's a ldescription I found when I googled her name that she put on eBay some time back when she was living in Philadelphia:

I loved the magical luminosity of Fused Dichroic Glass the first time I saw it. A few years ago I was drawn to experiment with making it myself. What you see here are a few of the results. I cut, stack, arrange and fire the Stained Glass and Dichroic Glass in a kiln at a temperature of 1500 degrees Fahrenheit at which it melts and fuses together. Each piece is made of at least 3-4 layers of glass. In addition, some have 24-karat gold or pure silver foil added to the design.

Jan just sent me her website address: http://www.janwilcox.com

She lives in a fairly modern house, with a large basement where she has her kilns and workshop. She gave me a small tour of her yard, or environs. There's a river runs through it where she can skinny dip if she's so minded.

We had a great dinner and talked until we were tired. It felt great to miss the whole Halloween miasma.

I slept well and got up early to make the run to Brunswick to see my friend Annie again before I made my way back to Nova Scotia.

10/28-10/31: Bee-lining to the Catskills

Heading out from Minneapolis, I did have a thought of visiting Chicago. I had wanted to take a picture of Jackson Park, where my aunt Ruby and Clarence Darrow's ashes were spread and perhaps seeing if I couldn't track down some information from the University of Chicago, or perhaps meet with a Mrs. Weinberg, who's husband wrote a biography of Darrow. But, it was not to be. I couldn't really find a place to stay and I have something of an aversion to wandering around in a big city (and Chicago is one of the biggest) by myself with no clear place to stay, or only pretty expensive alternatives. I was also feeling something of a push to get back to Nova Scotia before winter set in and snow came.

From Minneapolis/Saint Paul, I passed by Madison and Milwaukee, where conceivable there were sangha friends I could stay with, but no one had answered the phone or written back, so I took that as a sign to keep going. I got as far as Beloit, Wisconsin, just across the Minnesota border, and another Comfort Inn. Not much to be said about it really.

Next day I passed through Wisconsin and then into Illinois. I bipped thorugh Chicago, which like New York, has the turnpike (not freeway -- that's my California heritage speaking) going right through the center of it, so I could get my signtseeing in. I'd contacted Jan Wilcox in the Catskills, who said she was having some friends from Hawaii visiting from November 1-4 and if I could get there before or after, it would be good. So, I went for before.

So, I passed through Indiana, very close to my birthplace, LaPorte (only there six weeks though back in 1946), but didn't stop. Got a spoon for my daughter, as they didn't have any shot glasses, and a fridge magnet for me to commerate at least having passed through town.

Then on into Ohio, where I thought of my friend Annie Johnston, a fabulous singer and guitarist, who moved back home to Yellow Springs (from Berkeley) and didn't leave me a number, so I couldn't call her. Didn't quite get to Cleveland, but made it to Freemont, Ohio, where this time I stayed in a room with a jacuzzi right in it. I don't think I totally realized what that meant. But when I saw it sitting in the corner of the bedroom, I decided that I should take advantage and rest my weary bones and watch NCIS.

Next day, I passed through Cleveland (80 miles from Freemont), then Erie, Pennsylvania, which sticks up into Lake Ontario, then past Rochester, New York, but didn't think I'd make it all the way to Jan's, so aimed for Binghampton. It was a very long way, about 500 miles I think, through the Adirondacks, which were pretty in their upstate, New York way. Stopped at several rest areas for snooze breaks (see pics).

I kept seeing signs that I was getting close to New York City, which was somewhat confusing, but just because I didn't look at the map closely enough to see how the states fell together.

Binghamton was quite nice actually, though I had to negotiate city streets to get to the "Comfort Inn," which turned out to be a heritage hotel, which was pretty cool.

Next stop, Jan's.

10/26-10/28: Dead deer and Darrow

It wasn't very far from Avoca to my next stop in Owatonna, Minnesota. As often happens, the scenery changed abruptly crossing the border to a kind of sturdy, wholesome autumn. There was a feeling of vast emptiness, but perhaps, from my point of view, more friendly -- more trees and squirrels, wildlife, and hunters.

Minnesota, home of Prairie Home Companion, where the men are handsome and the children are all above average.

I did have an idea from time to time to take pictures of all the variations in signs of leaping deer and elk (and moose in Canada) that one sees on the side of the road. It didn't really sink in as a powerful admonition until I saw a large buck deer leap across my lane about 300 yards ahead of me (if I have that kind of distance right -- far enough that I wouldn't hit him, but close enough that I could see his antlers and colouring clearly. I hit the brakes gently while I watched him land and then duck between the front and rear wheels of a trailer truck (not a real large one, but big enough). I think the deer thought it could just slide through, but the truck was going about 80 mph and hit it with its rear wheels, shunting it to the right side of the interstate. Bits of it flew off. Aggg. I saw it land with a thump golden tail wagging down on a white rump. Then I was past.

The next exit was to Owatonna, where I was checked into a Comfort Inn. I rather breathlessly reported the deer to the innkeeper. She called 911, but they said they had to transfer to the state troopers who put her on hold. They never came back on. As I continued driving I noticed many for deer remains along the side of the road or being picked up in pick-up trucks -- probably about 20-25 from that point on. But, "my deer" was the largest I'd seen.

This was kind of a nice Inn, but it had deer and buffalo heads on the walls of the foyer above a rather nice stone fireplace. It's hard to put that sort of a visualization out of your mind. Though I did have a very good dinner at a steakhouse nearby. It was a stopping place for hunters.

I managed to get them to let me stay until noon as I was only a few hours from Minneapolis. Getting back on the highway was hard as I kept seeing the deer leaping out. As with getting a speeding ticket in Manitoba, I used the reminder to come back to the road.

I took a snooze break at a rest stop that had an amazing number of perky squirrels and a memorial to some kind of invention for processing cloth.

I dawdled and dawdled on my way to the lawyer's house. I drove up and down his road and found a great view of a pond with absolute clear reflections of trees in autumn glory with a yellow low sun in the sky. Gad. Couldn't find anywhere to pause my car to take a pic. Oh well.

I got there at almost five on the dot. Randy wasn't home. His wife and two children were though. Susan, two-year old Sophie and four-year-old Ben. Randy didn't want me to put any photos on the web, so I'm honoring that and being a bit vague about my visit.

He was absolutely right that his wife was a marvelous cook. She's made a hobby of watching cooking shows and turning out gourmet meals. We had a kind of Mexican, black-bean, corn, vegetable medley the first night and an amazing polenta, blended with cheese and other mysterious ingredients to go with a savory roast chicken. I actually had seconds. Their house was very white and clean -- lots of books, a huge Leggo set for the children that had it's own table. The house was built by someone who valued his privacy. There were no windows along the curvy white concrete front (looked rather 50's, 60's modern). Windows in the back overlooking the Minnesota autumn. Pumpkins in front of the door.

The house was the quietest I've ever been in. For example, in the morning I would usually have heard the children whose rooms were right down the hall from mine, but I heard not a sound. I decided that I was probably imposing somewhat, though there was no hint of that in their demeanour. A friend of theirs had said that he'd come back on Monday so I could stay Sunday evening, but I decided not to let that happen as he had to get to work in Minneapolis and was staying rather further away. Randy and I had good conversations about Clarence Darrow and he gave me a copy of the readings he'd assigned for a class he taught on Darrow. We promised to keep in touch.

I was starting to feel somewhat antsy about getting back to Canada before winter, so left that Sunday.

10/22-10/26: Judiciously Dawdling: the Mobile Retreat

Update: Just to let you all know, I'm back in Halifax, as you probably guessed by now. I got a case of positional dizziness due to long hours spent at the wheel and it's taken me about a week and a half to recover. So, I will finish up the blog so you'll know what happened.

October 22: After my stay in Raton, I headed out for Colorado, which is when I discovered I was only a few miles from a pass that had been snowed in the night before. I had hopes of staying at Dorje Khyung Dzong for four days.

DKD is a beautiful Shambhala buddhist retreat center in southern Colorado where I've done a retreat before. But, it was not to be. Partly I was worried about the snow and getting stuck and I wanted to get to Minneapolis by Friday evening to meet Randy, the other Clarence Darrow "expert," so to speak.

So I reluctantly wrote Melissa and said that I wouldn't be able to make it. I would have to do a "mobile retreat."

By this time I'd driven probably about 7,000 miles. There seems to be a wondrous joy in driving off in the morning knowing I won't be back that way for the foreseeable future. It is certainly a lesson in the truth of impermanence. In the most simplistic way, just the instant by instant changing of scene. Sometimes spotting a terrific photo opportunity and zip it's gone, or no, I could stop. Click.

Zip it's gone. Road work ahead. Fines will double. Overturned tractor trailer (that's road work?).

Like in mindfulness meditation where you come back to the breath in order to come back to the present, in mobile meditation practice, it's coming back to the road and panoramic awareness of the space and atmosphere. Sometimes there's a fierce joy to be found in the unconditional travel down the road.

Passion, aggression, and ignorance are to be found in plenty. Someone passing and then cutting back right in front, so I'd have to tailgate. Breath. Maybe I could catch up to that truck way up there. Breath. Spacing out, slowing down and getting passed on the right. Breath.

Desperately searching for a rest area. Road Work ahead. Closed. Next Rest Area 43 miles. Aggg. Doing what I can to not doze off.

My car doesn't turn on a dime, but a Toonie. It has a lot of momentum, gets between 24 and 29 mpg. Basically it's behaved well. Got the tires rotated in a small gas stop in Arizona. I have snow tires on it, so the tread wears more quickly.

So, I just swooped through snow covered southern Colorado. Thought about staying in Boulder, but no one really responded to my rather no doubt too subtle queries. Plus, I might get stuck snowbound. Bipped through Denver. Discovered that Wendy's seems the best of the burger chains -- so a few days I'd get a cheeseburger to eat in and a Mandarin Orange salad to go for the motel for dinner. Stopped in Fort Morgan on the plains past all trace of snow.

Next day, beeline for Nebraska. Decided to stop in North Platte. A kind of surprising town/city. In a quest for a lens cap, I found a pretty decent sushi place called North One, Suyin W. Groesbeck and Wilson Fang (a Chinese man who learned to make sushi in San Francisco). they are both fans of the internet and were quite pleased to let me take a pick and include them here.

They put a great package for me to take back to the Blue Spruce Motel, where I decided to stay (instead of at a Comfort Inn). The price was better (only $32, including tax). The proprietor was local. no question. He had on one of those round necked, sleeveless undershirts and was in the middle of a remodeling project. Pick-up trucks parked here and there. Didn't have a plastic glasses and I almost thought they didn't have towels, but finally found some by the sink in the bedroom area. Unfortunately the bedsheets were laundered in a very odiferous floral-smelling detergent that hadn't been rinsed out enough. But overall, it was good to buy local for a change. And the wireless worked. Called Zeb via skype and Stan on my cell phone to see how he was doing in terms of the fires (already reported).

Next stop was a Motel 6 in Avoca, Iowa heading into Minnesota. I wouldn't particularly recommend it. Small room. Smelled intense -- kind of like a variety of lysol. Wireless was promised but didn't work. "Must be something wrong with your computer." Right. It's only 2 months old.

These two pics give you an idea of Iowa. They were taken outside the Motel 6. Skies were clear as a bell, so I was fulfilling my desire to dance between the sunbeams and not get caught in a raging tornado storm. Quite flat, but interesting in a more subtle way than other vistas. Smells of cow manure indicating the passing of a cattle ranch. Lots of trailer trucks, got some good state shot glasses for my daughter, though I think she's stopped collecting them by now, with too much enthusiasm on my part.

Next Minnesota.

10/18-21/07: Dancing Between the Sunbeams

Update:
Today (Halloween) sees me at a Clarion Hotel in Binghampton, New York, on my way to Jan Wilcox's to visit for the night and then back to Annie Cooper in Brunswick, Maine, on the last leg back home.

It's been a while since I last wrote. Stan and his family are OK. Crestline, where he lives, wasn't touched by fire, which is wonderful. Hopefully this blue jay is still flying with its mate through the pines in their front yard.

I saw the lake on the right
on my way out of town -- the back way, through to Barstow and Arizona. I heard that this area burned, but don't know that for a fact. Dancing between the sunbeams this time, I made it to Arizona and stayed in Williams, just outside of the entryway to the Grand Canyon, where I met Pagent and Susan at their Battledress and Bodyworks shop, where I bought a tourquoise necklace made by Pagent. Evidently they had just opened and were willing to give me a really good price. Pagent (the one on the left) showed me where the ATM machine was in a restaurant next door -- very C&W, kind of biker, but with good steaks. Susan showed me photos of women who looked dressed in kind of medieval biker tattooed exotic dress (like sword and sorcery sci-fi art beloved by teenaged boys and young men). It was all paint, not a stitch of fabric to be had, so to speak.

When I walked in they suggested that I could try on any necklace or motorcycle helmet of my choice. In a way, I was kind of flattered and though that if I actually lived in Crestline, I might need a helmet, so that I could ride with Stan on his Ural, but I probably wouldn't get pink.

The next day, I did got to the Grand Canyon, as the pressure from my friend Sue Corning back in Halifax and Pagent in Williams was too great. I realized I'm not actually that much of a fan of on-purpose tourism. But, of course it was beautiful, hot, fair number of people, and of course, the requisite idiots (as can be seen if you look very closely at the top left of the photo on the right. At the very tippy top of the rocks are some dim-witted daredevils.)

I did get some pretty amazing shots though (like on the left), which, of course, you can see more of when I get back.

I stayed that night in Winslow, Arizona. I tried to stay in this really cool train station that I stayed in with Stan when we did our road trip in 2006 to bring my mom's car back, but it was full for days and I ended up staying at a Best Western, I think, at the same great expense as I would have done if I'd been able to stay at the train station. I ate dinner there though, but got kind of sick. I think it was the lime margarita. I was feeling adventurous, but I generally just drink wine or sake, not mixed drinks. Too bad.

The next day, I tried to see if I could stay at the Ritchies, where Stan and I'd stayed last time in Santa Fe, but, while I could have perhaps, it would have been in Halifax, as that's there home base now. Above and on the right is a pic of the border between Arizona and New Mexico. New Mexico has more mesas, though the colouring is a bit like the Grand Canyon, it's a bit more red.

So I made it to Las Vegas, New Mexico, instead and stayed at a sweet little place called The Lodge, owned by Latinos. It was cheap, simple, and clean. What more could I want. Then I listened to the weather news and heard there was a blizzard blowing up in the front range area of Colorado, just where I'd be going the next day, if I kept to my plan. You can see from the series of photos I took on my 100 mile journey to Raton, New Mexico (right on the southern border with Colorado) that the decision to stay at a Comfort Inn in Raton was a good one.

Turned out there was a high pass in about 15 miles that I would have to cross to get into Colorado that was snowed in. This is a picture I took outside the window about an hour after I got into the motel at Raton. The first flakes had begun to fall just as I pulled my car in. Frost was on the windows the next morning.

10/24/07: Update: Lake Arrowhead fire

Hi out there. Just thought I'd let you know, I spoke with my son Stan yesterday. Here's his report:

As background, Stan lives in Crestline, California, up the mountain from Lake Arrowhead, a center of one of the big fires in San Bernadino/L.A.

On Monday night he had packed up his car in case of an evacuation notice, though the fire was still about two air miles away. On Tuesday, four years to the day, they read the official notice to evacuate via http://www.rimoftheworld.net/ to evacuate. By 11 pm he'd packed up the family, cat and two dogs and headed to his mom's (adoptive) place in La Verne. It was very windy, two semi's were overturned on the road, but there was almost no traffic.

He'd spotted boats, trailers, and classic cars (like a '57 Chevy) parked in Goodwin's (the Crestline supermarket) parking lot. He figures they were from Dart Canyon, which was in the path of the fire. Where his house is situated in in a protected spot where he could see the stars and clear sky overhead, but heavy smoke up-mountain. He'd heard that Twin Peaks, a nearby town, had embers the size of milk cartons flying in. Twin Peaks is pretty much gone.

It was four years to the day since he had to evacuate from the last big fire. His daughter Sarah was just nine days old. He said the situation wasn't as bad as that time, believe it or not, at least in Crestline, which historically hasn't yet burned because of wildfires.

He said it looked like Apolocypse Now at Lake Gregory, which is in the town of Crestline, with helicopters thwop thwopping in lines scooping up water to dump on the fire. The level of the lake was already low, but now is noticeably lower than it was when I was there a few days ago.

He said by Monday as he was trying to call me on Skype he heard a frantic knocking at his door. It was his neighbor across the street who said "I'm 80 years old, too old to leave now, but my daughter's freaking out. Can you come over and help?"

They have about 15 dogs and cats. He saw eight cats in boxes lined up by their car. He told them he didn't think they had to leave just yet, which calmed them down a bit. They have three cars that barely run (one had a broken water pump and the engine was spewing oil) and a trailer parked there that had plastic for a door. I think they do have one car at least that can get them out of there.

This time Stan says he's better prepared and shut off the water and all his electronic stuff, like computers, TV, phone. Last time they were gone for 10 days and the refrigerator was a mess, with melted ice-cream leaking down the back. He'd been given a pair of surgical industrial-fit gloves, a bag and a mask which he donned to clean it up. The electricity was still on as of last night, so he's hoping it won't be as much of a mess.

He emptied the garbage and the food out of the dog run, so mice won't get in.

He says in Crestline, because it's not as upscale, people don't plant plants that don't naturally go there or water them particularly, like they do in San Diego, i.e., mesquite and chapperal that burn nicely, and that the infrastructure is better, compared to San Diego.

He said it is raining ash in La Verne, but otherwise it's fine. He plans to go in to work at Redlands on Thursday. Kristen teaches grade six in the Highland area, where another fire has started. They've closed the schools in San Bernadino, so she has a few days off.

Sarah packed her new Barbie suitcase with five pairs of socks, underpants, three shirts and pants, and a few toys, so she's set.

I'm putting in a few pics I took when I was there of Sarah's birthday and Stan working on his Ural (russian-made cherry red motorcycle with sidecar) that he's left up there along with a new scooter.

I got to Crestline in time to celebrate Stan's wife Kristen's and daughter Sarah's birthdays, which was really great. We went out to Baker's restaurant, a favorite of his mom, Vera's, to eat lunch and then came back to her house for cake.

Me, I'm in North Platte, Nebraska, about to head out to the other side past Lincoln, on my way to visit another Darrow expert. I'll keep you posted.