Let’s Talk About Arkansas

Tags

Arkansas, bridges, Little Rock, southern U.S., stereotypes, Weekly Photo Challenge

At the edge of your seat? That’s what I thought. Here in the U.S., Arkansas does not get a great deal of respect outside its own borders. As one of the states ranking lowest in education, highest in levels of obesity – and perhaps because of the stereotypes based on those two facts – one of the least-visited states in the country, Arkansas strikes some as a sad little backwater full of banjo-strumming, catfish-eating rednecks down south somewhere. Don’t believe it.

I’ve always gravitated to and been a champion of underdog locales, so I’m here to dispel some of the myths about Arkansas, one of the most naturally beautiful states in our country. Yes, it is; it really is! I started traveling to Arkansas a few years ago when my youngest son took a job in Little Rock, a place where he didn’t even want to interview but, once there, he embraced this artsy little city and threw himself into local affairs. Every time I visit, I find more to like, and it begins with the scenic appeal of the undulating, verdant topography.

The Natural State has millions of acres of national forest land, including two mountain ranges, the Ozarks and the Ouachitas. There are miles and miles of streams and rivers, the two biggest being the Arkansas and the Mississippi. Trails and campsites, dozens of lakes, caves, and even hot springs draw visitors and entertain locals alike. Boating, canoeing, fishing, and hiking are accessible almost from border to border with national and state parks galore, including one of the oldest and most visited parks in the country – Hot Springs National Park.

Arkansas’s appeal goes beyond the great outdoors, though. Its capital, Little Rock, is a quirky little city, with quaint throwbacks like a streetcar system and ’50s era drugstores and barbershops side by side with spiffy bespoke tailors and well-groomed suburban shopping malls.

Its distinctive neighborhoods are connected by a few main thoroughfares, and many are worth a drive-through and a stop – perhaps a morning farmer’s market in SoMa (the up-and-coming South Main Street area), then on to a Cajun lunch or taco in tiny Riverdale, a late afternoon latte in boho Hillcrest, dinner in the more stately Heights, then back downtown for a nightcap or some music.

Farther west, the houses are huge and the lawns are manicured, but the hilly roads are a constant, dipping and curving amid the ubiquitous tree-covered greenery, and biking and walking paths are also given all over the city, especially along the Arkansas River.

Little Rock’s compact downtown boasts an array of live music venues, including a picturesque riverfront amphitheater, as well as a few tall corporate headquarters that assert LR is a real city, the usual mix of small local cafes and fancier big restaurants, art galleries, and new tech spaces. Old warehouses have been converted into stylish lofts, chic new condos and apartments are popping up here and there, and everything is a short walk away. For those so inclined, those strolls can take in the Clinton Presidential Center and Park, as well as the impressive Heifer International headquarters building and information center.

Like any river town, Little Rock has a plethora of bridges – old railroad trestles, sparkling new spans, and my favorite (and best-named), the Big Dam Bridge. The latter is an engineering marvel to view and, even better, it’s in an area of woodsy trails and pedestrian bridges just minutes outside of downtown.

There is much more to discover in Arkansas, and I have every intention of doing just that. Tops on my list is the Crystal Bridges Museum, a glass jewel box of American art nestled into the forests of Northwest Arkansas. Nearby is the charming town of Eureka Springs, as well as Fayetteville, home of the state university and a city I’ve always wanted to visit ever since novelist Ellen Gilchrist made it the home of her main character in The Annunciation (and herself in real life). In my mind, Fayetteville is a classic college town of bookshops and art stores, cafes and boutique shops, set amid the same rolling landscape I’ve already raved about, and it sounds like a perfect little base for the museum and hot springs visit, too.

If Arkansas is languishing near the bottom of your travel list, don’t be afraid – it’s not all razorback hogs, hillbillies, and moonshine! Come on down here and check it out – it really is a great blend of small-town charm and natural beauty.

Daydreaming in the Delta

Tags

Argentina, Buenos Aires, delta, family travel, Parana River, river, Tigre, Weekly Photo Challenge

We had covered Argentina from top to bottom, starting way up north at Iguazú Falls and winging it south almost to the tip of the continent to Patagonia. Bracketing those extremes were two stays in Buenos Aires, and this last one, for a few days before we finally flew home, was all about relaxation and absorbing all that we’d seen.

We settled into our bohemian little neighborhood, Palermo Soho, and planned very little for the sultry days and nights we had remaining. We ambled slowly through the narrow streets, licking ice cream cones, drinking wine, and popping into shops and markets at our whim. We photographed the doors and the vibrant street art, napped at the pool, and then ate and drank some more.

For one last outing, we roused ourselves to meet up with a business colleague who wanted to show us the town of Tigre and the Paraná Delta of waterways and islands that surrounds it. The area is a huge tangle of rivers and land covering over 5000 square miles, one of the biggest deltas in the world and one of the few that do not empty into an ocean. Here, the milky, muddy Paraná River splits into innumerable smaller channels and forms an ever-changing pattern of sediment-built, tree-covered islands.

We glide along in our gleaming, polished wood boat, brushed occasionally by willow branches and slipping in and out of sunlight. There are occasional signs that the delta was once both more and less than it is now. Belle époque-style buildings grace the shores closer to Tigre itself, and there are glimpses of larger houses hiding behind some of the modest, multi-colored cottages on stilts that line the shore.

As we chug lazily toward the Rio de la Plata, the river that divides Argentina and Uruguay, the little spits of land become more remote, and we can almost imagine the days when jaguars roamed here, giving their name (tigres) to the area. Tree branches cast their flickering shadows on the water, and the deeper we go off the main streams, the more we feel we’re on a Heart of Darkness kind of journey. All of us are lost in our own thoughts, staring dreamily at the languid water, as we work our way farther into the mysterious estuary and become more and more removed from the frenetic pace of modern life.

As we leave the tour boat channels, we crack one lazy eye open to watch local families spread laundry and other belongings in yards and on docks, and see lithe, sun-kissed children leap like dancers from launch to moorings. Mail boats, water taxis, and grocery dinghies ply these unhurried canals, and rudimentary cafes hide among the foliage; we would never find them without our native friend.

Around a bend in the river, we part the leaves of some overhanging trees and pull up to a weathered dock. We clamber out of the boat, climb the stairs, and are greeted by a man in shorts and little else. Our host knows the ropes and orders quickly for us: a bucketful of icy beers and a couple of margarita pizzas, which arrive with a mound of the freshest, greenest basil I’ve ever seen piled on top.

Sated and groggier than we were when we stopped, we pile back into the launch and begin the hour-long ride back to the marina. As we bob and skim back through the waterways, we awake from our floating dream and reenter the world of bigger boats, river commerce, tourists, and finally, roads and cars. Our lazy day in Tigre and the Delta is our final memory of Argentina and a great way to finish off the otherwise bustling city of Buenos Aires.

Transient, Fickle, or Genetically Mutant?

Tags

genetics, nomadic lifestyle, nomads, transient, wanderlust, Weekly Photo Challenge

This past spring, I left one of the most transient cities I’ve ever lived in; every few years, entire apartments and office buildings turn over, and a fresh crop of hopeful newcomers arrives in Washington, DC. Of course, there are plenty of career folks in town, and people working outside the government, but my take on my year in DC was that everyone was a short-timer, and those transient residents did not want or need new friends. Feeling temporary myself, I made little effort to settle in, and 2016 ended up being one of the loneliest years of my life as I insisted on leaving the city every chance I got.

The funny thing is that I thought I loved impermanence and being on the move. For decades, I dreamed of moving and, even more radically, of becoming nomadic in some form. I am so comfortable traveling and making myself feel at home all over the world that I thought this was the life that suited me best, not the stable, boring, predictable life I had.

Could I have been wrong all along? For that year, at least, I suffered without good friends. I pined for my familiar, tiny grocery store. I became cranky without all my belongings. I realized I had grown roots that were way deeper and stronger than I knew, and when I cavalierly ripped them out of their home soil, I killed something I had undervalued.

So we left DC and resettled more permanently in yet another place, and some of those tethers and connections have begun to repair themselves. I have formed an eclectic group of friends and have grown fond of my house, my neighborhood, and my new city at large. So why am I suddenly, eagerly reading articles about vanlife and people in motor homes with an alarming level of interest? Is that foot that is always poised over the threshold responsible for the weeks-long European road trip I recently put together for the fall?

In the middle of all this thinking about transience and fickleness, berating myself for my grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side attitude, I happened across an article on the so-called “wanderlust gene,” a mutation of the DRD4 gene that helps control dopamine and, thus, learning and reward. If the desire to explore and roam does lie within our genome, it may be the DRD4-7r variant that is the cause of our restlessness, according to dozens of studies that have been published in the last few years, and an astonishing 20% of us might carry it. I like this idea! It’s not a character flaw; it’s in my genetic makeup to seek change and movement!

As I ponder the reasons for always wanting to be where I am not, I leave you with these photos of some of the most transient people on earth – the nomads who live on the Mongolian steppe – and their portable homes. They have moved four times since I left them last summer, and I’ve almost kept up with them, leaving two houses and moving to a third in that time. I plan to stay put for at least another season, but after that anything’s fair game!

Friends on Foot

Tags

friends, hiking, mountain guides, new friends, trekking, Weekly Photo Challenge

I wake up, groaning, in a 35-degree lodge, my stomach in spasms, and my head pounding at an altitude of nearly 14,000 feet, a good week into the Everest Base Camp trek in Nepal. How am I going to do this today, I wonder? Teeth chattering, I dress and stumble out to the small dining room, thinking about how I can tell the guide I can’t possibly go up another 1000 feet or more this morning. And then a guy from Alaska pushes a bowl of warm oatmeal and a mug of coffee at me and gently encourages me to eat. A young woman leaves her mom’s side as we get up from the table and commiserates about my cramps, and our guide slaps me five as we gingerly step into a snowy, misty morning. You’re looking good, Miss Lexie – ready to go? And indeed, there I went, held up by people I didn’t even know when I landed in Kathmandu two weeks before.

Tramping across this Earth has been one of the highlights of my life and, more often than not, I have been introduced to new lands in the company of strangers. Even when I have set off with family members or existing friends, I have collected what I always call “my hiking friends,” people I’ve met on the trail who become fast friends for as long as the trek lasts, and sometimes longer.

On rare occasions, those people become real friends, and some have joined me on future walks. While others do eventually slip away and become simply holiday card recipients or pleasant memories, there is a small circle of us, including a few guides, who will always be connected long after we left the pathways.

My husband and kids tease me about my hiking friends, wondering how I can become so attached to people with whom I have spent a mere week or two. But a week of post-hike beers and dinners gives friendship formation a power boost, and believe me, three days in camps with no showers and one toilet tent creates an intimacy one rarely experiences with friends at home! In a matter of days, we think nothing of sharing our trail food or embarrassing stories, and we take care of each other in ways that belie the brief life of our relationship.

Every step of the budding bond is accelerated when we spend our waking hours chatting on a tough mountain track and our evenings sharing meals, pains, and more life stories. Most of us are in the early-impressions phase of trying to be agreeable and supportive, and friendship blooms quickly and easily with those who are open to it.

In the last decade, I have met my Nepal hiking friends for a ski trip in Utah and reunited with them on the Paine Circuit in Chile, hosted my Tanzanian guide in our home in Chicago, gone back to Peru and linked up with my Inca Trail guides again for some smaller walks on my own, and recently had another Himalayan hiking friend over for dinner here in Houston. They may not be my everyday pals, but my hiking friends and I have a singular connection that I cannot share with anyone else, and my life is richer for them.

A Sunday Drive

Tags

Bryan, countryside, France, Houston, politics, reflecting, road trip, rural, Sunday drive, Texas, Weekly Photo Challenge, Williams Jennings Bryan

It’s a summer weekend several decades ago, and my dad is seeking company for his customary Sunday activity: a drive in the country. As usual, I am the only taker. Sometimes we look at houses, occasionally we explore new areas, but most of the time we just drive out into the country and admire the rustic fences, the barns, the crops, and above it all, the sweeping sky. We chat or we don’t, and we inevitably end up at a Dairy Queen for a twist cone at the end of the day. These yawning days are among my favorite childhood memories.

***

Flash forward, and there is still something about an unscheduled Sunday that cries out for a jaunt in the car. Yesterday I answered the call, and we loaded the vehicle with the dog, some water, and a few snacks, and headed northwest from Houston to enjoy a spectacular spring day on the road.

Our destination is the perfect distance away (less than two hours) and has an additional attraction; a town called Bryan, Texas, named after my distant relative, William Jennings Bryan. Three-time presidential candidate (and perpetual loser), secretary of state, famed orator, and attorney both admired and ridiculed, Bryan is a direct ancestor on my father’s side of the family. Hailing from Illinois originally, but a long-time resident of Nebraska (where my grandfather was born), Bryan somehow left his mark quite deeply in Texas, where he owned a winter home and farm.

The journey itself ends up being the enchantment. The sky is a blue bed of white puffballs, and the early crops are a cheerful lemon-green. Rural fences always rope me in, and today is no exception. We see white pickets, split rails, and dark wood dividers on both sides of the road. We get off the main highway as often as possible and keep swerving off onto the berm to photograph the ranch gates, both simple and elaborate, along the way. We follow the web of farm-to-market (FM) routes, observing the network of roads that physically connect rural America to our large cities.

My husband eats a Texas-sized beef brisket sandwich at a popular BBQ joint at 11 am, halfway through the drive out, and is still sated when we arrive home in the late afternoon. We stop at a famous rest stop/gas station to fuel up at bargain prices and peruse the outlandish array of paraphernalia available there, from fresh fudge to hot dogs, homemade kolaches to every bag snack you’ve ever heard of, stuffed animals to camouflage gear, and the “cleanest restrooms in America.”

The historic town of Bryan is closed down on this Sunday afternoon, which is fitting given William Jennings’ religious bent later in life. We wander through the downtown streets for a few blocks anyway and then load the old pooch back in the car and retrace our route back to the big city.

We’ve accomplished little, but we’ve temporarily cleared our heads in all that fresh air and sprawling land. Unfortunately, mine is now spinning with thoughts, reflecting on presidents and populations, of byways and barriers. This is what most of America looks like geographically, even as the majority of our population moves into urban environments.

In Bryan’s day and our recent past, this dichotomy did not seriously threaten our cohesion as a nation; in fact, those FM roads connected more than just farmers and our city tables. But now our differences, the other kinds of fences we have put up at home and around the world, have helped to create the calamity of our current leadership.

While I was piloting and pondering, France was rejecting a vision of the world where a nation can only house one type of person, where only the market-makers matter, and where outside interference can amplify those differences and scare people into a frightening, reactionary decision. We were not so careful or clear-headed here, but my hope is that the strong French results will somehow nudge the world back onto the kind of road that connects rather than divides.

Warning Signs

Tags

canyons, danger, Gurvan Saikhan, hiking, Mongolia, warning, Weekly Photo Challenge, Yolyn Am

Yolyn Am canyon was a welcome stop in our exploration of Mongolia last summer. We had been on the steppe for over a week, baking under the Eurasian high summer sun, and we were headed to the even hotter Gobi Desert when we boarded a tiny propeller plane for the south and the Gurvan Saikhan Mountains.

From flat, scrubby expanses, we arrived in a deep, cool gorge for an invigorating hike inside towering walls. Yolyn Am (named after the yol, or lammergeyer, a vulture-like bird) is known in part for its ice field that lingers well into the summer, and we saw remnants of this as we criss-crossed a running stream at the base of the canyon.

Although the hike was lengthy and we had to pick our way carefully in some of the narrower stretches, there was only minor danger encountered that day. Nevertheless, we got a huge kick out of all the warning or admonitory signs on our way into the trailhead! Can you determine what to watch out for or refrain from doing here?

Turning Childhood Memories into Wanderlust

Tags

EUROPE, family travel. wanderlust, memories, road trip, travel with kids, Weekly Photo Challenge

Are we nuts? I scowled at my husband, as we boarded the plane and crammed ourselves and three little kids into the economy seats of a plane bound for London. We had put our farther-flung travels on hold for the toddler years, but now it was time to load everybody up and start seeing the world through fresh young eyes.

We soon found we had nothing to fear. From takeoff that summer day, we discovered our kids were born to travel. They entertained themselves or slept the entire flight, they stayed up all the next day until bedtime, and they believed me when I said there was no such thing as jet lag, spending all of day two on their feet, in the tube, in the parks and museums and churches and shops, and they topped it off with a night at the theater. They were 5, 8 and 10 years old; I have to say I was pretty impressed.

We stayed with friends in London and started some great travel memories, the kind of recollections kids have of their trips, not necessarily the kind adults and travel bloggers write about. They remember minding the gap as we rode back and forth into the city, gawking at the torture devices in the Tower of London, snuggling a new Paddington Bear toy, and the sheer magnitude of choices at the food court at Harrods. They remember the crushing crowds at the theater, but not much about the play. They recall it being scorching hot outside Big Ben and Parliament, but nothing about the places themselves.

Paris was next, via the Eurostar train through the chunnel, a ride that is still remembered for the orange juice that was spilled on my daughter’s white sweater rather than for the transportation wonder that it was. Strongest memory of the Eiffel Tower? The awful pizza – who puts weird mushrooms on pizza, they cried! (Who eats in the Eiffel Tower, we should have been asking.) Continental toilets were the subject of many a journal entry; my oldest was intrigued with the different flushing mechanisms, the water flow, the seats – you name it; he cataloged it.

Notre Dame is remembered for its roof and the winding stairs that got them there; back then you could go the whole way up, and we spent well over an hour looking out over the rooftops, but no one has any memory of going inside. Parisian cuisine? They ordered steak frites or jambon et fromage sandwiches at every single restaurant for every single meal (except for that sad Eiffel Tower pizza). We rented a spacious apartment decades before AirBnb, and they remember … the lobby.

The French countryside brought new delights. What kid would not love Mont St Michel and the idea that we could be stranded there when the tide came in? Forget the abbey; that natural moat was the cool part. Dinard was a charming beach town, but here they had the coziest, whitest beds, all three crammed together in a toile-covered room, and that Grand Hotel may still be their favorite hotel in the world. Monet’s garden delighted my daughter, perhaps in part for its flowers and green benches, but mostly because she remembered she had gotten out of a day of preschool to attend the Monet exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago with me years before. And, to them, the D-Day beaches represented the end of a different kind of World War: a huge fight between mom and dad over asking for directions! (To be honest, that hours-long argument and the driving in circles all over Normandy are my strongest memories of that historic place as well.)

Belgium brought panic and a three-way police lookout when we sailed through a toll area without paying the toll (by accident) and the kids were certain we would be arrested, but it also brought one of the most relaxing afternoons we had, meandering though Bruges, eating chocolates and posing on every little stone bridge we crossed.

Our final destination, the Netherlands, where my brother was living with his family, is somewhat properly remembered for our visit to Anne Frank’s house, an evening canal cruise, and the pannenkoeken houses, but what they would say really sticks in their minds is the stone their cousin threw at our youngest’s head in their backyard. Or the porn movie that came on as my brother tried to change the TV channel. Or the girls in the windows in the red light district, which they struggled to comprehend. Or the topless beach near Scheveningen.

Ahem, there is a theme developing there, but it was a different kind of lust that was growing in the kids on that first big trip. Today, those little tykes have a wanderlust that matches their mother’s, and I think all those mundane memories of other countries were the spark. All three kids spent some portion of their college lives overseas, continued to travel with us for many years, have worked overseas in Israel, Ireland, South Africa, Ghana and Malawi, and now take their own road and train and bus trips, wrangling their friends and significant others to step away from home to create more silly, random memories.

Happy in Houston – Part 1

Tags

Buffalo Bayou Park, Houston, surprise, Texas, urban hikes, urban parks, Weekly Photo Challenge

After almost a month in Houston, I am surprised and not surprised at how quickly I have regained my happiness. Houston is one of those cities – and Texas one of those states – that elicit sneers and grunts from those who don’t know them. I endured my share of puzzled reactions when we excitedly announced that we would be leaving Chicago and Washington, DC, for the Bayou City, so my goal is to surprise my readers with some of the great things about my new hometown.

One of my favorite first impressions is the incredible outdoor link between my neighborhood and the city. Buffalo Bayou Park is a green space stretching for about two miles from the Montrose neighborhood to the edge of downtown Houston. There are bike paths, walking trails, a skate park, kayak rentals, disc golf, a dog park, and more, all nestled into a ribbon of land on both sides of Buffalo Bayou. Houstonia magazine called the park, finished less than two years ago, “Houston’s new front porch,” and that it is; from morning to night, people ply the paths, sit on the benches, and otherwise savor the outdoors here, just in front of the skyscrapers that stretch for block after block downtown.

My new morning routine is becoming a short walk or drive to the park, followed by a brisk hike, jog, or bike ride within the green confines. I can spend 30 minutes, an hour, or longer winding my way through the spring wildflowers on the banks of the bayou, watching dogs frolic in the Ritz Carlton of dog enclosures, or passing under the Waugh bat bridge, where thousands of Mexican freetail bats emerge and soar against the city backdrop each evening. I can stay low and close to the water’s edge and disappear into nature, or I can ride higher on the paths, closer to street level, and stop at any of a number of sculptures, fountains, gardens, or memorials.

One of the coolest surprises here is that the park was designed with the knowledge that it would flood. In Houston’s tropical climate, rains can be heavy, and the bayous and streets flood numerous times each year. Engineers took into account the fact that waters would rise up to and occasionally above the top of the bayou banks, so they placed electrical lines above the floodplain and used materials like raw concrete and galvanized steel that could hold up under water.

The lower paths are often sandy after a downpour, but the walkways and bike lanes were designed to be easy to sweep clean. Buffalo Bayou Park is built along a natural body of water that is an integral part of the city’s drainage system, so park planners also planted native grasses, trees, and wildflowers whose roots would absorb water underground.

Beyond the practical results of all this planning, the design and flora create a natural habitat for wildlife and make the park feel like a real refuge from urban life. The biggest and most wonderful surprise of all, though, is the moment when you crest one of the graceful park bridges and see before you a bucolic, riparian scene: a trio of kayaks slipping away from a rough, natural shoreline, framed by flowering trees and bordered by shady pathways – all reflected in the shiny spires of the city skyline. The city and nature coexist here in the most surprising and wonderful way, and this park has fast become one of my favorite parts of my new life here in Houston.

A Graceful Turn to the Future

Tags

change, classic cars, Cuba, future, graceful, Havana, La Habana, Weekly Photo Challenge

I was feeling unsettled about my trip to Cuba even before it was time to step onto the plane a few weeks ago. The inscrutable little island had been near the top of my travel wish list for years. It had originally wormed its way into my consciousness through my reading and the stories of Cuban exiles I knew and admired, particularly my thesis advisor, who is vexed to this day about his native country. Cuba had an aura of impenetrability – both physical and psychological – that made it all the more attractive to me as a travel choice.

Suddenly, though, Cuba seemed to be everyone’s new destination, and I was feeling peevish about that and my own life situation. Getting in before now had required joining a group, and I balked at paying the exorbitant fees and traveling as part of a package tour, so I stifled my desire and waited. As soon as individual entry was allowed, I jumped to make a plan, but after a Christmas break full of sorting and packing, dumpsters and goodbyes, I was utterly exhausted and cranky going into the trip, so that “plan” was quite vague. Basically, we (my sister and I and each of our daughters) had two cities in mind and a few Airbnbs booked. Luckily, this works just fine in Cuba!

My first surprise was finding Havana light on Americans, but perhaps we avoided them with our choice of accommodations and activities. The throngs of tourists I expected (based on fawning articles, recent Instagram photos, and Facebook posts, all brimming with classic cars and peeling paint) did not materialize in our neighborhood or most places we visited. We spent our first three nights ensconced in a seedy building on a bustling local street, our dingy metal door right next to a window with Fidel’s portrait overseeing a small display of outdated ladies underwear. We loved it!

A second (less thrilling) revelation was the need to stand in lines. I remembered, idiotically, that this was actually still a Communist country, and we started the endless queuing before we even left the airport, spending almost an hour waiting to exchange euros for CUCs. We stood outside state-run establishments, and we warily eyed the disorderly hordes outside the Etecsa offices waiting to buy internet cards.

All the waiting, then buying supplies at shockingly under-stocked stores, and then waiting some more – all with no wifi since we stubbornly resisted the crowds – helped us understand the daily ordeals of the Cuban population even as the new, secondary economy grows almost daily. There are so many signs that change is coming or almost here, yet so many reminders that it really is not. As a traveler, I wondered which one I wanted? And then I wondered which one they wanted.

Those three days exploring Havana were my favorites of the trip. Our apartment in Havana Centro was forbidding on the outside, but very clean and comfortable inside. We were able to walk most places, including the Malecón (which we were lucky to see on the first day as it became inaccessible after a fierce storm on day 2),

Photo credit: K. Klein

Havana Vieja and all its charming small streets and plazas,

and central Havana (which included the most unique restaurant visit of my life – chronicled here).

View from our Havana Centro apartment

We dined at a classic state-run place that involved over an hour’s line-up outside, made a failed attempt to tour the Partagás cigar factory, and took numerous taxi rides all over the bigger-than-expected city in everything from utilitarian and supremely uncomfortable Russian Ladas to chugging and wheezing 1951 Plymouths or 1948 Buicks with no door handles, seat cushioning, or in one case, windows.

After a foray into the tobacco-growing countryside (future post), we returned to Havana to experience a different part of town. This was to be our splurge – two nights in an old colonial house in what was billed as Havana’s poshest neighborhood. We were giddy with excitement after our humble digs in central Havana and Viñales. We had booked a place that showed white columns, a manicured lawn, a small pool, and huge rooms in the Playa/Miramar area. We pictured ourselves sashaying into Club Havana in cute sundresses and gleefully ogled the few fancy houses we saw from the bus windows on the way back into town.

Expectations are everything, as I’ve cautioned in previous posts, and those cheap places in Havana Centro and rural Viñales exceeded them: Hairdryers! Semi-modern bathrooms! What a deal! About to pay four times as much money, we fantasized about the luxuries we’d get in this fancy house in its stylin’ neighborhood … we would see the pre-revolution lifestyle of wealthy Habaneros up close and personal.

Good from far but far from good

Then we rolled up to the place. The columns looked good from the street, the grass was green, and there were some palm trees,

but we entered our grand house to find mildewy rooms, cloyingly heavy decorating, open showers that sprayed the whole bathroom, NO POOL (filled in with concrete per government edict), no hairdryers, truly bizarre art (think wild cats in Shakespearean ruffles), abominable crumbling structures next door, few commercial establishments, and cold, gray, windy weather (the only part not their fault).

Lounging by the concrete pool

Our rooftop view

We salvaged the stay, finding another fun state-run outdoor restaurant nearby one night and paying 10 CUCs (US$10) for a day at the beach and pool at Club Havana (which looked nice enough but was eerily empty, with no visitors other than us and a middle-aged Russian lady in a bikini).

After two piña coladas each, we were finally feeling like the socialites and celebrities who’d hummed along to Frank Sinatra here in the 1940s and ‘50s … until our driver rolled up to fetch us in his rattletrap car and we crammed in and bounced our way back to the casa to the beats of 2017 Cuban hip-hop.

Contrary to some opinions and the fears of those who can’t get to Cuba fast enough, there was little to suggest that this place is going to change inexorably in the coming months. It can be both charming and maddening at the same time, and the quirks that make it that way are not going to be ironed out overnight, for good or for bad. Like one of its famous classical ballerinas, Cuba is turning slowly, carefully, even gracefully, toward its new future – no sudden lurches, no wholesale jumps into a new reality.

It’s a fascinating place, and when I stopped asking myself why and when, or good or bad, it delivered. I was being a terrible travel snob, I realized, and all those colorful car and fading façade photos that had seemed like overblown clichés before I went were authentic representations of Cuban life today. As my daughter said one afternoon as we snapped our 17,000^th photo of a classic car against a crumbling building, “This just never gets old, does it?”

Confounded by Cuba

Tags

ambience, beauty, Communist, Cuba, Havana, paladar, Weekly Photo Challenge

Complete coverage of last week’s trip to Cuba requires some additional digestion on my part; the full impact of this enigmatic country is much more confounding than I would have imagined based on others’ posts or my pre-trip reading. One place in particular, though, captured the range of impressions Havana leaves on the uninitiated: the fresh new ideas bursting from ruin, the colors, tastes and sounds that thrive amid decay and neglect, an ambience that is not easily explained or understood.

We’ve been told by numerous friends and other tipsters about an amazing restaurant housed in an older building in central Havana. Unable to book a table for any evening we are in town, we persevere by showing up at the place at lunchtime opening hours. We approach the address on shabby streets and pull up short at a door that exposes a scene of extreme disarray. Scaffolding, piles of bricks and boards, sunlight streaming into cavernous rooms open to the sky, and a staircase that looks as if it might or might not bear our weight. We’re going to eat food here? my sister asks, incredulously.

The building, a former mansion subdivided into what is now a partially abandoned tenement, unfolds from an entry flanked by two thick wooden doors crackling with dried paint.

Greeted by a headless goddess and a view of a forsaken hallway, we take our first steps upward, turning to view our progress from time to time.

At the second level, we stop, mouths agape at a surreal scene of row upon row of flapping white fabric in a vast room of open windows. We feel as if we’ve stumbled on an art installation of some sort, perhaps an entry in the Whitney Biennial, not the simple airing of tablecloth and napkin laundry from the restaurant above, as we discover on closer inspection and a stroll through the fluttering cloth.

We continue our ascent slowly, savoring each surprise as it reveals itself. Ornate curlicues on the banisters (part with handrails, part without), an opening to an atrium, a bulky thing (sculpture?) on a landing, columns and arches, graffiti and water tanks.

On the third floor, we finally reach the restaurant, as surprising in its elegance and finished state as a pearl in an oyster. We are in luck; we can have a table if we finish in less than two hours. We are fast-eating Americans; this is not a problem!

The meal is excellent, the surroundings beautiful and relaxing. But this story is not about the establishment; it is about the unveiling of it. Like Cuba itself at this moment in history, the restaurant rises from long neglect to newfound stardom, from Communist-era living space to privately-owned paladar. The old-new friction can seem raw, and I found myself wanting to keep parts of Cuba covered up, protected from what is coming, preserved in its imperfect, faded, messy splendor.

But that’s not my call, any more than it is to want the opposite – for parts of this inefficient, maddening place to get it together at times throughout my week there. After a week, Cuba is more of a mystery to me than it was before I went, and this building and restaurant epitomize the unpredictable dual nature of the travel world’s new darling. More to come as I try to make sense of my feelings about this bewildering place.

It has long been my practice to avoid naming specific places of business in my blog posts. If you are headed to Havana and simply have to see this marvelous place, please send me a message at my blog email address (in the About section) and I will happily respond!

Out with the Old, In with the New!

Tags

change, moving, new horizon, travel, Weekly Photo Challenge

Is it the nature of things (or simply me and my itchy feet?) that just as I have (semi-happily) settled into my newest environment that I should suddenly find ahead of me a tantalizing new horizon? Its confirmation awaits the final details … stay tuned until after the holidays on this one!

Meanwhile, 2016 – an annus horribilis for me in many ways – is nearing an end. The year started in a fine way, with a trip to Bogota and Cartagena, Colombia, followed soon after by a much-needed solo trip to Nicaragua. Things were looking good – back-to-back Latino-flavored trips in my favorite kind of weather – warm!

Unfortunately, the latter getaway was bookended by (much) less relaxing journeys to take care of my ailing mother. February/March followed up with a relocation from long-time home Chicago to less-than-eagerly-anticipated Washington, DC., and the beginning of multiple back-and-forth drives between those two cities, usually with elderly dog in tow, for the next few months.

I did get a few kicks out of hoodwinking many of you for April Fool’s Day, and I also escaped to Aspen, Colorado, for a glorious string of days in the mountains, even as I struggled with sleeplessness (so not me!) in a bad bed, myriad frustrations in a tiny apartment with non-functional appliances, and a decline in health and fitness in my new urban lifestyle.

Summer brought another series of trips to and from the new DC residence, the old house in Illinois, and the parents’ house in Pennsylvania, but again, the stress of this peripatetic lifestyle, and worries about aging parents and dog, were salved by one of the most amazing trips of my lifetime – to Mongolia – chronicled in an embarrassment of posts in August. Two little side trips to Seoul rounded out that month quite nicely!

I bitched about DC more than I should have (in spite of landing a great new job at American University), lived vicariously through my daughter and her stint in Ghana this fall, and then finally came to terms with Washington by late autumn, just in time to contemplate leaving for greener pastures!

I plan to enjoy my family and our soon-to-be-listed home in Chicago over the holidays and just afterward, I will pop into Cuba for a week before facing head-on the next wave of changes about to wash over me. It’s all good – this time I’m up for the ride! Can’t wait to tell you more about it!

 

 

The Magic Outside my Door

Tags

Dumbarton Oaks, gardens, magic, tiny, Washington DC, Weekly Photo Challenge

It’s no secret that I’ve been a reluctant transplant to Washington, DC, for the last nine months, and that was well before all the upheaval of the last few weeks. In my brain, I know it’s a beautiful city, but there was something in my heart that wouldn’t let me fully embrace this place.

Washington is filled with limestone facades and mansard roofs I would rave about if they were in Paris. Streets with colorful row houses lined up under flowering trees fill my vibrant urban neighborhood, yet I desultorily snap photos of them and never look at them again. Impressive statues spring from a plethora of green parks, rowers ply the sparkling Potomac in slim shells, and gothic spires pierce the sky from Georgetown to Cathedral Heights. And still I said Meh …

But a month or so ago, a switch was flipped. We started to make a point to get out at least once a week with tourist eyes. I resisted – some places more than others. Great Falls promised and delivered some powerful nature, Rock Creek Park and Roosevelt Island got us deep into the woods in the midst of a major city, and Union Market produced one of the best grilled cheese sandwiches I’d had in a long time!

Languishing on the list, however, was Dumbarton Oaks, a house and garden in Georgetown that my husband had frequented years ago as a student. I pictured a few teak benches and some pedestrian flower beds, a boring colonial house and small parklet of limited interest.

Proving my bias toward international inspiration, I got a comment from a blog reader way over in Sri Lanka (that’s you, Peta!) who gave me the final shove I needed to go see this place. On an abnormally warm, sunny day, we finally ventured through the gates to what turned out to be an enchanted garden of wonder and delight.

Each “room” was a microcosm of magic: Nearly tropical pockets of ponds, flowers and giant leaves.

Autumnal tableaux of pumpkins and pergolas draped with withering vines.

A mossy wall with a tiny Pan and his flute, pointing the way to an oval pool, a long allée, and its vanishing point among a stand of still-green trees.

A pebble garden, geometric latticework, and grassy steps in a worn amphitheater.

Time stopped as we slowly wandered the grounds here and for a little while, I fell in love with my adopted city.

Comfortable with (a little) Chaos

Tags

adrenaline, chaos, solo travel, Weekly Photo Challenge

Chaos sometimes happens when I travel and in retrospect, it has created many of my most powerful trip memories. Life at home is rarely chaotic; it follows a fairly predictable rhythm and most days I’m a slightly boring creature of habit. Drop me into a foreign locale, though, and I’m usually (strangely) OK with all hell breaking loose after a few days of acclimation.

Kathmandu has to be the all-time winner for daily bedlam. On first arrival, the sensory assault here was overwhelming in an almost frightening way. As I left the airport late at night, alone, I wondered if my days of solo female travel needed to finally come to an end. A good sleep later, I was feeling intrigued by the cows in the street; a few days into it, I was charmed by the jumble of vendors jammed into alleys; and two weeks later, I was truly, madly in love with this colorfully outrageous and unruly city, even when an electrical box exploded a few feet away, sending me and dozens of Nepalis running for cover.

Athens – in full summer, blazing in 100-degree heat, and polluted by thousands of belching vehicles jam-packed into an overpopulated metropolis – ranks a close second. The chaos here was mostly car-based: the sharp and constant cacophony of horns, the shouting of drivers at one another, the parking on the sidewalks, and once, the abrupt and spontaneous gathering of four men to pick up and move, in a fit of pique, one of said cars parked on the sidewalk.

A skinny street in Istanbul, approaching Taksim Square, seemed placid enough – until we rounded a corner and came face to face with the beginnings of a protest. Waving signs and chanting mobs thickened in minutes, and the sudden crackle of firecrackers set my heart pounding, my head panicking, and my feet beating a retreat.

Egg-throwing mobs similarly interrupted a pleasant morning stroll in Buenos Aires, and hurtling rickshaws threatened to cut us down as we tried in vain to cross a main street in Lhasa. Sweaty clumps of young men pressed (a little more than necessarily) close to my college girlfriends and me on a morning ride to class on Madrid’s metro years ago, trapping us and blocking our ability to get off at our station. Perhaps most frightening of all, a dense crowd at Sydney’s Y2K New Year’s celebration caused us to lose our 12-year-old for almost an hour as we were sucked into its vortex at the end of the fireworks show.

We could play it safe. We could skip the crowds and the bigger cities. We could leave the kids at home. I could travel with others to some of the exotic but underdeveloped places I like to experience. Some of the chaos has been simply unpleasant, some horribly frustrating. A few situations have been potentially dangerous, and one or two downright scary. But when push comes to shove (literally!), the deepest imprints of my trips have often been the unexpectedly crazy moments that started the adrenaline pumping and the opening of the veins that take in the lifeblood of a place.

Happy Camper

Tags

camp, confidence, girlpower, girls, hiking, North Carolina, transformation, transmogrify, Weekly Photo Challenge

An unexpected glimpse of my childhood arrived in my inbox this past week. The camp I attended as a young girl had revamped their website and sent me a link, so I poked around it for a few minutes until I came to a video. I blithely clicked PLAY and for the next 30 minutes I was transported several decades back in time to a place that started my love affair with the great outdoors and in many ways transformed the arc of my life.

The camp was founded over 70 years ago and most of the cabins and other facilities had seen little updating by my day, or since. (This is a good thing.) Green Cove is a traditional girls’ camp (the brother camp is nearby), a place where old-fashioned activities continue to be practiced in much the same ways they always have, perhaps with slightly better equipment. There are no team sports here, no competitions, no electronics, and no fancy anythings. The cabins and dining hall smell delightfully of mildew, and the furnishings are of the woodsy, rustic variety.

Here we learned (and the girls still learn) to rock climb, build a fire, sail and kayak and canoe, and ride mountain bikes and horses. We handled carabiners, tent pegs, awls, pitons, booms, paddles, and reins. We got filthy almost every day, and we didn’t care if our wet hair stuck to our faces, our t-shirts got permanently stained, and our shoes and bathing suits never dried out over the course of a month or more. We ate hungrily at every family-style meal, and we burned off all of it and more every day in the lake and on the trails.

We launched arrows and fired rifles, cast fishing lines and hoisted backpacks, carved wood, wove textiles, and enameled copper. We were trusted around sharp tools and hot fires, wobbly river rocks and skittish horses. We were given the confidence to lead the way on a steep ledge, the skill to clean a mare’s hoof, the faith to lean back into a rappel, the nerves to flip a kayak.

In our free time, we swept high out over the lake on a giant swing and dropped into the cold, muddy water, played capture the flag until we were winded, lay back in the grass to count wooly white animals in the sky, wrote long letters home from our bunks, and napped, deeply. At night, we gathered around campfires, sang songs, played ping pong, opened mail from home, talked for hours in our cabins, and slept more soundly on a lumpy cot than we ever would again in a five-star bed.

Camp life was idyllic, but for me, the highlights of my months in the mountains were the wilderness trips. Starting at young ages, girls could start spending from 1 to 6 or more days out in nature, learning to live as one with the earth. I loved that Green Cove’s raison d’être was to encourage girls to seek outdoor adventures and to develop the skills needed to continually pursue challenges in the woods and mountains and, ultimately, life. I went into camp a very shy girl, a girl who played it safe. I emerged with the ammunition to get through my teenage and young adult years with some semblance of confidence, and I started down a path of world discovery, ideally on foot out in nature, that I still eagerly pursue today.

I’m sure a few of my fellow campers no longer want to trek for weeks on end, go without showers for days at a time, or sleep on a flimsy mat under a sleeping bag on a buggy night. For me, it’s still heaven, and I still chase those interludes when iPhones and email, work deadlines and house projects fade into gray, and nothing lies before me each morning but a chance to put one foot in front of the other under a green canopy or on a rocky path. Camp changed my whole relationship with the world outside my door; I fell in love with it, and I never fell out.

Submitted as part of the Weekly Photo Challenge: Transmogrify

Photo Note: Not a single one of these photos is from camp! Those days were captured on a tiny, crummy old film camera, and I don’t even know where the prints might be.

Losing my Local

Tags

Chicago, home, local, Washington DC, Weekly Photo Challenge

I’m struggling to define “local” these days. Life has been so unstable for the last nine months that we seem to have no local anything anymore. We are missing a whole lot of local, in fact: a local bar, a local grocery store, a local group of friends, even a local collection of all of our possessions. I like feeling like a local; I like to belong, I like habit, and I like to have regular places that I frequent.

Given my love for travel and always being on the move, this state of affairs should not have thrown me as it has. But having one foot out the door implies that the other one is planted somewhere, and it’s that solid base I’m missing. For 25 years, local has meant my home in a small village near Chicago, a place filled with independent stores where the shopkeepers knew my name and stocked things I asked for, an errand always turned into a chat, and everything I owned was in one place.

We are now bouncing from DC city apartment to Pennsylvania mountain getaway, minus the hiking shoes I left in the Midwest on the last trip “home.” I feel scattered, but (I swear) I’m trying hard to make my new location my idea of local.

My Local Metro

On the Edge in Seoul

Tags

edge, old and new, Seoul, South Korea, Weekly Photo Challenge

Bracketing my glorious time in Mongolia last month were two short stays in Seoul, Korea. Knowing that flights into and out of Ulaanbaatar could be iffy due to windy conditions, I was happy to arrange a day south of the Han River on the way there and two days on the north side coming home. After my husband’s trip to Korea in the 90s that was full of unfortunate stereotypes (mostly dog and smog), I knew I would not be accompanied there anytime soon, so I had to make this happen on my own. Luckily, I fared much better!

A common theme of the two stopovers was an old/new mash-up – historic structures and streets pushed up against the edges of the very modern parts of the city. Both sides benefitted from the contrast: temple bricks and wood with the patina of time added texture and depth to the glint of skyscrapers in the Gangnam area,

while the blocky, mirrored facades of distant towers made a contemporary backdrop for the monochromatic old hanok houses and their curly-edged rooflines in the more northern, traditional part of the city.

In Gangnam, my hotel was sleek and cool, but at the push of a button, the curtain panel drew back to expose a giant Buddha standing amid lanterns and upturned eaves in the Bongeunsa temple complex.

In Insadong a few weeks later, the tables were turned; my lodging was small and backward, but my view was into the future. There, a morning stroll along the edge of ancient Changdeokgung Palace led me uphill to Bukchon Hanok Village, a 600-year-old urban area from Joseon Dynasty days, which looked out over an array of new high-rises shimmering in the summer haze.

Seoul is a huge city, but its most captivating sights always seemed to be at the edges of my vision: a quiet man on the edge of the urban Cheonggyecheon stream,

artwork on the edges of buildings in Insadong,

the boundaries between fanciful old design and the angular solidity of new architecture,

a glassy line-up on the river’s edge, or a tiny restaurant wedged into a zigzag alley.

Seoul teeters on the edge between ancient temple cuisine and trendy coffeehouses; dank, lukewarm showers and fancy, self-heating toilet seats; gritty fish shops and Samsung’s funky HQ; old men in drab clothing and young girls in full-blown Hello Kitty. I barely dented the surface of Seoul, but in three short days I walked these borders of past and present, ageless and innovative, to find a city looking both forward and back in a most agreeable way.

(Huge shout-out to Shelley, a Seoul resident and blogger at Travel-Stained, who really gave me the biggest edge of all with her priceless advice on where to go and what to see in my short time there.)

Framing a House (Mongolian-Style)

Tags

ger camps, gers, Mongolia, nomadic life, nomads, steppe, tents, Weekly Photo Challenge

When we build a house in most of the world, we start with a permanent foundation and frame the structure from there on up, and we hope and expect that our home will exist in that spot for years to come. In much of rural Mongolia, there is some beautiful house framing going on, but the resulting structure – a ger (often known as a yurt in other languages) – is a fully collapsible and movable one that has been used for thousands of years.

I’ve spent a good amount of time in tents the world over, and I expected a fairly similar abode when I went to Mongolia last month. I was in for a striking surprise in several respects. For one, gers are quite large and sturdy. Gers are sized in terms of the number of expandable panels, and a typical ger for a family might be a 6-panel affair. Each panel is an accordion-like grid of lightweight wood strips that folds up into a bundle that can be loaded onto a camel (or these days, sometimes a pick-up truck) for transport to the next season’s pastureland.

Between each lattice-work panel is a post, and the panels and posts are lashed together with leather or rope ties. Between the front two panels is a wood doorframe and heavy wood door.

In a ger of this size, there are usually at least three couches or beds that serve in those capacities, respectively, during daytime and night. One side of the ger is used for food preparation, and other sections have traditionally been designated for men, women, children, and guests. In the center of the ger is a wood-burning stove whose chimney rises through a hole in the tent’s ceiling.

My second surprise was how complex and stunning those ceiling designs were, in both the gers for tourists and those of the nomadic families.  An open circle, or crown, at the top of the tent has a series of radiating poles – a gorgeous geometric array of orange or red painted rafters – that settle onto the side panels. This roof is often self-supporting, but in larger gers, it may sit on the support posts between the side panels. The crown is partially open for the stovepipe and for air circulation, but it can be covered with a canvas tarp that usually lies over the roof for extra protection.

The entire structure is covered with felt, usually made from sheep or goat wool from the family’s animals. This material insulates the ger in both hot and cold weather and is often wrapped again in a canvas covering that is more water- and sunproof. The entire tent is held together by long ropes tied horizontally around the dwelling.

(As a fun aside, we visited the Mongolian version of Costco one day to gather supplies outside Ulaanbaatar, and what should we find in the back of the store but a generic ger! Like most things in a big box store, this one was plain and characterless.)

Gers are round in order to redirect the fierce winds on the open steppe. Their circular shape helps them resist gusts from any direction, which is critical in a place with no natural windbreaks like trees or tall grasses and shrubs, and their rounded tops protect the roof from being ripped off.

A nomadic family can disassemble and reassemble a ger in an hour or two, and most family-sized gers can be transported on two or three camels. We were lucky to see one camel loaded up with long poles as the summer grazing season was coming to an end during our trip.

We were even luckier to spend half of our nights in Mongolia in these aesthetically pleasing and comfortable tents. I loved tucking my modern belongings into the lattice-work walls that have characterized these gers for centuries. I slept like a baby with my crown view of the stars and my door open to the sweeping grasslands (in spite of a hungry visitor one night – a vole? – who ate my snacks right out of my backpack, and a toad that hopped in one night after it was too dark to find him to scoot him out). We visited a number of families on the steppe and in the Gobi Desert, sitting around their stoves and enjoying their unmatched hospitality in their cheerful gers.

I think a good quarter of my photos are of gers – gers at sunrise, gers in the distance, gers on a glowing evening, and gers with their charming owners – and I’m sure one of those remembrances will end up in a frame of its own on my wall one of these days!

Part of a series of posts on my trip to Mongolia in August 2016. Other posts can be found here:

Danshig Naadam: https://lexklein.wordpress.com/2016/09/06/danshig-naadam/

A Steppe Out of Time: https://lexklein.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/a-steppe-out-of-time/

Ulaanbaatar’s Contrasts and Surprises: https://lexklein.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/ulaanbaatars-contrasts-and-surprises/

Nothing Narrow Here: https://lexklein.wordpress.com/2016/08/01/nothing-narrow-here/

A Steppe Out of Time

Tags

blue sky, camping, gers, Mongolia, nomads, rare, simple life, steppe, Weekly Photo Challenge

I’ve always had a fascination with the word “steppe,” a term I’d read in various books to describe the land over which impossibly exotic characters ranged – legions of Russian soldiers, swarms of Genghis Khan’s archers on horseback, camel trains of nomads traversing a vast, empty plain. I pictured the steppe as a massive shelf, an unbounded plateau taking a giant stride down from Russia and Siberia into Central Eurasia. I might even go so far as to say that I went to Mongolia solely to see the steppe, with its grasslands and treeless plains that spread out for miles and miles under massive blue skies. I saw the foray into this land as a rare opportunity to step off the grid and into the pages of history right up to this day.

In my last post, I noted my surprise at the newness and modernity of Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar. While I took pleasure in getting to know that city, my real joy in Mongolia was heading out to the steppe land west of UB. With one of the lowest population densities on earth, Mongolia is literally wide open, and I wanted to get out there and breathe in the vastness and, maybe, see a little of the life that takes place there, a life that feels far removed from that in the city.

The Mongolian grassland plateau is part of the biggest steppe region in the world, one that stretches from Eastern Europe (Ukraine) through Central Asia – a number of the ‘Stans (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), Russia, and others. While there are now paved roads connecting most of the country’s provinces, the majority of roads on the steppe are bouncy dirt paths, often with no discernible lanes or traffic patterns.

The verdant plains of summer spread out like ruched fabric, rising and dipping, folding and wrinkling like thick, crumpled velvet. Often, the greenish-yellow moors are framed by brown and purple mountains, unfolding in layers for miles on end. The vistas are like watercolor paintings, gradations of color and light stacked from foreground to background until they melt into the heavens.

Little white gers off in the distance dot the landscape, and herds of animals roam freely, the sheep with the goats, the horses alongside the camels.

Unlike the leap into the 21^st century that UB has taken in recent years, much of life on the steppe takes place just as it has for centuries, with people living in harmony with the land. Nomadic families move with the seasons, packing up their gers and their animals at least four times a year to find new pasturelands. In summer, access to water is critical, while winter brings a need for grasslands with minimal snow cover. In spring, the herders look for early flora to nourish the animals before birthing time arrives, and in fall, they seek out later-growth foliage to fatten up before winter comes around again.

Both the livelihood and sustenance of these nomads depend on their animals – primarily horses, camels, cattle, sheep, and goats. The Mongolian diet is heavily based on meat and dairy products, and days revolve around animal care and putting up food for future seasons. On a visit to a wonderfully engaging nomadic family, we helped milk the mares and the cows, then cut huge blocks of soft cheese into smaller pieces that were dried on the roof for winter consumption.

We drank airag, a fermented mare’s milk, nibbled on mutton dumplings, and savored a creamy rice pudding made with the cow’s milk we had helped procure minutes earlier. Animal fur, hair, and skins can be sold for use in the city as rugs, the famous Mongolian cashmere, and other products as a way to earn money to buy agricultural staples the nomads cannot grow (rice and flour among them), animals to breed (the most expensive, a camel, costs about $750), or supplies, like the gers themselves ($1000 or so).

Traditional herding life is likely to change and fade out in coming years as pressures to join the global economy increase and as younger generations develop ambitions beyond a life in the country. The families who still make their home on the steppe may live simply and freely, but they take small bites of the world beyond. They use solar panels for energy in their gers, their children go to school (which is compulsory), and, of course, they own cellphones, which are almost as attached to their ears as they are anywhere else! The darling girls I bonded with one evening knew their way around an iPhone – insisting we take selfies together and then taking (many, many) videos of me riding their horses.

I didn’t get enough time on the steppe. I understand the difficulty of taking people out into such unpopulated, unsupported areas and I get that most people can only take the ger camps for so many nights before craving a real shower and some wifi! But I could have stayed much longer, waking at dawn to see horses wandering through camp, bouncing down the dirt roads into the green suede hills, stopping to photograph a shimmering, lemon-lime wheat field or a posse of Bactrian camels, meeting the industrious and endearing local people, and reclining outside my tent at midnight to see the entire Milky Way clouding up a night sky unpolluted by other light sources.

The steppe was a rare treat, a dream come true, a step out of time and place, a pause button in the universe that I needed to see and experience for myself. If history holds, I will crave a return someday soon, and I will add Mongolia to the list of places I’ve felt compelled to revisit.

 

 

Invincible Summer

Tags

optimistic, summer, Weekly Photo Challenge

When I was a teenager, I was so cranky in the wintertime that my mother gave me a little framed quotation by Albert Camus. (On a normal day, she was more likely to give me an earful for my griping and whining, but I think she secretly sympathized.)

In the years since, I have gazed upon that little frame so many times, willing a little shoot of green joy to poke up through the dirt of midwinter. Of course, Camus was talking about much more than two seasons, and it is that daily rush of renewed hope and optimism – that invincible summer within – that I hang onto for dear life.

I was born in February, the darkest, meanest month of all – a month of short days, low sun, and a paucity of plant life. By then, we have descended at least three months into winter, and there are many more weeks to go before we can climb up and out, until life and warmth return to my part of the earth. Glistening snow has turned to filthy mush, and the cozy glow and attraction of hot tea and cozy throws and fires is on its last flicker.

In a literal way, I escape winter by physically seeking summer – flying south as far as necessary to chase down some heat and sun. In recent years, I’ve made it to Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia and, just last week, Nicaragua, in the dead of our winter and have thawed my bones enough to get me into spring.

But I don’t think that’s what Camus had in mind, and the kind of summer I keep inside me is a different and truer source of warmth. Although you will frequently find me bitching about the weather, the summer sun burns inside me in other ways. We live in a mess of a world, but I stubbornly see more lightness than darkness, more good than bad, especially in my travels.

In the midst of dire poverty, I have seen incredible generosity – the poor helping the poor and even offering the rich the little they have. After the worst days of clouds and rain, I have witnessed the best sunsets. And trite but true, the happiest people I have met have the fewest material goods.

Even at home, my invincible summer dawns every day. It starts with coffee, and builds through little things like a bit of fresh air, a job well done, a smile from a stranger, a new book suggestion, the dawn of comprehension in a student. On the darkest days, in the depths of winter, that tiny flame somehow stays lit, and I am grateful for it.

Prompted by the Weekly Photo Challenge: Optimistic

Ten Feet Out the Door

Tags

family, family travel, gathering, Weekly Photo Challenge

Every few years, our family of five eschews traditional gift-giving at Christmas time. Instead, we gather in some far-off location where we can just be with each other without the distractions of errands, other friends, or holiday madness.

Epidaurus, Greece

Long before we started this tradition, we carted our kids around the world as they were growing up. When I look back now, I can’t imagine how we herded three children under ten (with suitcases) through the radiating streets around the Arc de Triomphe to catch the rush-hour metro. I am in awe of the mere idea of trekking and camping with five teenagers (our three and two friends) on the Inca Trail. I cringe to remember my 6-year-old pushing and shoving with a friend on the edge of a chasm in the Dart River area of New Zealand. And I have photos to document the times we pulled over to capture some striking scenery and ended up with one boy or another watering the local flora on the side of the road. (T alone has sprinkled five continents, I would guess.) Ten feet out the door was not an excursion for the meek; it was a major production and involved the assembling of a lot more than just people. Back then we had to gather passports, inoculation records, tiny backpacks, snacks  – and more often than not, our wits – as we set off for new places.

Serengeti, Tanzania

As the years passed, the kids got busy with activities and college and their own lives, and my husband could never get away as much as I could to travel. I started to travel alone – either completely solo the whole time or just on my own until I met up with a trekking group somewhere. Even as some of my neighbors clucked disapprovingly, I grew to really relish my time alone, and I tried to book at least one and sometimes two trips a year during my work breaks to explore somewhere my husband didn’t care to go.

Iguazu Falls, Argentina

But as much as I enjoy the adventure and peace of wandering the world on my own or in small numbers, the gathering of my brood to travel somewhere new is the greatest gift I can imagine. This year, our gathering spot will be Colombia, and I can’t wait to have our ten feet all together once again!

See some other great takes on the Weekly Photo Challenge here!