The Other Side of the Ocean

We’re in Inverness now. Sore, each in different parts of the body, but deeply content. Hiking clear across Scotland – initially, it seemed too big of a challenge. And yet, the things I worried about proved manageable. The thing I did not worry about proved to be the greatest problem, ultimately posing the highest risk. It’s like that in life – you worry needlessly over so much and you hardly give a passing thought to thing that do you in. More on that in a bit.

I left Ocean with a report on waking up on Saturday to the view of Loch Ness at the time of sunrise. Let me pick it up from there.

Refreshed. Onwards! We continue high above the shores of Loch Ness. Truly, I can not get enough of her!





But the trail begins to dive inwards now. We are leaving behind not only Loch Ness, but the forests at her banks. Still, this is enchanting countryside. Bucolic, serene, with the highland cattle and ever present sheep to remind you where you are.
















After four hours of moderate hills and quiet landscapes, we are in Drumnadrochit. I have adjusted to the different rhythm of our days. Morning coffee cannot come in the morning. It has to come when the next village crosses our way. On this day, it comes in the late afternoon.

And I have a chance to post (see post below)! I hurry – it’s a long process to unload photos, pick better ones, adjust them as needed, put them up in flickr, transfer them to blogger, write the text – really, the more interesting the day, the more time it takes to put it on Ocean. The Loch Ness Center has functional WiFi, and for the price of a cup of tea, we sit down and I do my work. The Internet is grindingly slow. Finally at 6:30, I say the magic words – I’m done!

For his incredible patience, I reward Ed with a promise to camp again. And it’s the right thing to do. The last stretch is the longest of the Great Glen Way. Putting in some uphill miles now is a good idea, especially since the sun, normally so welcome, and giving vivid contours to the stunning landscape, gets to be significantly hot at midday. Ed goes through water at a speed I’ve never seen in anyone (he refills in streams and purifies with iodine). Now, in the evening, the hike is less of a toil.





We hike for several hours – through forests that are first dense and dark, then thinning, until the terrain looks like the stubs on a man’s unshaven face. With a few hairs left behind.





We pitch a tent just as the sun sets (close to 10). There isn’t a view this night. Nor do we have the comfort of a brook nearby. But it’s late and we haven’t eaten much and the map shows a tedious landscape ahead. And so we sleep here, along the road used once to haul back these trees that smell like pine heaven.


In the morning (today), we’re up early. It’s still a long hike to Inverness. At first, the views are tremendous. We’re away from Loch Ness now, and the moors and hills stretch into the distance – with patches of brown (the still dormant heather), yellow (the gorse) and green, all against a blue sky (note the windmills!).





But walking is a slow thing. There is a lot of hot path from one hill to the next. In this last stretch, the hike seems both interminable and magnificent.






And then, it all ends. We enter a forest and a few miles later, we are at the outskirts of Inverness.

We have walked from coast to coast.

So, where does the title for this post come from? And doesn’t it seem that all was simple and trouble free once the weather improved?

I’ll roll you back to my last post, where I wrote about moments of bliss. On this walk, we were reminded that even in moments of bliss, there is always that tiny element of struggle: nothing is without thorn or (more aptly, because it's Scotland) thistle. My toe, for example, got a significant and irritating blister (hence the “toe” in the tic tac toe).

But by far, the biggest issue came for us when, halfway through the hike, I found the first "tic". We had been warned of midges and we had come prepared for their onslaught. The midges stayed away, but the unheralded ticks did not.

Toward the end, we spent a good amount of time hunting our skin surfaces for tikcs. And we found not an insignificant number of them. Unprepared, we had to remove them as best we could. Lyme disease isn’t as widespread as it is in the States, but it’s here and on the rise. So, now we know. A warning to those setting out in the Highlands -- do as you would in Wisconsin (or elsewhere in the States): avoid brushing against their habitat, wear long duds, bring tweezers, know what to look for. Where there’s a sheep, there’s a tick.





Oh, why the “tac” in the title? Well, I’ve not mentioned that the village of Drumnadrochit has taken on the Loch Ness monster theme to a commercial level that is sort of, well, just a tiny bit tacky.





This is the village that has lured tour groups with an entire Loch Ness Monster Center. I’m not sure what’s on display there. But I am grateful for it – it’s where we found access to WiFi.


IMPORTANT NOTE: for the next eight days (until June 9th), my Internet access is going to be very uncertain. Over my years of blogging, I can think of only a handful of times where I could not post because of a connection problem. This may well be another such time. I will try – I’ll be hiking and kayaking with my computer in my pack (scary thought that it is). But we’re not sure if we’ll find places to stay (we have our sleeping bags) let alone places to hook up. So, stay patient please!

It’s almost 10 p.m. and still fairly light. If I lift the flap of the tent, I come face to face with heather. Not in bloom, not this early, but still, I can imagine the purple hue. Springtime, I make do with bluebells and buttercups and a host of other flowers.










The smell is of fir. Like sleeping underneath the Christmas tree. It’s morning now. Saturday. The sun is breaking up a few early misty clouds. Stepping out of the tent, I look toward Loch Ness – the southern tip, where we began our hike on Friday. So different now, in the morning light!





I start the rituals of a stream bath. It’s not really a big stream – we’d passed more gushing ones earlier, but it doesn’t really matter. Gone are the days where you could bathe in a mountain brook. Now, it’s all about porting water and sudsing away from the banks. So it takes time. Instead of a mirror, I stare at the face of the primrose, clinging to the stone by the trickling stream.





The water is cold, but that’s the only thing that’s cold. We have hit (finally!) a warm spell in Great Britain and suddenly, with that blast of sunshine, life is easy, life is good.




Our morning yesterday (Friday) was quite different (and equally pleasurable): our sweet, sweet b&b hosts (a mother daughter team) let us sleep in and dry out from the previous day’s rains before feeding us a wholesome breakfast of eggs from the back field, where the dozen chickens roam (see that one? -- I’m asked, she’s a regular hen pecker – never leaves him alone!)





… cooked tomatoes, mushrooms, Scottish pancakes, toast. We pass on the sausages and hams because I track the eating habits of my traveling companion. It’s funny how easily that happens: one day I cannot have enough of prosciutto for lunch, the next, my plate is empty of meats.

Filled with the b&b’s wholesome foods, we hike down to the village of St Augustus (at the southern tip of Loch Ness) to stock of on essentials and to watch the boats work their way up the docks.





And still, we aren’t in a hurry to set out. The day could not be more different than the rain drenched previous one. Brilliant sunshine! And my legs are moving again, without pain! But when a sense of leisure enters the soul it’s hard to throw a heavy pack on the back and get going.

So we play with the b&b dog for the rest of the Friday morning.


But eventually, just after noon, we get going. Up, through the forest, to a ridge from which we begin to appreciate (now that it's not lost in a misty rain) the stunning beauty of the area...





and especially -- of the extraordinary Loch Ness.





They say that if you combined all the lakes of England and Wales, you still would not have the water that Loch Ness has. She is deep, she is narrow, she is long. The books tell us it takes more than two days to hike her northern coastline.

Walking along her side is sublime. You’re in the forest, she is hidden behind the tall pines and then you come to a series of clearings and there she is again!





At one point, we sit down, there, high above her and then we take off our packs…










..and eventually we lie down on the soft moss and grasses of the Glen and we doze. I think then how these moments are so rare – of complete tranquility. At a café over an espresso, looking out at a beautiful square or street; at a morning breakfast outdoors surrounded by potted flowers; or now -- stretched out on a bed of moss, looking out over Loch Ness on a warm, clear day. They are what we work for, right? They are what gets us through the tedious stuff and dark February days.

Half an hour later, we’re up and hiking again.





Past timber operations. There’s a lot to be said about forestry in Scotland. I’ll just note here that there are signs explaining the attempt now to promote diverse growth in places where timber operations made the land barren (and I don’t just mean recently: cutting down Scottish timber during the period of industrial growth depleted the forests so much that in the construction of the Caledonian Canal, needed timber had to be imported from across the Baltic).










We reach the end of the day’s segment at 4:30. We’re in the village of Invermoriston. Where the bridge from 1805 provides a vital link between Inverness and Fort William.





The plan is to grab some refreshment here, but the restaurant is still closed. We settle in at the pub...





... and this time, without hesitation, we each order a pint. One dark, one light.





I ask if by chance they have WiFi. They do! But you need your own computer.
I have my own computer…
The guy with the knickers shakes his head in total disbelief. When I get away for vacation, I don’t want contact with anything or anyone!
I like checking in to see if my daughters are okay… (I skip mentioning checking work and blogging – no hope for sympathy there at all).
The couple at my other side are listening. The guy agrees. We’re on vacation (from England) and my wife and daughter are texting nonstop!

I think – how nice that we all have available the tools and we can use them or not use them, but they are there. I log on. All’s well back home. I’m at peace.

At 5:45 we begin what is regarded as the next day’s hike. We didn’t get the meal in the village that we wanted, but between nuts and ale and an ice cream bar from the local grocer, we feel fortified.





Up the hills again, up past ferns and firs, up toward the ridge, where the views of Ness are so magnificent…










We want to make progress and we do. Our legs are stronger. We are used to the packs.

A few hours into the hike we begin to search for a spot to pitch a tent. It’s so easy here. The trail is empty, so finding a quiet spot is only a matter of taste: forest, or grass? Proximate to stream? Or view?

We find our piece of heaven. We eat our bread and cheese and tomatoes, I take one last look outside – the glen is still, in the shades of dusk.

And now, Saturday, cleaned, refreshed, I’m ready. I’m looking forward to the next village of Drumnadrochit. Only 10 miles away. I’m hoping they have coffee there.

IMPORTANT NOTE: for the next nine days (until June 9th), my Internet access is going to be very uncertain. Over my years of blogging, I can think of only a handful of times where I could not post because of a connection problem. This may well be another such time. I will try – I’ll be hiking and kayaking with my computer in my pack (scary thought that it is). But we’re not sure if we’ll find places to stay (we have our sleeping bags) let alone places to hook up. So, stay patient please!

I had thought of several subtitles for this post: every pain has an end; exhaustion; it was not my fault; it very much was my fault; it was the fault of the British telly; etc. None capture the essence of the day well. I’m still trying to understand how it came to be that at 9:30 p.m., I could hardly put one foot in front of the other and the end to the day's hike seemed intolerably distant.

Sure, we had planned to push ourselves a little – to do more than the recommended miles for each day. Yes, I know, we’re not athletes and we’re both getting very close to the what some would call the golden years, but still, we are full of energy and our physical stamina is high.

But there is the matter of the heavy packs – I’m carrying a lot of gear in addition to the usual daily stuff. And then there’s the issue of the weather. It was supposed to clear up (the telly said!). Instead, it clouded over and what started out as a gray drizzle…





Progressively turned into a heavy drizzle and then somewhere between that and light but constant rain.





And still, our first segment – 13.5 miles through the National Forest that borders Loch Lochy – had segments of hope. My hood would come off, I would grin and pose for photos…





…I would hum a nice ditty and tally forth.


The ditties stopped when the trickle of wetness felt its way down my neck and the breeze lost its warmth and the climb began to reflect the hilliness of the terrain.

I would still occasionally take out the camera – the green forest is dense and beautiful and the ferns and wild flowers at the edge of the path are stunning even in the rain.










But mostly, I would keep it under cover.

And so we lumber forth. We like to pause in our hikes – to look out, to admire, to sit quietly and reflect on the landscape around us. We try once and I get chilled and that puts an the end to our beloved pauses.

Except, as we leave the forest...











... and approach the end of the day’s segment (at 4 p.m.) at a wee village just at the tip of Loch Lochy, we do pause. There is a barge, artfully converted into a pub. Used to Scottish weather, the owners have a woodstove going, and a room to hang up wet garments and more importantly, in addition to the tea and hot chocolate, they offer us bowls of hot soup. It all goes to my head.




And, Ed in an uncharacteristic move, suggests that we split a pint. After going back and forth as to whether it should be pale (my preference) or dark and bitter (his preference), the bartender prompts that we should each get a half pint and therefore stay with our own likes and I think – how cool! Bartenders understand that sometimes compromise is tough to accomplish.

For example, compromise in the matter of camping. I have agreed to occasionally camp. But the rain has caused me to reconsider. We’ve pitched tents in damp weather plenty of times. To me, these are the tough times in camping. So, if a few more miles can put you in a warm b&b, wouldn’t you rather hike the extra miles than pitch in a puddle and throw wet gear in a tent?

It is this kind of reasoning (on my part) that leads me to suggest that we walk the whole next segment and push for Fort Augustus – another 10 miles up the trail. Fort Augustus has b&b’s. In Fort Augustus we can dry off. Then, in subsequent days, we can camp. Especially since the bartender assures us that the barometer is on the rise.

Ed agrees. He's less into the "dry off at the b&b idea," but the man likes a physical challenge. We call a handful of b&b’s, find one with an available room and set out.

I notice right away – the minute we leave the barge, that my upper legs are hurting. I shrug it off. That’s what you get for sitting down for too long.

At least the barometer appeares to be on target. The rain is definitely pausing. The clouds are still there, but they are higher, as if they're giving up on the likes of us, looking for other souls to torture elsewhere. I take out my camera again and snap one for the road as Ed moves ahead of me (note the Great Glen Way trail marker at the side -- it is an exceptionally well marked trail).





But still, we do not pause. I begin to realize that I am very tired. And that when I do pause, my legs stiffen. The pain of getting them to a working state again is too much.

And so we push ourselves. Along a rail bed that has shreds of the Industrial Revolution still in evidence. [On the one side – the old and in this case failed rail link, and on the other – a canal that was as important to commerce in the centuries of Britain’s industrial expansion.]

Now, of course, it is all very green, very forgotten.





On the other side of the water we can occasionally hear cars moving along the road. You have to wonder if that, too, will become obsolete two hundred years from now, so that this area will be a museum to failed forms of transportation.

Occasionally we pass pleasant meadows – ideal camping places. And of course, we should have pitched a tent (the recent law in Scotland permits hiking and overnight tenting on any private land, with very few restrictions; it’s a camper’s dream to be able to do this at will!). But now I feel obligated to the place we have called. Someone is holding a room for us. Someone is counting on our promised payment.

We walk on.










By now, even Ed is hurting. We each develop a list of short complaints – mine are heavily concentrated on gnawing pain – legs, feet, shoulders. Pain. We smile to each other in support, but the smiles are fleeting, hardly worth the physical effort.

We are back at the side of the Caledonian Canal and I remember yesterday’s endless walk along an earlier stretch of this same canal, hoping that each bend would be the last. How poorly we learn the lessons of our past!





I call our b&b person and tell her that our pace has slackened considerably. Indeed, that we are basically without strength. It would be close to 10 before we would arrive.

Each trail has an end and each day ends with the hope that tomorrow there will be sun and the limbs will loosen up again. But on this night, we are spent. The b&b person senses the tiredness in my voice. She sends her daughter to fetch us just at the point where the trail enters the village of St Augustus. It saves us the half mile hike to her guest house. I have never felt more grateful.


IMPORTANT NOTE: for the next ten days (until June 9th), my Internet access is going to be very uncertain. Over my years of blogging, I can think of only a handful of times where I could not post because of a connection problem. This may well be another such time. I will try – I’ll be hiking and kayaking with my computer in my pack (scary thought that it is). But we’re not sure if we’ll find places to stay (we have our sleeping bags) let alone places to hook up. So, stay patient please!

I’m in a warm bed and I had a dinner. Two hours ago, I was sure I’d be without both tonight.

Sure, those are things to be grateful for, but even more remarkable is this: on our bus ride from Edinburgh up north (total bus hours: 6), the skies turned from mostly cloudy…





… to mostly wet.










But when we reached Inverness (the northernmost big town in Scotland), patches of blue began to appear again. And for the rest of the evening, the threat of rain receded to only a mild possibility.





Inverness was, for us, only a temporary stop. We wanted to drop off some equipment at the b&b we would eventually return to some days in the future. But we were there long enough to realize that things have changed up north in Great Britain. First of all, great coffee is now easy to find and secondly – Inverness is no longer just an English speaking place. The second language here is Polish.

At the bus station, the signs are printed out in two languages – English and Polish. Around town, I hear my language again and again. At the café where I purchase the wonderful coffee, Roman, the (Polish) long haired barista, gives me a strongly accented lecture on how he cannot rush my cappuccino order, because if he does, the foam will be too frothy. I want to tell him that I prefer frothy foam to a missed bus, but I know that arguing with my fellow countrymen is a long and drawn out and mostly futile enterprise (and besides, I want my coffee), so I stay silent.

Our final bus ride puts us in Fort William. Here we begin the Great Glen Way hike.

It’s a trail that runs from the western shores of Scotland all the way to the North Sea on the east (for a total of 72 miles). The recommended hiking time is six days, but we want to do it in four and a half. Indeed, that half is highly suspect, since we don’t reach the trailhead until 5 pm.

The deal is that occasionally we’ll sleep in a warm b&b, but even more occasionally, we’ll camp (this last is entirely an Ed preference).

And so we set out.










This day’s segment is only 11 miles and it is an easy walk: mostly along the banks of the Caledonian Canal.




















The plan is to reach the endpoint: a bridge that marks the end of the Canal segment, and to then call the booked b&b for this first night (Ed occasionally succumbs to pleading). At the bridge, you’ll find a red phone booth. Call us when you get there! – said the friendly farmer when Ed called from Madison to book a room.

After three hours, we began to look for the bridge and the red phone booth. At each bend, I shout back to Ed – no bridge yet! A dozen corners later, I ask the unanswerable question – why aren’t we there yet? We hadn’t eaten since breakfast. The b&b host was supposed to pick us up, drop us off in a village where we would find food, then take us to his home (a common practice to get hikers to stay at the off-trail places). But things were getting uncomfortably late for all that to happen.





Ed takes out his trusty cheap cell phone and dials. No ring. A weak signal. Low battery. All portend of trouble ahead.

We amble over to the one solitary house by the trail. Our knock is answered by a guy who looks like he is very tired of living in the one solitary house by the trail. But, after some discussion, he tells us that something’s off with the phone number. He disappears inside his house and we think we’ve lost him for the day, but 15 minutes later he comes out and gives us a new number. Try that – he tells Ed. We thank him and, as we leave, I ask – so, how many lost and confused souls do you get at your door? Thousands… -- he answers with resignation.

And I can see it. Ever since the trail opened some half dozen years back, hikers have been passing his front door, wondering where the hell they were and how long it would take to get to the bridge or a road or some sign that the canal path will finally end.

One mile later, at Garliclochy, it does end. And there is the identifying phone box.




We call and our hosts pluck us off at the intersection and drive us to the only open eatery in the area -- the Little Chef. [In case you don’t know this chain, I’d say it’s like an upper-end fast food place. When I ate in one some two dozen years ago, I distinctly remember crunching on a burger that was like meatloaf with more loaf than meat to it. This time, I was pleasantly surprised to find free range chicken and sustainable fisheries salmon on the list. Basically, Little Chef has taken on the challenge of serving well-sourced foods. It’s still fast and short on flavor, but I’ll take free range chicken over McNuggets anyday.

Even in this northern outpost, the light is almost gone when our host drives us the short way home. We are at the foot of Ben Nevis, the highest peak in Great Britain, typically shrouded in cloud cover, but now, tonight, almost visible to us.





At the b&b, I’m too tired to sleep. The hike isn’t taxing (thus far) elevation wise, but we walk briskly and my pack is heavy, what with sleeping gear, the camera and my computer. Still, can you imagine – we’ve stayed dry so far. And on the telly, I hear that Great Britain is in for a warm spell. How good is that?!

IMPORTANT NOTE: for the next eleven days (until June 9th), my Internet access is going to be very uncertain. Over my years of blogging, I can think of only a handful of times where I could not post because of a connection problem. This may well be another such time. I will try – I’ll be hiking and kayaking with my computer in my pack (scary thought that it is). But we’re not sure if we’ll find places to stay (we have our sleeping bags) let alone places to hook up. So, stay patient please!

The Edinburgh airport is small, but even so, my Ryan Air flight is parked at some distance to the terminal. For a minute, I wonder if they’ll charge us for the bus ride in. [In case you don’t know, Ryan Air is the Walmart of the airline industry: the flights are very cheap; but you have to be careful – everything is subject to a surcharge: sending luggage through, the weight of each bag, the order in which you want to board the plane, the water you drink on it – everything.]

I scan the grounds and notice that there are only a couple of planes at the gates. None of them Air France.

But as the bus pulls up to the terminal, I see the familiar Air France logo taxing toward us. And so I am not surprised when at passport control, the person behind me is Ed, arriving after a series of connections from Madison.

It is damn cold here. 51F feels very nippy after the heat of Bologna. I notice that even the locals are in their woolies. But I also notice that it’s not raining.

I had briefly lived in Edinburgh more than thirty years ago, when my then husband was working on his dissertation on the Scottish Enlightenment. I remember very many wonderful things about the place, but I also remember the rain. You could start the day without it, but sooner or later a nice black cloud would roll in and dump its wet stuff on you.

Today, however, there is (occasional) sunshine.

But the city’s a mess. It appears they’re putting in a tram along Princes Street (the main commercial hub). Everything is ripped open. No matter. We’re here for the night only and we’ve got stuff to do: buy pants for Ed (his fell apart on the flight over; you have to know Ed to understand why that is not a ridiculous statement – the man wears his clothes to their bitter and often unexpected end), buy book on the Glen Way hike, buy sim card for cell phone, walk back several miles due to getting off at wrong bus stop, find hotel, convince them that it’s fine to leave our bags for several weeks there, etc.

We do all that against the backdrop of Edinburgh’s splendid scenery.





Indeed, if you look up toward the castle, or down toward the Firth, it all looks quite fine.





You just cannot look straight ahead, because all you’ll see is construction.

In the evening, we stop everything to eat dinner. We pick a place with a seafood theme, so that Ed can gradually adjust to the Scots’ preference for blood on the plate. We eat sardines and trout and mussels and I think – it’s not too bad foodwise up here in Scotland.










On the walk back to the hotel, I look up and notice the telltale clouds on the horizon.





It’ll be an interesting few weeks.


IMPORTANT NOTE: for the next twelve days (until June 9th), my Internet access is going to be very uncertain. Over my years of blogging, I can think of only a handful of times where I could not post because of a connection problem. This may well be another such time. I will try – I’ll be hiking and kayaking with my computer in my pack (scary thought that it is). But we’re not sure if we’ll find places to stay (we have our sleeping bags) let alone places to hook up. So, stay patient please!

I go down to breakfast early. The hotel staff person, who resembles in every way a Sicilian grandmother greets me and asks if I want my cappuccino. Yes, yes, thank you. I am in a hurry. At 7:30, I will be taking a cab to the airport.
You were here with your daughter yesterday? She smiles.
Yes, but she’s not here today. She had to catch a flight before dawn.
The Sicilian grandmother (maybe) frowns. She’s alright? Nothing happened?
I nod. She’s alright. She just needed to get back before me.

My daughter -- my guide, my cheerful friend.

Last night after dinner, she (the poor student) reaches quickly for her credit card and pushes it at the waiter. No, take mine! -- I’m waving mine as well. He looks at both of us and takes mine. Let your mother pay – he says with a smile. In those four words, he shows his understanding of family. This is how it works. Kids grow up, but mothers will always want to make sure they’re eating well.





At the airport, I look at the screen. About a third of the outbound flights are canceled. I panic. Why are they cancelled? Did my girl take off okay? She, of course, would laugh at my worries. She has dealt with travel issues on all continents of this planet. Mostly without me to guide her through them. But she has a tight connection! I ask an attendant what's happening. Seems that Bologna ground airport staff are on strike. Of course. I cannot remember being in Italy when some branch of the transportation industry was not on strike. And the early flight to Paris, did it take off? I ask. Yes, yes. Don’t worry.

What are they talking about? To be a parent and not to worry? Has anyone figured out how to do that? (Has she landed In Paris yet? Did she make her connection? And what about my older girl – how will her morning proceed? What will she be eating for dinner tonight?)



Monday, our last day in Italy, starts slowly. We stroll up the wide boulevard in search of lunch. Prosciutto and melon, prosciutto and cheese – the combinations are predictable. Will I manage to go back to a lunch-free existence after days of sweet melon and thinly sliced Italian hams?

I look up at the tall trees shading the terrace of the café. Chestnuts. A full canopy of chestnuts.





I don’t know a city that isn’t improved by the presence of chestnuts. But wait, does Bologna even need improvement?

Her squares are gorgeous (if empty now, as in the heat of the midday sun people keep to the shaded loggias).











And the colors! Yes, the red, and the marigold yellow, and Sicilian orange.












Nor can Bologna’s foods be improved upon. Indeed, I doubt that the stores selling her foods can be any better.




















And maybe it’s the heat that slows things down here, to a calm and friendly pace, but somehow I don’t think so. I think it’s just that people like each other. And they have a lot to say. And they like a good espresso. It’s a stellar combination.





So we walk the lovely streets and we look inside stores and we study the faces of the old churches.





And we very carefully pick our ice cream place because it is going to be our last gelato and it better be a good gelato since we have such fond memories of Rome’s gelato!

Oh, it is good. More than good. Over the top great. A new “best”! (La Sorbetteria Castigliana)





I order three scoops. The flavors are intense and very Italian: ricotta and figs and honey, pine and walnuts, lemon and cream.

We’re intrigued by a fairly popular variation on the cone. I ask someone – what are you eating? What is that? He laughs and his girlfriend answers for him: la foccacia!





Italians take such pleasure in their ice cream. Like an espresso, it is quick and dirty. On the run. You pause, you buy, you eat and you continue walking. We do the same.

Up one street, down the next, weaving in and out of loggias, entering shops, glancing at racks, leaving again. Grazie, arrivederci. Damn, this country has style!











And now we are at the towers again. I keep thinking – grassa, rossa, towers, tortellini, tagliatelle, tits… It’s all here – the loggias, the monuments, the tits on the monuments…































Evening. The waiter asks if he can pour the Prosecco. He picks the dinner wine for us, but foodwise, we know what we want – the thin ham, yes, that, and the meats – with mushrooms, with balsamic, yes, we’ll have all that, sure, but really what we are most in need of right now is a big bowlful of tagliatelle bolonese.





The final and most satisfying comfort food that Italy can offer us. Take this memory with you, take it and bring it into focus on the February night in Wisconsin or Boston, when the temperatures will be 100 degrees colder than here, on this day.

The dish is perfect, absolutely perfect.

As is our trip here.

As is our late night walk home.

Bologna the hot. That's my contribution.

Bologna already has other nicknames:
La dotta. [The learned one. This town has the oldest university on the continent – dating to 1088. And even today, its student population swells to 80,000.]
La grassa. [The fat one. The epicenter of Italian agriculture and the navel on the big belly of Italian cooking. Tagliatelle and tortellini were invented here.]
La rossa. [The red one. Look for red in the color of the terracotta bricks. And in politics. A communist city council for most years after the Second World War. Free public transport. etc.]

But today, she is also steaming. Ninety-five degrees outside. Italy is in a heat wave and the Bolognese are reveling in the summer-like weather.

And still, at the Drogheria della Rosa, everyone is begging for a dinner table outside. The owner and his staff are plucking tables from the small room and scattering them up and down the loggia.





What’s a loggia, and where are we, and how is this place anyway?


We came Sunday afternoon. Leave Rome, head north. Past beautiful, lush Italian countryside.





Past Florence, but not quite yet in the Venice region. We get off the train at a small station outside the city. The main station (Bologna Central) is undergoing major systems upgrades and so we are carted by bus from this suburban outpost to the center.

Bologna Centrale. Are you old enough to remember the terrorist bombing that took place here in 1980? I am. Eighty people died and scores were injured as the roof of the station caved in during the terrorist attack. Italy in those years felt like Northern Ireland at the height of unrest.

It’s calm here now and the only movement comes from under the soil. As we well know, these can be dramatic enough. (Remember the earthquake west of Rome this year.) And underneath Bologna, things are shifting and heaving (if not quaking) all the time. Take a look at her ancient towers now, after centuries of ground movement:





Didn’t I mention that Bologna is also called the city of three “T’s”? [T for towers – there used to be hundreds and a significant handful are still standing; T for tortellini – see above; T for tits – something about the healthy and voluptuous shape to the female form here.]

But don’t get lost in all the nicknames. For the tourist, Bologna is one beautiful medieval town. Well preserved, heavenly to walk through. It’s the city of arcades -- most blocks have them (originally used as a way to expand living space without narrowing the already small streets, the concept really took off here. New York built its space up to scrape the sky, Bologna went for the sprawl in a different direction).






At the Drogheria della Rosa, the chef, Francesco Guerra, comes out to check on how the food is going over. Noticing my photo taking of the most perfect dish of tortelli di stracchino e squacquerone with zucchini blossoms, he comes up and asks to see the photo. Quality control! he jokes. You can keep that one.





Someone comes out with an open bottle of Prosecco. We’re past the aperitif stage, working our way through a bottle of local white wine, but our glasses have just a smidgen of wine in them at the moment. The person with the Prosecco tops what we have with the fizzy wine. In a few minutes, he does the same to another table of diners. No one protests. It’s as if we have an invitation to pause in midmeal and enjoy a special moment.



Bologna on a Sunday is like a sunflower, with colorful but empty petals and a center swarming with every Bolognese man, woman and child. (There are few tourists here. Everyone is in a hurry to move from Rome, to Florence, to Venice. Towns along the way are forgotten. And I should talk! For all my frequent travels to the Mediterranean, I’d only been here once before. Almost forty years ago.) The market sells the usual cheese and sausage, but also sweet things. Crispy pancakes, cookies, nuts coated in honey.










We walk in the cool shade of the loggias, through vast open squares...





... pausing only briefly at a café to catch up on food (because, really, we’ve been so starved in this country!).










I watch the cyclists cut across the square. Families again! Father with two children, then father with daughter. She waits patiently for his conversation to end.











In Rome, we never once used any transportation – not even when a restaurant was miles away, not even when retreating on a hot morning to the railroad station with luggage in tow. It took countless hours to move around this way, but we felt closer to the city and her people by simply walking.

In Bologna, we walk as well, but the distances seem child’s play by comparison. Hiking toward the corner of the old town to look at the university and the faculty of law, where it all began almost a thousand years ago, we pass groups of students idling away the early Sunday evening.





And there are traces here of Bologna’s more radical side.





And of course, here too, we find the beauty of the loggias -- so compelling, so cool on this hot hot day.





Around the corner. There are the towers again. They come and go. Tilting, hiding behind one another.





Notes of opera music spill out into the loggia of the Drogheria della Rosa, chasing down every last patron sitting at the scattered tables of the restaurant.






Emanuele Addone, the proprietor, comes over and asks – you like opera music? I think this is so appropriate for good food. When I tell him that truly not only do I find the strains of opera so enchanting, but the pasta dish was in fact the very best pasta dish I ever remember eating, he pulls up a chair and joins us for the remainder of the meal.

You see, I have this menu, but it does not say anything (in fact, there is no real menu; Emanuele goes to each table, tells them more or less what there is to choose from and they take it from there). Because I don’t want to print out anything. I go to the market and the menu is born then.

Someone calls to him from inside. Porca miseria, leave me alone! He shouts back. It’s my day off from the kitchen!

He’s from the south – from Matera. But he learned about the restaurant business in France and England.
Ever travel to the US? – I ask. We think that for this type of food, there would be lines around city blocks, say in New York.
No, no I haven’t. I like it here, in Bologna. If I could spend time elsewhere, it would be in Brittany. But, the wife – she’s a professor of French here.

He’s effusive about the region. And about cooking. Good food is about good memories. I remember a moment when I ate this same cheese and I put it into the tortelli, to create that happiness again.

He shouts out to the waiter to pull in a chair from a departing client. He’s my nephew, he tells us. I’m trying to teach him. He shakes his head as if the effort is sometimes too much.

The staff is hovering now. They want his attention for one detail or another, but Emanuele is on a roll. Here, I will give you a shirt to take home. (He whips out a shirt with a logo about a cap that I do not understand, but you can see the man is all heart. He has a reputation for treating guests as if they are longtime friends. I can see why.)

The Prosecco bottle is at his side again and he offers us another glass, but it is near midnight and we are ready to call it a night. I pick up the bill. I'm shocked at how small the tab is considering all that we have consumed.

The strains of opera, muted in the corridor of the loggia, stay with us until we round the corner. We hold on to our roses – Emanuel takes these from the tables and hands them to all his female guests. Good memories. Made at a dinner table. Over a plate of tortelli, and pheasant in spicy honey, and Mascarpone with strawberries and cream.

Sunday morning. In an hour we’ll be taking a train. I’m at the desk in the small hotel lobby, talking to the proprietor, Pierfrancesco.

You have a fantastic place here, I tell him.
Oh, I’m so glad you feel that way! This place is my baby. We’re still working out the kinks – we’ve just been open for a year! – but you know, this is my home. I grew up in these apartments. I still live here! Next time, you have to also try my restaurant. [We didn’t go this time because it’s a short drive from the center of Rome.]

Next time. How soon will “next time” be? It took me five years to return to Rome. Next time. Maybe next year? Is Rome a place you go to, again and again, with excitement? Like, say, Paris?

In the last day here, I begin to see the appeal of being here just to be here. And as the small details of the city began to emerge, so, too, does my love for those details.

We have no particular agenda for Saturday. The day is, as they all are, sunny and beautifully warm.

Our breakfast is leisurely. A chocolate croissant, a cappuccino, a yogurt. By the time we set out, it is almost lunch!

Up one street, down the next. I am used to seeing the delivery vans with all those flowers. I recognize them. I like them.





We turn left on the Via del Boschetto It’s a street with small shops, most selling clothing, most made right on the premises. Some vintage fabrics, some new. I am smitten with a pair of sunglasses. Blue rims. They match my blue earrings perfectly.

Stunning! The woman tells me, smiling.
Yes, sure, but after Rome, when I ever wear them? My life at home involves bike riding to and from work, to and from Ed’s farmette, to and from the grocery store. Where in those routines do blue rimmed sunglasses fit in?





We stop at a Botega del Café for lunch. This is a meal that at home is terribly insignificant. So much so that I rarely bother to eat it. But here, in Rome, it is all important. And why not? Is there a better way to spend a midafternoon hour than at an outdoor table? Over a plate of paper thin prosciutto, covering the sweetest melon slices on the planet?










We walk some more. Pausing to watch a changing of the guard. Pausing at our ice cream place, San Crispino (honey and bergamot!).





Did I say our ice cream place? We have one now?

Up one street, down the next. Some are crowded with tourists, or even tour groups, with characteristic matching hats...






...some are empty. Except I never have to wait long to spot a family scene. Always the families. A girl tugging at her father’s arm, a grandfather type telling a story. A mother laughing. Eight people in one doorway, eight conversations taking place at once.





We stop at the Salotto Bar and drink squeezed orange juice and crushed mint leaves from tall glasses.





The Salotto is cool and very quiet. Run by an Italian-Swedish couple, it exudes calm in this chaotic part of town.





Refreshed, we’re ready now for a quick return to the Trevi…





… and to the Navona.





A few quick errands in a shop or two make me realize that I left my credit card some stops ago, at the lunch café. We’re happy to retrace our steps, to take one last look at the small little square, to glance over at the early evening aperitif drinkers.










Families. You don’t leave them behind. Even if their drink is still from a bottle rather than from a tall flute.


We had on the very first day here decided that our last night in Rome should be at the Maccheroni. Somehow the mood of Rome began for us there, over the roasted artichokes. This time we’re at a table outside. Crowds try to get a table, but we are the privileged few (calling in advance gives you the coveted outdoor space), the ones right by the wall with the sign where someone had scribbled Maccheroni troppo buoni.





Pierfrancesco from our hotel later tells me that Maccheroni’s proprietor keeps the place open year round. He never closes! Three hundred and sixty days a year, he serves dinner! (Which are the sacred five where no one even considers eating out?)





The wait staff is efficient and playful and so very knowledgeable. Eat the cheaper cut of beef (over arugula, with cherry tomatoes). That’s what we eat! And try this wine from Lazio. You’ll like it. (We do.) I look at the bowl of pasta carbonare placed in front of my daughter and I tell him – that’s too much! He pats her on her stomach. She can use some food. Besides, you can both go running tomorrow!


Go running? No, tomorrow we head north, for two nights in Bologna before my girl flies home and I fly to meet up with Ed in Scotland.

Rome, you are magnificent!

It is a Friday, so it’s not as if I am thinking market thoughts (those are, for me, a Saturday deal). But we decide that this day should have elements of commerce: that we should walk the narrow streets in the footsteps of the locals – to the market, to the store, to the lunch hangout – all that.

But the day begins and ends with people who are very much like us – outsiders.

We are late breakfast eaters. I’d say we bring in the rear here. Something to do with my blogging and our sleep patterns. On this day, there is only one other pair in the breakfast room by the time we amble toward the espresso machine (our hotel is very small – just 15 rooms, but it has the essentials: great espresso and WiFi). Two friends, slightly older than me, from Scotland.

Scotland! I say, as I show them to work the espresso machine (it’s their first morning here). I’ll be heading there soon!
Oh, very wet. All May, it’s been cold and wet.
Which part of Scotland are you from?
(They mention a small village at the foot of the highlands, north of Glasgow.)
I’m going that way!
Very wet, they repeat. And the midges, you know about midges (yes I do: they’re swarms of biting bugs that come out in late spring and drive you nuts)?
I should think they’re just starting… the other chimes in.
But it’s beautiful there! I remember it being quite beautiful!
Oh yes, quite. You know, some try to protect against the midges, but you really can’t.

And there you have it: a northern European’s take on life. The midges, the rain, the resignation that this is what spring offers.

We wave a cheery good bye and scoot out.

Now, for the Mediterranean side of things. First of all, the Campo dei Fiori, What’s fresh and regional here right now? The beans. The artichokes. The Roman cherries.















And who sells here? Take a look:




















We purchase some cherries and watch people meet up by the fountain for a quick chat. Before it’s time to officially sit down and continue the conversation over lunch.

Lunch. Each day, this is an important decision for us. Where to eat the midday meal. On this day, I let my daughter lead me out of the maze of streets in the Centro Storico until we come to this block:





On the corner, there is a dazzling little place with tables spilling out over the cobbles, ivy on the walls, lively chatter of friends and a good deal of welcome shade (it’s been in the 80s consistently; and sunny; and for the first time this year, I feel blissfully warm).





We order prosciutto, melon, tomatoes, arugula, focaccio – all the proper ingredients of a perfect midday meal.











We listen to the conversation of the lunching handful (it’s a tiny place), understanding just enough to keep us entertained, but not enough to really follow the storyline. But the music of the dialogue is lovely. I always like to think that in college, I studied an instrument: I studied Italian.





We end with an espresso and head out.

So what’s an afternoon walk like here? Well, it's melon yellow, warm, very pretty.





We make a lot of quick darts into stores. I’m in search of sandals. My cheap old French pair finally fell apart last year and I have been deeply disappointed with Madison’s offerings. I want something feminine! – I tell the clerks there. We sell comfortable sandals that pay attention to the support.. bla bla bla… Yes, great, but why can’t it look pretty and delicate and colorful? Why is everything here brown or black?

Italy, like France and Spain, cares about how the shoe looks on a woman’s foot. How quaint is that!

Finally, I find something that is comfortable and colorful.





But wait, there is a gelato stop as well. With this very original, very delicious flavor: crema al Barolo chinato (translated: Barolo wine ice cream with cinchona). Oh, and strawberry sorbetto. And so long as we are expanding our diets to include ice cream and pasta daily (in addition to, you know, the main courses and desserts) why not add some delicious cream on top? We join others who stop their shopping long enough to take in a cup of the good stuff.





Was this day only about commerce and food? No. Rome doesn’t allow you to forget your surroundings.

We pause at the Piazza Navona (along with others who pause to take photos, or just to stretch the legs a bit)…










…and we walk down to the Pantheon to get that sense of humility that comes from being in this most daring structure in the country. Perhaps the world. Imagine: the dome was built in 125 A.D., without the tools and knowledge that we have today and yet it is said that had it been built now, it would surely have crumbled over time. The biggest brick dome, the most copied, the finest -- in the history of architecture, it really outshines them all.





There is an opening at the center of the dome. When it rains, the water pours down and empties out through the twenty two small holes in the ground.

We stand in awe of all this and I expect if we come here again (yes, we must!), we’ll stand in awe again. Rome is like that: awe repeats itself, even if you’ve been there, seen that, done that.

And now we take the familiar turn, up the Spanish Steps – a razzmatazz of people and voices and hot sun and cool waters for foot dipping (just a little yukky, if you think about it)..






It's time for us to rest for a minute at the hotel. Because it’s another long walk in the evening as we head out toward the island in the middle of the Tiber, for dinner at the Sora Lella.

Oh, but let me explain that an evening walk here isn’t just about the time it takes to get somewhere. And it’s not only about darting traffic at crosswalks (we are getting, unfortunately, braver with this: we are up for the challenge! We’ll make them stop!). It is about passing these, in the fading light of the disappearing sun.















The Sora Lella is the most traditional of our dinner choices. We order pasta and lamb stewed in rosemary and we drink the local wine and it is all extremely good.















Next to us, there is a couple – two guys from the Netherlands, each pink as anything from too much Roman sun on the first day here. One is gregarious and outgoing and it’s not long before he strikes up a conversation with us. The other smiles patiently in the way that you do when you think your partner is really a tiny bit embarrassing, but you love him (or her) anyway.

We talk about wine and I mention how much I love the whites of the region. The dessert comes, the espressos follow and the tiny room settles into a comfortable rhythm of an ending day. The two waiters are almost done with the work of making us happy. The proprietor looks in, satisfied with the sound of the friendly mixture of Italian and (in our case) English.

It’s late and we have a long walk back. Across the bridge, up one hill and then another and another, all the way back to our room with the crisp white sheets. Shoes kicked off, tumble in, sleep.

Rome is a handful of neighborhoods, slapped together on very lumpy terrain. Each is separate and distinct. Not at all like its neighbor. Some are so separate and distinct that they aren’t really part of Rome at all (the Vatican comes to mind, but also the hip and artsy Trastevere on the “other” bank – if you’re from Trastevere, you identify yourself as such, rather than saying that you are Roman).

Thursday was the day for neighborhoods on that “other” bank – the one that is at one end basically white (the Vatican)…




… and at the other -- burnt orange (Trastevere).












[Why do I include red in the subtitle? At least two reasons: my daughter’s roving form in red gave a rosy sheen to the entire day.





…and, I want to pick up on a comment from Ann’s blog [where she linked to Ocean Rome posts and a reader noted:

Those are excellent photos but they do little to covey the sensation of sheer terror that is the unavoidable price one pays for daring to walk near the street at rush hour.

Gratefully, the natives seem to understand this and hardly give a second glance at lame tourists like me inching their way along storefronts, gritting their teeth with their backs against the wall, hyperventilating pure auto exhaust and digging their fingernails into solid granite.

I read it and thought: how true. At any street crossing, there is always the possibility that blood will spill due to some unfortunate encounter with a car or motorbike. Crazy traffic is so much a part of life here. I’ll throw out this comparison between three cities – all with the law that on crosswalks, you must stop for pedestrians:

In Madison, drivers who know that this is the law do stop. Many drivers, especially those over, say, 80 and under, say 20, do not appear to know the law. Watch out for that demographic.

In Paris, they’re lambs dressed as wolves. They rev up engines and roar across the city, but if you’re bold and venture out on a crosswalk, they apply brakes quickly and stop. You can count on it.

In Rome, they are wolves. They roar across the city and come straight at you as you cross. They don’t slow down. They know the law and at some level they want you to live, so I do believe they will stop if you ignore their aggressive show of force, but to me, they’ve won the psychological battle. The only way to cross is to hide to the side of equally aggressive pedestrians and let them take the hit for you. After all, you’re the guest here.

While crossing the bridge toward that “other” bank, I note that an enterprising fellow is offering rides on his cycle-taxi.





I cannot imagine a more hellish way to see the city. Thankfully, my girl and I have strong legs. We avoid cars, cycles, all of it. We walk.]


Our other bank ramble has the necessary foods to keep us going. Pizza with porcini mushrooms and arugula, and fried zucchini blossoms on the side…










...and, continuing down the list of people’s favorite gelato places, we sample some on this side of the river, at the “Old Bridge.”





This time I pick strawberry and coffee.


We had made the decision to bypass the Vatican museums. Both of us had been here in the past and neither wanted to commit a day for it on this trip. If in my images of Rome I include the Vatican, it is also true that the Vatican isn’t merely a separate chapter of a book, it is an entirely separate book. And so we stroll through St. Peter’s Square, we admire, we comment on our memories of the place, take some photos, watch others take photos…




…and we move on, along the Tiber (so different in spring than in summer! You could almost think that you’re in Paris here, no?)…






… to Trastevere.





Trastevere is thankfully mostly a pedestrian zone (though apparently scooters have the same rights as I do, which truly is not fair as their horse power is not equal to my horse power, even after all that pasta and gelato). It is also very very pretty.





And if I said that I associate burnt orange with it, that perception is especially strong at evening time. At this café , everyone was drinking freshly squeezed juice, as if on cue. We dare not be different.





We poke into churches, rest just a little, walk up one street and down the next, taking it all in, taking photos, watching others -- indeed, entire families -- take photos...










... and finally, as the sun begins to disappear behind the tall Roman pines, we head up the hill behind Trastevere, to where the views are grand…





…and the parks are expansive, with ample opportunities for more strolling…






...or solitary book reading under the pines...





…and the roar of the city grows to a very quiet hum, which is sort of remarkable, given the mess of cars and motors out there, in the gut of the city.


We eat dinner up here, west of Tevere at Antico Arco. Gnocchi with seafood, meats, wine from the region and this for dessert – with a touch of saffron. A perfectly orange moment.





The walk back to the hotel is long from here. But we’re not going to wilt now. Down the hill, across the river, up another hill. People are still out and about, still eating, now in the shadows of the night, white shirts against the deep orange-red walls of an ancient city.




It’s midnight. Shoes off, white sheet pulled loosely against the cooler night, I fall asleep.

Back in Madison, when I was telling Ed about a particularly vivid dream I had had in the wee hours of the predawn, he said – you sure have a lot of challenging dreams!
Don’t you? Doesn’t everyone?
I can’t remember having anything like yours in decades.

Here, in Rome, you would think that after a day packed with treasures (real and ephemeral), my psyche would use the opportunity of a long night to sort through them, arrange them neatly, maybe add a few exhilarating twists, and wake up refreshed.

Not so. When I travel, my dawn hours are spent in dreams that have nothing to do with that beautiful reality. Instead, they’re about the fight between good and evil, and it isn't always the case that goodness triumphs. And so I can't wait to wake up. It's such a relief that I don't have to engage, for example, in warfare.

Morning blogging (when I travel, I blog early; when I am at home, I blog late) makes up for what the world of dreams has failed to offer – a chance to sift and sort and add twists and arrange things neatly before the new day begins.

The new day.




Looking back on yesterday, I have to say that there’s a lot of wonderful stuff to work through. If the first full day was grounded in ancient Rome, yesterday moved crazily (in an adventure-park sort of way) between modernity, the Renaissance, antiquity, everyday reality, leisurely outdoor dining and very by-the-clock, rigid indoor gawking – in other words, the day’s only unifying theme was Rome.

And it all began with ice cream.

In Italy, most every town has a “best” ice cream place. Guide books have favorites, visitors have favorites, locals probably have favorites as well, but I think it’s us outsiders that really are hell bent on identifying the top of the top.

In Rome, anyone’s top list would have to include (among others, because I know there are others) San Crispino. I mean, these guys do everything supremely well. The creaminess, the essential flavors, the absence of coloring and additives, the use of artisanal methods and organic, seasonal products where possible – all of it, packed in a gelato.





Melon and honey for me, chocolate and pistachio for my girl. A friend recently said that you can tell a lot about a person by what they order in an eatery. If flavors tell tales, you can spin your own based on ice cream preferences. This day alone will give you ample information on what I always love in a gelato.





Our walk across town puts us on a street with a lot of small retail outlets. If the economy has slowed here, you can’t see it in shopping habits. Sure, there are the sales (so unusual in Europe, where sales tend to be seasonal rather than erratic), but the stores are not empty. I would guess that in Italy, prosperity has not been a reliable, steady presence, especially in the south (and Rome is the south; we are in a sunny, hot land right now, least you doubt me). So why curb your shopping enthusiasm now, when things are as rocky as they were, say, yesterday, last year, and the decade before.

We stop at a lingerie store. I find Victoria’s Secret back home rather garish and so I look with pleasure at things that are delicate and feminine and not especially over the top, even as, if you look closely, it is all very suggestive. A wee little purchase and we continue.

On Piazza del Popolo, we admire the expanse of it all, the twin churches, the alternative artsy handful on the steps. (Women of ill repute? – I say to my daughter. Well, maybe not. Two carabinieri are standing to the side. That would be sort of odd. I retract, feeling somewhat guilty for my attributions. Let’s just say women in fiery apparel.)










We cut into the park (the Borghese – by far the largest in central Rome) and immediately get lost. The maps deliberately confuse you. Parks shouldn’t have set itineraries. You should ramble, sit on a bench, enjoy the moment.





Our destination for early afternoon is the Galleria d'Arte Moderna – a wonderful building with a very eclectic collection of significant pieces from the past century and a half. It’s a huge leap to have done this – to move so blithely from ancient ruins to this museum, but Rome is not a city that thrives only on markers of past glory and so it seems appropriate that we should leap to the future quickly and effortlessly.





No photos in the museum. I take this first one…





And then I am silly enough to ask for further permission (there are no signs mentioning cameras) and am immediately told that cameras are forbidden. For added measure, I am given that look of reprimand that cuts to the heart. I hang my head in shame to show proper remorse. (And, like a true Italian, look for opportunities to ignore the rule.)


We pause for a long while at the museum café. We’re very hungry for Roman food (which is very different from being simply hungry; I can’t say that I am at all hungry after my very first bowl of pasta here), so there’s that. But also, it’s just so pleasant to sit outside in a shady spot, with the cool presummer breeze touching my bare shoulders (Rome requires sun dresses and we are happy to do well by her demands) and a glass of acqua minerale, or sometimes wine, and a plate of greens and thinly sliced prosciutto, or tomato and buffalo mozarella before you.










Oh, and of course, capped by espresso. And ice cream. Strawberry and cream for me.





We glance at the other patrons. More affluent here than, say, at the Capitoline café (the previous day’s museum rest stop). And so very Italian. Watch his hand caress her arm…





Our lunch break is long also because one of the rooms of the museum (just one) is closed at regular intervals throughout the day. Why? I don’t know. But if one room is closed before you, then you become determined to get to that room, even if it means waiting a long time for it to reopen.


Eventually, though, we have to hurry out. We have an appointment at the Borghese.

If you leave the Vatican collection off the list (it is, after all, a separate country), I’d have to say the Galleria Borghese is Rome grandest, most beautiful museum. It had been closed for renovations for many years, and now it positively shines with the glory of the Renaissance and the centuries leading up to it.





It is so gorgeous, that the city has had to institute crowd control. You need to book your visit in advance, and as in special exhibitions in other museums, you are given a two hour slot. And you better show up to collect your ticket early if you want to avoid that Italian rabbuffo.

One notable detail about a visit here is that you must deposit everything at the cloakroom before going inside. And you do this early, so that you’re ready to plunge the minute the doors open. Consequently, you’ll find, in the half hour before the next group is permitted entry, scores of empty handed people milling about, purposeless and unencumbered. It is a strange feeling to stroll like this, especially if you are a woman, and a photographer, and you have gotten used to having your shoulder serve as a donkey for everything you may need in the course of a long day out.


It’s evening by the time we leave.

We walk down the Via Veneto. I remember coming here when I was still a kid. I was told it was glamorous and since I hadn’t a clue as to what that could possibly mean, I took it for granted that I was in the presence of glamour.

Things have changed and I hear that the glamour crowd has moved elsewhere and and so I will never know how glamor made itself at home here, on the Via Veneto. Right now, all I can see is the tremendous green branches of trees towering over the winding boulevard, and I think – wow, that’s pretty leafy up there.





We freshen up at the hotel and head out on our next eating adventure, at the Osteria Sostegno. All our eateries thus far have required a long walk by way of the Spanish steps. The streets begin to lose their light then…





…and at the steps, at 8:30, the sun just dips below the horizon line. We watch a dinner party at a rooftop and I wonder if eating this way on a regular basis, in such glorious light and before happy crowds helps the digestion and livens the senses.





This time we, too, have the presence of mind to reserve an outdoor table and it is indeed magnificent to eat outside. Tucked in a quiet alley, the lights glitter and the wine sparkles and it is, in all ways, a heavenly meal.

Keeping to the habit of ordering that, which is very regional, I eat a big bowl of pasta with shaved white truffle, followed by a plate of sliced beef with artichoke. Roman food is essentially comfort food done at the highest level of professionalism. It is a cuisine that you love because of what it means to accomplish -- the highest level of bliss.





We are not far from the Trevi and so we detour to take another look at the craziness that congregates here every hour of the day. It is all of Rome (though without the traffic fumes) – the art, the food, the crowds, the dazzle – all here, at the edge of a pool of water loaded with coins.





Time to head back. We follow a group of older men, walking arm in arm, and we walk that way too, because after a great meal, it’s good to lean just a little as you hike the long road home.

Time to be tourists. Leave the city of today, forget about her markets and cafés. Roll back to the beginning. The birth of the Empire that started here and went in all directions, before things sort of unraveled.

It’s a pleasantly hot and sunny day. We set out toward Piazza Venezia, walking down from our hotel, through the cheerfully yellow blocks of homes, stores and places of work.



If you begin at the Venezia, at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, then I suppose you cover all bases: here is a monument to those who have died in wars of yesterday. And there were a lot of battles and wars. To say nothing of adventure killings, pleasure spectacles of murderous games – all there. Or, all here, as we are standing in a place where it all began.

Okay, from the white typewriter – the dreadful to some, lovely to others, Monument that dominated Ancient Rome’s skyline, place of the Tomb mentioned earlier, looking out on Rome. Just to get our bearings.




It’s interesting to note the rules here: can’t sit, lean, eat, drink etc. Understandable. The space is large, but it is after all, a tomb. The guards unleash torrents of words against those who forget and, say, lean on a something. Very intimidating. The women guards are the loudest. It’s like getting scolded by the meanest teacher in grade school.

We are, therefore, very careful.

We take in the views from all sides, including toward the Colosseum…




… climb a few more steps and note that we have far too few bottles of water for the long hours in the hot sun. We purchase supplements at the café and walk on…

…to the Capitoline. This is our big museum stop – I’m going to say it is the oldest museum and surely what it holds is very old. Roman sculpture. Inside and out. Photographed from all angels. Admired by the young and old.










I lean on a column, thinking it’s just a piece of rock and get the Italian guard scream. Full of apologies, I explain that I didn’t know. She’s heard it all, I’m sure.

Inside, we read bits of history, quietly, reverently.
Did you say the flocking geese warned of the approach of the gulls?
No, of the approach of the Gauls.
I’m learning.

The Museum has a lovely terrace cafe and we linger for a while over lunch there. At the table next to ours, a woman sits alone and looks out toward Rome's rooftops. That's me, years back. All those years and years of solo travels!





But today, I am happily in the company of someone who makes me smile and smile.




This one:





Oh, wait. You probably wanted to see the view that captured our attention during the lunch hour(s). Here it is: Roman rooftops.





We leave the museum, where temporarily we have suspended our modesty, starring with admiration at the human form in all its sculptured splendidness, and where we refreshed ourselves next to photos that would, in other parts of the world, make some blush.





Outside now, I watch as a mom asks her youngest to take a photo of the sister and mom.





They're by the Roman Forum. And so are we. You could regard the idea of strolling here in the hot sun as sort of insane. But really, it’s the best place to stroll if you happen to be in Ancient Rome in midafternoon. Quiet. With the smell of Mediterranean foliage.










Again, there’s much to photograph, including the elements of art that are placed here deliberately, to juxtapose the significance of art elsewhere (Peru) and of another era (contemporary).





We spend a while here, even though you could regard it as sort of a sad place – destroyed by time, traffic, weather, tremors – every natural and human-made disaster. A mere several thousand years of history, reduced to rubble.


Our final stop is at the Colosseum. More water bottles. Higher prices. More people here. Indeed, swarms of people – school groups, tour groups, they all come here – the pictorial focal point of Rome.

My daughter and I stroll on all accessible levels of the amphitheater. It’s not yet the height of the season and the place is large. Not impossible to find a quiet spot. To take a photo and make it appear almost empty, despite the chaos of people coming and going.





The arches reveal the colorful neighborhood that cropped up on the other side…





…or, depending which way you look, the crumbling structures within.





I say to my daughter that it’s awfully dirty. Traffic, dust – they leave dark stains on the stone. But maybe it is a good way to see it. Cars scream past, oblivious. We move on in time, barely remembering that others have played and waged wars and done battles on these grounds not so long ago.

Outside the Colosseum we find a café that puts color right up front. A welcome change from antiquity.





As we walk away from Ancient Rome, I am reminded that this is home to families, to children, who still find strips of grass to play in and who probably barely notice that they are doing so against the backdrop of walls and columns.





Our dinner picks up on the modern. And on the color. It’s at Trattoria – a “new Sicilian” kind of place.





It’s quiet and serene and it knocks down stereotypes by avoiding the use of onion and garlic. And yet, the Sicilian is there: in the chickpea flatcakes, the caponata siciliana, the octopus and potatoes, the fried cheese.





Delicious!

It’s late and my daughter leads me through winding streets that seem somehow familiar. Ah, there we have it – the Trevi Fountain at night.





Policed here as well – after all, all the coins, and crowded, sure, of course, but still, not as much as it will be two months from now. And anyway, you can always find a spot for intimate conversations.





And if not here, then in a neighborhood café. Or tea shop.





Shoes off, plop down in bed, fall asleep. The next day should be more modern. But not entirely. A mixture. But wait – all days are a blend. Rome is like that.

My feeling has always been this: Rome is a mammoth. It’s impossible for me to find her pulse. The city’s intractable. Even as I had a fierce youthful crush on Italy (what young woman hasn’t), I’d stop by for a handful of days here, shrug my shoulders and move on. Half a dozen visits later I still feel that I know her least well of all the major European capitals. I don’t mean the sights – I checked those off dutifully. But the heart of the place remains a mystery.

And so it was a thrill to have my younger daughter tell me that she would love a week in Rome for her annual European vacation with me. Like me, she loves Italy. Like me, she studied Italian in college. Like me she felt that we had, on past trips here, not gotten enough of Rome.

A Roman holiday.

My thought on challenging cities (that is -- ones where you typically spend more than a dozen hours out walking, and it’s hot, and there’s a lot of noise and traffic) is that, at the end of the day, you need to return to a room you love. And for people on a strict budget, this is a city where inexpensive food is often great, but a lovely room for less than a small fortune is nearly impossible to find. But perseverance and luck often work wonders. Not a great name (in my opinion), but perfectly fantastic rooms, all hidden on the upper floors of an old building, a short stroll from the Centro Storico: Suite Dreams. (You may thank me for this tip someday, if you travel here.)



We have come prepared to do the city right: many books, a daughter who actually studied Roman history, a love of reading about destinations before getting to them, pages and pages of restaurant reviews – all that, we have all that. And still, I cannot help it. I ask the hotel proprietor for help just on this first day. He’s a restaurant man (he runs his own on the outskirts of the city). He looks at my lists, frowns, shakes his head at half the choices we’ve so carefully identified, finally nods his head and points to one.

That one. Tonight, you should eat there. This is a city that so loves to eat that even now, in the shoulder season, you need to book a table at the popular places. And so, our first Roman act is to book a table at the Maccheroni.

And now the trick is to stay awake until the hours when Romans set out to dine (you show up before 8 and the place will either be closed, or full of British guests, whose stomachs demand food before the sun sets).

We walk.





Up one street, down the next. To the Spanish steps, remembering when nearly twenty years ago we struggled to stay awake right here, on our first day in Rome with two very little girls. The girls have grown, the views have stayed the same.





On this first day, we don’t dare sit down. We watched movies the whole flight over and somewhere in that time on the plane, we forgot to sleep.

And while I’m on the subject of the flights over, do you mind if I throw in these two photos from the flight out of Paris (where we connected to Rome)? Because never is it more obvious that l’Etoile (the place where the Parisian Arc de Triomphe stands) means "star" than when looking down, on a flight over the city.





…and never is it more obvious that Rome is a Mediterranean place than as you look at the countryside on the approach, also from up above.





…and I may as well throw in here that our ride from the airport was also in train cars that could only be Italian: on the older side, but very colorful.





Now, back to our stroll.





Except now it is evening and we are hungry and sleepy and dinner is still hours away. We sit down at Piazza Navona – which is sort of the equivalent of sitting down on Piazza San Marco in Venice or della Signoria in Florence: people watching nirvana.

We sip prosecco and eat ice cream (if the idea of eating ice cream just hours before dinner strikes you as odd, you haven’t traveled with people who love to eat local stuff at any and every opportunity; besides, I’m talking about some serious hours of walking).
















And then we stroll some more. Just for that elusive first grasp. And again, luck is with us, because I think in those evening hours, Rome began to slowly poke out. In the dark streets of the old town, in the opening restaurants, with tables stuck in every conceivable spare corner…





...in doors, opening, people stepping out -- for a pause. To chat, to get a sip of water...
















… in the fading light by the Tiber river, with the dome of St. Peter’s on the other side.






Finally, we are at a decent eating time. We make our way to the Maccheroni, so very aware that we are at the height of artichoke season…





…and in general, in the very midst of the Mediterranean growing season.

The food is delicious, copious, simple but heavenly: artichokes done in the Roman way, pasta stuffed with zucchini flowers, a carafe of wine and jugs of water. All very very fresh and honest.










The cook tosses pasta in the visible to us kitchen, then smile as we wolf down platefuls of his creations.





It is a fine, fine evening.

We walk back to our crisp, white room. I throw myself on the bed and barely remember to take off my shoes.

Waiting between flights now, thinking how very perfect the month of May is. In Madison it can be a notch on the cool side, but the vivacious colors and robust greens (as opposed to the tired greens of August) more than make up for this. And, it's too early for mosquitoes in May. How very wonderful!

The trouble is that this same perfection extends to the other side of the ocean as well. Landing in Paris, I am always enchanted with the color of the fields, the feeling of energy outside, the crispness of the foliage. No one is on vacation yet (even as May here is full of long holiday week-ends) and so you can blend into the stream of daily life -- something that's not possible in the summer as you elbow your way through crowded cities (crowded with visitors like yourself) and even more crowded south-bound highways and trains.

So it is with great joy that this year I got to split my May between the States and Europe. And now I am just about to embark on this second half, over here -- with the hope of good weather and many many good walks.

But I have one flight still to go. And a daughter next to me for the week. I'll post once we get settled in at our final destination, just a little southeast of here.

That says it all, right? In transit. From one space and mindset to another. With very sketchy Internet to start me off.

I look out and think -- it's a beautiful day outside. Someday, Internet connection issues will be history and all that will be relevant will be the brightness of the light and the leap into another week of strong, beautiful human connections.

And why wait. Let me leap into the latter and forget about the Internet until I reach the other side of the ocean.

Until tomorrow then.

Nonstop. I worked like a horse today. Because, you see , I had this dream -- that in the next four weeks, I would work at a bare minimum.

For the first time, I didn’t even go down to the Saturday Farmers’ Market. (For dinner, we ate frozen stir fry. Even as the season is bursting with fresh flavors.)

But by late afternoon, I needed a pause. I couldn't ignore it anymore: the day was absolutely brilliant (and with that brilliance comes an unpleasant surprise for those of us who rushed the planting season – tonight we face a danger of frost).

Trees in bloom, farmers working, cats prancing (under peach tree blossoms) –what a day!




















Intoxicating!


At home, I find a package waiting for me. I have many wonderful and enormously kind commenters on Ocean and I truly value the friends I have made through blogging. But one who especially deserves mention today is "danDe" – a commenter who has an infinite capacity for generosity, both in his comments and in his attitude toward family, friends and the occasional struggling “artist.”

Today, he sent me a woodcut print that he had done of an Ocean photo from last December. (Did I tell you that he is an accomplished artist? Find his work here.) It’s so beautiful that I have to include a picture of it here for you (with many heartfelt thanks to you, dande!).





Can a person chase dreams through art? Through writing? Through pruning peach trees? Through travels with her daughters? Or with an occasional traveling companion? Yes.

Tomorrow morning, I’m off. Be patient. It’s a long trip. Where to? Not to Florence, but close. Keep checking. Eventually, once I arrive, I’ll post.

By midnight, I was home. It was quite the trip back, but if my goal was to pull in before Friday, I succeeded.

And then it was a treadmill run, but without the exercise. My list alternately grew and contracted as I churned through mostly office work. I did not mind. Walking from the bus stop toward the Law School, I thought that the building (looking from the back) never looked lovelier. Something about the pink and green framing of it…




From my office, I watched students slowly trickle toward the Union for the graduation ceremonies. Radiant smiles, cameras snapping, friends hugging -- all there, parading below my window.





And so it was a fine day. Of good views and productive hours. Now, let me hope for a repeat tomorrow. Only, can we add a little sunshine, please?

When did our conversation change? When did we start thinking about maybe another trip out here? At what point did I think that maybe Sharon Springs can have a small corner of the vacation market again?

Probably not until this morning, when Ed and I pulled up to the Black Cat Café before our drive back to the Midwest.

The Café was open now and the proprietor was there, behind the counter, chatting to the patrons who streamed in steadily for a coffee, or doughnut, or something more substantial.










Are you from here? I ask him.
Oh my gosh, no! From the city… moved to Connecticut … too suburban there … sold the house and moved here.
We’re from the houses up on Washington Street– Ed explains.
Oh! So you know the lady that comes down here still…
My aunt.
And the gentleman in the yellow house? With his sons?
My cousins.

We chat about the opening up of the American Hotel, the attempt to serve food at the Roxboro…

And I notice a difference in the way that I’m listening. I hear about these little efforts at rebuilding community and I think that maybe there really is one here. Not snuffed out yet, no, not at all. And I think – maybe even now, without the sulphur baths, you would want to come here. For the quiet, rural life. For the opening of this café, and that hotel, and the gallery up the street, and the soap store down the road. And the good New York wines in the liquor store. Maybe…

We drive away reluctantly. We would have liked to stick around a little, gossip some, but I have a flight to catch and work to do and so we say good bye and leave.


I should back up a little. Yesterday, we visited the richer neighbor – Cooperstown. Do you know it? It’s also a village, some twenty miles west of Sharon Springs. True, it’s at the shores of a lovely little Lake Otsego, but this isn’t the draw: it is the village that claims to be home to American baseball. And with those bragging rights, it has pulled in a tourist traffic that would make any resort town blue with envy. Here, after all, is the great Baseball Hall of Fame.

Me, going to a Baseball Hall of Fame? I know – it’s an insane idea. Not that I don’t get baseball (like, say, football). I know the basic rules, I even once owned a mitt (I was 10 and I was drawn to American icons). But I just don’t follow the stuff. Still, Cooperstown is a place where Ed went numerous times with his family -- for the museum, for sailing, for a fancy lunch at the Otsego Inn. So I was curious.


Cooperstown. What can I say. It’s where Sharon Springs would be if sulphur baths were half as popular in this country as baseball. Cooperstown is doing very very well.





I hesitate before spending the money on an entrance ticket to the Baseball Museum. They charge a lot. People will pay a small fortune to see the dusty, well worn shoes of Babe Ruth. Or the authentic bricks of the home where Hank Aaron once lived. But, it’s the thing to do here and I like reading small bits of history. Even if it’s baseball history.





True, in the Hall of Fame, I don’t have the feeling that others may have here – of standing among giants – but it’s a fascinating place nonetheless. With an aura to it. Letting you believe that this is important stuff! These are our heroes, our accomplished men of sport! Not many women celebrated here (I counted one), that’s for sure, but then, baseball has never been very open-minded about such things as gender. And why should we care. As I sit through a film clip that asks us to sing along to "Take me out to the ballgame…” (Ed almost leaves at this point, but I hold him back), I think – this is fine. A good rousing song and a few more rooms of baseball bats and old uniforms. Yeah. Way better than sulphur springs. I guess.



Cooperstown’s inns never closed in the way that Sharon Springs inns did.





Cooperstown also has a main street that is lined with stores selling baseball paraphernalia.

And I think – what a drag. This isn’t a village to bring your relatives to for long dinners of corn on the cob and grilled one thing or another. It’s a tourist destination, mostly, by the looks of it – for men in baseball caps and hours of watching The Game under their belts.

Ed and I stroll toward the lake and picnic on a bench in the well tended park. The waters are quiet and very beautiful. Empty now. Not quite the summer season yet. Ed talks about days of learning to sail here with his father.





Success invites the successful and as we stroll, it becomes obvious that property values here are significantly different than up in Sharon Springs. Homes are well cared for. Painted on a regular schedule. And on this bright May afternoon, the gardens look remarkable.

Ehhh… Too fussy. The place not only has a money-making baseball motif to it, but it also has that feeling of privacy and wealth, rather than pulling together and creating community (I do think that it’s rare for the two to overlap).

Ed and I drive past a tennis court. We get out and volley the ball for a while, enjoying the feeling of spring.

And eventually, we leave, driving the backroads east again, past small villages that are clearly struggling. But not unbeautiful in their simplicity and quiet. You have to believe that kids still come by to the store for candy and that they get a break if they don't have the right change.





Ed has an appointment with an attorney. A local guy who knows everything about the villages here. We spend a while with him – too long probably, but it’s so easy to lapse into idle talk here.

We stop at the village right next to Sharon Springs: Cobleskill. That’s where you’ll find the closest grocery store. And the Bull’s Head Inn, where Ed and his family would occasionally come for dinner.





What did you order then? – I ask. (He wont admit to ever liking beef and it’s fun to tease out the truth about past eating habits)
Oh, you know, the same stuff.
Steak?
Oh, probably not so much.
Did your mother order steak?
Yeah, sure…
Did she eat it all? (His mother looked pretty svelte in the photos I looked at the other day.)
No, not the whole thing…
Did she take the leftovers home?
Oh no, not that. You know, we finished it up for her.
Ah.


In the last rays of the sun, we pace through the Sharon Springs property again, imagining what would be done with it in the years ahead. In the melon yellow evening light, the grandparents' house looks again splendid. For a minute, the decay, the peeling paint, the too-old windows are hidden from us. As if the old lady wants to be remembered for what she once was -- a place of elegance and warmth.





And again I feel nothing but sadness for the fate of these houses, for the dwindling connection that so many feel toward this land.

One last peak, from behind the lilac bushes and we turn our backs to her, retreating for the last time to the cousins' house.





I fall asleep early and Ed tells me I sleep for twelve hours. He exaggerates, but not by much.



We are driving now toward Rochester, New York where I have a plane to catch. We pass apple orchards, beautiful apple orchards…





…and we talk about how great it would be if Sharon Springs had a farmers market – with the apples and cheeses and produce from the area. And how beautiful the littlest house, the Button House would be if some took it under their wing. And how wonderful it would be to stroll into town and get a coffee and gossip about the food at the Roxboro, or the art gallery, or the future of Sharon Springs.


We continue due west. One last stop, just one final pause. At the northern edge of the Finger Lakes, we get out of the truck at Seneca Falls. You probably don't know that this town was the inspirational model for Bedford Falls, of It's a Wonderful Life fame. You probably do know that this was also the home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

There's a Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, honoring accomplished American women. It's tiny! And rather lean in demeanor. Truly, it should not be viewed immediately after a visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I remember a wall mounting from the Baseball Museum where the question was posed: should a baseball player earn as much as a Nobel Prize laureat? Maybe. But here's mine -- should a Hall of Fame honoring women be so poorly funded comapred to a Baseball Hall of Fame? Maybe not. I'll say this much -- the entry fee is a fraction of the one in Cooperstown.


So ends our road trip. Maybe we’ll go back to Sharon Springs, maybe not. Keep reading Ocean in the years ahead.

In the meantime, I have a week-end ahead packed with details, most having to do with making sure that I have with me all that I need for the month ahead: exams to grade, numerous texts to read – that’s the serious stuff -- and also proper attire for warm city life and cold country ramblings. I'm relocating to the other side of the ocean for a month come Sunday. But first I have to get myself to Madison today. Last I heard, I wont be making my connection.

I can't believe riding back with Ed in his rickety truck would have been more reliable than using a return flight ticket from the east coast. Life is so unpredictable!

After my previous post, a commenter wrote: one of the saddest things around is a long empty house. Fascinating, but sad.


Ed and I wake up to a crisp and brilliant Tuesday. Inside, the cousin house has heated up to a toasty big oven.
What’s the heating system here? -- I ask.
Primitive – Ed answers. He explains about oil and hot water and hissing radiators, but my thoughts are wandering as I look around the room where we spread out our sleeping bags. There is so much that is old here! An entire set of the Encyclopedia Britannica on the shelves. The 11th edition, published in 1910. The room is stuffy now, but we dare not open the ancient windows. The wallpaper shows water damage in the walls. In some rooms, old furniture is stacked to the side. But, the kitchen is modern and we see a copy of an Alice Waters cookbook lying around. And, Ed has us connected to WiFi in no time.

I try not to misplace things, but in a room with someone’s clutter, it’s hard. We spend a good half hour looking for my misplaced watch. As a result, I am now familiar with every dust ball around our sleeping area on the floor.

I need some fresh air.

We walk down to the village and look around. Sharon Springs is one fat chapter in a history book. But it feels like that chapter has come to a close. The spa hotels, the gazebos, the sulphur baths – they defined the Main Street not too long ago, but now they’re shut down. Left standing, but in disrepair, they are not glorious at all. They are a sad reminder of how shifting tastes can ruin a village. Or at least strip it of its significant markings.






There are two or three cafes in town, but all are closed for one reason or another. I search for a cup of coffee and finally find one in a pizza place. The grocery stores have shut down several years back but there is a liquor store, and a place where you can get your nails done. On the outskirts, you can still pull up to Dairlyland for a soft swirl ice cream cone. And some fried chicken tenders.





In the afternoon, we set out to inspect the family houses. Besides the cousins’ place, there is the grandparents’ grand place and the small “Button House” – probably the oldest of the three. In addition, there are the out buildings -- garages, a greenhouse, sheds...

We begin with the grandparents’ place.

On the outside, you immediately notice the peeling paint and places where the wood is warping. But on the inside you begin to appreciate what years of great care can do to a home. It all looks so perfectly preserved! What, to me, is so disconcerting is that nothing has been touched here for decades. The closets have linens, neatly folded, discreetly covered in the old world style with a hanging sheet. The smell is of camphor and mothballs. An old trunk has a beautifully printed card on it: “this trunk was last inspected and cleaned in June, 1966.” The grandfather’s room has jars of his knickknacks in the closet. His shoes are tossed to the side --- untouched for decades. In the room where Ed’s parents occasionally stayed (before the young family took over the Button House), a closet is full of his mother’s clothing. Things that predate Ed’s childhood, I’m sure. No one has touched anything here either. If any relative passed through here in the last quarter century, there is no indication that she or anyone ever entered these rooms. (And certainly there are enough rooms here that you could bypass the main ones and still do well by yourself.)

In the third floor rooms, Ed shows me the fire station and doll house his father and aunt played with as children. On one wall I see war helmets hung by the window. Which war? The first? The second?





We go out on the roof. Slate – Ed shakes his head. Who uses slate anymore. I'm thinking -- these slates sell for a lot at Crate & Barrel. As cheese plates.





The reality is that there is no future for this house. Too big, too old, too costly, sitting here in a depressed rural community – a beautiful, aging misfit.


Down the hill, the Button House is in far worse shape. The walls and ceilings in some rooms have given up and crumbled to the ground. The furniture is in place, the dishes here, too, are still in the kitchen cupboards, but it’s as if someone chased the inhabitants out in the middle of a meal. And then poked holes in the house. The shell is damaged even as the rooms are left alone. The ancient TV, the crank phone, the old clocks, books, Currier and Ives prints – still there, as if waiting for the family to return.



We walk through the former gardens, past grape vines, the apple orchard, past the buckled pool, the shattered greenhouse. You should have seen the care my grandmother took with the gardens. My aunt too! There were flowers everywhere. And as I’d run up from one house to another, I’d pass relatives sitting on the porch, always with a question for me, a good word.

But here is the brutal truth, the bottom line, really: these houses, untouched for all these years, must eventually be stripped and taken apart. Just as rebuilding the spa hotels seems like a wistful and ultimately futile endeavor (for whom? for what reason?), so, too, investing in these mammoth houses makes no sense at all. Not here, in the little village of Sharon Springs.

And it is so sad for me to see this. Being raised in Europe, I have always missed the mixing of the old and new here. And now, I am walking through a village with a remarkable and rich history and that village is about to lose its markers of a fascinating era. It'll have a clean slate, eventually to be filled with more practical homes and convenience stores, or in a worse scenario – by nothing at all, so that the entire village will have moved on. To Florida or Texas maybe.

Even though it is so pretty in this upstate New York region!






We eat dinner at one of the old, boarded up hotels – the Roxboro.





The place has been taken over by a local couple. Even though there is already one restored hotel in town, they're full of optimism for this one as well. Thus far, they've reopened the dining room. Three courses for $9.95 if you come before 6. An old woman and her son sit at a table at one end of the room. We are at the other end. The silence in the room is palpable.

If they reopen the hotel rooms, who will stay here?





We drive to the edge of Sharon Springs. At Dairyland. Ed orders a vanilla milkshake. We take turns sipping it as we return for the night to the cousins' house.

We sit in an empty dining room, waiting for our pizza. A rotary banner is leaning against one wall. Each of the dozen or so tables has a small American flag stuck in a cup of gold and red sparkly streamers. Paper placemats advertise local businesses. The rooms looks much like it probably did when it first opened for business, almost 100 years ago.

We're in the village of Sharon Springs. A place full of good childhood memories for my occasional traveling companion, Ed.


(On the approach:)
















His great grandparents picked this location (some 200 miles north of NYC) to build a summer residence. They were part of the wave of immigrants from Eastern Europe who must have been used to the custom there of taking curative sulphur baths. Sharon Springs has such baths -- once so fashionable for the vacationing community, now closed up. The habit never really caught on here (even as in Poland, people still travel to resorts that boast curative waters).





You could say that Sharon Springs rocked, for about 100 years (say 1870, until maybe 1970). Hotels sprung up. Musical events took place in (quaint to my eye) gazebos. The Sulphur Springs created vapors for inhaling, waters for bathing, mud for spa treatments. Saratoga Springs, the competing New York destination for those inclined toward sulphur spring treatments flourished as well, but Saratoga Springs discriminated against Jews (and eventually against communists – Polish nationals were not permitted to visit during my childhood years in New York) and so the immigrants and their families settled in Sharon Springs. With rail access to New York City (back then), it was a magnificent vacation spa village!



the Roxboro: now closed, except for the dining room




the American Hotel: closed for a while, trying to capture now the b&b market




Inside the American: remembering the glory of the Springs


Ed’s family residence here is vast. Several rambling houses, each more than 100 years old, with wrap around porches on some and more rooms than I could keep track of. On summer week-ends here, the rooms were full of cousins, aunts, uncles.


But eventually, the fortunes of this vacation village declined. Sharon Springs still drew Holocaust survivors here after World War II, but in time, the hotels faced a dwindling tourist base. And, too, the custom of building large family vacation homes for all those sons, daughters, cousins diminished in popularity, as cousins, sons and daughters and their children and grandchildren embraced a new freedom of movement, choosing instead to vary their travels: to warm climates, overseas, anywhere. Sadly, the old homes of grandparents and great grandparents stand mostly empty now.





One of the family buildings here, however, is still used by Ed’s cousins and the caretaker opens it up for us as we pull in late in the evening.





A shame the other houses are so neglected, the caretaker mutters. They were once so beautiful. But, no one wants to come to Sharon Springs. Not much to do here. It’s no Cooperstown (!). No work here, either. People drive to Albany (fifty miles away) to find jobs.

The waitress at the restaurant where we wait for our pizza is young.
You like it here in Sharon Springs?
It’s my mother’s restaurant. I’m just helping her out. But all my friends have moved away. Just today I found out that my best friend is moving to Texas! Texas! I cried for two hours!
So you think you’ll stay here, with your mom?
Uh-uh. I’m finishing up some school work. I’m thinking of moving to Florida. My brother’s there.


Earlier in the day, Ed and I work through eighteen crates of family belongings, stuck in storage in Brewster, just outside NYC. Neither he nor I are big keepers of stuff and to sort and segregate family belongings is enough to make you want to run home and throw the last of your own junk away.

The supervisor at the moving and storage company is patient with us. Occasionally I go to his office room to warm up. I lean against the door for a few minutes and study the numerous commemorative army photos from Vietnam and Iraq. The man also likes guns and I am half tempted to look through some of the gun magazines piled on top of his cabinet. On the wall he has a poster announcing his strong feelings for Jane Fonda (kill the bitch) and for Woodstock (the only Woodstock that I recognize is my rifle). He goes in and out of the office, giving orders on which crates to bring from where and we go through another, and another (looking for boxes with tiny green stickers on them). My hands are dark with the dust from another life.

In one crate, I find several boxes of family photos and I spend some time looking through these. Ed doesn’t have photos at home and the people I’ve heard about in the years that I have known him have been faceless for me for a long, long time. Don’t you want to take some home? They’re not mine. He answers briefly and continues methodically opening boxes, and packing them up again.



It’s cold now up here, in Sharon Springs. (Our work in Brewster is done and we’re here for several days to take stock of the place.) I think the growing season is close to that in Madison. Maybe even a week behind. A far cry from the Carolinas, or even DC. The caretaker shows us where to turn on the heat. I wander through the rooms – twin beds in most of them, as if a family with a dozen kids once lived here.

Tomorrow, I say to Ed. We’ll explore the other, more neglected houses tomorrow.
I used to walk down to the general store and buy a paper. He tells me as we spread out our sleeping bags. I remember plates of corn on the cob and fresh string beans from the garden...

We are in DC for less than a day. With a long drive ahead of us on Sunday, we shouldn’t linger.

But we do. It’s a sunny, warm Sunday, a holiday for families. If beaches are at their best when empty, DC is best when the vast green common spaces are filled with families.

Ed and I leave an apartment full of still sleeping people, pick up a latte at a café (where, too, people watching is completely satisfying...)





…and proceed toward the Mall.

At the Museum of American History, he gets lost in the exhibits. It is at once sweet and frustrating to be with him in these places. The classic cereal box reader should not be let loose in rooms full of informational tableaus. But I find that of all the museums here, this one is such a perfect match to what’s outside. Washington is the one city in America that, in my mind, wears its past openly, at every turn. A tumultuous past, sad and thrilling, all in one fell swoop. And so I am again looking at meticulously put together exhibits that churn through communities, inventions, presidents, inaugurations – like packed pages of a thick, bold, colorful magazine.


Outside, the day is equally dazzling. We do a shortened stroll past my favorites – up the hill with the Washington Monument, down to the Monument to the Second World War, and finally, along the Reflecting Pool toward Mr Lincoln. All the while watching Mother’s Day unfold on this magnificent spring day.






















We meet my daughter and her visiting friends for brunch – a late, long, wonderful brunch which cannot end because when it does, Ed and I have to find our truck, pack it up and head north.

One more minute, just one more story from across the table, one more bite, a swallow, a glance her way…





… and off we go. Six hours later, we unload in Danbury, Connecticut. We’re here for just one night, so that we can go back to Brewster and look through Ed’s family’s storage unit again. The old truck is holding up well. It’s time to load it up and slowly meander back toward the Midwest.

We wake up to someone cranking his van outside our motel door. Motel life. I’d forgotten the quirky bits and pieces of it. [I actually love our place on Hatteras Island (Cape Pines Motel). But you have to give up on the idea that a room should have a view. The best views are toward a tiny swimming pool. Our window looks out on the power station. And of course, on the nose of our pick up truck. But, oh, is this place a bargain! And is it ever clean! But it's the location that really pushes it to the top of the heap for me. Here, at Cape Pines, you feel the pace of island life.]

More noise. Ed asks if it’s raining. I look outside.
No… I think you’re hearing the wind.

It’s the wind alright. Positively howling by the time we’re up and moving.

It’s our last day, not even a full day, and I want to go up to the top of the Hatteras lighthouse. Tallest in the country! No. Too windy. The National Park Service staff is insistent. You have no idea how much stronger the winds are up there!

I believe them. They are forceful enough even at the base. You could push a plane into the air with this kind of a gust.

We're satisfied to poke around at the visitors' center. We watch a mom take a group photo of high school kids on a field trip. How many photos were framed over the decades in front of this candy striped tower? Will these kids look quaintly clothed to their grandchildren, thumbing through an album fifty years from now?





I suggest we hike to the elbow bend of Hatteras Island. I read that it's the most south-eastern tip of the country. A funny characterization. Not southern enough, not eastern enough, but put them together and you have a winner!

We step out on the beach and we are hit by sand. Needles stinging every exposed part of your body. The day is slightly hazy, I admit it, but I swear you can see the movement of air as the wind pushes sand back into the water. Who is the powerful one now -- the ocean, or this blast of air that makes us look down to avoid a direct hit? Today, the wind has the last laugh. Even the birds appear to be struggling against its force.










We’re at the truckers’ entrance to the water. The fishermen are here, even though, I’m told, the fish aren’t biting today.











And because it’s the week-end, their families are here as well.





But we can’t hike down to the bend. The beach has been closed off just there. The National Park Service has determined that there are reasons to keep people out of the southeastern most tip of the country. It’s breeding time for a number of birds. Sea turtles, too. We're awed by these natural habitats. We're intruders. We turn around and head back to our truck.

We can hike down a path to the cape and bypass the protected beach area – I say to Ed.
The path isn’t hard to find, but at its end we encounter the same closures. Ah well. You could say that here, just at the edge of the beach, I am standing at the southeastern most part of the US. Bur for where the turtles and birds mate and reproduce.





Again we retreat. The birds and animals watch us leave.






The warm wind and moist air make us feel clammy and hot. Ed is more than ready for a swim. But I resist. It’s as if there’s too much to watch out here on this, the most beautiful beach on the continent. No, not people watch. Even on the week-end, the place is nearly empty. But the blowing sand, the movement of gulls, the dazzling waters of the Atlantic – they all grab my attention. As Ed plunges in grinning with pleasure, I stay satisfied with letting the waves crash against my legs, washing off the layer of fine sand.

Again the birds watch our antics and retreat if we move too close to their space.





And now we feel truly satisfied. We are done for now. The Outer Banks aren’t discoverable, really, not by people who breeze in and out like we do. Yet, in just four days, the islands have presented us with wildly different images of what it’s like to wake up to a spring morning here. We've tasted so much! Brilliant sunshine, stormy clouds, gentle breezes, gusty winds – we’ve had them all. Time to head north.






We leave Hatteras Island late in the afternoon. Our drive takes us past Kitty Hawk (still on the NC Outer Banks, but further north) and Ed suggests a quick stop at the memorial to the Wright Brothers, who launched the first heavier than air powered plane from here in 1903.

The monument is beautiful – perched high on a sand dune (stabilized by local grasses), much like the sand dune that was here a century back. I watch a boy run up to get a closer look.





The brothers came here from Ohio because the Outer Banks offered all that they needed for their experiment: a good wind, a soft, sandy base and vast open space. And as they launched their successful flight, a local photographer caught the moment.





There is a replica of the plane here. Indeed, you can stand behind it and put yourself back in time, camera poised, pushing your windblown hair off your face, waiting to see if this time, the plane will stay airborne...

Ed wants to study the exhibits inside the visitors' center. But I nudge him to hurry. We have a long drive ahead of us. And we have yet to eat a meal today. Still, we are the last to leave. As the guard gets ready to close the door after us, I ask him – why did one of the Wright brothers die so young? Typhoid. He ate some contaminated seafood. But not here. Further north.

We drive on as the sun sets somewhere toward the Midwest. We stop only for a minute -- to
pick up some fruit at a roadside market (becasue, of course, Saturday is market day!).






Five hours later, we're in Washington DC. We grab a late night pizza at a favorite U Street eatery and crash at my daughter’s home for the night. Happy Mother’s Day indeed! Now if only my youngest one wasn’t so far away!

Sometimes, here on Hatteras Island, I think – we get it. The ocean is powerful. We are mere grains of sand. It can move a village in a day. It takes us years to build one. Yes, mere crystals of sand.

Other times, I think we don’t want to remember. The ocean is our toy. We work hard year round. We come to its shores to release all those tensions. Water is cool. This is our playground.

On the Outer Banks, the further north you get, the more of a playground feel there is to the islands.

On the southern end of Hatteras, where we are, you don’t see it as much. People fish, sure. Trucks with fishing rods stuck to the nose are as common as SUVs are in America's suburbs. At the coffee shop, the salesclerk talks about going out to fish that afternoon. The weather is warm, sticky even. The winds have died down. Good fishing day. But this isn’t merely play. It’s a way of life.





Ed and I head up north a little ways, because that’s where the rentals are. He had wanted to take out a Windrider (a trimaran) – to try it out for possible future use. But the boat got sold and so we were left to check out the just opening rental shops that are putting out their windsurfers and the occasional Hobie Cat for the summer people.

In the village of Salvo, we find a Hobie Cat, ready for sailing. Or, at least, this little person is ready to let us take her out.





But her dad comes in and tells us the boat is spoken for, at least for the next couple of hours. Come back at 3. In the meantime, you can hang out at the Atlantic beach, just at the pier. You're lucky, you know. It's been too windy. This is the first day that I'm launching the Cat.

This baffles me. Ed worries about too little wind. The island person worries about too much.
You want your boat to come back. Ed tells me. Too much wind for him is too dangerous.


We find the pier alright. But it charges a dollar for a walk and ten for a fishing afternoon and so, after watching someone nail a tail to a post, we move on.





Salvo has many, many holiday rentals. All built on stilts so that the mad stormy waters can take their anger out on the sands and leave the structure alone. In the Midwest, we hide from storms below ground. Here, they run away by building up.





Every property has a for rent sign and many have a for sale sign. The prices are steep and the bragging is bloated. “Ocean view” – for any place that shows even a speck of water, no matter how obstructed.

The sands are forever shifting here and the beach is slowly taking over the first row of homes. Instead of shoveling snow, you shovel sand off your driveway.





Sand. Everywhere there is sand. The breeze kicks it up. The humidity is high today. The sand sticks to you. Inside the houses, they must surely have given up. Sand in the bedroom, sand in the kitchen.





Too close! What price for that water view? So that the homes will someday look like this forest that once stood here defiantly?





We walk for several miles up the beach and back again. The wind is picking up again and the surfers are out. Here’s a water enthusiast, sitting at a spot where civilization and oceanfront collide.





The water pushes forward, moving, crashing. Bringing to shore fantastic large shells -- a conch, the pearly oyster. I leave them behind. I’m not a collector. Besides, these look beautiful here, on the beach, where the water gently washes their form again and again.













On the other side of Highway 12, the sound side, the water is calmer and here is where scores of windsurfers come to play in the wind. I tell Ed he should do this. Someday. Next time? For now, we are happy to go off in the catamaran. We are not above playing in the sea. We are summer people.





The wind is perfect. In Brittany, where we last sailed together, the puffs of wind made the boat go from a crawl to a gallop (can you tell that I’m basically a landlubber?) in just seconds. Here, the speed is consistent and the sail sets well the entire time we are out. The water is so warm that I let my feet soak as we zip around the buoys marking traps for crabs (I'm guessing here). We lose our bearings briefly, then find our markings on the shore again. Out from the water, land appears very insignificant.

Ed never stops grinning.


We bring the boat in and Ed pauses to chat to the owner. They winter down in Costa Rica and rent boats here in the summer. They have been doing this for 23 years.
If business gets better, I’d like to split the year half and half (they home school their girl to make this work).
How is it so far this year?
Too early to tell.

Oh, the ever optimistic islanders! They think and work in ways that we can only pretend to grasp.

I know that Ed would like to swim, but I’m hungry and so we put off more water play until the next morning. We head back to the Captain’s Table and we eat our last dinner here. North Carolina clam chowder (it’s a clear broth), a glass of North Carolina wine, North Carolina shrimp and North Carolina crab cakes.









On Saturday we think we should pack up and head north. We did all that we set out to do here. Maybe it's time to get moving. Maybe.

We’re sitting at a place that serves breakfast late. Eggs over easy and grits. I watch as Ed adds milk and sugar to his bowl of grits. I break an egg over them. Loaded with pepper. Two people traveling together, with such different approaches to a plate of grits.

I read the forecast: hail, storms, strong winds. All today. At least it’s not a hurricane. Naturally, people here take storms in stride. You can't live on the Outer Banks if you're going to worry about wind and water.

The rain is starting now. We weigh our options and decide to go ahead with our plan to hop over to Ocracoke Island. It’s just south of us, but it can only be reached by ferry. Forty five minutes from our own island of Hatteras.

The rain is steady and for the first time in the Carolinas I feel the chill of a damp and soggy day. We park the truck in the ferry line and wait. I don’t smell a violent storm brewing, but it is nonetheless a very wet and windy day. I ask Ed if he thinks ferries sink in bad weather.
You should be so lucky. Instant law suit and a nice sum of money for your daughters.
I relax.
The ferry pulls away.







Ocracoke Island is an odd little place. To me, it looks like a soup ladle: the arm is one long road with protected shoreline on either side (the ferry from Hatteras docks at the very top of the handle). The soup-holding part is the village and harbor. Settled by the British, God knows how many hundreds of years back (remembering that in 1587, the first settlement was organized by Sir Walter Raleigh on Roanoke -- just a few islands north of where we are now), it’s been so isolated that the people continue to speak in a brogue that has been analogized to something akin to Australian English.

To me, Ocracoke looks magnificent on the handle part and sort of sad on the soup carrying part, where the people, especially visitors congregate. The shops, the motels, the rental huts look weather worn and mostly empty. The marina has very few docked boats. It's as if the party has moved elsewhere. Of course, to us, that's a good thing. The quiet is very beguiling. And yet, you feel for the locals who have given over their harbor to attract boat people and day trippers. Empty spaces mean lean times. Our motel keepers back on Hattaras have put a lot of money into cleaning up an old-style motel. They're paying their bills now, but just barely.



Ocracoke marina


But before we reach the village of Okracoke itself, we make a few stops along the protected shorefront. The long beach along the handle of the soup spoon is magnificent! Even on this gray and wet day.









In the middle of the “handle,” the National Park Service looks after the wild ponies of Ocracoke. At least they used to be wild. Once the road was build across the island (some fifty years ago), the ponies were thought to pose a hazard and now their movements are restricted to this small patch of land.





In the village, we stop at the Flying Melon (a New Orleans dude is cooking here and judging by the menu – I had a fried oyster po’ boy – he’s doing a good job of it). It’s lunch, it’s brunch, it’s a meal in between all meals and it’s quite okay.





But we both pass on dessert. Which says something.

We feel satiated and a little under-exercised. It’s gray still, but the rain has stopped. The storms neve came. The weather is never a sure thing here.

We visit a local museum and listen to tapes on how it was to live here some 100 years ago. Men fished, women took care of life’s essentials. Perhaps in that regard, not much has changed. Men who stay here like the crabbing and fishing. Women can find work mostly in tourism – especially serving and preparing food for others.

And every few years, a hurricane comes and covers the islands with water.



We leave on a late afternoon ferry as the skies reveal wide swatches of blue. Ed talks about sailing here on his coastal journey south some years back. He points out the breakers and the ribbons of shifting sand.





On the calmer side, we see huts perched off shore. Duck hunting cabins. We have them in Wisconsin except they're on firmer ground.





The skies are looking better now and Ed is anxious to hit the waves again. As the sun dips toward the horizon, we head back to our beach by the lighthouse.





I’m not interested in swimming. I play the good admiring companion who sits and watches the man work the waves. Occasionally I am diverted by beach life, coming out of hiding now that the day is nearly done.










On the way back to the motel, we stop and play tennis. One ball goes to the swamp. Ed retrieves it. I grin.

At the motel, we eat cheese and crackers and grapes and I catch up on fragments of work late into the night.

We are unprepared for it. The sunshine, the warmth – all of it. I studied the Net for weather patterns, but for once, all predictions (for storms and rains) were off. And here’s another thing: the seventies here are not the same as the seventies up north. Here, you sweat. At home you need a sweater.

I coax Ed out by late morning, but he is not ready for the beach. I sense trepidation. It’s one thing to sail down the coast of North America, solo, to pull up on small islands and pitch a tent and read a book until the light goes down, it’s another to go with your occasional traveling companion (me) to a beach place just to hang out.

So we start with the familiar – a game of tennis at the community center courts. If you hit the ball too high and it goes over the fence, you lose it, or you go down into the swampy undergrowth and look for it. Twice Ed hoists himself down into the marshes in search of a wild ball. I can't stop laughing.


And now we are loose and island ready. We walk to the beach unencumbered (except for the camera). It’s not a short walk – Hatteras Island bends here and the National Seashore commands a hefty chunk of land at the elbow. You have to enter the park by road and it takes a while to get to the shore. But, we are barefoot and the skies are blue and winds are perpetually blowing in our face. We talk of putting up a shack and staying here. It is a sign of contentment, nothing else. We have such shacks all over France and Italy and more recently – California, Connecticut and the Carolinas.

In afternoon light, the beach looks markedly different than at dawn. But its sharp, defined colors are equally stunning. And the place is still almost completely empty.





Ed sees the waves.





Let’s put our shoes down and go in!
No no. That’s not how you do it. You walk away from the beach entrance, find a spot, dig in and eventually, after much contemplation and discussion, hit the water.
(Ten steps later) Okay – this spot. Here. Now. I’m going in.

And he does. His powerful body is, for once, at the whim of a greater force. He rides the wave until the very end, then tumbles out onto the shore.





He does this again and again. Sometimes, he disappears under water for so long that I become uneasy. But, he emerges laughing, heaves himself out, stumbling unsteadily and goes back for another run.

I watch for a while...





...and eventually plunge in myself, though not nearly with his abandon. The undertow is strong and I struggle to stand up even in shallow water. Eventually I retreat to the wet sand and watch birds run toward the water and then away from the foaming wave.





Tired, Ed joins me on the sand and we build the sloppiest, most ridiculous sand castle. With moats and uneven turrets and a deep well in the middle. And then I coax him for a walk along the infinite coastline.

We see on the horizon the glimmer of metal. As we get closer, we realize that there is a short stretch where cars and trucks are permitted to drive down to the water’s edge. (This is a source of local controversy: there are those who want to keep everything, people included, off the ecologically sensitive waterfronts, and there are those who want to roll right down to the water and throw down their lines.)

…while the birds watch with amazement.




It’s a lazyman’s sport, I think.





You cast, and you need do nothing else for the rest of the hour.










We watch for a while and then head back toward the lighthouse and our path home.





Gulls keep us company. Their squawk, the crashing water and the gusts of wind make it at once a peaceful and sound-filled walk.







I’m hungry early, but dinners here are served early and the fishermen exerting all that energy out there, on the beach, like to eat early as well. We head toward a local favorite – the Captain’s Table. I order NC grilled shrimp and scallops.





Delicious. I ask the owner and a local fisherman who happens to be leaning at her desk when the season for soft shell crab starts.
Soon. In a couple of weeks. But you know, it seems that everything comes later these days.
The fisherman agrees. Next time have the tile fish. It’s in season right now.
And the grouper?
My husband (he is a fisherman and co-owner) doesn’t look for it often. Because of the limits. It doesn’t pay for him to go 30 miles off shore searching for it. He can’t bring in that much.
All your fish here are local?
Except for the oysters. We get those from the Chesapeake Bay.


We walk home along the main road. People wave to us. Friendly. At the grocery store, they ask us about our day.

At the playing field next to the school, we pause and watch a little league game. No one is hitting well, but the parents and friends are enthusiastic. The dads are coaching. One comes over and admits – I’m more nervous than they are.

A kid drops her bat to tie her shoe. The little ones out in the field crouch low and wait. The pitching machine throws out a ball. She misses. Strike three! The parents applaud, she runs off and the next one comes to bat. We retreat as the game goes into another inning.

The walk home to our motel becomes shorter each time we make our way along Route 12. Something to do with the familiarity of it by now.

Finally, I have time. At this moment, I have nothing pressing, nothing requiring immediate attention, nothing that has to be done today or tomorrow or the day after.

I can write in full sentences.


I’m on a pseudo road trip. To my law students, I would say it is a constructive road trip. It has elements of it, so let’s just call it that.

We’re on the east coast because Ed again has to review storage crates from his family belongings in New York. It struck me that a detour to the Outer Banks of North Caroline might distract him, especially since the man loves sailing more than life itself. And there are some mighty cool catamarans and trimarans to be had (or rented) down there.

But, my time, as always, is tight. And so we drove crazily, without attention to roadside anything, just so we could fit in a handful of days on the islands and then proceed up north to give more attention to estate issues.


We didn’t quite make it to Chapel Hill the first night (we were, I think, wise enough to call it quits after 850 miles, even though we had only 75 miles to go), but early the next day, we toddled in (en route to the islands) and, thanks to Ed’s friend who lives there, took a look around.

The UNC campus -- one of the oldest in the south -- is lovely, especially at this time of the year. The grass is truly greener here than on Bascom Mall. And their Mall trees have robust flowers!





(As does the garden of Ed's friend.)






We ate Carolina shrimp at the Carolina Inn…





…then waved good-bye and headed due east. Past lowlands and forests touched by swampy canals. Past meadows of poppies and cornflowers.






Do you know the Outer Banks of North Carolina? A thin strip of islands, reached by ferry or, from the north, by a series of long bridges? I found a place to stay at the very southern tip of the Banks – in the hardest to get to island (and therefore, I am hoping, the most beautiful of the lot).

A drive here at dusk is both exhilarating and a little disturbing. You feel like you’re putting a lot of distance between yourself and the rest of humanity. People who live here like the separation from the mainland. Me, I need a minute to adjust.


We cross the bridges, one after another. The day has been full of rain, but now the skies have settled. The air is warm and humid. The water is reflecting the still gray skies.

We pick up the one road that snakes down south from one island to the next. There are villages with small, weather beaten houses and a few stunning vacation rentals. Sand dunes rise to the left – the Atlantic side. But really, there is sand everywhere.











We reach our motel at Hattaras Island. It’s the kind of place I remember staying in when we took road trips across America in the 60s, in the family Chevrolet. It’s dark now. In the off season, you don’t see many people on the road. We pull up the rusty nose of the truck to our door. It’s quiet in our room. Except, somewhere in the distance, I hear the hum of the ocean.



In the morning, I am up at sunrise. I take the truck out to look around.

The lighthouse. The tallest in the country. Easy to find.





And right behind it, the ocean.





The morning mist blurs the border between sea and endless miles of sand. It is a canvas of such soft colors! I stand and watch the water chase the birds up and down the wet sand.

…But is it really a road trip if you spend 18 hours straight on the road?

We leave Madison at sunrise.




And we hit that corridor of highway boredom. Heading south, to Chicago... stuck in rush hour city traffic... through the industrial swamp hugging southern Lake Michigan... then onto the flat landscape of Indiana and only slightly more perky Ohio.


Ed and I share a love of the backroad, but this time we’re in a hurry and so we’re stuck on those never ending ribbons of highway that sound great in a Woody Guthrie lyric, but when you're on them -- feel as spiritless as a bowl of pasta with nothing on it.

We push forward, one book-on-tape after another, past billboards and gas stations and exits, tempting one to get off, get off.

I do most of the driving at first. Ed knows what he has to do to get me to take over – a few miles of working the wheel with his wrist (it’s comfortable that way! Out you go; I’ll drive).

Somewhere off the too-long highway in Indiana we make stops to borrow WiFi from parking lots of motels and fast food chains. We buy cheese and crackers and pickled mushrooms at a grocery store. Road food in a hurry.


By late afternoon, we finally cross over to West Virginia. Google has put us on a country road that twists around the hills of Appalachia. Bridges cross muddy waters, green forests hide old homes and private lives with untold stories.










But I am getting tired. In direct proportion to the fading light. Our goal for the day is Chapel Hill (Ed’s friend will overnight us there), but I protest that this is too ambitious. We begin the discussion as to whether we should pause for a rest in West Virginia, continue it in Virginia, culminating to a nonstop gentle back and forth on the wisdom of driving this late all the way across North Carolina.

In the end, it’s a little like childbirth: if you don’t choose the anesthetic early it becomes too late to benefit from it. Because even though we finally do stop, just an hour short of Chapel Hill, it is past two in the morning and the benefit of a fitful sleep is lost.

No matter. In a few hours the sun will be up again and we’ll continue east.

The fog was lifting, a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me...

A week-end of brilliant skies and soft May colors.

In the afternoon, my daughter and I drive south to Governor Dodge State Park. She asks for a hike in a park with a lake. Sure, of course. It’s easy here. We have lakes to please.





We follow a trail around the water. Hurried stories now, because there is little time. We have to fit it in.










It’s beautiful here. It is possible to understand that life can be at once simple and very magnificent.






I cook a favorite dinner and we eat it out on the balcony. It is past seven, but for the first time this year, we can do this. The evening is like a summer evening – calm, inviting, sentimental.





Before dawn, she catches her flight back to Washington and Ed and I set out east as well, but in a more rambling and rumbling way. She will be at her work desk by noon. Ed and I will be bumping along, hoping the 1992 Ford pickup will stay in one piece. We have a thousand miles before us today and another three hundred the next day. We’re equipped with sleeping bags and water in case we have a breakdown. If the roads are kind, I’ll post from North Carolina tomorrow.

She’s been living on the east coast for ten years now. All of her young adult years. But when she is home, in Madison, it’s as if she never left. Nearly all of her school friends have moved away, but I need not worry that she comes home to a social void. She is as happy on a solo walk, in the company of mom, or going for a motorcycle ride with Ed.

Always, a daughter's visit home includes a visit to the downtown farmers market. It is a beautiful morning and we stroll without purpose (I am leaving on Monday and so have nothing to buy) and without hurry.





Even as the sidewalk space for the market has grown, much of the content remains the same over the years and making the circle for the first time this season confirms that many familiar vendors are still here, starting their spring run of spinach, mushrooms, bedding plants, and, for the first time this season – asparagus. Predictably, flowers steal the spotlight. I prefer these to the vibrant reds of August. Perhaps because we have moved so quickly now from months of no color, to a market of yellows and pinks.





We usually begin the Downtown Market orbit at Café Soleil, my former place of moonlighting work, but one unexpected change this year is their decision to cut back on baked goods by 10:30 and switch to a lunch “menu” – a huge loss for all of us who don’t stop by until the late hours of the morning. If you’re as disappointed as we were – tell Tory and Traci you want the spice girls and chevre croissants back on the shelves for all of market time! Only in early-to-rise Midwest would week-end brunch munching have to come to an end before the sun reaches a decent warm spot in the vast skies above us.





No matter. We had always wanted to try Madison’s favorite market bread – Stella’s spicy cheese loaf – and we happily pull at warm twists of cheesy bread the rest of the market morning.





Only once do I remember that a week ago, I was in a Warsaw park. the flash comes when I see that a vendor has a small tray of these familiar little forget-me-nots.







In the afternoon, my daughter and I set out on a long hike. She loves the south Wisconsin hills and forests and so I take her on a segment of the Ice Age Trail that weaves its way to Devil’s Lake – to get a little bit of everything into the mix – the woods, the hills and lake.





We reach Devil's Lake late in the day, but I am nonetheless surprised at how empty it still feels. The lake side boats are laid out for the first time this week-end, but no one is using them now.





In another few weeks, this beach will be full of "city people" -- from as close as Baraboo, and Madison, to as far as Chicago. Though even then, it's always possible to find a quiet, contemplative spot with nothing to rattle the peace that extends over the clear water and the the forested bluffs.






We do not finish the hike until 7. The sun is low, but still warm. A honey warm of golden green tones.





If the trees aren’t fully green, they are at least delicately green. And on the forest floor, fern fronds show the baby fuzz of their delicate green bodies. Nothing is as it was two months ago, two weeks ago. And that’s a good thing.

When a daughter visits, time takes on different dimensions. You move from now, to how it was once, to how it will be two years from now and then you start all over again. And so the day fills.

I have a daughter here for the weekend and predictably, I have little to add to Ocean tonight. I’ll leave you with a picture of blooms from the morning market and a promise to come back to something of substance tomorrow.

A last long spell in my office today. I’m packing up books and materials to take with me, I'm saying good bye to my office neighbors, I'm heading home. It’s time for me to open up my summer office. Which, at least in spring, follows me and mixes freely with many days of no work at all. Or, no class-based work. Instead -- a hope for progress on my Great Writing Project.

Good-bye Bascom Hill – site of so many photos when nothing else in the course of my work day captured my eye.



boy, girl, dog


Hello open slate.

I’ll leave you with two thoughts for the first of May:

One comes from a graduating student who stopped by my office this afternoon. He said that, due to the economy, his employer deferred the starting date of his new job until January. Suddenly he has free time. I feel the pressure of spending it well! – he tells me.

Me too. I feel the pressure of spending these coming months well.

My second thought comes from my wise and wonderful office neighbor. I have often started my day by sharing slight worries with her. She’s just so good at diffusing anxiety that it’s become rather a habit. Her best piece of advice came today and I think it’ll hold me for at least the one or two months that I’m away. I leave you with it:

My very old aunt said to me – you shouldn’t waste time worrying. Things we fret about do not happen. The bad stuff comes from stuff we never worried about.


In the meantime, the sun sets on forests that are almost green, fields that are almost planted.