in transit

So it will be brief. I am in Minneapolis, heading east. It makes no sense, I know. But my travel choices rarely make sense to anyone.

I am listening to a guy making flight arrangements to Beijing and then somewhere south of that, still in China and I'm amazed at how commonplace this is now. You are no one in the business community if you do not have ties in (and occasional trips to) China.

This isn't as random a thought as it seems. Minneapolis is a stopover destination -- more common for those bound for China than, say, for Boston. And not too long ago I remember sitting in this room with a younger daughter -- the one whom I'm visiting this week-end. We were then returning from China. In transit. Waiting for the storms to pass.

There are no storms here today.

I’ll write tomorrow, from Cambridge, MA.

comfort

Suddenly, it’s so cold. I wrap a scarf twice around myself.

I can’t take the time to bike, to walk. Up early. Hearings, meetings, classes. Good, yes, it’s all good, but hey, did anyone notice how cold it is outside?

Ed says: let’s eat pasta. (Actually he first says: let’s eat Mexican, but I haven’t the time to drive to Madison’s newest attempt at south of the border fare.)

Comfort food. I rarely eat it anymore. And it isn’t because I haven’t the need for comfort. Especially when winter is hovering.






At the restaurant, Ed does what he is so good at doing when he is comfortable. He dozes off.





Food, soft light, cold air outside. Who can blame him.

midweek blues (and yellows)

Too much work again. The best I can do is give you two photos of bottles I came across today.

Are you complaining? Do you understand how hard it is to take a photo of anything in and around Whole Foods? Really!








Beyond that – nothing, Oceanwise. I didn’t even bike home by the lake path. I walked home along indifferent, if not repugnant University Avenue.

forest follies

I need to stock up on cider.

[Ed and I joined forces – however you may define those forces – two years ago, at an apple orchard; I mark the passage of time with his annual purchase of cider. Twelve gallons of it: one for each month, I guess.]

Like last year in mid-October, we head for Ski Hi, near Baraboo (so which is it? Ski, as in the sport or as in the celestial heavens?).

And you guessed it: at this time of the year, they’re all about selling apples and apple foods. Including very amazing pies, sky-high with apples.











And cider.

We walk through the orchards – beautiful at this time of the year. Markers of autumn against other markers of autumn.










looking down Ski Hi Road


It’s Sunday morning and it is still warm. Summer weather. Cider and pies are spread out on the back seat of the car (I buy one pie, Ed buys four. The man has an appetite for pie).


Ed has mapped out a hike for us and I just want to put this question out there: how is it that you can get freaked about getting lost when you are hiking within fifty miles of Madison?

Answer: ask Ed to map out a hike for you.

We’ll start cross country, through the forest.

There you have it: bramble and berry canes tearing at your clothes and skin, prickly spurs sticking to your socks: an Ed kind of hike.



Ed, in search of trail




finally, a clearing


Adventuring. He can never have enough of it. I’m fine with that, so long as it ends with a café at the end.

Thinking back, I forget about the branches hitting your face and the rotting logs that crumble as you lean against them for support. But I remember the still gentle colors of a season that can’t quite make up its mind.





We finally get lucky and stumble upon the Ice Age Trail which we take all the way up to Devil’s Lake.









Every Madisonian knows and loves Devil’s Lake, especially on a warm fall day that also happens to be Sunday. I would say that it’s as close as we get to having our own city public space, even if it is some fifty miles away from the Capitol Square. It’s worth the trek. And you can always find a quiet spot for a rest. With a view.





By this time, we have been hiking for many hours. We hadn’t planned on pausing by the lake, but that cool water is just too tempting on a warm day, even if it’s an October warm day.

Ed dives in.

I follow.





There’s still a good number of miles of hiking trails for us. We shake ourselves off, like wet dogs whose skin and fur have been doused with water. And we slog on.

There’s no café at the end of this run. But there’s a car full of cider, and a gorgeous sky, first as seen from on board the Merrimac ferry…





…then over the fields of Wisconsin farmland.





It’s evening now. We pause and watch a woman shucking dry corn. Getting ready for the season. Pumpkins and squash, corn and hay. She smiles for the photo and goes back to her work.




A beautiful day. One gallon down, eleven to go.

oh, Madison

Biking home last night from campus, along the lakefront, I had to tell myself that this is indeed October. I was remembering when, ten years ago, on October 9th it snowed. Yesterday, at dusk, no one was thinking of snow.

morning

It’s warm, it’s lovely, it’s all the things you’d want of a week-end day. And I am inside, at a conference, from morning ‘til dusk.

I could post photos of rows of tables. Of water bottles with the printed labels of the UW Extension Conference Centers. Of serious faces. And a folding table with the usual hot water, decaf and caf jugs.

I wont do that.

Instead, I’ll take you for a quick sunrise run to the Westside Community Market. It’s been a while. And the colors in the morning light were pretty near perfect.



red squash, green squash



hen of the woods




my flower vendors




catching the first rays


Tomorrow is the last day of autumnal warmth and terrifically sticky and soothing sunshine. Not anything and not anyone will keep me inside.

story writers

We’re that. Mercilessly spilling it out.

So there I am, biking to work. The long way. Ten miles plus.

It is the underbelly of autumn now in Madison. Brown rather than red or golden. And really, mostly still green. With a rare burst of color.





I bike and I come across the geese. Always the geese. Fly south already! (I’m much less scary than I appear.)





They stare at me and stay put.





Why is it that none of us can ever leave? We hover, and we land, right back where we started from.

Oh life.

encounter

It's almost dusk. I walk into the field.

What's your name?
Nina...
Nina? Do you live here?
Yes... (why do I say this? Perhaps because today, after a long week, I choose not to be a strict constructionist)
Good! Not many people nearby... Here!




She hands me flowers she had only seconds ago cut down.

For you.
Thank you.

late afternoon

By late in the day, I can't stand it. I leave my office and head toward the bike path.

You can do that in Madison -- hit the trail within minutes of your central digs. Past the lakes...




... with only minor obstacles. [I imagine in the polar regions, people feel about penguins as I feel about geese: too omnipresent to be noted for their beauty; so move out of my path, already!]





Back in April, I blogged about the Hmong farmers, renting land on the periphery of Madison, growing foods, flowers. Now, in early October, the harvest is winding down. Still, the work continues. Squash, green onions, cosmos. Long list. No more bugs now. Just a beautiful day to be outside.









One more look at the wetlands, now in dusk, with the same old geese looking regal now rather than pesty.





A good ride. It's so easy here: the bike is unlatched, the helmet is on and there you have it. So long as the weather holds.

thinking

Paper—what a waste. Save trees. I try, but I do miss reading newspapers and magazines.

When I travel, I plunge into the world of print again. At airport lounges, I pick up every free publication out there and I spend many hours in flight reading and dirtying my hands with newsprint.

I read, this time, about the French. And how they think too much. To the point where Sarkozy tells them: think less, do more.

I wonder if thought is antithetical to enthusiastic action. I worry about that, given my propensity to drift away, away into idle thought, you know, in the way of an immigrant, who finds now both sides of the ocean perplexing.

For example, I am standing with my suitcase at the RER (commuter train) station, waiting to get on the train that would take me to the Paris airport and suddenly, I hear it – the Polish language. It’s easy to hear Polish in and around Notre Dame cathedral, but there, at the Luxembourg station – it is a jolt. Two men, talking. Decently dressed men. Every other word from their mouth is the standard Polish curse word, in the same way that I hear the word “like” out of the mouths of teens here. Though -- Like, I talked to her and like, she like, didn’t even, like, hear me – is a lot more pleasant to hear than: kurwa (whore), he came up to me and kurwa (whore), he kurwa (whore) told me that he wasn’t kurwa (whore) going to kurwa (whore) go after all. Kurwa (whore).

As I go about booking my winter flight to Poland now, I can't help but think how lucky are the tourists who come to Poland and don’t speak the language. Because they don’t have to hear this kind of common discourse when they are out and about.

And then of course I feel guilty for thinking negatively, in the way that only a Pole can feel guilty. Guilt, pity, despair -- these are national traits and we are especially good at manifesting them.

Then, I remembered a photo that I took on my last day in Paris. Here, it’s this one:





It’s not especially noteworthy and that’s why I never posted it. But it depicts a scene, with man, a dog, a paper, a cup of espresso and a croissant. And I think – is there a better way to start a morning?

Today, walking home, I noticed a dog tied to a post outside a gas station. The gas station sold food and so dogs weren’t allowed inside. Unhappy dog. Go to France, pooch. You can watch your owner sip an espresso while you admire the chick-dogs that walk by.

Finally, still on my walk home, I pass Madison’s shrimp truck. It rolls up here every now and then to sell shrimp (and other seafood, upon occasion) from the Gulf. I am fussy about shrimp. But you know, as one of the vendors reaches for a handful, I can't help thinking that you could not easily find such nice plump crustaceans at good prices elsewhere. Not even in France.









So my thoughts are all over the place. Perhaps they lack the sexy existential qualities of French thought, but I swear, when I took a brief stroll outside my office at lunchtime and I came across these guys, down by the Union, I thought: why am I not a duck? (…whose biggest worry appears to be whether to plunge from the stoop into the water?)

Paris notes, one last time

The morning light comes late now. Maybe 7:30? Later? I’m trying out a new left bank hotel. Small, on a quiet street in the 6th arrondissiment. Or, have I crossed over to the 7th? A room onto a quiet street lets me listen to it waking up. Like last Friday, when the knife sharpening cart (I'm guessing here) rolled by and the sound of the bell came in so clearly through my upper floor window.

But it’s Sunday now and I wake up quickly, finish last night’s post and wait for my companions. We’re setting out for Versailles .

I have not been there in more than twenty years. I tended to choose crowded Giverny over crowded Versailles. But I am curious now how it looks. As if twenty years could do anything to change the place!

We catch a fairly early train. Along with so many others. When Louis XIV contemplated visitors coming to his palace, he did not anticipate Sunday visitors on the last day of September, in the year 2007. The rooms aren't large enough to contain us all. The bottlenecks are tight.

I choose not to linger, not to contemplate the art, the furniture. I give a nod to each room, I read who slept and partied where...





...and move out onto the gardens.

At the back of the palace, you can look one way and see this:





…and in the opposite direction to see this:






In the early hours of the day, the visitors are taking in the interior spaces. I head for the park. So warm in the delicate sun! In the public spaces, just outside the gates of the chateau, the park draws families, lovers, cyclists, picnickers.The scent is of Autumn.















I am enthralled. A French Sunday. A Parisian Sunday, really, even though this is no longer Paris.

At 1:30 we make our way to a restaurant in town – Le Chapeau Gris. It's not recommended anywhere, it just looked right (town listing on the Net). We see long tables of many generations lingering, as we will linger, over a large Sunday meal. This is not a time to hurry or to eat light. It’s a time to take a real pause and listen to stories that take abit longer to recount. All in the space of a wonderful three course meal. With a bottle of rosé wine.













In the late afternoon we return to the Chateau grounds. There are more buildings to explore, Marie Antoinette’s little park, all of it, sprawling, offering the opportunity to walk and take note.




















In the evening, we head back to Paris. An omelet, one last glass of wine.

I walk by crowded cafés and ice cream vendors. I look inside and see a bin of pistachio. I was seven when I first traveled to Paris. By train, from Warsaw, on my way to my first visit to the States. I woke up then to a bright day on the left bank. On the Place des Invalides, an ice cream vendor was selling cones. Vanilla or pistachio. I had never seen green ice cream before. It was a long time before I could put the ice cream's sweet taste out of my mind. Creamy texture, unusual color, easy to love. Like Paris.