fire

How are my eyebrows? -- I ask Ed. Completely gone?
No, just a little singed.
Casualties of the morning. Also undone – a pair of outdoor gloves. They were old, but still...

But let me say right away – and perhaps this will surprise you – it was an excellent morning.

My idea this winter to ski daily faltered rather quickly: the trails around Madison don’t have enough snow to make it fun. The temperature heaving has given them a brittle, icy coating. With twigs and pebbles poking through. I talked of doing a trip up north, but the older Ed gets, the less he likes spontaneous ling distance  journeys. And so this morning, as I see again a nice strip of bright light at the horizon just before sunrise, I say to Ed merely this – outdoors... we have to get outdoors today.

It’s windy and in the low twenties. Eh, so what. The Ice Age Trail folks (such apt description) are organizing a work day out on one of the segments of the trail just west of Madison.


 


At 9 a.m., we’re there with them at the trailhead, waiting for instructions.

Clear the hill, burn the brush.

It’s great work! Within minutes the cold ceases to be a problem.






And as the stacks of chopped and snipped wood grow, the fires flair and the air takes on a gusty smell of campfires.










Managing the fires when the wind is this strong is a challenge. My brows are the price to pay for it.


 


But it’s terrific work and for three hours, we chop, snip and haul until the leaders call for a lunch break. We leave then. We’re known for that – we come, we work, we leave. Unfriendly types who scorn bonding over dead flesh between slabs of bread. I wont deny it -- it's an apt characterization.

Ed drives the now fixed, but so very rusted Geo home. These hills west of Madison are especially pretty now, in January. Here, you can't tell that the snow cover is actually quite thin.





It is a beautiful landscape.






And now we’re at Paul’s café. Ed’s sleeping, I’m thinking about how to trim eyebrows around the missing parts. The smell of wood is still with us. The chill of the wind is long gone.

morning light

It’s late now. We’re watching a show on snakes. It’s fair to say that I dislike it immensely.  Sometimes I am fascinated in simply watching Ed become engrossed in a story. It makes up for the unusually gross nature of the subject matter. But this is not one of those times. I’m just a tad wiped from the day and though I can think of any number of better alternatives to tracking snakes – with all their disgusting hunting/eating habits -- I'm too tired to push for any of them.


It was, in fact, a delightfully (partly) sunny day. When the sun first peeked through, I was up and ready for it.






Ed was up as well, making repairs to his unbelievable tattered 93 Geo.






And Isis was up. He’d made his way up to the farmhouse this morning. Very early. In search of TLC.

Lovely blushed with sunshine minutes!






But that's it for the outdoors. We - all three of us - retreat and resume the indoor life. Isis by choice, Ed and I -- because it's Friday and that's just the way it is.







  
In the evening, I play to the memories of a gentler set of weeks. Somewhere in the background k.d. lang and Tony Bennett are crooning.  
Here, Ed, I’ve made shrimp salad for supper. Andalucian style.





To the bliss of sunny days. Here or elsewhere. A whole string of uninterrupted sunny days. Mmmm...

scattered

One little key on my laptop was wobbly. It seemed loose and ready to fly – elsewhere. And so I made this evening the time to visit the Apple store.

What a time suck! It’s not that the blue-shirted wiz kids weren’t helpful. It’s just that they, as always, made me understand how utterly incompetent I am in the use of Apple stuff. So long as I was there, they untangled some muddles I had gotten myself into. But it took time.

(I promised to sign up for all kinds of classes to boost my skills. Someday.)

After, I pulled the red hot lover onto the Beltline (highway) and within seconds came to a near standstill. A traffic jam. It’s rare that a Madisonian has to endure an utterly clogged highway. I'm surely happy that this is not part of my everyday.


So long as I am in a tired and only mildly chipper mood, might I lodge a complaint about the weather?

I’ll just say this: may we please have some nice bright wintry stuff? It’s too warm, too gray, too wet, too dark..






No? Darn.

trapped

...in days of tense work schedules, I remain, much of the time, behind closed doors. No breakthrough or break time moments today. No time, no time...

That’s okay. Little tidbits remind me that life toddles forward in interesting ways, regardless of pressures and work priorities. For example: I come home late, but with the idea that we still have time for a Paul’s coffee. I pull up to the farmhouse. Ed comes out of the sheep shed,  greeting me with a mousetrap in hand.
I got one. We can let it out in the fields on the way to Paul’s.
He waves the little plastic box with a mouse in it in my face.
He was tricky. Ate the peanut butter the first time, the second time. This time I got him with pepper jack cheese.

And where was Isis in all this?

Don’t know. Not really paying attention to the mouse.

The cat has grown useless. Sort of like me, I imagine, once I reach the age of retirement. Or maybe before.

Ed releases the mouse into the field...





....the little guy runs like crazy across the snow crusted landscape. We wave good bye.

Will you now place the trap in the farmhouse? I ask. There haven’t been signs of mice since we came back, but I like the security of the trap, just in case one gray fellow passes through...
Soon, soon.

I think of Isis, the farmette cat. He hasn’t come to the farmhouse since it turned cold.  His paws don’t appear to like anything below 42 degrees. So he stays at the shed and watches mice dart this way and that. Fine cat. He’s lost his belligerence.

There's so much snappish anger out there. It's good that Isis has moved beyond that.

thanks

...for the sunshine! It helps to set out in the morning to this.






When the bright light shines down on Bascom Hill, even the snowman there looks good.






In the last semester, after my last class, Ed and I would meet at Paul’s café where I would re-energize myself for the remaining working hours of the day. We’re trying something different this winter: before the daylight fades, we’ll do a quick spin on the trails just to the east of the farmhouse. That’s the re-energizing moment. After, we’ll end the day at Paul’s, even if that means grabbing the final coffee when the light is long gone.

It’s a tough schedule to follow, but we’re trying. And today, we pulled it off.






True, the ski break was awkwardly icy. There’s not enough snow out there. And, there were places, adventurous places, where the trail spun downhill toward Lake Waubesa and I wondered whether Ed, or indeed either one of us, would be able to steer clear of the not quite fully frozen waters. You can’t quite stop on a downhill stretch, when that stretch is completely iced over.






In the end though, we were happy to be moving again. And we made it to Paul’s, just before he closed. Hi Paul. Back in Jerez, there was this artisan, making a little clay flute called the ocarina...

spring semester

I look outside my office window and I see a giant snowman on Bascom Mall (the expanse of hill just outside my office window). It's not a very attractive snowman -- not very photogenic in any event, but it's there, commemorating the beginning of the Spring Semester. He doesn't taunt, he just stands there, erect, steady, in your face big.

So the classes begin. A wet, sloppy beginning (not unpretty out here, at the farmette, though).





I suppose it's good that it isn't the typical soul-shattering cold spell that gets us into the swing of the new semester. But here's a hint: can we please have a bit of that good old Midwestern brilliant winter sunshine in the days ahead?

Thank you.

parks and (winter) recreation

Ed tells me – we should get our Dane County skiing permits. As we navigate the ins and outs of doing this online, we note that not all parks have groomed trails yet. It’s that kind of a winter – cold, but not (yet?) oozing with snow.

We want to get into the habit of skiing – as close to daily as possible. On this Sunday morning though, the weather is iffy. Freezing fog, I read to Ed. Meaning, bits of icy rain. Or something. The temps are in the twenties.

And it does feel that way – misty and icy.

We could go to our park just up the road, but Madison’s Elver Park is bigger and since it is a week-end, we can be more adventurous.






At Elver, it’s heartening to see so many skiers out today. Just like us. Early, despite the weather. And every now and then, there is the young skier. I was on wooden boards first when I was six. Old, compared to, say, this moderately enthusiastic cross country little one.






It’s not easy to be skiing on a day like today. Ed forgot his cap and very quickly, his hair develops a nice frozen mist of ice. White on white.






So there are the skiers. But not only.


 


Elver is Madison's great sledding destination. We pass by its large hill and I say to Ed that sledding has to be one of the most good and honest winter sports out there: so little equipment, so much joy. A man zips by in front of us on a rubber tube. His is possibly the longest of the downhill runs. He gets up grinning broadly. The best $30 I ever spent! – he shouts to us as he drags his beloved rubber tube up again.






Obviously not everyone loves the snow.
She gets cold – the dog owner tells me as I ask about the many layers of sweater and jacket on this park visitor:






But she’s the exception. On the trails you're likely to see only enthusiasm -- great gobs of it. And it's a fast enthusiasm. Ed and I are trail skiers. Most, these days, prefer skate skiing. It’s faster, for one thing. We get passed an awful lot. I mind less than Ed does.


Oh, but it’s a good way to spend a Sunday morning! Freezing fog notwithstanding.

that countryside

To live in the country, to travel freely and not infrequently to the city. That’s my idea of a good life.

We drive up to the farmhouse after our flights back from Spain. I enter it and note right away that the overhead kitchen lamp isn’t working. I say to Ed – I thought those light bulbs last years.
He tests them. They’re fine. Can’t imagine what the problem is.

It’s pleasantly warm in the house. I unpack, I find my Polish wooly slippers, put them on. Oops. Pebbles in one. I take it off. Not pebbles. Mice droppings. Out comes the trap. No other sign on the floors of mice, and no mouse is tempted by the copious amounts of peanut butter in the trap for the day I’m there. So, it was a quick visit and exit. You get used to it.

In Chicago, the snow falls steadily, at times heavily. I walk to my daughter’s place with my face to it, thinking how not unpleasant it is to be battered by snow in this way.






In the evening, we try to catch the bus up to another part of the city. No, their iphone tells them that the bus delays are tremendous. City life. Even in winter-ready Chicago, the snow disturbs daily life.







We do manage to arrive at the restaurant fairly on time, the celebration proceeds...





And, at the end of the day, the carpet, picked up back in Tanger (this is a photo from that day of purchase), is finally home. Her home.






In the morning, I’m on the phone with Ed.
I figured out what happened with the lamp, he tells me. A mouse chewed through the wires.
My slipper had been right under that light fixture. A mouse party.

I look outside – a sunrise in Chicago.






It’s 21 degrees F in the city. I check the temp back at the farmette: minus 6 F.

Last chance to enjoy a meal “out.” At the farmhouse, breakfast moves only in one direction – out to the porch on sunny days. In the city, the range is broader.

My girl is busy with work and so I walk over and pick up foods for us at the City Provisions. Cool name. A nice selection of specialty foods, baked goods, sandwiches. There are shelves, too, of foods that come from “the country.” Raw honey, for example. Probably from Wisconsin.












I say goodbye to my city kid and her guy. We are not well programmed for goodbyes with our offspring, even as, in life, there are so many.


Ed picks me up at the bus stop in Madison. He has our skis in the back and we go to the park that's just three minutes from the farmhouse. It is our first time this year on skis. We hope it's the first of very many such times.

















After, during the short ride home, we wave to the deer...






And now we are truly home. The farmhouse home. There, beneath the setting sun.

for the daughters in life

I toss about this for a good part of the night: snowstorm Friday. I need to be in Chicago in the evening. What if traffic comes to a grinding halt? I can’t be late. Should I take the 11:30 bus (It’s a three hour trip)? Just in case? No, not good enough. Maybe the 10 a.m. Or, should I go even earlier, like on the 8:30?

In the end, I decide I need the time in my office before heading out. Ed drops me there just as the light of the morning takes hold. It’s not snowing yet, but I tell Ed to be careful, knowing damn well that he tunes out every such warning. We’re down to one car (the red hot lover) and a truck – his old Geo went up in smoke yesterday and he may or may not be able to fix it. And it’s not as if the red hot lover projects reliability, on snow or otherwise.


The bus ride today is longer, of course it is. It’s snowing fiendishly by the time we get on the interstate. I settle in to work, feeling rather sorry for those who are anticipating flight delays (it’s the airport bus).


Chicago.





Ahh, plenty of time. But I am loaded down. Birthday gifts – yes and normally this would not be awkward and clumsy but I am also carrying a sack full of work papers and, assuming that my little one isn’t going to read Ocean before tonight’s celebrations (she is at work), I am also lugging the carpet I picked up for her in Tanger.

Ah yes – this was the great deliberation, resulting in a too low price and a happy, for me, purchase. And perhaps now you understand how truly kind Ed was to strap the thing onto his backpack and carry it through our hikes thereafter – including on the beaches of Tarifa and to and from our hotel in Córdoba. Sometimes he asks me, teasingly -- you don't think I'm too nice to you? (For instance, when he buys me a cup of coffee.) For this, I would have had to answer (knowing how much he hates to be burdened with things) -- yes, I do.


And, too, perhaps you’ll sympathize more with the mod hotel owner in Córdoba who took one look at Ed’s pack with a carpet in an old ugly plastic wrap, strapped to one side and a huge tube containing the broken down painting and frame, strapped to the other and dismissed us thereafter as quaintly odd.

It is a testament to how little we otherwise take with us to say that Delta examined our various parcels and concluded they fit within the “carry-on” restrictions.


So now here I am, in Chicago, lugging the darn thing and then all the rest, looking for the café I was told could accommodate me for the three or four hours I have to wait until we meet up and head for a family (and various sundry boyfriends, though not my own – I need not remind you how Ed feels about birthdays) dinner.

Ah, there’s the café. Ipsento. Almost missed it -- the coffee cup logo is blending with the white snow.





And here’s my drink of choice. I wont bother showing you my five bundles. Bundles are not cool.





And I wont worry just yet about walking the ten blocks from here to her place in the blowing snow. For the daughters. One does stuff for them, with such joy! That’s just the way it is.

the same, but different

Today my youngest one turns 27. Happy birthday, sweet little thing. A child of warmth, born on a cold day. But don’t fret – there are flowers to be had now and you don’t have to travel to Andalucía to see them. At the farmhouse, these are blooming for you now, in the coldest moments of the coldest month.







Me, I work all day long, from the predawn hours when it is so cold that I regret stepping out to catch the early light...











...through the generously sunny afternoon (with a high of 7 degrees F)...






...and the trip into town, for groceries, and a peek at the now officially frozen lake.






(I pass on the opportunity to go go with Ed to salvage his wreck of a car – one of the handful of items that lost faith in this world in the course of our absence and now needs extra coaxing to get back into the swing of things.)

I shovel the walkway to the farmhouse and we almost make it to Paul’s café, but not quite. I have to finish my work before tomorrow (I’m off to Chicago then for a quick celebration of 27 good years – not mine, hers).

So it’s as if Andalucía is forgotten, done with, right? You jump into your everyday and nothing remains of your travels but the dirty laundry and the light suntan on your nose. Is that it?

No. As we move through grocery aisles and I try to get into the mindset of planning meals for the whole week, Ed says – maybe you could make that seafood salad that we always had as a tapas or a starter...

And though the seafood isn’t like that from the market in Jerez, I do my best...






We eat already closer to our Midwest eating hour. That’s okay. The moon shines bright over our farmhouse. And that’s surely a good thing.

Córdoba considered

Wednesday: predawn

A moon shines over Córdoba... It isn’t a night moon. It’s the one that stays high on an otherwise dark morning. Barely visible, between Córdoba’s elegant buildings, it still makes me pause, in appreciation.

Tuesday: afternoon

Elegant Córdoba. That is my first thought as we step off the train from Jerez and look around. I had scribbled notes on how to get to our hotel (in the old quarter, not too far from the cathedral). We want to walk. Google says forty minutes from the train station? That’s good. We like the opportunity to look around as we trudge forward.

And so we walk. And I’m thinking: this is a hellishly complicated route and, too, I’m thinking – Córdoba is not Seville or even Granada. Make of that what you will.





Size-wise – they’re all quite the same: just upwards of a quarter million people. Like Madison, only I think back home we must fudge the data because all three cities here feel like cities, whereas Madison feels like – well, a nice place to live in, but not really a city.

But Seville felt Sevillian and Granada felt Granadian and Córdoba? I can’t quite make up a personality for this place.

In the newer part, as you follow the boulevards from the station, it’s snazzy. Elegant. Glossy. The men don’t much wear the woolen caps or felt hats that Sevillians or Granadians favor. Up in the new town, they wear pressed shirts and ties. And yes, I know in Ronda women paraded in heels, but here, they’re beyond that. Heels are so... yesterday.






And then we go down into the old town – because that’s where our hotel is. This is a confusing part of town and everyone on the Internet complains how confusing it is and they’re right. One minute you see Roman columns...





...the next minute you’re lost and if you ask any local where such and such street is, they’ll stare at you with pity. They don’t know. They only live here. They don’t need to figure it out like us, poor souls, with heavy packs (made heavier by acquisitions in Morocco and Jerez, – there’s a lesson in there, I know, I know), wondering where such and such lane is and why it’s right there on the google map but in reality not there at all.





Eventually, we find the hotel.

So the hotel. The Viento 10. I picked this one entirely based on Tripadvisor. No guidebook would have it – it’s only three months old. But since its opening, the reviews have been strong. All top scores from everyone. And the price – 70 Euros – quite attractive for Córdoba.

It’s modern. Let me rephrase that: it’s post post modern. Much care has gone into the project and if you want to be dazzled, you can look at their website.





I wont knock it. I suppose it’s beautiful. For me, two things stand out – we look clunky and ill-fitting in this slick place, so there's that.  And, the room has only one window and it is to the side, in the ceiling – well hidden from anyone wanting to find out, say, if it is a cloudy day.

(The ‘we look ill-fitting’ comment is, I know, subjective. It could be said that Ed and I are a poor choice of customer in any place that strives for a cool aesthetic. We travel with packs and Ed’s pack is especially old and neither of us looks as if we are clued into fashion. I understand that. We don’t add glamour. But my feeling is that if you offer rates that are low, you’re going to get all sorts of guests, including unglamorous ones and you should put a good face forward and not mind. Here, I feel the hotel owner minds. He cannot understand why we walked from the station when a taxi would have been so much more comfortable. As for the packs – I’m not even going to explore his thought process there.)

So we throw down our stuff in the beautiful room with the most incredible massage shower system you could imagine, but without a credible window, and we set out.

Tuesday: just before sunset

In Córdoba, sightseeing is easy. Even as the city is seeking to be recognized as the cultural capital of Europe for the year 2016 (I don’t quite understand the competition, but I do see signs announcing that it is a contender!) there is really one reason why 95% of the tourists come here. It is for the Mezquita Catedral.

We walk through the attractive old blocks...


 


...toward what some regard as the most incredible structure in all of Europe (again, I’m quoting literature on this).

It must be intensely crowded around the Mezquita in the summer, because as we get nearer, the number of souvenir shops grows. Sort of like on the final stretch up to the Alhambra only more.

And then we come to the fortified walls. Impressive!





And we enter through one of the great doors – to a lovely courtyard with orange trees and palms and a fountain that makes beautiful tinkling noises and because it is now close to 5, the light is golden and quite splendid.











It’s beautiful, it really is. To the river side, there is the mosque/cathedral, to the town side there is the bell tower...












Magnificent.

I find the ticket office and Ed pauses now. You go. I’ll sit in the courtyard.
Why? I ask.
Too much sight viewing. It’s pretty here, I’ll sit and admire that. You go.
I understand that. He’s had his fill of cities, fortresses, churches, too much gawking, clamoring. The courtyard is quiet and peaceful. He’ll be happier just lingering there.

I go inside.

Oh my!






This place began as one place of worship more than a thousand years ago. Since that time, it has been built, rebuilt, added to and you can see the Moorish arches and the Byzantine tiles and the Christian nave and it is all rather incredible!






At the Alhambra, I was prepared, but the Mezquita catches me by surprise.












I spend a while inside – how could it be otherwise and when I’m done, I tell Ed – don’t miss this one. And since I don’t often nudge him to do something he’s inclined not to do, he knows that it must be so and he loses himself inside while I now linger in the courtyard, watching the sun grow more golden, at least as reflected against these yellow walls.





We are probably the last ones out (the Mezquita closes at 6 in the off season). I can’t really tell because it seems empty even before closing. Maybe a person here, a couple there. Not much action in Córdoba in January, not even at the mosque/cathedral.


We walk out on the bridge behind the Mezquita – to look at it from across the water, but really to let it all sink in – the Mezquita, the town itself.











I watch a bird take a river bath and I think how this river is less lazy and calm than the Wisconsin River back home.





We walk some more through the old quarter, including the old Jewish enclave, where there are still, today, old synagogues, even as they’re closed now.







Inevitably, you'll see people opening up folded maps, trying to place themselves in the complicated network of alleys.






It’s been a long time since we ate our boiled egg and cheese sandwich at the Jerez Casagrande. I’m hungry and so we find a tapas place and have their special – a house tapas of potato salad and a glass of wine (or beer), for 1.5 Euro.





Still needing more food, I order the friend eggplant with honey and sesame seed – I’ve been meaning to try it as it’s a very common regional tapas. It’s good: like a tempura sweetened by honey.





We walk back to the hotel and we’re growing used to it now – who cares if it’s night or day, it’s dark now and it’ll be dark when we leave here the next day, early in the morning.

Tuesday, quite late

Later, when it’s proper dinner time in Andalucía, we set out to the Bodega Campos Tavern, where we have roasted peppers with tuna, followed by one portion of artichokes with Iberian ham and one portion of asparagus with egg and Iberian ham and it’s good, really it is...


 


...even though we kind of miss the seafood of Jerez and the other places we visited – all had been screaming seafood at us, except not here, not now. Córdoba is a city of meats.

Wednesday, quite early

The next morning, we leave the new and glossy hotel before anyone is up and around. We walk, even though it’s dark (Ed has his flashlight, but we don’t need it – there are street lamps, enough to give us a place to study the maps), up, up, to the new town with the lovely square, scrubbed clean for the new day...


 


...and we are at the station in plenty of time for the 7:22 to Madrid.

It’s a crowded bullet train, with a zippy top speed of 165 mph but everyone has a wonderfully comfy seat and I wont say anything more about how I feel about trains because every Ocean reader must surely know that I think they are a superb way to see the world and your own back yard too, should you be so lucky as to live close by to a train route which, in Madison, unfortunately, we are not.



 


(Here’s Rorschach like shot from the ride: focus on the inside, focus on the outside...)





It’s a tight connection for us – from train to airport bus to flight, but we’re sure that the train will come in on time – RENFE – Spanish Rail – has a guarantee: if the bullet train is more than five minutes late, you get a refund on your ticket. They don’t give many refunds.

Wednesday: a confusion of hours and places

Our flight to Atlanta is a Delta flight and for the first time in years we’re in a transatlantic flight that’s half empty. It feels very strange.

I rarely fly this path. Madrid to Atlanta is a long flight – nearly 10 hours and it takes us, of course, a tad south. But here’s a stunning gift: the flight path has us come in over Cape Cod, then straight down the Atlantic coast so we can see a sunny Providence, Newport, an even sunnier Long Island, and a stunning view of New York and Manhattan – one that I’ve rarely, if ever, seen from this high up.





We have several segments of flights still before us (I'm posting from Atlanta). Deliberately. I collect segments like others collect coins and swords and automobiles. There wont be a sun shining over Madison when we finally arrive. But the moon should be there. Over snow-covered fields, frozen solid. Last I heard it’ll be some thirty degrees below freezing outside the farmhouse when we get in.