A Memorial Day thank-you

This is Memorial Day weekend here in the States. Between our barbecues and picnics, we pause to remember the servicemen and women who've lost their lives on our behalf. Because we're fighting in Iraq, the holiday's message is current and painfully real. So many of us feel we should never have gone to Iraq, but we're there, and our young men and women are in harm's way every hour of every day. This is tough for us to take, but we're tough. In difficult times, we have a history of coming together, supporting one another, and focusing on what's truly important.

And on this Memorial Day, what's truly important is to consider the young lives recently lost and to honor them. And to let every man and woman in uniform know that we respect them for their courage, decency, commitment and patriotism, regardless of our feelings about this war. The magnetic yellow ribbons stuck on half the cars in America say nothing about our president or this war. They say only, "Support Our Troops." And we do. Thank you for what you're doing and for the way you're doing it. You make us proud.

As many of you know, the September 11 attacks were the impetus for the 12,000-mile road trip I would come to write about in Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America." My kids and I set off to make sure this country and her people were OK. They were, and they are. I'd like to share a book excerpt I think is fitting for this Memorial Day. It's unabashedly and unapologetically patriotic:



Somewhere out west, Dana had asked, “Sometimes you hear people are different. Then you hear we’re all the same. Which is right?”

Both. We have different ethnicities and backgrounds, different ways of making a living, different geographies and climates, different pastimes, different religions and traditions.

But we’re also the same. We love our families and communities. We love our part of the country, but we respect the rest of it. We work hard. We’re independent. We cherish our freedom. We speak our minds. And, judging by the flags, patriotic symbols, and messages of hope and support that we saw everywhere across the land – on ranches and gas stations, logging trucks and billboards, fishing boats and bumper stickers, churches and diners – we share a love for this nation.

America exceeded my expectations. No part of it failed me or left me empty. It’s a quilt of small, fascinating pieces that give great comfort when sewn together. A kaleidoscope of beautiful shapes and colors that amaze when blended.

On any journey, whether short, long, or lasting whole relationships or lifetimes, you can usually find what you set out to discover. You choose what to look for, what to focus on, what to celebrate. I went on this trip looking for good things, and found great ones.

-----
Our thanks and prayers go to those who made and make it possible for us to keep finding great things about America.


www.LoriHein.com

Chasing rainbows

There's been a lot of hammering lately in my neighborhood. I thought it was people doing seasonal home maintenance -- fixing up porches and installing new screens in sunrooms to get ready for summer. But today it hit me. My neighbors are building arks. And, as soon as Mike gets home, I'm going to suggest we do the same. I'll pack a box filled with two of everything we think we can't live without and leave it by the door.

It's been raining here in the northeastern United States for what seems like a biblically long time. I can't remember the last time I saw sun, and if the meteorological prognosticators see any in our future, they're keeping it to themselves.

Today's wind-whipped torrents remind me of a furious tempest that barreled in off the sea one afternoon when the kids and I were walking the promenade in Sliema, Malta. We retreated to our hotel room and watched the tumult through the wet glass of our balcony door.

Then the rain stopped, and God sent Malta a rainbow. I hope he's got one up there for us New England arkbuilders.

Taiwan: Say what?

The future speaks Chinese. The U.N. predicts that Chinese will surpass English as the most used language on the Internet by 2007. The U.S. State Department has designated Chinese a “critical language” for reasons of “economics, culture and security.” China’s star is on the rise.

And, amidst the brinksmanship on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, there are intermittent positive signals in the relationship between China and Taiwan. Taiwanese have traveled to China for years, but the People’s Republic recently announced it would begin allowing its citizens to visit Taiwan as tourists. Lien Chan, leader of Taiwan’s Nationalist party, recently went to China and met with President Hu Jintao. The historic meeting prompted Lien to announce, “I believe the door has been opened.”

Chinese tourists should get on well with the people from the “renegade province” because they speak the same language. They may disagree over politics, but they’ll agree over proper pronunciation of Mandarin. There will be no humiliating and potentially dicey linguistic bombs like the one I dropped during an unintentional assault on Taiwan’s – and China’s –mother tongue.

My tourist map of Taipei had no Roman letters. No Hanyu Pinyin transliteration of Chinese characters into something I could attempt to pronounce. But it had pictures of the city’s top draws, so when Mike and I flagged a cab to go to the Chiang Kai-shek memorial, I pointed to the little blue-tile-roofed icon on the map. The cabbie nodded and opened the taxi door.

Hah! We were on our way by simply pointing at a picture, and, feeling satisfied and in control, I said Chiang Kai-shek’s name. Or thought I did. Things devolved from there.

What I said sounded like “chang-ky-SHEK,” a perfect utterance, I thought, of the name of the man who’d turned the island of Formosa into Taiwan, the Republic of China. Assuming leadership of the Kuomintang after the 1925 death of Sun Yat-sen, Chiang battled the Communists under Mao, lost the civil war and removed himself and his party and military faithful offshore, creating Taiwan, which some parts of the world consider a nation and others, like China, consider a piece of rogue real estate to which the word “independent” does not and will never apply.

The instant “chang-ky-SHEK” came from my mouth, the cabbie shrieked with laughter. He would have doubled completely over had the steering wheel not been in his way. “AAAHHHH!” he howled, “Chang-ky-SHEK! Chang-ky SHEK!” He nodded and bobbed his head in hysterics. He chuckled uncontrollably. He looked in the rearview mirror at me, grinning. “Chang-ky-SHEK! AAAHHHHH! Chang-ky-SHEK!” He turned all the way around in his seat to stare at me and howl with glee. “EEEEEEEEE!”

I knew the cabbie wasn’t laughing at the revered Chiang, so I accepted his subtle, tactfully delivered hint that I’d erred in my pronunciation and made apologetic, I’m-just-a-tourist-what-do-I-know gestures with my head and shoulders. But rather than take the fun I’d gifted him with, enjoy for a moment and move on, he decided to humiliate me from one end of Taipei to the other. It was hot, his window was rolled down, and he was primed for a good time.

At red lights and intersections all across the city, he’d lean out the window, catch pedestrians’ and drivers’ attention, point to us in the back seat and yell, “Chang-ky-SHEK!! HAAAAA! Chang-ky-SHEK!! AAHHHHH!!” The others laughed and held their bellies and put their hands over their mouths. “EEEEEEE!” They stared at us and grinned and bobbed their heads up and down. We tried to melt into the seats. I apologized to Mike for whatever I’d said that had led to this. We’d set out on an innocent sightseeing jaunt, and I’d ended up sending half of Taipei into convulsions.

We pulled up to the Chiang Kai-shek memorial (above). Our friend sprang out to open our door, saw another cabbie, and lapsed again into his “chang-ky-SHEK” histrionics. Both cabbies became debilitated by laughter. I felt ripped off when we paid the driver. What I really wanted was to bop him on the head. Twenty minutes earlier I’d felt repentant about the unintended mutilation, but enough was enough. It’s over, pal. Get a grip. I wished I knew a few other choice Chinese words to mutilate for him.

Before we walked away, our cabbie stopped laughing long enough to try to sell us a jar of honey and an ancient photo of Richard Nixon. I looked him square in the eyeballs and responded with a perfectly delivered “Chang-ky-SHEK! CHANG-KY-SHEK!!!”

(If anyone knows what I said when I maimed the founder’s name, please let me in on the joke.)

www.LoriHein.com

Orlando left hanging

Orlando was special. Of the staff at the Amazon Safari Camp, upriver from Iquitos, Peru, Orlando (above), was the one whose job description was to interact with the tourists. He spoke flawless English, was gracious and sociable, had a quick wit and knew everything about the great river and its surrounding jungle world.

He dressed like a city kid in jeans, football jerseys and running shoes, and he flashed a wide, white grin that charmed and disarmed. He took us along the Rio Momon, an Amazon tributary, in a sputtering wooden boat splashed with peeling turquoise paint and covered by a canopy of dried, gray tree fronds. We visited the villages of the Yagua and the Bora and watched young brown boys standing on the prows of shallow dugouts spear fish from the muddy water. We looked for snakes in the trees and took in the tumbledown hubbub of Iquitos, a shabby, backwater river port that had long ago lost the luster of its boom days as a Dutch-controlled center of rubber production. Orlando took us on daytime tramps into the rainforest to scout plants and animals and to swing on vines, and he took us on nighttime tramps to gaze in awe at the Southern Cross.

Orlando loved his rainforest world, and his relationship with it was a deep, reverent drink. A communion. But he wanted very much to leave it.

He wanted to come to the United States. In each new group of visitors to the river camp, Orlando looked for a connection, a contact, a sponsor, a benefactor, a bride. A ticket out. He romanced the single ladies and displayed his intelligence and business acumen to the men. Our group numbered about a dozen, and he focused his emigration efforts on a lovely wisp named Chris, from Denver, traveling with her mother and brother. When they thought no one was looking, Orlando and Chris would scramble up a muddy bank and disappear into the trees. Not, we presumed, to scout plants and animals or to swing on vines.

When our visit was over and Orlando deposited us at the ramshackle Iquitos docks from where we’d make our way to the airport for our flight to Lima, Chris smiled the smile of a free-spirited woman who’d had a good time on vacation, and Orlando smiled the sad smile of one who’s come to know and expect rejection. We all hugged Orlando and shook this beautiful man’s hand, and we left hoping he’d find a way to display his talents and gifts on a stage larger than the banks of the Amazon. We left him reluctantly.

A few years later, as Mike and I were painting the walls of our house, the phone rang. I answered, and the caller, a man, asked for Mike. “Tell him I’m busy,” Mike called from the living room. He was up to his elbows in paint. “Get the number, and I’ll call him back.” I asked the caller for his name and number, and the voice said, “It’s Orlando. I’m in Chelsea.”

He’d made it out of the Peruvian jungle. We talked for a minute. Orlando had married an American and lived in Chelsea, a blue collar suburb north of Boston. He was a half-hour drive from us. That he’d saved our number all these years stunned me (but shouldn’t have). In the chaos of dropcloths and paint cans and furniture piled in the middles of rooms, I found a slip of paper, wrote down Orlando’s number and told him that Mike would call him back and that we couldn’t wait to see him.

Painting done for the day, we decided to call Orlando. Invite him and his new wife over to see slides from our Peruvian adventure. (“Yes! That’s your husband swinging from vines!”) Welcome him to America. Embrace him with the same warmth and graciousness with which he’d embraced us when we were in his country.

We looked for the slip of paper I’d written his number on, but we couldn’t find it. We looked for days. We didn’t know Orlando’s last name, so we couldn’t call information for the number. We’d sit, with a sick feeling, knowing he was waiting for our call, and we’d get up and look again.

We never found the number. Whenever we think of Orlando now, the memories are bittersweet. We met a good human being who reached out to us, and he thinks we turned away, left him hanging.

Boomer Women Speak (and they travel a lot, too)

I'm the Featured Author for the month of May at BoomerWomenSpeak.com, a wonderful online community for women. A warm thank-you to Dotsie Bregel, the site's founder and editor, for inviting me.

We're talking travel over there, and we're having great fun. Pop over and join us. Anyone can read the thread and, if you'd like to join the discussion, just register and you're in.

We're just two weeks into our chat, and I'm amazed by the number of directions our discussion has taken. From pepper spray to homeschooling to horse meat to topless Cote d'Azur waitresses to the free-roaming buffalo of South Dakota's Custer State Park (above). We've broached such subjects as domestic violence, the Hawaii Ironman, duct tape, the price of gas, and a nifty tool, Car-i-Okie, which helps keep kids and their adults sane and entertained on long road trips.

We've been to Finland, Monaco, Istanbul, Budapest, Japan, Cap d'Antibes and New Hampshire's Castle in the Clouds. We've talked about airboat rides through the Everglades in Kissimmee, Florida, villa rentals, the merits of KOA Kamping Kabins and long retreats at a monastery in Pecos, New Mexico.

Boomer women speak. And they have a lot to say.


Add Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America to your summer reading list.

Everbody out of the pool!

Yikes! I went for my pool run this morning (where, why, blue Styrofoam booties, and how it all relates to Peru and the summer solstice described in a previous post), and I tell you, we need a bigger pool! It was ugly in there!

Things started to devolve a few weeks ago when the seniors' water aerobics classes evaporated because the fitness center lost its instructor. Now, all the seniors still come each morning, but instead of being in a gay, tidy group in the shallow end, bouncing and bobbing to the Beach Boys, they float around in little widely-scattered bunches because they don't know what else to do. And, there's a new lap swimmer who thinks the pool was built just for him and thrashes through the water, invading the seniors' space and splashing them in the face. Today, one spry gal hit back, literally. Then, there are the folks who don't play by the commonly-accepted pool rule that says you share lanes if it's crowded. Ohhhh. I could go on. Ugly, really ugly. I shudder to think what tomorrow will bring. Hand-to-hand combat? Mass chaos? Violence that will require a police visit to this otherwise quiet neighborhood YMCA? We need a bigger pool.

Like the one in the photo above. The Hotel Arribas in Colares, Portugal has the biggest swimming pool I've ever seen. We based ourselves in Colares, known for its Atlantic beaches and wine-making tradition, while we explored the area around Sintra, a fairytale town and UNESCO World Heritage Site filled with pastel castles , exploding with flowers, shrubs and fruit trees, and ringed by a lush, deep green forest. We'd drive from Colares up the mountainside to Sintra, get our fill of sights, then drive back down to enjoy the beach and the hotel's gargantuan saltwater pool.

A piscina of epic proportions. A pool so big you got lost in it. Like being in the middle of a football field filled with water. I'll dream about it tomorrow morning as I fight my way through the YMCA pool.

The Kentucky Derby: May the best horse win

Dana and I are getting ready to watch the Kentucky Derby. Less than 50 minutes to post time. In honor of the event, an excerpt from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America:


Closer to Lexington, redemption. Hints of green and blue. Patches, then whole pastures, of rolling, perfect grass. Grass that nurtures champions. Mare and foal pairs in love and nuzzling, savoring their time together, sunlight on their withers. Horses so beautiful you wanted to cry. Elegance and long legs and strong backs and power bred for a purpose. This was Lexington.

Dana’s dream became real, mile by white rail-fenced mile. The horses were pure majesty. I watched Adam watch Dana. I could see him decide to go with the flow and let his sister enjoy. I filled up. My daughter was in her place of a young lifetime, we were surrounded by equine beauty that took your breath away, and Adam was showing himself to be a true gentleman.

Our Lexington days were all horse. We made an eight-hour, 85-in-the-shade, no-square-inch-missed visit to Kentucky Horse Park. We went three times to Thoroughbred Park to leap among and sit atop the life-size bronze Derby contenders. We stalked a pair of Lexington cops and their chestnut mounts as they walked their Main Street beat. “The police even ride horses!” marveled Dana, as she added law enforcement to her mental list of jobs for horse lovers.



I don’t think Dana slept much the night before our dawn pilgrimage to Keeneland Racecourse to watch the morning workouts. When I whispered in her ear at 5:30 that it was time to get up, her eyes shot open, and her face beamed. We dressed quietly so we wouldn’t wake Adam, slipped out, and went downstairs for a quick breakfast before heading into the already hot Lexington pre-dawn. We were the first breakfast customers of the morning. As we passed the reception desk, I whispered to the clerk, “We’re off to Keeneland.” “Ahhhh,” she whispered back, nodding at Dana with a knowing look, telepathy transmitted from one horse lover to another. “You’ll love it.” I looked at Dana, always beautiful, and, at this moment, the most excited, gorgeous little girl on the planet.

We traced a route around venerable Keeneland along parts of the Bluegrass Driving Tour, following Rice and Van Meter and Versailles (“We say ‘ver-SALES’, not fancy like the one in France,” the night desk clerk had told me when I’d come down to ask the best route from the hotel to Keeneland.). Dana could have spent hours on these roads, each a thin, gray ribbon along which lay some of Lexington’s most storied horse farms. The pastures were lush green carpet, the architecture distinctive and utterly beautiful. Crisp lines, fresh paint, rich trim. Pristine clapboards and elegant cupolas, graceful weathervanes. Dana has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything equine and, from her reading, was more familiar with these farms than I, and her excitement as we read their names – John Ward, Drumkenny, Broodmare, Manchester, Fares - traveled like an electrical current, stirring in me a deep contentment. We pulled over by a white rail fence on a slight rise in Rice Boulevard and looked out over the pastures spreading before us, hints of blue visible in the rich grass as it waited in the low, early light for the new day to burn off the night’s dew and mist.

On Van Meter, the red trim on the outbuildings of a vast farm betrayed it as Calumet, and, as we neared its fences, from a stand of tall trees that graced a velvety grass hillock, came a line of grooms, all Latino, each man leading a stunning thoroughbred on a rope. The line of small, silent men and sinewy horses flowed down the hillock toward us, then turned left and continued, parallel to the fence and the road we watched from, keeping under the shade of the trees, then turned left again, gently ambling back up the rise toward Calumet’s stables.

At Keeneland, we stood at the rail of the fabled oval, the only spectators, and watched trainers lead horses from the misty rows of silvery stables and onto the track. Light, lean, blue-jeaned trainers, one with dreadlocks flying from under his helmet, put pounding, sweating thoroughbreds through their paces. The trainers wore helmets, and most wore chest pads. They carried crops, which they weren’t shy about using. Some stood, others crouched. Some made their horses step sideways. The men and animals took the track’s bends and straightaways at breakneck speeds. Old Joe, tall and gaunt and wrinkled, in jeans and western shirt and a helmet with a pom-pom on top, sat astride his horse, Frog. They sat at the track rail, inside and on the course, ready to go after runaways. That was their job. Joe’s eyes were peeled, and he was ready to ride Frog to the rescue of any trainer whose trainee decided he’d rather be somewhere else.

A good number of the riders took note of Dana. A little girl with a beautiful brown ponytail who’d risen before the sun to stand at the rail. Like this morning’s desk clerk, they recognized her as a kindred spirit. They smiled, waved, and slowed down when they passed so she could look longer at their horses. Dana had brought her little plastic camera, and some of the trainers posed for pictures.

One trainer with a gentle face and shining eyes assembled himself and three others into a parade formation. They passed us, four abreast, at a slow, regal posting trot, like palace guard presenting the colors before the queen, each rider smiling down at Dana. I thanked them with my eyes. That they took note and took time turned this special morning into magic. These were busy men with hard work to do. Some were watched by the horse owners who paid them, and they weren’t paid to be nice to little girls. But they were, and I’ll always remember them with fondness.

Before we left Keeneland, as the first brush of hot, higher-than-horizon sun kissed the bluegrass, we ventured into the great grandstand and sat awhile in Mr. George Goodman’s personalized box, imagining what it would be like to settle in here in the cool shade on a sunny race day to watch the horses and the other racegoers.

Adam had slept until we turned the key back in the door. “Breakfast is about to close. You’d better get down there, bud.” On this trip, I left no hotel amenity unturned, amassing a sack full of little soaps, and bottles of shampoo that I used to wash our clothes in the sink or bathtub. And, I encouraged the eating of any available free food. I looked for the magic words “Free Continental Breakfast” on motel signs. Sometimes we hit pay dirt, finding a motel that also hosted a “manager’s happy hour.” This meant free dinner, because, next to the beer and wine and soda, the manager usually laid out cheese and crackers and a big tray of crudité. The kids drew the line at raw cauliflower and broccoli, but tucked into the celery, carrots and cherry tomatoes, huge dollops of dip on the side. Sometimes pay dirt turned to mother lode, with a spread that included things like tacos and little egg rolls.

Through careful husbandry of free motel fare and a manager’s cocktail hour here and there, we were occasionally able to patch together a string of five free meals in a row: free breakfast at Motel 1; free lunch of apples, bagels and peanut butter (cream cheese for Dana) spirited from Motel 1 breakfast spread; free dinner from Motel 2 happy hour; free breakfast at Motel 2; free lunch spirited from Motel 2 breakfast spread.

By meal number six, we were ready for a restaurant, and we always voted unanimously on type: Mexican. (Curiously, we’d eat our worst Mexican food in Texas and our best in North Dakota.)

Dana and I accompanied Adam down to the breakfast bar. “So, how was it?” he asked, of our visit to Keeneland. He asked Dana, directly. I wanted to hug him over his plate of biscuits and gravy. As she wove a tale of the magic kingdom of Keeneland, Adam listened and chewed. While it was clear he thought Keeneland sounded cool – he said, “Okay” a few times as Dana talked – I knew he didn’t feel he’d missed anything. Dana preferred horses, he preferred sleep. He was content they’d both gotten what they most wanted from the morning.

That night, while I worked on my first installment for the newspaper, Dana was writing her own story, “Horse Capital of the World.” It begins: “In the heart of Lexington, Kentucky, lies a beauty like no other…”

~~~~~
Lori Hein.com

Tibet: Who let the dogs out?

My daily runs are usually enjoyable experiences, but close encounters of the canine kind can ruin things. I had a dog experience a few days ago, one that sent me to the police station to file a complaint. A husky atop a picnic table on a backyard deck built high above a yard and encircling fence saw me coming, leaped over the fence into the street and held me hostage for ten minutes. This was the third time I’d met this beast on my favorite route, and all the cardio goodness I got from my run evaporated as I blew my top and blood pressure while keeping Mr. Fang from my calves and thighs. (Hey, dog, I need those!) The neighbors who watched but couldn’t help yelled perversely encouraging things like, “So many people have reported this dog!” and “This happens all the time!” and “The owner is a Boston cop, but he doesn’t do anything about it.”

I’ve been pawed, clawed, sniffed, jumped on, growled at, held at bay and bitten by loose dogs whose owners often stand nearby watching the action but taking none. I’ve had my clothes torn, and I’ve been to the ER to confirm the age and protective power of my last tetanus and rabies inoculations. “Don’t worry.” “He’s friendly.” “ He won’t bite.” “He’s more afraid of you than you are of him.” “He’s never hurt anyone.” Oh, had a dime for every time I’ve heard such words.

The dog encounter that most sets my head to shaking was the morning I ran around the dirt roads in the New Hampshire development where we have a cottage and was stopped dead (happily, hyperbole) by two canines, teeth bared, who bolted down their driveway and kept me prisoner in the middle of a considerable hill. I screamed for the owners to come out of the house. They eventually did. (Minutes seem like hours when mouths dripping saliva hang a few inches from your shins and sidequarters.) A mom and two kids ambled, moon-eyed, to the end of the driveway where they stood as a unit and stared at me. They did and said nothing, until the mother finally mumbled, “You’re getting them excited. If you’d just stop running, they wouldn’t come after you…” The three humans stood motionless and watched their animals growl and lunge whenever I made a move to leave. We stood in this stalemate until the dogs got bored and loped back down the driveway.

But this is nothing compared to the dog dread I felt while in Tibet. There, mongrel dogs are everywhere, but they appear in particular abundance at monasteries. (Or, more accurately, ruins of monasteries, as the Chinese, having invaded Tibet [they don't call it an invasion] in the 1950s, successfully obliterated most Buddhist monasteries, epicenters of Tibetan life, during the horrific years of the Cultural Revolution. The Chinese have partially rebuilt some of the temples and monasteries and repeopled them with enough monks to keep them operating as "museums" and tourist attractions.)

At Sera Monastery outside Lhasa, where monks sit in groups in the treed courtyard polishing their debating skills, a horde of dogs swarmed our vehicle when it pulled into the parking area. As we explored Drepung Monastery , "Rice Heap" in Tibetan, (a Drepung monk in above photo), which hangs on a high hillside outside Lhasa, dogs followed us up and along the warren of dirt paths and alleys that ran through the complex of temples, dormitories and chanting halls.

And there were more dogs in Xegar, a dusty outpost that is a gateway to Mt. Everest. This is a verbatim entry from my journal, written in Xegar’s Everest Hotel (a concrete gulag – I’m low maintenance and extremely easy to please, but this was bad): “Last night I barely slept. Dogs were running wild through this compound all night. There are more dogs in Tibet than you could ever believe. They hang out in massive profusion at monasteries because they get food there. The monks feed them because they believe dogs are reincarnated monks who failed to return to a higher plane. At 4 a.m., I went outside our cell (“suite,” the tour operator called it) to go to the bathroom (a pit latrine), and, as soon as I stepped down the three steps to the dirt yard, two wild dogs tore by my legs. I was scared to death.”

The morning after I wrote that journal entry Mike and I hiked up a mountainside outside Xegar and came to what the Chinese had left of the 800-year-old Shining Crystal Monastery, a walled citadel tucked away on the high reaches of a slope overlooking the beautiful, light aqua river that runs between the last mud-walled houses at the back of the town and distant yellow mustard fields under cultivation. As we climbed, the river pulsed and rippled over mounds of smooth, rounded stone.

We thought Shining Crystal, which once housed 400 monks, was abandoned. It was a shell of what it once was, and we expected to have the striking, firebombed ruin to ourselves. We were at serious altitude, which made us feel even more alone. We were startled, then, when we puffed up the last piece of dirt trail and heard laughter.

Above us, on an ancient, deep red stone arch that framed the mountain trail, sat a half-dozen boys in maroon robes. Little monks. They smiled, swung their feet back and forth in the air and beckoned us to enter. As soon as we crossed the compound’s threshold, dogs appeared. They barked viciously and showed their yellow teeth.

Saved by the monks. The cherub monks shooed the dogs away and then, with great smiles, led us through the passages and warrens and alleys and chambers of the monastery. They showed us everything that was left, everything the Chinese hadn’t disintegrated. We gave the boys pens, hard candy and a few yuan. (They wanted pictures of the Dalai Lama, beloved secular and spiritual leader of all Tibetans, living in exile in India since his escape from Tibet at the time of the Chinese invasion. "No Dalai Lama pics," I said sadly. I’d made a conscious decision not to bring those into Tibet because I didn’t want to be arrested. I applaud passionate activists like the forever-blacklisted-from-China Richard Gere, but I, a weenie, waited until Kathmandu to buy my bright red “FREE TIBET” t-shirt. Just days after we returned home, newspapers ran stories of two Americans who’d been arrested in Lhasa’s Barkhor Square for wearing “FREE TIBET” shirts. Dummies, I thought. You did things backwards. See Tibet first, then buy “FREE TIBET” t-shirt in Nepal. Wear it on the plane home. Make a statement, but stay out of Chinese jail.)

Shining Crystal’s boy monks brought us into the monastery’s main hall, full of images of Tibetan spiritual leaders Dorje Chapa and Songsten Gampo. At the holy chanting hall, where monks young and old were gathered in meditation, Mike was invited to enter, but I, a female, had to remain outside. Mike took his shoes off and went into the deep, close space. I stood at the chanting hall doorway and breathed in the scent of burning yak butter as it escaped in wifts from the sacred, oblong chamber.

Chanting concluded, Mike and the monks emerged from the dark room. Mike put his sneakers back on, and we bowed and touched our fingertips in the universal salaam of friendship and respect, then turned to leave.

On a rock wall above our heads, dogs, growling viciously, shadowed us. We moved, they moved. These beasts would, it was clear, pounce on and eat us before we reached the gate that led back to the world below the Shining Crystal Monastery.

I’d had enough of dogs. Traveling overland across Tibet required considerable endurance, and I was hard pressed to waste any of my remaining energy on dogs. I turned toward the chanting hall threshold in total and complete supplication. An old monk stood in the doorway, and I asked him with my eyes to help us. No words were exchanged, but the spry old guy hopped up onto the wall and, with his arms, kept the canines frozen in place atop the wall until we’d safely exited.

We scrambled down the slope toward Xegar. When we were out of sight, the old monk probably fed the dogs, his yet-to-be-optimally-reincarnated fellows. “I’m sorry,” he might have said. “They’re not all like her. And be patient. Your next lives will be better. Om mani padme hum. Hail to the jewel in the lotus."

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Brittany: The march of the crabs

A Breton proverb:

E-lec'h ma vez tre ha lanv
E c'hell pep hini lakaat e anv.

La ou il y a flux et reflux,
chacun peut inscrire son nom.

Where there is ebb and flow,
everyone can write his name.

We'd rented a house on France's Rose Granite Coast in Brittany, a Celtic world in a Gallic country. We'd had previous success with rental agency Interhome and booked through them again, and they did not disappoint. For less than the price of two double hotel rooms for the week, our family of four lived regally in a seven-room house on a grassy hill above a beach in Louannec, part of the larger municipality of Perros-Guirec (Perroz Gireg in Breton).

The tide outside our back door was a magical, organic part of our Louannec days, and we found ourselves using its movements like a natural metronome. As it ebbed and flowed, we waded, walked, wandered, swam, sat and dreamed according to whether the water was full in, moving out toward the open sea, gone a mile or more from the shore, or on its way back toward us. The tide's rhythm guided our own and shaped our daily routines.

Each morning, Dana would skip down to the bay with a plastic orange bucket and a spatula she took from a kitchen drawer and collect the dead crabs exposed by the water's dawn retreat. She arranged the most colorful and interesting of the empty shells, picked clean of their meat by seagulls, in a line on a garden table that sat outside the kitchen window. Each morning, the line grew longer.

After we returned from the neighborhood boulangerie with our day's supply of soft, warm, luscious-smelling baguettes, she'd open the kitchen window and wave a baguette baton at the crabs, leading them in an imaginary march.

Kilimanjaro takes off his poncho

In March, Reuters distributed an article about a London meeting of the world’s biggest polluters. Ministers and leaders gathered to discuss the imperative to reduce carbon emissions. (The US was represented, but, as far as this American can tell, emerged thinking Kyoto Agreement means little more than acting civil while in a lovely Japanese city north of Osaka.)

To spur the ministers to outrage and action, photos were shown of a bald Mt. Kilimanjaro, evident victim of global warming. Kili, 19,340 feet at the tip of Kibo, the tallest of its three summits, sits in Tanzania near the Kenyan border. The highest peak in Africa and one of the world’s highest freestanding mountains, Kili has, for ages, been a symbol of wonder, elusiveness, striving and a source of inspiration and strength. I wrote a story about Tim Saunders, a Massachusetts man who climbed Kili in 2003. “If God lived on earth,” Saunders told me, “I imagine this is what His place would look like.”

His place looks different now. The snows of Kilimanjaro – Kilima Njaro or “shining mountain” in Swahili – are almost gone. The photo above, taken a few years ago, is the best I could get from Kili. Covered in clouds during most of our visit to Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, the legendary snowcap seemed small and vulnerable whenever it showed itself.

When I read the Reuters article and considered the now nearly snowless Kilimanjaro, my mind flashed back to a van ride across the Bolivian Altiplano.

Adam and I were on our way to Lake Titicaca with Mario, a wizened old driver able to see through roiling clouds of Altiplano dust, and our guide, Federico, a young doctor who had just finished his internship and was trying to qualify for a residency program in Germany. He moonlighted with La Paz’ Crillon Tours to earn extra money for that hoped-for air ticket to Frankfurt.

For two hours, we drove up close and parallel to the Cordillera Real, a string of Andes that blew my mind. From Illimani that looms over La Paz to Illampu near Lake Titicaca, the ride was a nonstop visual feast of some of the world’s grandest peaks.

One looked barren. Chacaltaya was mostly stark brown in comparison to its brilliant, snow-draped neighbors. There might have been more snow on the side I couldn’t see, but Chacaltaya, site of the world’s highest developed ski area, looked rough and rocky. When I suggested to Federico that perhaps the mountain was mad at people for skiing on him, Federico looked at me as if I’d opened a door he never expected me to be able to unlock.

“Every mountain is an abuelo – a grandfather – and a great spirit,” he said softly. “When a mountain loses its snow, it is cause for much concern. We say that the grandfather is taking off his poncho.” When an abuelo takes off his poncho, Bolivians believe the grandfather is preparing to act in some way that will affect the lives of those who live near the mountain. Federico said Chacaltaya had been slowly taking off his poncho for five years.

Kilimanjaro is taking off his poncho. Is he telling us he’s angry at how we treat our world? Kili and Chacaltaya stand on different continents an ocean apart, but the indigenous people who live under both recognize them as elders to be honored, earthforms with spirits. Perhaps the two grandfathers talk to one another, wondering whether mankind will heed the message sent each time another abuelo begins to take off his poncho.

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