Santa Rosa, New Mexico: Eyeball to eyeball on Route 66

A friendly town on New Mexico's Route 66 was the setting for an important family moment in this Ribbons excerpt that recently ran as a front page feature in the Traveling Today department of iparenting.com. Enjoy, and feel free to pass this post along to others who had, have, will have or are glad they don't have teenagers...

Where shall we go next?

Christo, the Chrysler Building and one bad oyster

I'm back from New York City and, as always, she was amazing. Can’t get enough. I’ve got to do more of these spur of the moment quickie trips. Four hours and I’m there. Maybe next time I’ll take the Fung Wah Bus. For fifteen bucks each way, you’re delivered between Chinatowns – Boston’s and New York’s.

I did some of my regular New York things – photographed the Chrysler Building 99 times; sucked down a platter of mollusks at Grand Central’s Oyster Bar (I actually met an oyster I didn’t like – from Kitana Bay. Quite milky, and it sat too deep in the shell, making it hard to get to); ran the city and found more bronze plaques marking historic sites (I now know where Nathan Hale, hanged in New York City at age 21 by order of General William Howe, uttered his last words, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country” and where Thomas Edison screened what was the world’s first “movie”); marveled at the life-sized stuffed horse and elephant ($15K) at FAO Schwarz and watched two young staffers – maybe Julliard students – play The Entertainer with their feet on the piano Tom Hanks danced on in Big and passed on the $16 to-go banana split on offer at the street level ice cream shop; hung out in Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library – the food kiosks were closed, but the lovely hunter green lawn chairs were out, and many homeless people sat in the sun, sleeping.

But I spent most of my visit in Central Park enjoying Christo’s Gates (see last post). The whole thing was great fun, and I think that’s the idea. Enjoyment, glee, happiness, good feelings, freedom. Whatever you call it, art or not, it made people smile. And I mean grin really big. Thousands of people walking around smiling. What a lovely gift. Something vast, intriguing, colorful and temporary bringing joy, for 16 days, to everyone in or around Central Park. Even people I overheard professing to hate it (“What is this? Art? We could do this. String some material over some poles...”) kept walking through saffron-draped gate after gate after gate. The naysayers were having a good time, and I didn’t see any of them turn and leave.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude took a few spins around the park in a gray-silver chauffeured luxury car. Jeanne-Claude had her window down in the 16 degree cold, gleaming and waving, her giant red hair laughing on top of her head. I focused on her so long that I only saw Christo as a shadow by her side.

All kinds of people having a huge, happy time in a supreme public space in a city where superlatives are the norm. In February. In sub-20-degree weather. Art? I think so. Powerful, good vibes.

Everyone related to the miles of flowing orange curtains in his or her own way. I listened to a fit, steel-haired man in his 60’s, talking to a friend on a cell phone, say, “I’m under the gates. I’m right under the gates. Get yourself into the city, Sandy. There are women here. Lots of women...”


Ribbons of Highway proceeds continue to go to tsunami relief. Thank you.

Where shall we go next?

Off to Central Park to see Christo's Gates

This will be a short post. Busy day. I was reading the February issue of Smithsonian yesterday and came upon an article about Christo's installation, The Gates, currently alive in Central Park for a mere 16 days. Something wonderful in my favorite place in my favorite city on earth. I bought a train ticket and nabbed one of the last hotel rooms in the city -- Manhattan is sold out. (Mike tried to get me into a Marriott because he's got one of those fancy platinum cards, but no dice. Every Marriott in the city is booked. I then tried our old 3-star favorites, places we use in Manhattan when we're not staying for free using Marriott points -- the Westpark and Radio City Apartments. If you're fussy, or are bothered by bedspreads that don't match the drapes, look elsewhere. Anyway, both sold out. I turned to Expedia and got what looked like the last room in midtown, at the Roosevelt Hotel near Grand Central Terminal. )

I'll tell you about The Gates when I return, but, as anyone who read my inaugural blog post back in October will remember, you'll have to wait a bit for a photo, because I use film and am one of the few people left on the planet who have to wait for slides to be developed...

This should be an exuberant event. A perhaps once in a lifetime opportunity to take in something as wacky, wonderful and joyous as a Christo installation. I hope I see Christo and Jeanne-Claude, his wife, wandering around the park. I have a feeling they'll be there, watching everyone enjoy the miles of saffron-colored nylon fabric draped from 7,500 gates set 12-feet apart along Central Park's maze of walkways.

I will spend my entire visit in the park, viewing The Gates in the evening, at dawn on my 6 am runs, at height of day, and in the late afternoon light. I'll also scope out the course for the MORE Marathon, a marathon I'm running in Central Park on April 10.

Which reminds me, I'm in training, and today's my long run day. Gotta sign off and go bang out 14 miles. Come home, pack, and I'm off to New York City. Have a great weekend.

St. Valentine was Italian

Well, not technically Italian, as Italy didn’t exist in the third century, when the priest, Valentine, stood on the side of love and free will and married young couples in defiance of Roman emperor Claudius II’s decree that young men could not wed. The emperor had decided that unattached men made better soldiers than their married counterparts. Valentine, a make-love-not-war type, performed marriages anyway and paid with his life.

It fits that a man whose life legend gave rise to a holiday celebrating love came from what is now Italy, a land to which I could return and return endlessly. Italy is beauty and romance and sun and light and breeze and blue water and sweet nothings and rich tastings and languid afternoons and shimmering evenings. Italy isn’t a country. It’s a state of mind, a sensual experience to be savored.

Love was in the air when we visited Burano, a small island in the lagoon that surrounds Venice and environs. Crazy-colorful like a box of crayons, Burano’s houses are brilliant shades of purple, blue, red, orange, yellow, green. Vivid, gorgeous, great fun. I can’t imagine being depressed in Burano. There’s too much fantastic, spirited color.

As we walked the island’s main street, wide, cobbled and built aside the canal that flows through town, I saw a homemade flyer taped to the window of a small shop. Two young faces – the kind Valentine must have looked on – smiled from the poster, which announced: “Walter & Paola oggi Sposi” – “Walter and Paola married today.” Cheek to cheek, Walter and Paola shared their love with all of Burano. I hoped they’d put the poster up that morning, which would make “oggi” mean “today” actually, and not just in translation. Maybe we’d see a wedding.

We made our way to the broad, cobbled piazza that held Burano’s ancient church. We looked up at the church’s campanile, which tilted some 15 degrees. We’d seen the askew bell tower from the water on our approach to the island, and now we stood under it, trusting it wouldn’t topple onto our heads.

The piazza began to fill up with people dressed in their Sunday best. It wasn’t Sunday. Hot dog. We were going to see Paola marry Walter. We did our best to blend in with the wedding guests, but our backpacks looked like rhinoceroses in the sea of graceful, lace umbrellas the ladies carried to shield their faces from the sun. Burano lace is prized, and each of these exquisite, handmade umbrellas – some white, some a velvety black – was a work of art. I stood behind some of the ladies and examined the intricate, dreamy lace patterns as the sun played on the umbrellas.

Just before noon, Paola walked up Burano’s ancient main street on her father’s arm. He beamed. The train of Paola’s snow-white wedding dress brushed over the centuries-old pavement as she made her way to the church door. Her father lifted her veil, kissed her, and the wedding party and guests entered the church.

We didn’t want the rhinoceroses on our backs to spoil Paola’s wedding or wedding pictures, so we watched the nuptials from the window. Wagner’s Wedding March thundered from the church organ, filling Burano’s afternoon air. The crayon houses seemed to break into smiles. Paola glided up the aisle and joined Walter at the altar. Oggi sposi. Married today. St. Valentine would have loved it.


(In researching links for this post, I came across this webpage by someone named Annie. The page hasn’t been updated since 2002, but Annie shares some interesting Valentine’s Day legends, lore and holiday traditions around the world. Scroll down past the candy and cards stuff...)

Where shall we go next?

Overnight trains

We've made summer travel plans. Mike and Adam will travel two hours north to our New Hampshire cottage and spend a week painting it. We’ve owned the place for 20 years, and this will be the first fresh coat it’s received from us. In New Hampshire, paint jobs, like people, are hardy and weather-resistant.

Dana and I are going to Russia. We’ll spend a few days each in Moscow and St. Petersburg. I can’t wait to see St. Basil’s wild-tiled domes and Peter the Great’s sherbet-colored palaces lining the Neva River, but what I’m really psyched about is the overnight train between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

When I was a student vagabonding around Europe, rail was my mode of transport, and overnight trains saved the cost of a hotel room. (That’s Backpacking, Lesson 1. If you’re female, you learn Lesson 2, How to Keep Safe, on the fly. Trust your instincts, ladies, and when intuition speaks, listen without question. If you feel the need to hit someone over the head with your pack, excuse yourself from the compartment, and sit on the floor near the well-trafficked and brightly lit bathroom, do so without hesitation or apology.)

Despite an occasional misadventure, I grew to love the trains. When we went to Kenya as a family not long ago, I booked us on the overnight train from Nairobi to Mombasa on the Indian Ocean. We didn’t sleep much, but we savored the experience.

Our cab driver, Emmanuel, deposited us at the Nairobi Railway Station. We bid him kwaheri, good-bye in Swahili, and went to the station’s central platform, where “LORI HEIN PARTY” was listed, with coach and compartment assignment, on the “Berthing Allotments” section of the station’s notice board. A railway worker in a white coat gave us four meal tickets for the train’s 7:15 p.m. seating.

We boarded, found our four-berth second-class compartment, and made ourselves at home. Dana read animal books and Archie and Jughead comics, Adam fired up the Gameboy, and Mike pulled out a copy of The Economist someone had left behind in the station waiting room. Luke, our “caretaker,” popped by to say he’d make up our bedding while we were at dinner. (When we returned he gave us a security drill, and his most urgent tip was to keep our windows closed at station stops to thwart thieves who’d try to reach into the compartment and grab things.)

A pair of stewards walked through our compartment banging a dinner gong, and we proceeded to the restaurant car. Dinner was orchestrated like a rolling ballet, white-coated waiters serving drinks, soup, bread, and rice and curry in an efficiently choreographed performance that gave you just enough time to eat, and them just enough time to clear, before the next seating. Dana, in the photo above, was dubious about the curry – she saw chicken in it. Not much of a flesh-eater, this girl has clothing that reads, “Spare an animal. Eat a vegetable.”

As we rolled toward Mombasa on this railway that Queen Victoria ordered built in 1898 to best the Germans in the European chess game of dominion in East Africa – Victoria and Kaiser Wilhelm lived to outdo one another – I stayed glued to the window, recording every nighttime scene and nuance in my journal. Over a dozen stops. Emali, Kiboko. Makindu with its beverage stall lit up bright in the black night and music playing. Darjani, where a full African moon lit the landscape and a lone, powerful southern hemisphere star commanded the heavens. At each stop, I heard nighttime voices and the sound of leather sandals padding the platform outside our window, hurrying to get on the train before it slithered southeast to the coast. Mtito Andrei, where big rigs traveling the dangerously narrow and monotonous Nairobi-Mombasa highway were parked, waiting for daylight. The road parallels the tracks, and I’d experience occasional middle-of-the-night terror when an 18-wheeler barreled next to our train, engine and headlights blazing.

I remember Voi at 5 a.m. A road and railway commerce hub that sits between Tsavo National Park’s east and west sections, the outpost was humming with trucks and trains, all moving, transporting goods from one piece of East Africa to another. Before we reached Voi, I’d looked out onto Tsavo – the Nairobi-Mombasa train rolls right through it. Twenty-eight indentured Indian slaves, part of the contingent “recruited” to build the railway from Mombasa to present-day Uganda’s Lake Victoria, were eaten by lions in the landscape I looked upon. Two man-eaters plagued Colonel John Henry Patterson’s railway-building camp, carrying workers away in the middle of the night, feasting on them, leaving only limbs and bones behind. Patterson himself eventually shot and killed the two lions, and his 1907 classic, “The Man-Eaters of Tsavo,” recounts the whole bloody ordeal.

I’m excited about my next train ride. Overnight from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Will I sleep? Or, as it was in Africa, will so many fascinating vignettes pass outside the window that sleep is rendered impossible...


Ribbons of Highway proceeds continue to go to tsunami relief. The headlines have faded, but the need hasn’t. Details here.

The Minnesota watershed moment

You're probably thinking, "Wait... this doesn't look like Minnesota...". You're right. It's Nevada. This Ribbons excerpt from a recent issue of Hackwriters -- The International Writers Magazine ties the two together. Everything's relative...

Ignorance is not bliss

I told you my mother reads this blog. Her response to my last post:


I enjoyed reading about it now that it is in hindsight. Once again it proves that the old saying, "What you don't know won't hurt you" is not true, since not knowing that these Indians believed that if you took their picture you captured their soul, could have hurt us.

Love Mom

Otavalo, Ecuador: Cameras and culture clash

My mother and I had hired a guide to take us by car from our base in Quito, Ecuador to the livestock and artisan markets at Otavalo, about two hours away. Marika, the guide, was a chic Dane who dressed in tight black pants and heels and stood nearly two feet taller than than most Ecuadorans. She’d married an Ecuadoran banker and had lived in Quito for about four years.

She met us in our hotel lobby and walked us to the car, a huge, steel, late-‘70s Mercury sedan with a metallic coppertone paint job and a back seat the size of a living room sofa. Behind the steering wheel sat a massive bear of a man whom Marika introduced as “Charlie.” Charlie owned the Mercury, which had somehow made its way from its Detroit birthplace to a new life in South America. Charlie spoke little English and focused on his driving, negotiating the panoramic cliff-hugging roads with great care.

We watched pigs and produce change hands at the agricultural market, where the Otavalans did their shopping, then wandered among the handicraft and textile stalls in Otavalo’s main square. Women in richly embroidered blouses and deep blue head scarves worked at the stalls, while the men, dressed in white pants and shirts and dark indigo ponchos stood nearby, often in pairs. The Otavalo Indians are proud, protective of their lineage and are among the most successful of Ecuador’s indigenous groups. The work of these renowned weavers is highly prized.

Imbabura province’s lush, high altitude landscape rolled past the car windows as we headed back toward Quito. We resumed the routine we’d adopted on the ride to Otavalo: Marika made nonstop polite chitchat from the front seat, and silent Charlie kept his eyes on the road, stopping whenever we wanted to take a picture.

What’s that up ahead?! Something interesting is going on down that embankment off the road! A flurry of color and activity. A large group of Indians in bright colors is swirling and dancing and singing in a dusty yard next to a low, white building with a covered porch. A festival! What luck! Charlie stopped the car, and the four of us walked down the hill to watch the celebration.

In short order, my mother and I were pressed into the crowd, in the center of which were half-a-dozen men in garishly painted bird and animal masks. Marika was whirling about, too. Charlie, over six feet tall and the size of a linebacker, stood on the porch, watching the scene as carefully as he’d watched the road. I read and understood his body language, and kept my camera at my side.

My mother, dancing in the circle’s middle, raised her camera, looked into the viewfinder and clicked. Before I realized what was happening, Charlie bolted through the crowd and said to me, “Run! Now!” My mother was still dancing. Charlie pushed his way to her. I risked one shot of a man in an orange mask raising his arm toward me before I turned to run. The men in the circle lunged at us, pointing at our cameras. Faces that had been friendly and welcoming turned angry. People shouted, shook their fists in our faces and tried to grab our cameras.

Charlie, bigger than any three of them glued together, put his body between us and the snarling crowd. “Run!” We scrambled as fast as we could up the short embankment. Marika was already at the car and had opened all the doors. We jumped in and waited for Charlie, who’d stayed below longer than he should have to give us more running room. He bounded up the rise, jumped into the driver’s seat and tore away, the crowd not far behind.

I’d seen something before I’d jumped into the backseat. A car had pulled up behind us, and a blonde tourist in yellow polyester got out and started bounding gaily down the embankment toward the festival. Around her neck hung a big, black camera.

Where shall we go next?

Update on book proceeds to tsunami relief (see Jan. 2 post): The Red Cross has announced it has collected enough funds to sustain a 10-year rebuilding effort, and UNICEF is scaling back calls for donations. Thus, I'll target future proceeds from "Ribbons of Highway" sales to Save The Children.

From Belize to Tikal: Peten jungle flight

"Ummm, you know that God is your copilot, right, Javier? Not me. We’re straight on that?” Javier, our cool, calm and capable Island Air pilot looked at the airplane steering wheel I held in my sweaty hands and laughed. I was riding shotgun in a 10-seater Britten-Norman Islander, in the copilot’s seat, and the steering wheel in my lap and the windshield and instrument panel in my face made me a little nervous. I like adventure, but I hate danger.

This was one of those rare days when you get a retake – a chance to do something you missed doing well or at all on some previous day of your life. A few days prior, I’d landed on the tiny airstrip outside San Pedro on Belize’s Ambergris Cay. Our family had flown from Belize City in a plane so small I feared our mammoth family-suitcase-on-wheels might tip the craft’s delicate balance and land us all in the drink, where we’d swim with the manta rays and hope to find one or two to cling to until we were rescued (or eaten). As we disembarked at the shack that served as the San Pedro terminal, I noticed a sign offering Island Air tours to Tikal, Guatemala, arguably the most stunning of the Mayan world’s deep jungle ruins. I’d come close to Tikal once before, but never got there.

This was an unexpected gift. Years earlier, my sister and I had spent an on-the-edge week in Guatemala (landslides, volcanic eruptions, rain-soaked nighttime mountaintop evacuations – a future blog post…). God must have figured we’d had our fair share of adrenaline rushes, so he kept making it rain in Flores, Guatemala, the gateway to Tikal. Flores’ runway was dirt, so rain meant mud, and mud meant canceled flights from Guatemala City. Three days in a row. Then, time to fly back to the States. I’d been to Guatemala, but I hadn’t seen Tikal. Kept me up at night. Such a bummer. Such a void. Close, but no cigar.

Fast forward to a family beach vacation. A little outfit called Island Air tells me it will take me on a day trip from San Pedro Town, Belize to Tikal, Guatemala and back. I’m in.

I walked to the airstrip at 6:15 in the morning, and at seven o’clock, Javier guided the hummingbird-sized plane into the air, and we were off to Guatemala. There were four couples and me, so Javier and I became a couple by default. The others – two thirty-something Manhattan investment banker-ad exec twin sets, Danny and Chris from LA, and a German couple who said nothing but nodded a lot – laughed when I took the copilot seat, the only one left. The couples held hands and snuggled while I got up close and personal with an altimeter, heard every word spoken into Javier’s air traffic control headphones, and wrote my name in dust on the plane’s tiny, oh-so-screechingly-close-to-me dashboard.

As we flew over Belize City, Javier pointed to manatees swimming in the Belize River below. About a dozen beautiful, primal behemoths. I relaxed. Javier, I realized, was just like the transcontinental 747 pilot who announces, in that reassuring pilot voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, if you look out the right side of the aircraft, you’ll see Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Lake Ontario…” Javier knew his route, his country and his plane. My white knuckles regained a splash of color. I resolved to look at the flight to Tikal as a sightseeing adventure in its own right. And Javier made it so.

We flew over the Peten, one of earth’s last dense jungles. We eat them up so quickly now, that to see one from the air is to grasp its deep, green, life-giving importance. If only everyone could fly over a rainforest. As green things go, emeralds are nothing. Trees are everything.

Javier pointed again and spoke. The pack in the back were out of earshot, so I was the only one who followed his finger to the comb of an as yet unexcavated Mayan temple that poked through the Peten canopy a mile below and miles away. Such a moment. The whole of the dense Peten spread beneath us, and a lone Mayan temple reached, through the centuries, to the heavens. Something few have seen. Something I would never have seen without Javier.

We flew over the neat, lush Mennonite farms of northern Belize and over tiny Belmopan, Belize’s capital. Finally, Guatemala’s Lake Peten Itza spread blue below us, and Flores appeared, just the vision I’d imagined it would be. A remarkable sight from the air, Flores sits in the middle of the lake like a red-tiled circle of earth, crowned by a conquistador cathedral and connected to the shore by a causeway.

When day was done and we’d taken in Tikal with the help of our lame guide, Raoul – “the one with the stick,” to whom I’ll introduce you in another post – we hopped back into our Britten-Norman hummingbird. The couples took their places in the rear. Javier and I jumped up front. “Onward and upward, Javier!” He smiled and guided the plane down the runway and into the air.


Book proceeds to tsunami relief indefinitely. Details in Jan. 2 post

Winter weather update from the Scottish Highlands :)

I heard from Patrick Vickery again (see January 15 post). He enjoyed the post, and he shared a weather update from his neck of the Scottish Highlands: "Awaiting the forecast - blizzards just now, but still not arrived. Everyone looking forward to a "day off" tomorrow if we wake up to blocked roads. Last week -- Wednesday -- all the bridges in the Highlands were closed due to high winds: Skye, Kessock, Cromarty and Dornoch Bridges. Quite unusual. Many trees down and some structural damage. We are having a memorable winter so far."

I hope Patrick doesn't mind me sharing his correspondence, but in addition to its being interesting, it gives me an excuse to share another winter-in-the-Highlands photo (this is Eilean Donan Castle) and to point you to more of Patrick's wonderful "garden blethers." Again, gardener or not (I'm not. I've killed cactus, although I did grow some mean organic green beans one summer.), you'll enjoy them. Check out "The Compost Blether," "The Surreal Blether," and "The Inanimate Object Blether." Gardening is a metaphor for life, so we can all relate...

Where shall we go next?

Ribbons of Highway proceeds go to tsunami relief. Deatils in Jan. 2 post

National Martin Luther King Day

Today is National Martin Luther King Day in the US. School is out, many businesses are closed, and people across the country reflect on the life and death of the man whose dream was the fuel that ignited America's civil rights movement.

The kids and I paid our respects to Dr. King's memory one Memphis morning just after dawn. We were about 2,000 miles into our post-9/11 journey across America, and we had to tuck hundreds of miles under our tires that day, but I couldn't leave Memphis without parking in front of the Lorraine Motel and spending a few quiet moments there.

An excerpt from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America, Chapter 4 - FROM MEMPHIS TO THE DELTA: Mississippi, Louisiana:

At the Rum Boogie Café on Beale Street, I held the cellphone up to the band so Mike could hear some blues. The music was wonderful, but I was more excited by my still novel ability to make a phone call from the middle of a Memphis dance floor.

We left Beale about 7:30 p.m., just as dusk dropped and seriously armed and muscled cops in groups of four began to appear. On the riverbank, people filed up the gangway for the 8 p.m. cruise on the Mississippi Queen. The night and the river were red and purple, and the soft green lights on the steel bridge that held the Arkansas state line in its middle glowed like mints.

Before we left Memphis early the next morning, we stood in front of the Lorraine Motel. A white wreath hangs on a blue metal railing, marking the second-floor room where Martin Luther King died. I’d hoped to see Jacqueline Smith, the protestor who’s camped for years across from the Lorraine and who lived in it before it became the National Civil Rights Museum. All her stuff was there on the corner. Her boxes and cardboard and signs. I half-wanted to stick around and meet her. I wanted to hear her story. I wanted to hear her tell how money spent on the museum could do more civil right by improving living conditions for Memphis’ black poor. But we had miles to cover, and Smith was still in bed somewhere, probably on a friend’s couch. We left Memphis as the sun rose, rays bouncing off a riverbank jogger puffing along in something that looked like a tin foil spacesuit.

Shortly after a quick stop at the graffiti wall outside Graceland, where I took a picture of Roop and his father from California and mentioned, perhaps unwisely, that we weren’t real Elvis fans, we entered Mississippi and rode the sterile interstate all the way to Vicksburg. We drove the powerfully haunted battlefield road and looked down sobering rows of endless gravestones in the cemetery.

“Ribbons of Highway” proceeds go to tsunami relief. Details in Jan. 2 post.

The Scottish Highlands in winter: gales and travel gods

I got an email from Easter, Ross, Scotland, from Patrick Vickery, a gardener and gardening writer. (Patrick writes “blethers,” and you’ll enjoy them, whether or not you’re a gardener. His “Scottish Blether” paints a lovely word picture of Easter Ross.) Patrick asked whether I’d ever visited the Scottish Highlands. I wrote him that I had, indeed, during a February blast of winter weather so powerful that “The Gales” were a major news item on BBC radio reports out of London. I remember listening with fascination to the report about a British Midland jet approaching Aberdeen, being buffeting like a toy in the wind, aborting its landing, and returning to London.

“My kids and I drove through a Highlands snowstorm on our way to the Isle of Skye,” I wrote to Patrick. “We crossed the bridge to Kyleakin – the bridge swaying and moaning – and were told if we wanted to make it back to the mainland, we’d better sightsee in a hurry, because they planned to shut the bridge down (which they did). While on Skye, the wind picked up my son and almost tossed him into the sea.”

Patrick wrote back, “Yes, lovely part of the world, the Highlands, though it does have erratic weather to contend with. But that’s part of its charm, of course.”

I couldn’t agree more. Weather is a thread in the fabric of a place, and it colors a traveler’s experience. I chose Scotland in February because of some irresistibly cheap off-season fares dangled by Icelandair (which helped the owner of The Official Loch Ness Monster Exhibition – not to be confused with The Original Loch Ness Monster Exhibition, whose brochure had driving directions that included, “Drive Right Past the Official Loch Ness Monster Exhibition...” – understand why a lady and two kids from America showed up at his establishment early on a bitter, fog-bound winter day. He agreed that a sub-$300 hop across the pond and back made off-season the right season.) I went to Scotland because I could get there cheap, but I fell in love with it partly because of its weather.

Erratic it was, but its variability seemed guided by the unseen hand of the god who watches over travelers and puts infinite enrichment opportunities in the path of the alert explorer. For a week, from our Highlands base in Inverness (30 miles south of Patrick’s Easter Ross), we were alternately challenged and rewarded by The Gales and by the god who blew them our way then blew them out of our way just long enough to reveal some bit of Scottish beauty.

A dense, gray Loch Ness murk at Drumnadrochit parted to reveal brooding Urquhart Castle, floating like a great stone serpent above the loch. As we took the A87 into the wild Highland glens that began after Invermoriston, heavy snow fell, but melted when it hit the warmer ground. The thickening slushy gruel gripped the car’s undercarriage in a chokehold, and every forward kilometer felt like an athletic achievement. Magnificent Highland peaks met the road and towered over us. The A87 from Invermoriston to Skye must be a spellbindingly beautiful ride in clear weather.

At times, we were inside snow clouds, our world a total whiteout. Then, at Loch Druich, the travel god replaced the snow clouds with a soft sheet of rain and revealed hauntingly perfect Eilean Donan Castle. Like Urquhart, a castle arguably best savored in dark, mystery-charged weather. As we got out to explore, the wind nearly ripped the car doors from their hinges.

“You do the petrol, I’ll do the prellie,” said the BP station attendant in the seaside hamlet of Balmarca. I pumped while he shielded me, with a red-striped umbrella, from what was now biting sleet. We talked about the weather. “This degree of bad weather and gales is unusual for us,” he said, then confirmed it was going to “get far worse later today.” At this point, we were so close to Skye, the day’s destination, that I could have spit and hit it, so we kept going through Kyle of Lochalsh, where all the fishing trawlers were tied up tight at anchor, captains perhaps tucked in a comfy pub enjoying a single malt. Onto the Skye Bridge, where a neon sign flashed “HIGH WINDS,” and the top of the words “BRIDGE CLOSED” were just visible, ready to rotate into position. The toll collector gave me a weather report. The kids trust me on travel matters, but they shot me a few hairy eyeballs as we crept over the groaning bridge.

Because my mother reads this blog, I must assure her and other concerned readers that while I was being adventurous, I was not being stupid. We had a full tank of gas, plenty of food, and in Kyle I’d checked to make sure there were hotels on Skye that were open. The worst case scenario had us stuck on Skye in a Kyleakin hotel, eating tinned meat and playing cards until the bridge reopened (why, I even had flashlights, which came in handy a few days later during a blackout in Fort William).

We came, we saw (quickly, through bouts of hail), we evacuated. I believe the toll collector had been waiting for us. As we cleared his booth, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw “BRIDGE CLOSED” rotate into place.

Safe and snug back in Inverness, its floodlit hilltop castle outside our hotel window, we listened to Gaelic radio stations and contemplated our next road trip. We hit the A96 coastal road along Moray Firth. Tiny B9089 took us to Findhorn, smack on the water where the firth meets the North Sea. Rain beat the windshield. At Findhorn’s pebble beach, where wind whipped the dune grass and made it lie down flat, I parked the car so we could eat cheese sandwiches and watch the downpour. I likened the wet entertainment to sitting still inside a car wash. But the travel god halted the rain, and the kids took their sandwiches to the beach and ran along Findhorn’s dunes.

After a stop at Forres to see the glass-encased Sueno’s Stone, a colossal monolith carved with battle scenes by 9th century Picts (a Pictish depiction) and left in situ at what is now a busy intersection, we headed to seafront Nairn, in season a tony and lively golf resort. A barrage of rain. We were bombarded, pelted, poured upon. No vacation rental car windshield wipers on the planet ever worked harder than ours did that week. I know the Inuit have many words for snow. The Scots must have a bunch for rain.

We entered Nairn in a Scottish version of monsoon. But ach, aye! I knew things would change, and I waited for the travel god to do his thing. I parked near Nairn’s seafront playground, golf links and tin-roofed gazebo, the elegant Royal Marine Hotel, looking vacant and lonely, on our left, and Links Place, a rectangle of stone homes to our right. The instant I turned off the ignition, the rain stopped.

The kids burst from the car and ran up and down the lush green mounds that punctuate the park and links. As soon as they bounded down the hill in the photograph at the top of this post, a rainbow appeared. A North Sea rainbow. A Scottish Highlands in winter rainbow. The travel god is a pretty cool guy.


Book proceeds go to tsunami relief. Details in Jan. 2 post.

Bangkok, Thailand: A place of color and contrast

The wats and shrines of Bangkok are peppered throughout the cityscape, and their glittering, vividly-hued roofs and towers present a visual feast when the sun sets them aglow. Bangkok is a place of contrasts, its teeming, kinetic industriousness balanced by gentle spirituality and deep-rooted Buddhist calm. Parts of Bangkok are squalid, other parts sparkle. Orange and green tiles, and golden eaves, and doors and windows framed with bits of colored, mirrored glass move the eye up and away from the brown Chao Praya, busy with boat traffic.

Uniformed kids whoop and play at recess, chasing one another round and round the lotus-positioned Buddha who sits guard in the middle of the schoolyard; a silent trio of monks in saffron- and cantaloupe-colored robes negotiates the close quarters of “Temple Supply Street” and stops to consider a display of incense burners; nearby, “Orchid Street,” Plumbing Supply Street” and “Sewing Machine Street,” choked with three-wheel taxis and pedestrians, offer wares organized for maximum shopping efficiency; two masons, squatting before a line-up of 15 gold-leafed Buddhas, go to work on one of them, cleaning the stone pedestal with chisels and brushes; the caretaker at a temple complex arrives at work with his toddler, a boy no more than two, and father and son, dipping into matching aluminum pails of freshly mixed concrete, go about the important business of repairing the temple walkways. They wear the same contented smile as they work; the king’s birthday approaches, and ceremonies will include a royal ride down the Chao Praya. Specially chosen members of the Royal Thai Navy practice rowing the colossal golden-prowed royal barges down the muddy river.

(A grandson of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej was a victim of the Asian tsunamis)

For an indefinite period, Lori is donating proceeds from her book to tsunami relief. Details in Jan. 2 post

Travel to Southeast Asia

As Chris Heidrich of the BootsnAll travel community wrote in today's Boots newsletter, the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia shows us not only "the sheer power of mother nature and its unpredictability, but also reminds us that everyone is mortal, regardless if you are a traveler, a local, rich or poor, or what country you live in." Heidrich continues, "Instead of canceling your trips to Asia next summer, now more than ever is a time you should be going to places like Thailand and Indonesia. They need your tourism dollars more than ever."

Fishing and tourism are the economic mainstays of many of the hardest hit regions. A journey to Asia in 2005 can provide hope and support for people like this Thai woman who earns her living selling fruit and coconut juice to passing river travelers. Travel has the power to educate, to entertain, to renew and refresh, and to forge relationships and understanding. It also has the power to help heal.

Book proceeds to aid tsunami relief. See Jan. 2 post

Book proceeds to aid tsunami relief efforts

May 16, 2005 update: I will continue to donate book proceeds to tsunami relief through the end of May. The final donations will go to UNICEF's tsunami disaster fund. Thanks to everyone who helped a few more dollars find their way to people who need them.

Original post, Jan. 2, 2005:

First, thanks to everyone who purchased my book, Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America, during the holiday season. Proceeds from each sale were donated to Boston's Pine Street Inn, a shelter and work skills facility that serves 1,200 people daily. Mike and I have supported Pine Street for 15 years as a way of giving thanks for Adam, born healthy despite his very premature appearance into the world. Your holiday book purchases allowed us to increase this year's contribution by 25%. The past month was also Ribbons' most successful since its publication, and I truly thank you for that.

Beginning today and continuing indefinitely, I will donate proceeds from Ribbons to four organizations involved in tsunami relief efforts. Both my book and this blog promote understanding through travel. It's an amazing world, but right now a staggeringly large piece of it needs help.

I will split donations among these organizations: American Red Cross; Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres; Save the Children; United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). One-third of Asia's tsunami survivors are children. (Jan. 6 update: Doctors Without Borders has received all the tsunami-specific funds it needs at this time. Donations will go to the other three organizations.)

I will donate either $1 or $2 per copy, depending on where you purchase your book. For books ordered through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers, I will donate $1. I earn about $2 before marketing expenses on these sales. Because I earn slightly more on sales through my publisher, Booklocker, and on books purchased directly from me by mail or at personal appearances, I will donate $2 per copy on these sales. In addition to the paperback, Booklocker also offers Ribbons as an inexpensive, shipping-free PDF download, and I will contribute $2 from each PDF sale.

Links to purchase options, including Amazon sites in the UK, Canada, Germany, France and Japan, appear below. To read excerpts, reviews, and reader comments, please visit LoriHein.com. To order by mail (I'm happy to sign your personal or gift copies), send a check for $14.95 plus shipping (US $) to Lori Hein, 40 Williams St., N. Easton, MA 02356 USA. During this fundraiser, I will absorb some of the shipping costs, so $2 additional for shipping will get your book on its way to you. To schedule a free personal appearance/book signing for your group, church, shop, library or organization in the New England area, please email me or call 508-230-3766. I present slides from the American road, accompanied by excerpts from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America.

Use these links to order online. To keep the flow of money going out to relief organizations, I will send donations in ongoing increments of $10 or more as I'm able to confirm sales. I thank you for your help, hope you enjoy the book, and appreciate your sharing this post with others:

• Order from Lori or schedule a book signing/travel event - See Above or contact me ($2 donated)
• Order the paperback from Booklocker ($2 donated)
• Download Booklocker's PDF edition and read Ribbons on your computer ($2 donated)
• Order from Amazon.com or Barnes&Noble.com ($1 donated)
• Order from Amazon sites in the UK, Canada, Germany, France, Japan ($1 donated)

Another New Year's Eve, another morning after

An easy New Year's Day morning. Last night, we ate shrimp by the fireplace at our cabin in the New Hampshire woods. We were in bed by 11 and were up at 8 to greet the drywall guy who's going to make our cabin look like a real house. (The kids missed the drywall guy by three and a half hours. Adam and his friend, Thor, played Playstation until early 2005, and Regis Philbin kept Dana rapt until the Times Square ball fell.)

Many New Year mornings have found us waking in darkness in some city just tucking itself in after New Year's Eve revelry. We often take advantage of Christmas week school vacation to travel, and we usually fly home early New Year's Day morning. Locals' heads are just hitting their pillows as we wake in 4 am darkness to head to the airport.

By the time a city has turned quiet after its New Year's Eve celebrations, and our neighbors in the next room have passed out, and elevators have stopped disgorging loud, laughing groups into the hotel hallway, it's usually past two, and we catch a few teasing hours of sleep.

We try to ignore the festivities and turn in early, but we're rarely successful. There's too much temptation: technicolor fireworks pop and burst in the black sky over Wiesbaden, Germany's soaring cathedral spires; signs flashing multicolored holiday messages light the walls of our room in ancient Girona, Spain; chic, black-clad couples laugh and talk under our balcony overlooking La Rambla, Barcelona's vibrant pedestrian zone; Lisbon's well-to-do travel to their Algarve apartments where they host parties that spill into Albufeira's streets, and twentys0methings with boomboxes sit on the beach, their music and voices riding on the night air; lovers sit on Andorra La Vella's stone walls sipping champagne. They stumble home, leaving the bottle for the streetcleaner to pick up in the morning.

An egg in Baghdad revisited

I wrote the following post on October 28th and titled it "An egg in Baghdad: The price of UN sanctions." I'm posting it again. The price of the egg, it seems, was driven not only by UN sanctions, but by the UN itself and the rotten eggs that ran and benefited from the oil-for-food program. The original post:

If armed conflict is part of the current fabric of a place, I avoid that place, but conflict sometimes oozes over, around and through borders and colors a journey, nevertheless. In March 1999, I made a surgical strike into Jordan, seizing a period of calm between storms to visit Petra, long at the top of my goals list. I will take you to that exquisite rock city in a separate post.I’d planned to go to Jordan three months earlier, in December, but Saddam Hussein got in the way. He was a bad actor on a good day, and in December, there were no good days.

A week before my scheduled departure, the U.S. and Britain began bombing Iraq, and Jordanians joined others in the Arab world in protest. King Hussein, one of the world’s most tireless peacemakers, allowed anti-U.S. demonstrations, provided they were orderly. I kept tabs on State Department travel warnings, loitered in chat rooms at Arabia Online and daily read The Jordan Times Web edition, trying to gauge the mood. Would I be safe? My husband, Mike, and I stayed glued to CNN, watching Christiane Amanpour’s live broadcasts from Baghdad, flak popping behind her, the city’s mosques glowing an eerie neon green. One evening, Amanpour signed off, and CNN cut to Amman, the streets alive with men massed in protest. I looked at Mike. “I’m postponing.” His relief was palpable. I called British Air and rebooked for March.

I landed in Amman one day after the official 40 days of mourning for King Hussein, who’d died from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in February. On the day of his funeral, I’d risen in Boston at 4 am to watch on television, and I cried some. I’d respected this man, a voice of reason and conciliation, for many years. I felt I’d lost a friend and knew the world had lost a man of peace. Ala’a Haddad, owner of the Amman franchise where I picked up my rental car, told me the sight of 40 world leaders gathered to pay final tribute to the king made him proud to be Jordanian. “You cannot know what it was like for us that day,” he said, recalling the feeling of knowing that Hussein, even in death, could make adversaries discover common ground. For a day, Greeks mourned with Turks, Israelis with Syrians, Americans with Iraqis.

As I traveled Jordan and got to know its powerful desert landscape and gracious people, U.S. and British planes dropped bombs daily over Iraq, Jordan’s next-door neighbor, and chased Iraqi planes from the northern and southern no-fly zones. American pilots were busy. Five days after I landed in Jordan, American B-2s began bombing Yugoslavia. NATO had had enough of Slobodan Milosevic. Every night, I’d watch the bombing campaign on television. Every day, I’d sightsee, in my long skirt, long-sleeved tunic, dark socks, flat shoes and headscarf. While America was not alone in pummeling Kosovo and pieces of Serbia, or in bombing Iraq and enforcing economic sanctions, much of the world looked at America and saw arrogance and aggression. I felt a heightened need to blend in. To see Jordan without being seen.

I drove across Jordan to Aqaba on the Red Sea. I stood in the sun on my hotel room balcony and took in four countries with a single sweep of my eyes. The beachfront before me was Jordan. To the left, Saudi Arabia met the sea. On my right, the windows of high-rises in Eilat, Israel caught sunlight and bounced it back into Jordan. Across the Gulf of Aqaba, the mountains of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula sat in a shroud of desert haze.

I turned back into my room and picked up an envelope someone had slipped under my door. In a letter dated March 25, Consul Charles Heffernan of the U.S. Embassy in Amman wrote, “To all U.S. citizens in Jordan: Following the commencement of Nato Military Operations on March 24 against Serbia-Montenegro, there is the possibility for acts of retaliation by Serbians and Serbian sympathizers against Americans and American interests worldwide. The department of state urges U.S. Citizens traveling or residing abroad to review their security practices and remain alert to the changing situation...” A second letter dated March 17 urged traveling Americans to “maintain a low profile, vary routes and times for all required travel, and treat mail from unfamiliar sources with suspicion” because of “Usama bin Laden, the Dar Es Salaam and Nairobi embassy terrorist bombings, the Iraq situation...”

I spent my last night in Jordan at the Alia Gateway Hotel near the airport. The TV in my room offered only a mullah reading from the Koran, so I hung out in the lobby, watching a large, bubbly group of Indonesian hajis enroute to Mecca. The Haj was in full swing, and Amman is a main transit point for flights to Riyadh and Jeddah. While all the men wore white robes, the women’s robes and head coverings spanned the color spectrum. Their pilgrimage brought them such joy that they seemed lit from the inside out.

In the lobby bar, I met an Iraqi expatriate on his way home from Baghdad to Newcastle, England, where he’d lived for 40 years. This was his first trip back to Iraq. He’d gone to see how he could help his relatives, suffering under UN sanctions. Sanctions prohibited direct flights to Iraq, so he’d flown from Newcastle to Amsterdam to Amman, then taken a dusty, 12-hour bus ride to Baghdad. Now, he was making the trip in reverse. He was exhausted, and profoundly sad.“The West has no idea how the Iraqi citizenry is suffering,” he said. He would not call Saddam Hussein by name. “Him. I won’t say the name. He and his cronies are not suffering at all, but the rest of Baghdad is reduced to begging. One of my relatives rents a wing of his house. Now, the monthly rent for that apartment buys one egg.”

The morning moon was still high in the indigo desert sky when I checked in for my flight to London. The London-Amman flight ten days earlier had taken us directly over eastern Europe and the Balkans. The world had changed since then. When all the passengers were seated, the pilot announced over the loudspeaker, “Rest assured that we will be staying well clear of the Yugoslavian conflict...”

Travel can show you the beautiful and the brutal, sometimes in the same journey.

Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht

The last time I'd sung all the verses of "Silent Night" in German was in college, when I toted my guitar across campus to my German professor's house. She'd invited her advanced students -- I was masquerading as one -- for hot chocolate and Christmas Stollen, and I hoped a reasonable rendition of "Stille Nacht" might net me an extra point or two on my semester grade.

Fast forward to Christmas Eve, years later, to Wurzburg, Germany's 950-year-old St. Kilian Cathedral. Mike, Adam, Dana and I stood in the great stone church, our breath hanging in the chill air. Yellow candlelight, soft strains of "Stille Nacht," and the fellowship of the hundreds gathered within St. Kilian's soaring Romanesque walls warmed us.

The service ended, and we spilled into the snow-dusted street and fell in with families heading down Domstrasse to the old bridge that crosses the Main. Across the river, the Festung Marienberg crowned a vineyard-studded hill. The nude vines reached upward; thin, dark hands clasped in prayer. The fortress was lit with golden floodlights, and it floated above Wurzburg like a Christmas star.


This Christmas, we pray for peace, our prayers more urgent than in recent past years. We pray for and we thank our troops in Iraq and their families. Whatever our feelings about this war, know that, to a man, we support you. Your courage and conviction, and your sense of duty and loyalty fill us with pride. God bless, and come home soon.

Going to Cancun? Take time for Tulum

I got an email recently from Beth, who was getting ready for a Caribbean cruise. Embarking in New Orleans, she'd sail south and visit Cancun, Cozumel, Belize and Roatan, Honduras. A perfect blend of sun-soaked partying and cultural exploration. In Cancun, the cruisers would be offered an excursion to Tulum, an archaeological jewel of the Yucatan peninsula. If you're in Cancun, hop a bus, rent a car, hire a driver, and make the 130-kilometer trip to this Mayan ruin that sits on a bluff high above the sea.

The tentacles of development now reach far beyond Cancun's beaches and boundaries, but the Yucatan's Mayan ruins still offer an enriching experience somewhat removed from the touristic madness. (Go early. You'll have the sites to yourself while everyone else is sleeping off their hangovers.)

We were on the road in our rented VW by seven and were clambering around silent Tulum when it opened. The early start gave us time to visit majestic Chichen Itza the same day. By the time Chichen Itza began to fill with sunburnt tourists, we were headed back to Cancun for happy hour. We stopped at La Posada del Capitan Lafitte, not far from Tulum, and vowed that we'd stay at this low-rise, low-key paradise if we ever returned to the Riviera Maya.

If you visit Cancun, take time to visit the rich history just down the road. Tulum is easily accessible, and you'll congratulate yourself for adding some culture to your Caribbean holiday. Plus, your liver will likely need a rest, anyway. How many umbrella drinks can one person drink in a day? (Never mind. Don't answer that...)

(A special thanks to Beth for purchasing a copy of Ribbons of Highway for the West Bridgewater, Massachusetts public library. I hope townspeople enjoy the journey.)

LoriHein.com

A German Christmas

December in Germany is magic. Whether or not you celebrate Christmas, there is no more wonderful place to revel in the wonder of the season. Germans bring the holiday out in the open, with colorful Christmas Markets (Christkindlsmaerkte; Weihnachtsmaerkte) in cities and towns around the country; ancient, cobbled pedestrian areas lined with strings of soft, white lights and decorated evergreens; shop windows bursting with gugels and kugels and kuchen; rosy-cheeked citizens sharing mugs of steaming Gluhwein at outdoor cafes.

Drive the Romantic Road (Romantische Strasse) from Wurzburg to Fussen, stopping at Rothenburg, Dinkelsbuhl and Nordlingen, where churches and cathedrals tower above city walls that embrace the medieval towns like a good, strong hug.

December days are short here. But when the sun disappears, the magic intensifies. The colored lights glow brighter, and the Gluhwein goes down sweeter. Pack your parka and your mittens, and get out there.

Teach your children: What kids learn from travel

We'd experienced the wonder of the annual Pony Swim from Assateague to Chicoteague Island, Virginia, and Adam, Dana and I were making our way back across Maryland's Lower Eastern Shore toward Washington, D.C. and our flight home. The land between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic is flat, fertile, and full of history and chicken processing plants.

On our way to Chincoteague, we'd seen markers pointing to sites connected with abolitionist Frederick Douglass and Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman (see post below). "I did a paper on the Underground Railroad when I was in school," I told the kids. "I wasn't much older than you when I wrote it, and I remember how important it felt to learn about slavery and the people who knew it was wrong and tried to stop it." I told them everything I could remember about Douglass, Tubman and the miracle of the Underground Railroad. They listened and looked out the car window.

After five days on Chincoteague, we drove back along Maryland Route 50. It was sweltering, and I thought about the chickens crammed into those endless, hot barracks. Somewhere in Dorchester County, we passed a small sign with an arrow pointing left: "Harriet Tubman Birthplace." No distance; just what you'd find if you covered enough of it to get there.

"Let's go," said Adam. Waiting for us in Washington was an air-conditioned two-room hotel suite and a rooftop swimming pool with a city view. We'd been talking about that pool since we left Chincoteague. "I don't know how far it is, Adam. The sign doesn't say. It may take a while to get there and then back to this highway."

"I want to see it," he said. Dana was game, so we turned left onto a small road and started looking for signs of Harriet Tubman. After a few miles, we'd seen nothing but farms and fields. We stopped to walk among the stones at intermittent old graveyards. When the ride began to seem overlong, even to me, I offered to turn around and head for the Washington pool. "No," said Adam. "Keep going."

On we drove. More hot miles. Farther in time and distance from the cool rooftop pool. Then, outside of Bucktown, we saw a silver-gray historical marker, lit white-hot, stuck in the high grass at a bend in the road. It told of Harriet Tubman, "the Moses of her people."

We read the marker, silently, and turned to consider the broken-down wooden farmhouse nestled under trees at the end of a long, dirt path. The old Brodas farm, where Tubman was born into slavery. We were standing in a field that she likely worked, and she somehow made her way from that house to Philadelphia, and freedom. Only to turn around and come back, a score of times, to lead 300 other human beings to freedom.

There was no one around. Just us and Harriet Tubman. We felt her, and we felt her courage. "I'm glad you wanted to keep going, Adam." He looked at the dark, unpainted house. "Me too."

In the evening, as I watched the kids splash in the pool with a view, I felt proud -- and enriched. Travel brings fun and enjoyment, but it also offers more meaningful gifts. It favors those with open minds and hearts and rewards patience and curiosity. A detour down a Maryland back road had taught my kids something about tolerance, humanity, respect, courage, and right and wrong. That's a lot to gain from one short journey.


(In preparing this post, I came across a website that shares what 2nd graders at Pocantico Hills School in Sleepy Hollow, New York have learned about the Underground Railroad. Click here to read their words.)


Visit other American places in Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America

Harriet Tubman: Underground Railroad conductor led her people to freedom

Harriet Tubman (see above post) is one of the many courageous people, black and white, whose selfless efforts in leading slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad are celebrated in Cincinnati, Ohio's recently dedicated National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Tubman, a Maryland slave, ran north to freedom in 1849. The Railroad's only female conductor, Tubman would make 19 trips south of the Mason-Dixon line to lead some 300 fellow slaves to freedom.

O, Canada: Christmas trees and tidal bores

Last week, a crowd gathered on Boston Common for the lighting of the city's Christmas tree. Like 29 trees before it, the 46-foot white spruce was a gift from the people of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The tree is an annual expression of friendship and thanks for help that Boston provided after the 1917 Halifax Explosion, in which a collision between two ships, one loaded with wartime ammunition, took 2,000 lives, injured 9,000, and left 1,500 homeless.

George Bush recently went to Canada to try to patch the friendship damaged by his decision to go to war in Iraq. While politicians maneuver to mend fences, everyday gestures of friendship between Americans and Canadians remain strong. The delivery of this year's Boston tree reminded me of a personal experience with Nova Scotian friendliness.

I was in Truro, at the head of Cobequid Bay, a finger of the Bay of Fundy. I'd come to watch the tidal bore, an amazing crush of water that rushes toward Truro twice daily, filling Cobequid with a fast-moving wall of water that literally piles on top of itself. I was preparing to experience the evening performance, dramatically lit by a fireball sunset.

I pulled up to a farm that sat at the water's edge. As I began to see water from the distant Bay of Fundy move toward Truro, I realized I'd left my camera at the motel. The woman who owned the farm came outside, and I asked her if I had time to retrieve the camera before the water wall reached us. She considered the liquid shimmer advancing from the horizon and said, "Yes. You have time. But hurry."

I tore up the road and barrelled into the motel parking lot. The owner was waiting at the door, holding it open. "Forgot my camera!" She nodded and smiled.

I got back to the farm just as the water reached the channel neck west of Truro. In a minute or two, the advancing sea would be squeezed into a narrow space, and the aquatechnics would begin. The farmwife stood where I had left her, staring at the bay.

"I knew you would make it," she smiled. I considered the wonder I was about to behold, then considered the wonder I had just been part of. I'm convinced that, through the power of welcome and friendship, the farmwife and the motel owner had held back the tidal bore and made it wait for me.

A little beefcake with that trout, ma'am?

Ladies, this post's for you. An excerpt from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America, Chapter 9- Mountains: Northeast Wyoming, Montana. In this excerpt, we're about to leave (sigh) Idaho:

In the Conant Valley nearer Wyoming, things turned lush and alive. For single ladies, there may be no better place in the US to see beautiful men than Swan Valley, Idaho, on the South Fork of the Snake River. The Snake here is liquid art. Broad and bending, light sage green, it rushes with small white water, and drifts in silvery ripples. Fingers of treed islands and peninsulas cut and divide it, and wader-clad fishermen cast their arcing lines into its flow, lit by a movie set sun.

Swan Valley's population is 260, and it seemed to me a good percentage of that number are fit, gorgeous men, many young, many blond, all quite stupendous. Sit a spell in South Fork Outfitters (where fish-shaped bottles hold the bathroom soap, and a poster above the sink reads, "For Those Who Appreciate the Finer Things in Life, Like Hands That Smell of Fish"). Pick yourself out a fetching paid of hipwaders. But, before you cast your line, for fish or man, you'd better know your way around a driftboat and how to tie a damn good fly, because these boys aren't about looking pretty. They're about serious flyfishing. Looky-loos and dilettantes might earn five polite minutes of their time.

Copyright Lori Hein, 2004. Excerpted from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America

Visit to a Masai manyatta

"Make as many pictures as you can," said Dixon, turning his head to let me photograph the long braids dyed with red clay that signified his status as part of the Masai (Maasai) morani, or warrior, class. Dixon's 70-member clan earned revenue from tourists visiting their manyatta. The trade was lucrative, and the clan had been living in this location within Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve for three years. They were still pastoralists, their lives centered around raising cattle, but tourist dollars had enticed them into putting down roots and eschewing their traditional nomadic way of life.

Dixon, son of the clan chief, was our host and guide. While he spoke Maa to his clansmen, he talked with us in eloquent, flawless English, perfected during the 11 years he'd spent at a Narok boarding school.

He pointed to the sturdy, dung-walled huts arrayed throughout the manyatta. "Each house is the house of a wife," he said, "and each wife must build her own house." Masai men may have more than one wife and, explained Dixon, they "spend one or maybe two nights within a wife's house and then move on to the house of another wife." Dixon would soon take his first wife, chosen by his father. Dixon would meet her for the first time on the day of their marriage. She was from a different clan and would move to Dixon's manyatta and build herself a dung house. Masai women also maintain their houses and, each morning, they collect cow dung and slap a reinforcing coat onto roofs and walls.

We entered Dixon's mother's house, pitch dark and smelling of animals, dirt, burnt firewood and kerosene. The single kerosene flame that flickered in a corner was useless against the hut's dark closeness, so Dixon opened a tiny vent in the dung wall to allow in enough light to see. We sat on his mother's cowhide-covered bed, a raised mud platform built several feet from the cooking fire. "This is our simple kitchen," said Dixon, as he ran his fingers over and explained all of its contents -- a gourd water calabash, a pot, an iron grate to hold the pot over the fire, and a few sticks of firewood. The Masai diet is exclusively the blood, milk and meat from livestock, "except," explained Dixon, "in times of drought, when the government provides cereals, grains and vegetables."

We heard rustling from a dark recess on the other side of the hut and peered through the blackness to see a pile of children resting in a sleeping nook. The Masai's sleeping arrangements intrigued me, as they involve much moving and arranging of people and animals. When night falls, the cattle come inside the manyatta, the stick fence that surrounds the community affording protection from the Mara's hungry nighttime predators. Lambs and calves sleep inside the huts, in rooms built just for them. Masai men choose their wife du jour (or nuit) and go to her hut. When a man selects a wife and household with children, any boys over the age of 10 must leave the house and sleep in another hut -- one without a visiting husband in it.

So much pre-bedtime shuffling. I'm tired just thinking about it.

LoriHein.com

Where shall we go next?