It was actually nice to change into dry clothes and have a few hours of down time before 6:30, when Ombretta would pick us up to bring us to San Remo. Her boyfriend, Daniele, manages a campground in San Remo called Villagio Dei Fiori (Village of Flowers) and had been too busy to join us for lunch, so we would meet him for supper there. His father owns both Bagni Kursaal and the Villagio.
By the time Ombretta picked us up, with Sofia, Tomas and Fillipo also in the car, the storm had finally passed and it was starting to be a fine evening, sunny and warm. San Remo is about a 10-minute drive from Bordighera and is apparently a more popular summer place for tourists. When we got to the Villagio, Ombretta gave us a walking tour of the place. It’s quite large with many bungalows of different size available for rental. Most of them have kitchens and you can get them with 1, 2 or 3 bedrooms, but there are some economy-sized places of just one bedroom without a kitchen. There are also many places to put campers and tents.
Ombretta pointed out an undeveloped area that Daniele’s father had bought 5 years ago and was planning to build a 5-star hotel on the site. It appears that Italian bureaucracy is even worse than ours, since after 5 years he was only just now getting all the permissions needed to start building. The whole campground is paved and filled with greenery of all kinds – very exotic. It looks like a wonderful place to come to – we told Ombretta that we would try to get our friends Todd and Sue to come with us some time. They hosted Sofia last year and hosted their whole family for a week when they came to Indiana for Sofia’s graduation.
After the tour, Daniele met up with us and took us to the restaurant on site for our next meal. Oh my goodness, these people really know how to wine and dine you! Let’s just say that there will be more of me coming back to Minnesota than there was of me when I left it. Kris and I split a mushroom pizza and some pesto pasta. The mealtime was filled with laughter and much conversation, English and broken Italian as well, as we tried out what little we knew. We received effusive compliments on our Italiano, which felt very much undeserved. Daniele also apologized about the weather. We reassured them again that we’d had a perfectly wonderful day, but Kris couldn’t resist a little teasing and told them that when we told our friends about Bordighera, we’d tell them that it was a cold and rainy place. Lots of good-natured laughter ensued. Sofia said, “We are your sunshine today,” and she couldn’t have spoken truer words. Who could ask for anything better than spending time with new friends over a great meal?
I asked Daniele and Ombretta how they met. Daniele got a funny look on his face and said “It’s a long story,” but didn’t elaborate. Ombretta laughed and pulled out her phone, showing us a photo of two children, a boy about 1 year old and a little girl about 6. They had known each since childhood as family friends! Their lives took different paths and they didn’t see each other again until about 5-6 years ago when Ombretta brought her family of 3 children to San Remo for a vacation during a hard time after her husband left her. They seem very happy together; Tomas is their son.
Both Kris and I were kind of full after the meal and tried to turn down dessert, but Daniele insisted that we needed to try some of their dolci (desserts, literally “sweets”). It didn’t take much to persuade me, so I chose some gelato (surprise, surprise). Kris let Daniele pick something for him, which turned out to be a wonderfully gooey chocolatey thing. Ombretta had also ordered a sampler plate of other desserts that she wanted us to try. The plate was so impressive looking that I had to take a photo of it and now you have to look at it:
At around 9:30 we started to get ready to leave; Daniele still had a couple hours of work to do and looked pretty tired. We said our goodbyes to him with the European air kiss on both cheeks.
Filipo, Sofia, Daniele, Ombretta, Kris, Lynn
On the way back through Bordighera, Ombretta took some side roads uphill so that we could see the lights of Monaco just up the coast. Molto bello!! She made arrangements to pick us up at the hotel the next morning so we wouldn’t have to walk to the train. We will miss these warm and generous people; certainly our time with them was the highlight of our trip. The treasures of Italy are not just in museums and fine buildings.
Ciao!
Love, Lynn/Mom
Our adventures in Italy are almost over – only one more installment! Thanks for coming along thus far. Next: Adventures in Italy: Conclusion
Farewell to this post with an air kiss in the morning!
In our continuing quest to visit one attraction in Minnesota per month in 2024, we made our way to Fort Snelling for the month of June. If you’d like to check out previous Minnesota Meanderings, here you go: Spam Museum, Bell Museum of Natural History and Como Park Zoo and Conservatory.
I’ll start you out with a little history, which is more than I had when we visited. Those of you whose eyes glaze over at the mention of dates and data should just skip on ahead. The fort was built in 1819 at the confluence of the Mississippi River and Minnesota Rivers. Initially it was Fort Saint Anthony, but when its construction was completed in 1825, it was renamed Fort Snelling after its designer and first commander Josiah Snelling. There’s some controversy about whether or not Zebulon Pike was authorized to create the treaty that ceded the land from the Dakotas to the U.S. Military in 1805. Nevertheless, the fort got built and was used as a military installation until its decommissioning in 1946, after which much of its acreage was lost to the construction of roads and the Mendota Bridge. The Army Reserve 205th Infantry Brigade had its headquarters at the fort from 1963 to 1994. There’s really three parts to Fort Snelling now: the state park (at which we did a hike in 2020), the Fort Snelling military cemetery, and the National Historic Landmark where the fort buildings have been repaired or reconstructed for tourists like you and me to get a glimpse into the past.
Those of you who read the whole paragraph: bravo! Those of you who skipped it – well, I’ve been known to do the same thing so no judgment from me.
On our way from the parking lot to the visitor center, we got a little sidetracked by identifying the wildflowers along the path. We’re creating a perennial flower garden in our back yard so all of these things are of new interest to us now.
Pink crown vetch – my mom’s favorite wildflower!White campion
Once in the building we paid the fee for our visit and took a rapid walk through the visitor center where I took a photo that I felt might benefit from a caption provided by yours truly.
Suppertime!
Now it was time for the main event: touring the fort grounds themselves.
The first stop was the guardhouse, which also housed the first jail in our state (which wasn’t a state yet). We saw evidence that guard duty was taken seriously, i.e. the signs put around necks of those who were caught not fulfilling those duties.
We also read some sample judgments passed on those who were tried by the Regimental Court Martial.
John McCoy was a Bad Boy
One young man, John McCoy, took a little unauthorized side trip to the Sutler’s Store while on duty. Verdict: Guilty! Sentence: five days in the Guardhouse jail and NO WHISKY for those five days. Ouch! A poem suggests itself to me.
Oh, John McCoy, you troublesome boy You left your duty to go to the store. Was it worth being risky? You lost your whisky! You let temptation crouch at your door.
The fort didn’t just house soldiers; whole families lived there, so of course there was a school room for the children. Seeing the McGuffy Reader brought back memories of our homeschooling years – we had a whole set of those!
Next, the small, dark and brooding ammunitions storage area – The Magazine – in which (once our eyes adjusted to the dark) we could see piles of cannon balls and barrels of gunpowder (just a guess – I didn’t investigate). Reality just hit – this is a fort. Battles were fought. Cannons were fired. Lives were lost. It’s a grim business.
The Round Tower (named after General Angus Round) (ha ha – just kidding) is one of only four structures that is original to the fort. This was a place of defense – in fact, the fort’s last line of defense. Some of the musket slits point outside the fort, and some point toward the inside of the fort. I wonder if they ever faced a danger so great that the fort itself was overrun with enemies that had to be fired upon from the Round Tower.
We went up the spiral staircase in the tower and surveyed the fort from the top.
When we went back down, I tried to imagine soldiers, standing with their muskets pointed through those slits which couldn’t have allowed for any degree of firing accuracy.
On our way to the next building, we passed by a family getting a demonstration on how to fire a cannon and stopped to enjoy the sight of the children learning their parts in the complex dance required to fire off one of those things. Ah, youth.
Well, moving on let me tell you, the Sutler’s Store was quite the experience! We could tell right away walking into it that the young man staffing the store was all in. He regaled us with tales about the the history of the store, asked and answered questions, and pretty much kept us entertained while also educating us. He showed us a brick of tea which astonished me on many levels. Tea came in bricks? So crates of THAT was what was being thrown off the ships at the Boston Harbor? Apparently you only shaved off a bit of the brick each time you made tea, so it would last quite a long time. Being a tea lover, I asked him to pose with the brick for a photo. He did me one better and grabbed a top hat to add some verisimilitude and whimsy to the scene, while adopting a somewhat snobby British look. Well done!
I had to get a photo of a barrel of Jamaican whisky in honor of poor Private McCoy. And other things begged to be photographed as well. Every effort has been made to reconstruct all these places to look as they would have looked back in the 1800’s. Most of the things in the various buildings and rooms were facsimiles of the originals, but were painstakingly made to look like the real deal.
Eventually we tore ourselves away from the Sutler Store and wandered into the married living quarters. The large mannequin in the living quarters began speaking to us causing me to yelp with surprise. We were mystified by the specter of a man wearing the historical women’s dress. In these strange times in which we live, we all acted as if this was perfectly normal.
As you can see the room was pretty small. Four bunk beds for housing 2-3 families with perhaps 4-5 children each, so everyone shared a bed. The women worked doing laundry and sometimes made more money than their husbands made as soldiers. Children older than 13 were sent somewhere else to live and work, as there just wasn’t enough space and resources for them.
In the next building we entered the soldiers’ barracks and got a demonstration of how to load the muskets. The men of low rank slept two to a bunk while higher ranked soldiers got a bed to themselves. Eventually the powers that be figured out that diseases were being transmitted too easily when the men were sleeping so close together, so they all got their own beds and were a little farther apart.
From there we traipsed over to the commandant’s house, which I failed to get a photo of from the outside. This was definitely luxury housing compared to the barracks, but rank comes with privilege, right? The dining room had a table set with plates on which were printed names of slaves that lived at the fort. Although slavery wasn’t practiced much in Minnesota at the time, sometimes officers would come from the south with their slaves, so slavery at the fort was more common than I would have guessed.
We poked around the house a bit, looking in the rooms and going upstairs to see the mostly empty guest rooms. I saw a bit of crewel embroidery on some bedding that thrilled me. My mom made me learn how to do crewel and I still have the one and only piece that I did, which is always associated in my mind with when my youngest sister was born prematurely.
The day was getting warmer by this time and my energy level was beginning to flag a bit. Gone was the animated, engaged and curious woman of an hour ago. Tourist fatigue was setting in. Surely you know what I’m talking about. It is akin to the blog fatigue that you are experiencing due to the length of this one. Oh well, let us gird our loins and continue.
Making our way around the inner circle of the fort, we stopped in at the married officer’s quarters, followed by a room in which you could see displays of what archeologists had dug up on the grounds and pieced together. These are the cracked and soiled remains of a long ago community, the things that tell stories about daily life there. They even dug up some charred biscuits and had them behind glass. Oh, the chagrin of the baker who burned those and threw them away, if he/she discovered that these symbols of cookery failure were of great interest to us now. “What? They have THOSE on display?”
The Charred Biscuits of Yore
The hospital section was fascinating and horrifying at the same time. The doctors in the 1800’s were still employing rather crude methods based on false assumptions to treat disease and injury. Most of the drugs they administered were worthless or sometimes even harmful. And yet the physicians were supremely confident in their methods at the time. Hmmm…
I was super excited to see that we were getting to the end of things. We swooped through the carpentry room (actually, I swooped through; my husband was more thorough in his investigation). The blacksmith room was right there as well. Kris asked her a lot of questions and I leaned against the door taking photos of sparks from the forge while she worked the bellows. Divide and conquer, right?
While my husband was looking around to see if we missed anything, I wandered into the Dred and Harriet Scott living quarters which from the outside looked like an empty room. Too late, I spied the young staff woman sitting at a desk in the middle of the room. Without any preamble, she launched into a learned discourse on the lives of these two slaves. I had to re-activate my brain which had been threatening to shut down. She really knew her stuff well, and it ended up being quite interesting. As you probably know, Dred and Harriet Scott sued for their freedom, a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, but lost. When they finally were set free, Dred Scott died about a year later.
We left the fort area but still had one last place to visit: the chapel. When we got there and discovered that it was locked, I said a silent prayer of thanksgiving.
The only thing left to do was get an ice cream sandwich at the visitor center which brought us back into the Land of Air Conditioning.
We drove over the the Fort Snelling Military Cemetery from there to visit the place where my husband’s mother’s gravestone resides.
Thank you for meandering through the fort with us!
The beautiful poinciana and I have finally come to an understanding. I realized yesterday that we were at cross purposes. I’m not much of a detail painter, so with the encouragement of three dear friends with whom I had lunch today, I shoved all those former drawings and paintings out of my mind and went all fast and loose. True! I did three small paintings in less than 10 minutes and knew I was on the right track when a poem came forth as accompaniment.
I met a poinciana once, She seemed to speak to me “Please give me proper deference, I come from royalty.”
Her robe was bright vermillion Her underskirts were green She stood with careful dignity As if she were a queen
I gave a curtsy deep and low, Speechless with delight. I met a poinciana once, Oh what a lovely sight!
Many thanks to Lori, Teresa and Sara for giving me artistic wings and to Sue F. for asking me to paint the Queen of Trees.
I’ve gotten through 18 of the 50 Ways to Draw Your Beautiful Ordinary Life, which was a Christmas gift to me. My goal is to finish it in 2024 and then pass the book on to someone else, so I haven’t done any drawings in the book. It is pristine. Here are the June drawings (#13-16). Why did I put stickers on the page? Just me being weird with my sticker obsession, I guess.
By the way, I’ve never seen a fruit wrapper – how is this a thing?
Then I painted a couple babies. The first one is much smaller, but the paper was horrible. The paint wouldn’t glide over the surface but stuck and even bled through to the back. I don’t know where that paper came from. I did a larger baby on better paper, but which I liked less.
The back side – I’ve never seen this happen.Better paper, bigger baby.
I’ve developed a relationship with a poinciana tree now. I’ve stared at the photo for long and soulful periods of time. I’ve done sketches and then a small painting. This time I tried an 8.5 x 11 sized one. I’m not sure this relationship is going well.
Tell me what you think. How close am I getting? The tree trunk on my painting is too big…AGAIN.
That’s the workshop report this week!
I’m throwing this blog post wrapper in the trash in the morning.
I found out yesterday that the dolphin that I thought was on a menu a few days ago wasn’t actually dolphin, it was something called dolphin fish. I felt you should know this in case you were disturbed by the idea of Italians eating dolphins. Kris knew what it was but didn’t realize my misunderstanding. I’m still glad I didn’t order it.
Yesterday was to be our “beach day,” but God had different plans. We got to Bagni Kursaal around 11:30 and made our way to the umbrellas and chairs set aside for us, identifiable by the towels already placed on the chairs. Our hosts are so very sweet and generous! It was overcast and windier than the day before, but the temperature was still very agreeable. Kris took a dip in the ocean early on, but mostly we just sat again and either read or wrote (Kris brought his journal with him) or just looked out on the mighty expanse of blue before us.
There are beach vendors here, men who go from chair to chair trying to sell things like jewelry, towels, mats or books. In an hour and a half, I had five of them stop by. Here’s how a typical interaction with them went :
Man: *many Italian words* spoken while showing his wares Me (they never approached Kris of course), smiling but firm: No, grazie. Man: *many more Italian words* Me: No, grazie Man: *More Italian words* as if the words “No, grazie” were to be interpreted as “please continue” Me: No, grazie.
It usually took about four or five “No, grazie’s” to bring about an end to the conversation. One man had set out two or three of his beautiful mats in front of me and when he’d finally accepted the idea that I wasn’t going to be buying them, spent 5 minutes at the foot of my chair slowly and carefully folding them up and putting them back over his shoulder, perhaps in a last attempt at getting a sympathy purchase.
Carrying his mats to the next potential customer
Ombretta came for us at 1:30 and brought us over to the Bagni Kursaal restaurant right on the beach where we would have lunch. Sofia and Tomas joined us, the latter clearly not in a very good mood. Remember, he’s only 2 1/2 years old. They plied him with toys and colored pencils (colori) to try and cheer him up, but he wasn’t having any of it.
Tomas and SofiaOmbretta, Tomas and Sofia
Ombretta ordered food for us after having established the fact that Kris likes seafood and I do not. The appetizer came first, a HUGE plate of mussels. Everyone dug in eagerly except me, of course. I tried two of them and although they weren’t as bad as I had anticipated, they weren’t good enough for me to want to fill up on them. It’s best not to think about what they look like when you eat them, that’s for sure. Ombretta had ordered a splendid plate of risotto with sausage for me, an excellent choice! Kris got a large plate of fried calamari, which he ended up generously sharing with Tomas, who sat next to him. Or should I say that Kris was happy to let Tomas steal pieces of calamari off of his plate. Tomas declared his intention to eat all of the calamari and when his mother asked him playfully what Kris would eat, he replied that Kris could eat the plain spaghetti on his (Tomas’s) plate. By this time, Tomas had cheered up considerably, which made everything easier for Ombretta and Sofia. We were joined mid-way through the meal by Fillipo, the boyfriend of Sofia’s sister who also works at Bagni Kursaal.
Tomas is happy now
Toward the end of the meal, the wind picked up quite a bit and it began to look very dark out over the ocean, creating a spectacular contrast with the still fairly light beach. It was fantastic, if somewhat foreboding looking.
Not long after I took those photos, the rain came pouring down. We helped the restaurant staff in moving tables and stacking chairs in a protected area, as well as bringing in all the trash cans.
Ombretta and Sofia both apologized profusely for the weather as if they were responsible for it. Bordighera had had perfect weather all summer long – no rain until that day. We assured them that it didn’t ruin the day for us, but they were very unhappy that this should happen on the one day we planned to spend all day on the beach.
We all hoped it would blow over soon, but when it became apparent that it wasn’t going to stop, we took advantage of a temporary break and made for our respective homes. We walked with Sofia while Ombretta biked back with Tomas. By the time we dropped Sofia off at their house, it was starting to pour again, and she offered to have us stay at their house until it stopped, but we wanted to get back to the hotel and get dry, so we pushed on, walking the 8 blocks or so to the hotel in heavy rainfall. We were dripping wet when we walked into the lobby, earning sympathetic looks from the staff.
In the dark and cold days of winter, we hatched a plan to tear up our long-established veggie garden beds and put a perennial garden there instead. Hubby came up with a wonderful design that would incorporate the placement of the original beds into the new garden.
When spring arrived, he got busy removing the wooden boards that bordered the old beds and tilled up the ground, which we seeded with wildflower seed packets here and there, keeping just the asparagus bed because we’re still harvesting and eating the stuff. We added some annuals and perennials to have something to look at while we waited for the other flowers to grow from seed.
Moving on to the next phase, he sanded and painted the old wooden swing (that we never sat on) and placed it at the end of the garden where we now use it daily. We purchased an arch which he installed and we transplanted clematis to grow up onto it.
I think we should have a name for this glorious garden, don’t you? I’ve been thinking about the name “Pleasant Places,” from the verse in Psalm 16 that says, “The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; yes, I have a good inheritance.”
What name would you suggest?
When the foxglove takes hold of the lamb’s ear, I’ll delete this post.
As I mentioned before, restaurants in Italy don’t even open for supper business until 7:30. We found one a few blocks from our hotel called “La Diavolina,” and once again found that our Italian skills were put to the test since our waitress did not speak English. It’s been good for us! Of course, when most of the communication involves pointing at an item on the menu and trying to pronounce the words correctly, it’s not too difficult. We’ve also discovered that Italians don’t give you ice with your water unless you ask, so I’ve learned to ask for “ghiacci.” Kris ordered some wine and when she inquired about the size, offering the word “mezzo?” Kris agreed to it. This turned out to be a LOT of wine and I was afraid I’d have to carry him home, but when you stretch it out over a couple hours and are eating as you go, it all balanced out. While we were eating, a man came over holding a bunch of roses and asked Kris if he would like to buy a rose for me (in Italian, but what he was saying was pretty clear – it’s all in the context). Kris bought me a single rose – very romantic! I almost expected waiters to start crooning that song from “The Lady and the Tramp” – “It’s Amore,” and give us some spaghetti to eat so we could end up chewing on the same piece and meeting in the middle.
Speaking of music, I have observed that most of the background music we hear when we go places is American pop music from 20 years ago. Or, Italian versions of the same. Just thought I’d mention that.
We have now learned that a waiter will not bring you the check unless you ask for it. Our working theory about this is that it is part of Italian gracious hospitality. They do not want you to feel that they are trying to hurry you along, which is actually rather nice. We’re just used to American restaurants, where almost as soon as you finish eating a meal, the check is placed on the table. Americans are always in a hurry, so it’s something we expect and appreciate. Here, eating is much more of a luxurious experience; you are meant to take your time and enjoy the atmosphere and ambiance for as long as you want. We strolled home around 9:30 and although there is no air conditioning in our room, it was very pleasant and we had no trouble sleeping. As it turns out, air conditioning in Italy is not common.
And now for something completely different to entertain you – a couple of my weird dreams over the last few nights. This is akin to Annette’s parrot story, so by all means, skip to the “ciao” at the end if you have a “train to catch.” :-). One night I dreamed that Kris and I were planning to buy a second home in Switzerland. It was a very nice home, but I couldn’t figure out how we were going to pay for it and was working out elaborate schemes in which we would rent it out to friends and family to use when we weren’t there. It all seemed very plausible, like dreams do. Last night I dreamed that I had agreed to do some sort of bungee cord drop from the top of the IDS tower to raise money. As soon as I started dropping, I knew the whole thing was a huge mistake. “In the name of all that is sweet in heaven, why am I doing this?” went through my panicked mind. I dropped nearly to the sidewalk and then started up again and it was horrifying to look up as I went, seeing various office windows and people in them. I couldn’t even figure out how this was ever going to end – I’d just be springing back and forth forever. Fortunately, in the way that characterizes dreams, the bungee drop ended and here’s the best part that came next: I was with Billy Joel telling him all about the experience! I told you it was weird. If you’re in to analyzing dreams, have at it. Don’t tell me what you come up with unless it’s a good thing.
We have a game called “The Farming Game” that’s meant to demonstrate the vagaries of farming. You use your money to buy equipment and invest in different types of crops: hay, grain, livestock and fruit. The fruit trees cost the most and have the fewest spots on the board, but yield the biggest profit if the dice rolls in your favor. It’s always a bit of a risk, though. You draw “Farmer’s Fate” cards as you go around the board, which can be good, but most of the time bring setbacks to your farming operation.
On our tiny little “farm” with our wee orchard of two apple trees, we just drew a severe Farmer’s Fate card: “Your Honeycrisp tree has contracted fire blight. Cut it down right away and pray it doesn’t infect your Zestar tree.” And just like that, chop-chop! It’s gone. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
So now we have to figure out what to do with that space surrounded by a lovely circle of hostas.
Bloggers fate: “Your post has contracted blog blight and will be deleted in the morning.”
(I’ve been delaying on posting this one, mostly because I knew it was going to be painful picking only a small fraction of photos to share.)
We came back to the Air BnB and got ready for our big expedition of the day: Grand Canyon National Park! It’s about a 1.5 hour drive north from where we were staying in Flagstaff. The visitor center was only open until 4:00 so we thought we’d arrive around 3:00 and make a plan from there. Nice drive, sunny weather – a little on the cool side, but we dressed appropriately (it was around 52 degrees and windy).
We went to the Visitor Center and stamped our two booklets and decided we’d walk out to Mather Point Overlook, a 0.3 mile hike from the center. First glimpse of the canyon! It’s definitely awesome in the truest sense of the word. The overlook had plenty of railings lending the illusion of safety. Ha ha!
Vivid setting on the camera
We took some photos and enjoyed the view. A couple of young women noticed the fancy camera that Kris was carrying and asked him if he could take a photo of them with it and send it to them. Good grief! Kris assured them that their phones took excellent photos and his camera could do no better. They seemed dubious “Really?” but accepted the fact that Kris wasn’t going to comply with their request.
Is that a person out there on that rock?Yes it is! Some people don’t need or want railings.
From there we took the 0.7 hike over to Yavapai Overlook, to the west. It wasn’t a bad hike but because of the elevation, it still had me a bit out of breath. More photos, more ooh-ing and ahh-ing. One of the informational boards there told of a walking bridge for hikers that you could apparently see from where we were. It was circled on the photo shown, but I never found it. We went into the little museum which also had a nice view from the windows.
We decided to make only two stops along the road: The Grandview Lookout and Lipan Lookout. We wanted to be at Lipan around sunset (7:00 p.m.) for good photography. The Grandview Lookout was some 10 miles down the road from the center, so the views were a little bit different, also a little higher in elevation, I think.
Kris found a little path that went down a ways and had a nice rock like a bench for sitting so I joined him there with a little coaxing. It was actually the beginning of a hiking trail that took you to someplace with the word Horseshoe in it. I really should have the map with me while I’m doing this. We sat for awhile just enjoying the view, taking a photo or two.
There weren’t that many people around – this was a great time of year to do our sightseeing! We talked a little bit about the narrative of the National Park, that the great canyon was formed over billions of years by the river, carving away at the rock little by little. It seems so much more plausible to acknowledge that water receding from a great flood was the driving force to cutting through all that stone. Occam’s razor and all that.
The trail to the Horseshoe thing went right by us and downward
Onward to Lipan Lookout. The last part of the drive there (probably another 10 miles?) wound steadily uphill in a short switchback. It was a little more crowded there, but we found prime parking facing the canyon and the soon to be setting sun. But oh, was it cold! There was a bitter wind blowing much more fiercely than down below. We got out and looked around – I took a couple short videos to demonstrate the windiness of it all.
Darth Vader stopped by in the parking lot – quite a sight! 😆
The opposite edge of the canyon was 8 miles across from us – unbelievable. It was a little hazy and it didn’t seem as though the sunset would produce anything but a very dark silhouette of the canyon. We ate our crackers and cheese at 6:00 and talked about whether or not to stick it out for the true sunset. I noticed some cloud banks directly west behind which the sun would sink in about 10 minutes and suggested we stay at least until then, sure that there would be some glorious views with the sun partly obscured. And lo, it came to pass.
This poor guy tried to get his hood to stay on for about five minutes, but the wind kept blowing it back. It amused me.
Once behind the clouds, the sun cast long hazy rays over the whole canyon – we got a lot of photos. But it was so cold and windy that we just kept going back to the car, waiting for different shadows and light from the setting sun and then going out again to take a few more photos and admire the view.
I had discovered a setting on my camera with a special effect called “vivid” that I’d been playing with. It really created some spectacular photos with the setting sun, especially off to the north where the canyon and hills were darkening – it made them all sorts of shades of blue. Ooh!
So in the end, we stuck it out until just before the actual sunset, having taken probably 100 photos between us and sensing that we’d seen the best of it.
Vivid setting again
The drive home was mostly in the dark and we listened to chapter 12 of the first book of the Fellowship of the Ring: The Flight to the Ford. The darkness around us was appropriate to the mood.
I’ve been thinking about my older sister, Leslie, who died 37 years ago today. Brain cancer. What a shock it was to get the diagnosis 6 months before that. I was five years younger than her and she was one of my best friends growing up. I’m sure I’ve written of her on this blog before and of the things we shared and enjoyed together. For one thing, we were obsessed with Dark Shadows, a creepy soap opera full of campy plots and bad acting. But we loved it. She and I used to play jacks together on the kitchen floor for hours. She had such nimble fingers! And with those nimble fingers, she was an excellent piano player as well. She took to it like a duck to water. She loved singing and was in a band for a time in her college years, which was so cool. A band! My sister was in a real live band that had gigs and everything! If you detect a little hero worship there, you’d be right. I looked up to her. She used to write the most interesting stories when she was in high school. We’d gather around and she’d read the next installment to us. As I recall, one of her stories was about a girl who got sucked into a strange subterranean world through the toilet. Ha ha!! Wish I could remember how that one ended. When she was babysitting, all camaraderie was put on hold. “You’re not the boss of me!” When I was in college and taking a ballroom dance class, Leslie helped me develop some new steps to the fox trot for the final exam, since my partner (a guy I didn’t know at all) refused to help me. We would sometimes laugh together over things until we cried. She had a wonderful sense of humor and wasn’t afraid to laugh at herself, too.
When I became a Christian in my early 20’s, it perplexed her, I think. This was something she didn’t understand, nor did she want to. Still, we were good friends, and I wasn’t ready to say goodbye, not at all. Sometime during those six months between the diagnosis and her death, I wrote a poem to express some of the anguish I felt. There is a word Which stuns and shocks And ruthlessly interrupts The routine of life. Nothing seems certain anymore, Not today, nor tomorrow.
The future, with its Careful plans, And passionate dreams Has been crushed Beneath the weight of That one cruel word: Cancer.
Yet, hope is not extinguished And faith is not in vain, For where Christ lives, Disease cannot triumph And death cannot win.
Oh Leslie, let Him live In your heart.
I never shared that poem with her. Why not? I don’t know – it was intensely private to me at the time and I probably feared her response. She knew the gospel but I don’t know if she ever responded to it. I’ll find out in eternity and until then, I am content with the knowledge that God is just, and He is merciful.
Leslie died at age 33. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been without her now much longer than I was with her.
Leslie, with some of her shell collection that I got last year
I’m not ready to say goodbye to this post, not at all…
Remember Small Saul in the Big Bog? It has been some time since we’ve heard about him, but his story is being written and will be shared sometime soon. In the meantime, let me introduce you to two of Saul’s friends and acquaintances. I read that northern bog lemmings are often found in the same areas as masked shrews and meadow voles, all quite small critters. Sadly, one of the chief roles they play in the ecosystem is to serve as munchies for weasels, owls and hawks, sometimes even snakes. Let me ASSURE you that no such dastardly thing will happen in our story, although these predators may make a threatening appearance now and again to lend verisimilitude to life in the bog.
I am pleased to have you meet Tiggle, the masked shrew, and Henceforth, the meadow vole. Tiggle is smaller than Saul and is hungry nearly all the time, as is true of masked shrews in real life. He and his kind can only survive a few hours without food. He’s active day and night, year ‘round, so naturally that gives him quite an appetite. When he is resting (do they sleep?), his metabolism drops. Tiggle has been known to dig a tunnel or two in his day, but he’s also just as likely to use another animal’s tunnel. His friendship with Saul is fortuitous in that way, since Saul is an industrious fellow and a master tunnel maker.
Henceforth is what you might call “easily vexed” and not afraid to let others know it. But don’t let that alarm you. In a pinch, Henceforth is the right kind of friend to have around. He’s a little larger than Saul, but not by much. If you saw them running around the bog, you might not be able to tell the difference between them (one of the things that vexes Henceforth). He likes to dig burrows and store food for the winter, which keeps him fairly busy. He’s more active at night than during the day.
I’m looking forward to hearing about the adventures of these three creatures in the bog, aren’t you?
Gotta go – if I don’t eat in 5 minutes, this post will starve to death.
Lynniebeemuseoday 