kayaking – Little Home In The Valley

I’ve never been to the Hawaiian Islands. People tell me that it is lovely there, and I believe them. I might visit the islands if they were the Hawaii of 1941, when the novel and film “From Here To Eternity” took place.

At the time that I read the book I was young and very impressionable, and it “imprinted” with me. Later I saw the movie and I became permanently bonded to a time and place. In fact, that film had more than a little influence on my enlisting in the Air Force as a teen. The military life seemed the life for me.

Especially since there was always the off chance that I might meet the real life incarnation of Deborah Kerr’s character in the movie … ay ay ay … that scene … still … after all these years …

Well, that adventure didn’t last very long. I never got to be a pilot and I never got to Hawaii. But I did get to spend several weeks sweating profusely at Lackland AFB in south Texas in August, and came back home resolved to pick up my college career and get serious about it.

So if you look at it in in a certain cockeyed way, “From Here To Eternity” may be the reason that I finished college and med school.

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There is a certain genre of Hawaiian music that I have come to love, called slack-key guitar. And one of the most beautiful musical pieces of any genre I have ever heard comes from this tradition.

Here is the King’s Serenade (‘Imi Au Iā ʻOe), by Keola Beamer.

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While it is true that celebrities are no smarter than anyone else when it comes to politics, and there is no reason to give their opinions any more weight than let’s say, any old un-famous person, there is no reason to give them less, either.

George Clooney is a favorite of mine in the actor department. If he had only done O Brother Where Art Thou, and nothing else, it would have been enough to win me over.

So I gave his op/ed in the Times the same level of scrutiny that I would give yours. The only difference between he and we being that he is closer to the center of the action than most of us. And when he says we’re in a tight spot, I am prone to believe him.

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From The New Yorker

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How often does something turn out exactly the way you’d hoped? Robin and I had planned a several-day getaway to a small campground at Woods Lake, about 1 1/2 hours from home. The heat was rising here in Paradise, and at 9,600 feet, the temperatures promised were 20 degrees cooler, and off we went.

To get there you go through the marijuana capitol of our area, Ridgway CO, continue on for about twenty miles, then turn left to go past Placerville (home of the Yo Mama moving company), until you are almost to the megalopolis of Sawpit CO. You then turn right to drive up the Fall River road, which is 2.5 miles of pleasant blacktop followed by 6.5 miles of equal parts good gravel road, tooth-loosening washboards, bomb craters, and boulder fields.

Where that road finally ends is at Woods Lake. An alpine gem.

We launched our now almost-new kayaks onto the water and the wind did not blow. The sun did not scorch. The insects did not bite. The least movement of the paddle was enough to move the boats on a near-mirror surface. The lake is not a large one, and we were able to circumnavigate it a couple of times before supper on the first afternoon. Sometimes we just floated out there, admiring the mountains around us.

A handful of photos from Woods Lake.

We paddled through forests of neon-blue damselflies, watched clouds of tiny anonymous summer insects whirling over the water in the golden light of early evening, spent several minutes observing a beaver the size of a panel truck gnaw on an inch-thick branch, saw shorebirds of several different species running back and forth on narrow mudflats.

After all those hours of paddling and hiking we returned home wishing we had servants to fan us and brighten up our lemonades. That’s one of the two things life requires to be perfect and is almost always missing. People whose only aim in life is to make you comfortable and keep you fed.

The other missing part is having a background score for your life. Music that swells when feelings are building. Becomes expansive when you are confronted by beauty. Chills when your ex comes for a weekend with the kids. Weeps at times of misfortune.

No doubt about it. I need someone to write my soundtrack. Maybe this guy, Richard Thompson would do it for me. This dramatic melody from the movie Grizzly Man could just as easily be playing in the background as I spoon yogurt onto my granola in the morning.

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From The New Yorker

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I am a writer. I’ve denied it for years because I once thought that it didn’t count unless you wrote the novel of the year. But I write short pieces and string them together to make this blog, and that is the niche I occupy. It’s not Tolstoy. It’s not even Stephen King. It’s a sort of blather that I started to amuse my children and then found that those children were not easily amused and I was going to have to work at it to keep them reading.

Then it was something that I also did for myself, like writing a journal that you allow people to see, rather than keep it secreted away in a leatherette volume protected by a weak lock that will open with a tiny golden key (or you could just cut the flimsy leather strap with any household scissors). To me it was saying, like the Neil Diamond song – I am.

I Am, I Said, by Neil Diamond

I suspect that there are others among you who have had times in your lives when you wanted to say I am. Writing has been helpful to me, and you can see how little talent it takes to do it by reading my stuff. So write without fear, friends. You have nothing to lose but your dignity, and you may say something that resonates with a stranger on the other side of the world.

A change has occurred in my own thought life as the years have passed, and now I find myself saying more and more as my bucket o’days accumulates – We Are.

The horrorshow that reading the daily newspapers has become is never going to improve if all of the bozos like me do nothing but run around saying I Am in our separate and desperate identities. Except for those among us who are card-carrying psychopaths, there should be enough common ground for the remainder to stand on while we roll up our proverbial sleeves and get to work.

For me, at least, that means thinking more in terms of We and less in I. Alone I can make little progress in any of the problem areas America faces. But WE can.

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More from the El Arroyo restaurant

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From The New Yorker

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Got by April Fool’s Day unscathed. Actually it gets easier to do when the kids have moved out and you aren’t living near any of them. Who’s going to prank you? Neither Robin nor myself are pranksters, nor any of our local friends, who are mostly seniors. We seem to have got past that phase of development. Or maybe it’s because a good prank takes some planning, and that is too exhausting to contemplate.

We did our taxes on April 1 this year, challenging the Fates. But my fingers were crossed all during the session with the tax preparer, hoping that nothing gets in the way of the small refund we are supposedly due. The woman who does this work for us each year is named Darla, and she’s an old cob just like we are. Plainspoken, good sense of humor, solid advice.

Somehow we got to relating an experience Robin and I had when we first moved to Paradise. I don’t even know why we had to go there, but we made a visit to the local Social Security office. It was in a low brick building that was nondescript except for one thing – a small sign outside ordering: DO NOT PEE ON THE SHRUBS.

Even in laid-back Colorado finding a sign like that doesn’t happen every day, so once inside we asked a clerk if that was a problem. She said that since the facility didn’t have a public bathroom, and the wait times were occasionally long, some of the clients would relieve themselves in the landscaping.

When we related this story to Darla, it got us all to giggling like schoolchildren for several minutes, and I earnestly hope that there were no large errors made in our return during this period.

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Robin and I have kayaked and canoed for most of our life together. For a time we had beautiful Kevlar kayaks that weighed nothing and flew like arrows. But time caught up with the boats and with us, and we found getting in and out of them much less enjoyable as our bodies’ flexibility lessened. So we sold the old boats and were now marooned.

But this Spring we’ve been window-shopping for new kayaks of the sit-on-top variety. Except that they are heavier to tote around, getting in and out shouldn’t be an issue. Especially getting out, where all one need do is flop to the side and fall in the lake.

I love to float. Heaven would be leaning back in a kayak and being towed by an otter.

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From The New Yorker

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Joy, by Lucinda Williams

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Watching videos of games from the women’s side of March Madness is watching basketball at its best. Period.

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Tag: kayaking

Lei Lady Lei

I Am, I Said