How did we end up here?

Just pinch me.  A Holiday Inn Express this isn't.  Not even a Hampton.

This is the front entrance to the Hyatt Regency Cleveland at the Arcade from across Superior Avenue.  One of the earliest indoor shopping malls in the country, it opened in May 1890, Victorian through and through.  Our room overlooks the entrance on the top floor in this photograph.

The door to our room on the 4th floor



From the windows looking in




The view from the position of our room's door, but two floors down
(so as not to have the Hyatt sign/banner competition), featuring 300' of skylight and four wrap-around balconies. 




Skylight detail



Stairwell detail

We look out our windows at the Cleveland Public Library -- the original 1925-building and the new 1997-wing.  They are connected underground and by the Eastman Reading Garden, which has a beguiling set of gates.

Gates into Eastman Reading Garden at the Cleveland Public Library

Gate detail

All in all, I'm thinking the Road Scholar, Blount, Coastal Discoveries people are feeling really bad about our having been put off the boat ...

Let's all celebrate!

Two weeks ago at the John Wesley Powell Museum in Green River UT I bought a copy of John McPhee's "Basin and Range" (1980 Farrar, Straus and Giroux), which focuses on the area of the continent we know as eastern Utah to eastern California -- a portion of which we were traversing with our Road Scholar group. Although McPhee handles geological science, the impact of plate-tectonics on the study of the earth, the strata and time scale of geologic evidence in a way even I can follow (but, heaven help me if I were to have to repeat any of it in a coherent way), it was something else entirely that I would give the prize of "Most Memorable" between the softback covers of his book.

In the late 18th century a quiet revolution, based on the observance of layers of rocks, was beginning. Following is the paragraph that startled me so:

According to conventional wisdom at the time, the earth was between five and six thousand years old. An Irish archbishop (James Ussher), counting generations in his favorite book, figured this out in the century before. Ussher actually dated the earth, saying that it was created in 4004BC. The Irish, as any Oxbridge don would know, are imprecise, and shortly after the publication of Ussher's Annales Veteris et Vovi Testamenti the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University bestirred himself to refine the calculations. He confirmed the year. The Holy Trinity had indeed created the earth in 4004BC -- and they had done so, reported the Vice Chancellor, on October 26th, at 9AM. His name was Lightfoot. (95-6)

Now, I recognize that paragraph to be flippant, even impertinent. And, I have to admit that I looked up Ussher and Lightfoot. McPhee doesn't get the story's details quite right. But, he captured the gist. The resistance to geologic scientific discovery some one hundred years after these gentlemen completed their calculations was fierce and bombastic and authoritative and long-lasting.

In some ways not much has changed. We resist what threatens the who, what, when, why of our daily lives, the stuff on which we've built our world view. And, there's really no reason to expect human response to ideas which frighten to start being different.

There's nothing keeping us from celebrating, though. After all, it seems today's the 6014th anniversary of our earth's blessed event ... Enjoy!

Small satisfactions

It's early in Edgefield.

After 4274 safe miles, plus the 1250 we enjoyed with the Road Scholar group on the coach in Utah and Arizona, we have come full circle.  That is a big satisfaction.

The small ones?

1. Waking up at home.
2. Tal making coffee.
3. Coffee in bed.
4. Whitby and Belle on the bed with us.
5. Knowing I don't have to get everything on the "to do" list done today, or even this week.

I like those five, so I'll stop there. 

A single stop

When Tal and I travel by automobile, the point for most part is getting to our destination. We don't meander much, even skipping lunch or eating crackers, nuts, fruit as we move along, the passenger playing flight attendant to the driver. Given the distances with which we're faced in order to join our Road Scholar group in St George UT, we have to stay focused. Fortunately, with the ever-changing terrain, as I mentioned previously, focus isn't particularly hard. But, our destination ever in mind, passing by interesting spots can be.

We left I-40 and 75MPH, four-laned comfort this morning at Gallup NM to ascend the Colorado Plateau and travel through Native American lands along twisting, climbing, switch-backed two lane roads. The contrast one day to the next was dramatic to say the very least -- in both road and terrain. Mesas, buttes, washes, unfamiliar wildflowers, stunted trees in some places, magnificent Ponderosa pines in others. The beauty of Saturday, foreign as it was to east-coasters, was transformed into something other worldly. Tal and I kept trying to find words -- tortured, harsh, brutal, fascinating, mesmerizing, stark.

After reaching AZ Route 89A, passing along the Echo Cliffs on our right, with the San Francisco Peaks far distant on our left and the Vermillion Cliffs ahead of us, we entered Marble Canyon, through which the Colorado River passes on its way to the grandest canyon of all.

Without warning we came upon a bridge, two bridges actually, side-by-side. In the blink of an eye, we missed the parking area on the south side, exclaimed at the bridge on our right as we crossed the other one and managed to turn into the parking area on the north side. What a treat. We had "found" Navajo Bridge!

The bridge we crossed, constructed in 1995, is on the left. The original Navajo Bridge, built between 1927 and 1929, is now a pedestrian walkway, linking the vendors on one side of the river with the interpretive center and restrooms on the other. In the far background are the Vermillion Cliffs.

Our head-long momentum toward St George was stopped by about half an hour, a stop well worth the time. And, the only one over the course of our four westward days on the road.

To Chewonki ... and beyond

Tal and I have looked forward to canoeing the Allagash for several months now -- for the legendary white pines, for the challenage of serious physical activity, for getting to know a new group of people -- well, for lots of reasons. And, I like to travel, pretty much for travelling's sake, truth be known. With Hester's death I added another hope after we wiped our tears and waved goodbye to Bill: that the primitive nature of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway and the Maine North Woods will provide space for quiet and memory and for grief and gratitude.

We left Saturday Cove after breakfast this morning for the one and a half hour drive to Wiscasset and to find Chewonki, sponsor and coordinator of our trip. We did the "duffle shuffle" (getting our things out of our own luggage and into dry packs), met and had lunch with our two guides -- Alana and Colin, both from Maine, and three of the five others in our Road Scholar group -- Alice from Williamsburg VA and Kathleen and Dave from near Ashland VA, loaded up and at 2:00 set out in a 12-passenger van with canoes following along behind. (Pictured here is Tal double-checking the canoe straps.)

At a Dysarts truck stop in Bangor we rendezvoused with our final two group members, a father and son -- Ron and Eric, Ron from Maine and Eric from Idaho. Although at a little after 4:00 we were officially together and on our way, it wasn't until we left I-95 at Medway/East Millinocket and headed into Maine's interior that the remoteness of what we were about to do began to sink in for me.

It was dusk before we pulled into Chewonki's Big Eddy Campground on the Golden Road (which runs from Millinocket to the Canadian border and is the most active logging road in New England) and the West Branch of the Penobscot River, just outside Baxter State Park. It was there that we learned to pitch out tents and had our first meal cooked over a fire -- both activities accomplished in the dark. Now I understand why headlamps, rather than flashlights, were so highly recommended on our equipment lists ...

Hiking along Stevens Creek

We are almost within the final two month period before our June adventure to Alaska (Alaska: Enlightenment under the Midnight Sun). Road Scholar (a division of Elderhostel) has sent out a detailed description of the excursion, advocating some conditioning prior to meeting the group in Fairbanks on June 20th. Ever obedient, our walks are beginning a shift from the flat of the roads in our neighborhood and the gentle hills of the nearby golf course. Yesterday afternoon we headed out to explore a portion of the 12 miles along Stevens Creek in McCormick County.

The day was utterly georgeous and I felt better than I had in a couple of weeks. Given those two plusses (which can quickly become minuses), we agreed to try to refrain from being overly ambitious. Since neither of us had thought to wear a watch and since I'd left the cell phone (which includes a clock) on the kitchen counter, we couldn't walk for a pre-determined length of time and turn around. We were grateful, once on the trail -- beginning at the bridge on SR23 near Modoc -- to see that the distance is posted every half-mile. This is Tal as we turned around at the 2-mile marker. (He indulged my effort to get the marker in the foreground by walking into the distance.)

It's along Stevens Creek that the famous and endangered Rocky Shoals Spider Lily will begin blooming next month. Although we weren't treated to that sight or scent today, we were blessed with another lily ... I think the Atamasco ... growing along tributaries to the main creek and in low glades. I managed to muddy both knees, but getting these shots (and several more ...) nourished my soul this Easter day.


This flower isn't new to me. As a child I was privately convinced that it should have been the real Easter lily. I remember (perhaps wrongly) that they bloomed at Eastertime on either side of a brick waterfall near the Youth Taming the Wild pool at Brookgreen Gardens. An enchanting spot in my memory to be sure and one, to my surprise (and I have looked), that I did not photograph during those early years.