January 31, 2009

While many in my family deal with layers of ice and snow, downed trees and no power (living in southern Ohio, that is; Alice is spared those in Florida but has had her share of hurricanes, so it evens out), Ann and I are bummed that the weather is so nice in Minnesota today. We fell one day short of spending the month entirely below freezing. It wouldn't have been a record, but we would have felt more virtuous, somehow. A few weeks ago we had a stretch of 86 hours below zero, and we just nodded to one another: yep.

This is what winter in Minnesota is supposed to be like.

Today Ann went to a puppet show and puppet making workshop with two moms and three kids. I slept in, had breakfast, checked the roof for ice dams, then put a lawn chair up in a sunny patch of snow in the back yard and sat listening to the neighborhood noises. Eyes closed I could hear 360 degrees of sound. Birds up and to the left, eating and chiding Emmie who was on the sleeping porch no doubt making threatening gestures, neighbors walking down the sidewalk, some cars, a jet, crows in the distance. I was in the middle of blissful meditation when I heard the German Shepherd "Radar" barking down the alley. When Radar's owner walks him past our house you'd think he was the most dangerous animal alive, but when we walk past his yard he's always up on his hind feet against the fence, tail wagging, smiling, saying hi. When I heard Radar's voice I involuntarily thought of Hogan's Heroes, and the guard dogs who loved them, and laughed out loud. I don't think you're supposed to laugh during meditation (unless you're the Laughing Buddha), but I didn't feel too bad about it.

Ann is home, we've gone for a walk, and she's resting up between social events. She'll head to the Bob Marley tribute tonight with John at 8pm, about the time I start working on my tribute to the Napping Buddha.

Thanksgiving

I sent an email to everyone we spent Thanksgiving with, and Ann suggested I kill two blogs with one stone and turn it into an entry here. Genius.

Hey Everybody,

Yeah, I don't know how it happened but everything's covered in snow here this morning, so I'm glad not to be driving anywhere today. Ann's fighting that darn cold again, so send healing thoughts. I'm about to walk another warm drink her way.

We had a great time at Thanksgiving. It was lovely seeing everyone. It took me back to my first Thanksgiving at Homewood, when everyone was so sweet and silly and sometimes outright loony, and I remember having an image of Steve and the rest of you going to a weekend retreat at Clown College, and at the end all the clowns gathering around your car, shaking your hands, and saying "Thank you, we learned so much!" I think of this now in part because of the trick of how many Helms Teri can feed and house.

So here are the links to the bootleg Whitley tapes (let me know if there are any union or copyright issues here, Shaun), the Thanksgiving photos, and a couple of pictures from our last Sterling visit. Most of this is on facebook too, but I realize not everyone visits that particular land of make believe.

Love to all,

Scott


That'll Be The Day


Words of Love

Thanksgiving Album

Weekend in Sterling

Moose and Squirrel

We have friends who travel to Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming each year to camp, hike and paddle whitewater; this year we joined them. We hadn't spent much time in Wyoming before and we really enjoyed it.

It's a long two-day drive from Minneapolis, which we stretched to three days each way so we could see more during daylight. Not knowing what the rivers would be like we took four canoes, including an inflatable, on our trailer; the Subaru ran hot and slow through the mountains, but we got there and back fine.

There was very little traffic on the mountain roads, for which we were grateful. We thought of the high cost of gas as a surcharge that kept more RVs parked at home, and while it made our trip expensive it otherwise served us pretty well. Even the campgrounds had vacancies over Fourth of July weekend.

As soon as we arrived at the campground Ann saw a moose wade across the creek towards camp, and we had moose (and evidence thereof) in and about the campground throughout our stay. We also saw a pair of golden eagles, two scrawny foxes (scrawny despite dining on ground squirrels), a pine marten feasting on a red squirrel, and various deer and antelope playing. Coincidentally or not, we didn't hear any discouraging words. We were at the end of a ten mile dirt road along Granite Creek and it was blissful. The area had 600 inches of snowfall - half again more than usual - so there was snow on the mountain tops, a profusion of wildflowers, and much more water than usual in the rivers. We slept late, paddled most afternoons on the creek or the river it flows into, hiked, ate, and sat in the evening overlooking the creek and mountains watching wildlife and telling tales. It was a nice group we'd vacation with anytime; in fact we may join the every-year club. We'll see. I'm at some risk of being employed, and thus less flexible, by the time the next opportunity arises.

On our drive home we detoured through the Black Hills of South Dakota to see the Crazy Horse monument, which Ann and I had both seen about 20 years ago. The face has been completed during the interim but there's a whole lot of warrior and horse left to do. We were caught in two hailstorms and greeted by a good old-fashioned Midwestern thunderstorm when we arrived in Minneapolis.

I have never been in South Dakota without experiencing car trouble; this year as we stopped for gas on the way home we noticed one wheel of our trailer hanging on by the grace of God alone. The mechanic next door had the right size bearings and time to help us, so we were on our way in another two hours.

Pictures have been posted at our Picasa site, here; we may add more as we get them from the other campers.

Dog Heaven

For five days at the end of May I paddled a Canadian river (the Dog River) to Lake Superior with friends Alan, Dave and Dan. We carried our camping gear and so rode a little lower than normal for whitewater, and we had to portage around the odd waterfall, but it was a great trip. I haven't blogged about it because there's too much to say and I can't get started, but this picture from Alan says it pretty well. I'm the one in the purple boat. I was in dog heaven.

Additional pictures are here.

Urban Wild Life

I checked on Alex this morning and found him in the back yard with a wild turkey the size of Big Bird. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune we share the metro area with a couple thousand of them, but this was our (and Alex's) first encounter. Please notice the fierce cat in the bottom photo, all puffed out yet somehow backed as far away from the bird as he can get.

The older I get, the better I was.

In an effort to reanimate myself after a long, gray winter (not that it's over yet) I've been watching whitewater video and uploading some of our Grand Canyon snippets from 2003 and 2004 to YouTube.

209 Mile Rapid with Ann in 2003 (with one prominent profanity):



Lava Falls solo in 2004:


Granite with Ann in 2003:

feeding the iguanas

Overnight our youngest cat Emmie knocked a few blooms off the pinkish-purple azalia Robbie and Jeff gave us. Ann put what she could in a tiny vase and gathered the rest to throw into the yard. She stood in front of me with a fist full of purple and said "I'm going to give these to the iguanas. They love the purple ones."

I didn't remember the name of the tree whose blooms the iguanas preferred (wygelia?), but I assumed I had told Ann the story of the iguanas that wouldn't go back to eating lettuce when winter came. At least once. And, unlike me, she had remembered it well enough to make the comparison. And that became today's post.

Then Ann read it and said "I wasn't feeding iguanas in Ohio! I was feeding iguanas in Costa Rica!" Evidently she was remembering more recent (and more distant) iguanas who liked purple blossoms.

The moral being that profundity and reality may intersect but don't necessarily.