Last week, my friend Heather and I went to Chimayo. It’s a tiny strip of settlement along a two lane highway leading into the mountains from Espanola. You may remember the mention of these places from The Lost Recipe for Happiness, and I will say that it was oddly disorienting to see again all the places that inspired the book—the elaborate descansos, some now lovingly decorated for Christmas, the arroyo that saved Elena from bleeding to death; the wide open field behind the Santuario where I imagined her companions bidding her farewell.   It was like visiting another part of my life, a me I once was.

Heather and I were there to make vision boards, which is simply a poster-sized collection of words and images to represent goals and desires for the coming year. We wanted someplace quiet—and got it.  The Rancho de Chimayo hacienda is an old inn, with the rooms built around an internal courtyard in traditional hacienda style. A friendly white cat with black patches on her ears and paws visited us.  We had no television. No radio.  And horror of horrors: my iPhone did not work. No texts. No phone calls. No compulsive checking of emails every ten minutes.  It was wildly uncomfortable at first, and then we both grew into the quiet.

The first night, the only restaurants in town were already closed and the B&B had nothing, so we traveled back down the road to a convenience store where two tall blonds stood out like bright yellow lights among the small dark men.  Sometimes I’ve felt slightly afraid in Espanola, but not that night. The clerk was friendly, and one of his customers joked with us about our purchases—bottles of water and a can of prepared tuna salad and guacamole chips.   I had tucked away some good cheese and bottles of beer and Izze sodas for the trip, so we had those, too, and it was a decent supper. We cut out photos and started arranging our vision boards in the utter silence, and went to bed early.

In the morning, we both we ready to leap for more civilization. Breakfasts both mornings were very good, carried to our room on trays, with tiny oatmeal muffins and juice and pretty fruit the first day, a giant blueberry muffin and good yogurt the next.

That first morning visited the Santuario, which is one of only a handful of pilgrimage sites in North America. (You can read the story here.) It was only a few hundred yards up the road, and there we mulled spiritual things. I found small gifts for my Catholic son and friends who would appreciate the holy dirt. I shot photos and then spent a long quiet time in the chapel.   I found Heather, who is the queen of animal charmers (and believe me, that takes some doing in my world) making friends with a dog and a horse.

And then, like the city women we are, we bolted for Santa Fe. Heather had never been and I was delighted to show her around, thinking we could eat at my favorite diner, The Plaza.  First, we wandered around the La Fonda hotel, which is a very old, sprawling hotel with a beautiful restaurant in the middle.  Heather asked if we were eating here, and I realized I’d never tried it—I always eat elsewhere in Santa Fe.  “Another time,” I told her, and we headed for The Plaza.

To my dismay, it was closed under renovations.  Not only was I disappointed that we couldn’t eat there, but even more that the restaurant I loved would not exactly be there the next time I visit. No more the kitschy little booths, the old diner style in red and turquoise, the spirit of Route 66 lingering in the old tiles on the floor.   While I recognize things cannot always stay the same, I’m hoping that they’ll preserve the spirit of the old restaurant.

So we ended up at the La Fonda restaurant after all.  We sat by the fountain and I shot photos of the handpainted window panes thatgive the room its unique beauty. Light floods into the room. The menu had some northern New Mexico dishes, but my eye was captured by a spinach tart, puff pastry over sweet potato puree and topped with spinach and goat cheese. It is an elegantly balanced dish, and I’m sure a person who likes beets would have found even that note charming.  I left with the resolve to recreate the dish, and to have traditional northern New Mexico food at dinner.

We wandered the shops in the mild afternoon. I noticed again that Santa Fe is genuinely graying—far more people in their sixties than their twenties or thirties. I also remembered that love Santa Fe style architecture and decoration, the color and splashy details, the coexistence of buildings to earth and sky.  I should live in a Santa Fe style house someday.

Back in Chimayo, we had an indifferent meal at the local restaurant. Nothing was terrible, but nothing was particularly interesting, either.  Back in our room, we rigged up music through my iPad (and discovered we do not have the same tastes in music at all—since she likes mainly modern country and that might be the only form of music I don’t really know very well).  In the morning we made a second visit to the Santuario. I talked with the old priest, a tiny very old man with a Catalan accent, who told me he was “95 years old, soon to be 100!”   I bought Chimayo red chile, and a rosary made of turquoise and silver.

Our last meal was on our way home through Santa Fe to catch I-25, at Café Pasqual, and it was the best of the trip.  A chile relleno that might be the best I’ve ever eaten, delicate and not overwhelmingly cheesey, and a black bean and roasted corn tamale, that inspired me to give this version a try. I don’t even like black beans, and have an aversion to corn in things, and it was marvelous. We took a picture to remember the day, and drove home in a blustery day, across the vast, empty landscape with its harsh mesas and faraway mountains, talking and talking and talking and talking, which is what one does on a road trip.

It was quite fine. We agreed we will find another place for this trek next year, and make our vision boards again together.

Postscript: my vision board was not quite finished, and I wasn’t quite sure what I was waiting for.  It sat on a table in my family room for several days.  During the eclipse on the solstice, I awakened at exactly 1:48 and went outside to discover the shadowed amber moon at full eclipse.  I went inside, finished my vision board, and came back outside to see the bright white edge of blazing moon emerging from the shadows.  Magical!

Do you love Santa Fe, too, or some other place you like to go eat?  Do any of you set goals by using a vision board?

Camp pic, circa mid70s. Author on far left.

We were only there for a week, Sunday to Saturday, but it seemed that entire lifetimes took place during those days.  Romances and friendships built and lost, discoveries about self and place uncovered, dreams forged and reinforced.  On the last day, we all had our group photo signed, and hugged each other as if all was lost, and cried our eyes out.   In the backseat on the way home, I was silent and distant, lost in memories, crushed that it was over for another year.

Back home, it was a slam back into everything ordinary.   The ordinary green telephone on the wall.  The ordinary food.  No singing.  No long deep discussions about…well, anything.  For days, I would be lost in mourning, sure I would never, ever have a good time again.

As an adult, I’ve come to appreciate coming home to ordinariness, but I still love getting ready for a trip, making a list, checking things off, packing special totems, creating rituals.   I learned during those weeks at camp that every journey was a lifetime and I was changed by each one.  Sitting in the meadow at La Foret Camp (which is, ironically, only about a ten minute drive from my current home—it wasn’t even very far away in those days), I dreamed a life for myself.  I learned to connect to other travelers—my fellow campers—and I learned to think outside of the box, challenged by counselors to make us do just that.  (I also learned just about every folk and bible and church song known to modern woman—and you would think that my fellow pilgrims would have appreciated that on the Camino.  Somehow, they liked listening to Bethany, the trained professional opera singer better.)

Anyway.

Before I left for Europe in June, my creative well was very low indeed.  I wouldn’t say dry, but a voice shouting down into it would echo for a long time before hitting water.  It’s a normal part of the process, and probably because of the loss of my Sasha and the long months nursing her, I was a little more weary than usual.  I also had that nagging knee injury, which is not terrible, but is sort of…annoying, you know?

Whatever the reason, I was empty and sick of working by June. The great luxury of a writing life is the time

to go wandering.  I went to camp, first with CR to England and then with a group of women on the Camino, and I still wasn’t finished, because then we went to Orlando, where I spent the first half with my dearest writing buddies, and the second half with CR, playing at Disneyland.

Not only did I wander and chat and think about life in small and large ways, I read like a junkie, popping one book after another in a wild lust for story.  Australian writers, English writers, a bunch of Americans.  Fiction and non-fiction.  Adult and young adult.  Spanish and English. Reading, reading, reading, reading.

What I did not do is write.  I kept a journal, as always, and I wrote the odd blog post or Facebook missive, but other than that, nothing. I didn’t think much about writing, either, and when ideas started pushing into my imagination, auditioning for the next spot, I shoved them away.  Once in awhile, I took a note or two on my phone. Once in awhile, I woke up and thought, “Hmm, that has some merit.”

Mostly, I ignored every single one of them.

The result?

The well is overflowing.  I’ve been in a working frenzy, sometimes working on two different things in a single day because when I’ve reached the end of the juiciness on one project, I find there is energy and excitement left for another bout, so I change locations and start work on the other one.   One morning, an idea I’ve been shoving away for about two years awakened me and dragged me to the computer and didn’t let me go until well after lunch.

It’s lovely.  It’s like going to camp and getting the good stuff afterward, too.  Filling the well is always, always worth it, and I haven’t been taking enough time to do that.  Not at all interested in travel for a little while, you understand, but I am going to go to movies a couple of times a month, and play with my collages (which I realized recently don’t have to be about books all the time) and water color pencils.  I’m taking cello lessons.

It’s all material, right?

Did you go to camp as a child?  Do you fill the well with travel or by some other means?  What hobbies give you that sense of exuberance, whether or not you are a writer?

If you are like me, you are thinking Lee’s Summit is a backwater and you won’t find anything to your liking. I used to come through here on the train on the way to St Louis, pausing at a station that is, as a matter of fact, right across the street from where I now sit. In those days, I would see the Main Street with its hardware store and think …eh.

But this afternoon, in the rain, I have found a beautiful amber bracelet to celebrate the Girls In The Basement. I found it in a shop with fair trade goods run by a woman from southern California (the mosaic is in the sidewalk in front of her shop on Third Street). From a wine shop run by four women who must have been sisters with their matching platinum hair and robust figures, I purchased a local bottle of Pinot Noir (brewed right here!).

I really have not been afoot enough lately, and will have to work in some small trips somehow, despite my rather full schedule.  Ambling around in the world restores and renews me as nothing else can.

Now I have had an exquisite meal of chicken canneloni. I am one of three customers at the restaurant, because it is obscenely early, and it really is pouring outside.  The other two customers are a male couple with white hair, splitting a spaghetti plate. My coffee is here and I’m going to call a cab in a minute , but in the meantime, weve shared a meal. Thanks.

ciao bella

4th of July sunset on Lake Michigan.

Christopher Robin and I traveled to Michigan to celebrate his first 4th of July as a citizen.  Here are a few observations.

10. It is a long way from the Detroit airport to upstate, especially on the Thursday before a Saturday 4th of July, and especially when you’ve been flying since 6 am from Colorado, and you narrowly escape the crash of United computers at O’Hare Airport, where there are a lot of annoyed and exhausted passengers.  We arrived at Lake Walloon at 8 pm, just about as strung out as if we’d crossed the ocean to England.  Luckily, our hosts grilled exquisite fillet mignon and served them with perfect rounds of mozzarella, tomato, basil, and balsamic vinegar with a smooth red wine.

9. Lake Walloon is where Hemingway grew up.  It is surrounded by thick pine and leafy green forest that boasts no snakes except the friendly sort, and I’m not afraid of them.  900 (or so) people have “cottages” around this lake, some that are quite old and made of logs. There are also two summer camps, which made me think of Trixie Belden and my own girlhood at camps of whatever sort I could find–girl scout, High Trails (which is probably a Colorado thing), church, whatever.

8. On Lake Walloon I read Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories and found them dismayingly filled with the N word and had to stop.  I know he was a product of his times.  But I am a person of my times and the casual dehumanization was bothersome enough that I couldn’t keep reading.  Result: my love/hate relationship with Hemingway continues.

7. On Lake Walloon, we ate  s’mores, roasted over a fire pit by two boys in a still night with the lake rippling against the shore in sibilant commentary.

6.  At Boyne City, Michigan, the 4thof July parade is an Americana beauty, complete with little girls waving from fire truck windows, and flowers provided by the garden club. There were hats and pants and clowns suits and shirts all made of the stars and stripes, more stars and stripes than you have ever seen in one place, and it was all done without one tiny whit  of irony.  Three times people behind us leaptout of the crowd to join some marching band or float passing by.   Also, the entire downtown was still completely alive, populated with businesses like a hardware store and a fudge shop and whatever else.

5.  In Boyne City the day before, we met a man sitting with his beautiful labradoodle in front of an ice cream store. The dog was so lovely we stopped to admire him, and the man told his sad story of a wife who’d left him with the dog.  We all said, “The dog is a better deal,” but he was still so raw he didn’t know it yet.

4. Our host patiently taught me to kayak, and it was seriously fantastic.  I don’t want big rapids or danger or trouble, but paddling in the smooth waters of the lake was deeply, powerful meditative and I could do it for days unending.  (Note: as with all things, the secret is to relax into the whole thing.)

3. The traffic back to Detroit on the Monday after the 4th of July is also really insane.

2. In Ann Arbor I went with my aunt and uncle, who are practicing Hindus,  to a Guru Purnima celebration, which commemorates our teachers.  My aunt produced a flowing yellow outfit for me to wear, and we meditated and chanted and I loved being with them on such a sacred night. 

1. The next day, we visited Zingermans, a foodie heaven, where they have things like chocolate sourdough bread and exquisite olive oils, and my own particular reason for visiting:Balsamic vinegars, and I tasted several before deciding upon the 20-year-old.  My aunt, who is a foodie from before it was cool, naturally had a couple of bottles at home, along with her shelves and shelves of great ingredients and drawers full of utensils.

All vacations should be so filled with love, friendship, and the pursuit of passions.  I’m refreshed, renewed and ready to get back to work!

How was your 4th of July? Do you find it corny or uplifting? How do you celebrate in your corner of the world?

First, a little background.  While I was in Australia last year, the Langham Hotel in Melbourne was giving away B&B packages around the world, one each day, in honor of the Olympics. They have six hotels, two in the US, and to my great delight and amazement, I won a package.  To Pasadena, where my eldest son had just moved for a year-long clerkship.  The hotel was approximately a mile and a half from the hotel.  

Serendipitous on so many levels.  There is the weird and obvious benefit of landing within walking distance of my child, from a hotel halfway around the world.  I also really was ready for some immersion time in the book, and in fact timed the trip so I could do this work for three days without any phone or other dogs distractions.  Oh, and sleep.  I had the Colorado Plague for nearly two weeks and still haven’t quite kicked the dregs of it. 

So, last weekend, I packed up the laptop, some good walking shoes, and a notebook and headed to the Pasadena Langham Hotel, which used to be the Ritz-Carlton.  It sits in the midst of well tended, California Craftsmans and Frank Lloyd Wright style homes on zillion dollar lots. There are gardens and courtyards and a Painted Bridge that was created in 1932.  In those days, it spanned a gulch.  Today it gracefully leads to the cottages between the swimming pool and the garden pools that tumble down the hill.

Anyway, this is my writing log for the weekend.

2:15
Walk was very nice, rejuvenating. I am making some hot water for tea and will work now until 4:15, at which time I can take the long walk around the neighborhood that I’m dying to do, and come back to eat my very simple supper of apples, cheese and nuts. And I have to work again after that.

3 pm Edited two more scenes. Pretty sleepy. Will nap for a quick minute.

4 pm. Napped 15 minutes, read through the dinner scene and it still sucks but I don’t know what the fix is yet. Still missing information. Going for a long walk now, clear my head. Will work some more later.

So far: edited/read 80 pages.

6 pm
Had a good long walk, an hour or more, around the neighborhood, ate leftover pizza and read a little bit of Alice Hoffman.

I’ve been rewriting all day.  Which is fine. That’s writing, too.  I’m still not happy with a couple of spots, and there are  some quality problems with [one scene in particular] but I can fix them later.    [Deleted spoiler details here. ]

The Amazing Race comes on in an hour, so I’m going to work until then.

6:50
Added another scene, worked through some of the trouble.  Finished with edited 100+ pageds and about 1500 new words.  REALLY tired now.

Monday, March 30, 2009
It’s 9:50 am. I had a really good night’s sleep.  I had a shower then a nice breakfast at the Terrace restaurant, and sat with my notebook for a little while.  One character is not coming through on the page as well as I’d like.  I let her talk through my pen and she gave me enough insight that I have a place to start.

11 am
Scene from Vita POV.  Dozed for ten minutes and they’re doing something with noisy, noisy machines, so I’m going to go write by hand in the garden. Give the computer a chance to cool, too. It really gets hot if it stays up all day.

Oh, hmm. Now the machine is off. Maybe I can just stay here.

12:00
So, got the bread scene moving. Feeling kind of restless now. Maybe I’ll go write by hand in the garden simply because I would enjoy it. Have done five pages this morning so far. That’s slow, but I’ll live with it.

5 pm
Wrote by hand and then read awhile. Typed in the pages and feel much better about the scene. Not meeting Ian until 8 or so, and I’ll walk up to the shopping center in a little while, have some supper, get the cobwebs out of my head. Maybe come back and write a little more. We’ll see. 

Feels better, though. That’s a good thing. I’m really in the belly of the book now, and the only thing to do is just be with it.  I’m tired. I’ve been working and working and working!

11 pm
I walked over to the shops and had a very nice combination of salads at the local Corner Bakery. It was absolutely delicious and made me realize there are ten million things you can do with salad that I never think about. I love salads and don’t make them very often enough. Met Ian at his apartment and spent a couple of hours with him and his cats, then he brought me back to the hotel. 

Enough. I am very, very tired tonight. It might not have seemed as if I accomplished a lot, but I was at it the whole weekend, taking time only for walks and Ian. That’s all a person can do.

Ready for bed now.

6 pm
Something broke free in all that work, because the minute I arrived at the LA airport, I started writing in my notebook, scene after scene after scene, and wrote all the way home.  (Until the horrific turbulence–it was scary horrible, and I’m not a nervous flyer.)   A very productive three days and I feel quite well rested, too.

But of course, the best part was seeing Ian. Hanging out. Being able to give him a big hug and feed him the lovely breakfast at the Langham. 

(I notice that I cat-napped a lot during this telling, and almost deleted it, but chose to be faithful to my true process. Anyone else cat nap a lot?)

Writing is lonely work sometimes, that’s the truth. What do the girls want?  Maybe a nice walk around the grounds, or just over to the bridge.

Stop being so cerebral, the girls say.  Just go write the next part.  Rewrite the scene with Natalie and Tessa, then maybe have a little nap and a walk around the grounds and come back and do another scene. I can do a lot of work here. I’m here to work and I love my job so let’s just get to it.

1:15
Okay, I dozed for a little while, wrote the scene with photos, and the computer is really hot, so I’m going to take a walk around the grounds and look at the bridge and come back.

Yesterday, weary of the restlessness that has followed me around for two days, I gave up the pretense of getting some pages one and drove to the downtown library. They had a particular book I wanted, but the destination was less the point than the escape. I took care of the little bits of work that had to be done yesterday, then fled into the bright blue and yellow day. On my way down the highway, I tossed around possibilities–what else to do downtown.  Where to park, which shops to browse. Maybe I’d have a salad at Phantom Canyon, or have coffee at the Starbucks on the corner of Tejon and Bijou. (Every Starbucks, as you know, has its own spirit.  This one is a hotbed of thirty- and forty-something Match.com first dates and young urbanites who live in the lofts sprouting up over the shops.) Once, I would have gone to Michelle’s but that’s gone now.

To add a little soupcon of interest to the ordinary journey (I really could only spare a couple of hours), I decided to pretend I was a tourist in my own town, that I had flown in for a conference and had some time free to explore the immediate area.

First the library. The downtown, or Penrose branch, of the library has an entirely different vibe than the East Library, which is where I usually go. Both are quite large, and both have wide windows opening on the western view of burly mountains, belly up to the horizon, so big you have to bend down to see the sky over the top of them. In both libraries, people sit in the chairs facing the view and read, or simply contemplate the scenery.

Downtown is a library I know from youngest childhood. I remember when they built it, all glittery quartz walls, and a statue of a naked man in front. (I was shocked that my mother let me look at it.  Right at his penis, carved in brass.) Now, the non-fiction stacks are downstairs and there are usually at least a few homeless people—99% of them men—reading or wandering or just sitting quietly. They’re not allowed to bring in big packs or sleeping bags, but I like that they can come in and hang out. If I were a homeless person, the library would be the place I’d go to escape the realities of my life. I am not a homeless person, after all, and I escape there quite a lot.

I found the book I was looking for, Paul Theroux’s Kingdom by the Sea, and one other that I’ve been meaning to read for ages, since a travel writer at Santa Barbara Writers Conference, Jerry Dunn, recommended her—Jan Morris’s Journeys. And yet another, which is what happens to me at the library. It’s so easy to get drunk on all the choices and fill your arms and carry out those giant stacks of books you can’t possible read in three weeks, but—you know, it’s worth a try.

I left the books in my car and wandered toward Tejon, trying to keep that loose mind, admiring and aloof, a traveler’s observation, but it wasn’t that easy. I decided that I didn’t want to walk by the place where Michelle’s used to be, whether it is full or empty, it would make me sad.  (A tourist would never know it was there, or that it mattered, or what it was).  Instead, I wander up Cascade. And there, ahead, is a funeral parlor I’ve been inside—I remember suddenly that it was my Aunt Barbara, for whom I am named, and we were all in shock because it was so sudden and she wasn’t very old.

Step back. Observe.

But…there, across the street from the parlor, on Boulder, is the beautiful little park surrounded by tall apartment buildings, where my mother says we lived when I was a baby. I love to think of my teenage parents living in their first apartment in a Colorado summer. Objectively, I admire the mountains towering over the buildings, gold like necklaces still hanging across their chests.

I decide to go to Poor Richard’s, the last remaining bookstore downtown, where I’ll get a cup of coffee and browse. There are not many people out on a quiet Wednesday afternoon. A few students from the high school, a few more from the college up the road, a tidy woman with her tiny pug. A guy with his bike crosses the street with me and says, cheerily, “How ya doin’?” A pair of businessmen and a very pretty middle aged woman pass by, and the man on the end nods and says, “Hi.” Maybe I’m staring.

The bookstore, however, is packed. Lots of people shopping, lots of different kinds of people, the slightly furtive and grimy sorts with fingerless gloves, and women in business clothes, hair perfectly coifed and sprayed, a family group carrying around a plate of food they share with each other—the man is bald and wearing a suit with a tie, the women are maybe his wife and her mother or sisters. In the café, I sit with my back to the room so I can eavesdrop more adroitly, and listen to a woman behind me talk about healing her energetic body and someone apologizing for not getting the healing right the first time. She keeps saying it isn’t his fault, that they’re both just learning, but then I wonder why she wanted him to know. She speaks loudly. His voice is quiet and younger.

I face the windows, and watch the ordinary parade of afternoon go by on the sidewalk, a trio of teens on skateboards and striped sleeves, a bearded man with a guitar, a woman crisply clicking in her high heeled boots. Across the street is a bakery and I wonder if I should have done there to have a slice of cake, but honestly, the latte I’m drinking, served in a big porcelain cup so heavy I want both hands to life it, is one of the best I’ve had in ages and ages. I will come back here.

While I drink it, I read the book I found (because of course I found another book, even with all the ones in my car), Dog Years by Mark Doty, which engages me instantly because I am still grieving Leo the cat and I don’t care if it’s been three months. These things take time, and for once, I’m giving myself plenty, living with that thorn in my chest, and not rushing beyond it. Living now with the sorrow of the cat who kept me company for eleven years. The book gives me even more permission to do that.

This afternoon, my escape time is running out, and I reluctantly head back toward my car.  Again, I’m trying to practice seeing with fresh eyes. But as I walk, my mind is continuously tossing out background notes—it isn’t aloof or observational at all. In the hotel there, which might not even be a hotel any more, lived my ex-husband’s friend Chuck, who was charming and irritating and abrasive. He died, years and years ago, when 36 seemed old to me. I haven’t thought of him in ages. Did he live there? I try to remember. Maybe they just liked to drink at the bar in the hotel.

Anyway. Now I’m passing the corner basement where I took ballet lessons when I was six, and walk past the two connected shopfronts that once contained Chinook Bookstore, where my parents brought us on winter weeknights sometimes, both of them bibliophiles, and there was a playhouse where we children could hide. Down the block is the restaurant were I met my first love after decades of silence between us, and we had a proper wake, full of celebration. It goes on, and on, and on, block after block, street after street. My body is imprinted with hundreds of memories and they unfold like fans as I walk, one era of my life after another, in no particular order.

It is impossible to be aloof here, to be a stranger. Objectively, I see that it is a clear, dry, stunning blue sky. Objectively I see that there isn’t much to this downtown, that people from big cities would find it “quaint” at best, or provincial if they were less kind. Objectively, I see that the mountains are the saving grace. But that’s as much as I can distance myself. The taproots of the city and my life are entwined, inseparable.

Walking back to my car, the knowledge buoys me. How magnificent to know a single place so thoroughly, so intimately, as if we are lovers, bound always! My own, my city, waiting here in under the benign blue eye of my mountain whenever I wander home from my travels. It seems so reassuringly permanent.

Is there a place that makes you feel this way?

Oh, and this just because I think it’s gorgeous. Same guy took the shot.  Check out more of his Colorado photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cptspock/2694059955/

Photos courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/cptspock/

In the realm of total surprises: The Reef

In the latter category was swimming in the ocean.  We took a ferry out to Green Island and walked down the white sand beach to the beach, I was stunned by how clear the water was.  My experience with oceans is mainly California, where the water is muddy and often thick with seaweed, and you certainly have no idea what that…thing…might be brushing against your leg.  It is also cold.  Freezing cold.  I don’t go into the ocean in any significant way.   I like to sit on the beach.  I like to watch the waves and the birds and all that.  But swim in it?  Not in this lifetime.

But this water was clear! As clear as a swimming pool. Jo dived right in, and said, “Come on in. It’s nice.”  So, warily, I crept in.  And it wasn’t exactly hot water, but it was bearable.  I love to swim and it really was possible to see the entire floor of sand beneath my feet, so I gave it a shot–and ACK!  I COULD FLOAT!  Like do nothing, and FLOAT in that salty, salty, beautiful water.  I spied something out of the corner of my eye and whirled (freaked!) to see two little tropical fish, silvery things with blue stripes, swimming nonchalantly right along with me.   It was like being in an aquarium.  We only had an hour, but I’m telling you, I so get it now, why everyone likes tropical waters.  (Though not at Cairns for six months of the year, where there is a deadly, deadly jelly fish that fills the place.  Box jellyfish.)   CR said he’d go if we went to the Great Barrier Reef, and we can snorkle or even, if we’re feeling brave, scuba dive.  I’m so there.

Because here’s the other thing: The Great Barrier Reef is indescribable.  Incredible. We took a semisubmersible trip down and were blown away by all the life, teeming and teeming in that clear water, all the things you see so clearly.

And then, quite by accident, I saw it from the air as we flew down the coast.  I never thought to ask if I could have a seat on that side of the plane.  I didn’t know enough to realize it would be so magnificent.  I happened to look out just as we started flying, and there was the reef, plainly visible in all the swirling turquoise and aqua and sandy patterns it makes, hundreds of miles of reef and teeming, teaming life.  I could see the shape of islands emerging, and the patterns of the water, a vast, jeweled science experiment, and I was knocked right out of my head, dazzled and humbled, my brain set afire.

I didn’t know.  I didn’t even known I didn’t know.  Which makes me wonder what else there is to discover in the world? This giant, incredible planet!

Things you think you know

I didn’t expect Melbourne to be so cosmopolitan in spirit.  I thought it would be sort like an Australian version of Chicago or Denver, slightly not as hip as the big glitzy neighbor.   Not so.  It has a continental, elegant feeling, a vibe all of its own.  In the way the men wear such formal suits and the women in their business attire, it felt like London, and maybe that sensibility is carried through to the feeling in some of the bookstores and food shops and takeaways.  I did find (to my great joy) that British tea is everywhere, but so is very, very good coffee.

It was hard to get much of a look at Sydney, of course, since the rain was pouring down like it was.  My my editor was stunningly hip in red boots and cropped blonde hair and a coat I’d probably recognize if I were more fashionable.

Expectations
Things I am pretty sure of:
–that I will like the Australian sensibility. I am expecting it to be somewhere between the US and Britain, with a hefty helping of its ownself, which remains to be discovered.

Someone in the comment asked why I would expect that inbetween place. It wasn’t that I expected Australia to be a stepchild of either the US or Britain, but since I’ve traveled to Britain several times (and I’m living with a Englishman after all), and I am a native of the US, I was wondering where Australia would be on the continuum.   New Zealand felt quite British to me, in so many ways, even the houses and the bakeries and certain sensibilities of entertaining.  Not much like the US, or at least Colorado.

Which is a long winded way of saying we all catalog experiences and ideas according to what we already know.  It’s the way the brain works.

Given that, I found Australia to be entirely itself.  Yes, there was that slight Britishness here and there, in the tea and the suits and the take-aways, and in the bookstore, in particular, I saw similarities.  But I didn’t think it felt at all American, though of course there is a television bleed and music and movies.  And 7-Eleven!  It is both a more formal and more straightforward culture (which is a big fat generalization of both American and Australian culture, since both are such huge countries, but you can’t write a blog like this without an opinion of some kind).  Americans typically take a lot of care in choosing words, trying not to offend or get to far into someone’s space.   While Aussies do seem to have the same big body space needs Americans (especially Westerners) tend to really like, the straightforwardness of statements can be a little startling, just as it is in England.

–that I will not feel like the Valkyrie from some opera, as I do sometimes in France and Italy, where I am sometimes bigger than the guys, never mind the women.

I did not feel like a Valyrie.  In fact, I met more than a handful of women who were well over six feet tall.  Also, really sturdy men.  Good looking men.  I said to a woman next to me at a meal that I’d been startled, walking around Melbourne, at just how many very good looking men I saw.   “Well, we are known for that,” she said.

What I want to know more about:

Australian history and the patterns of settlement.   The Great Barrier Reef and the history of Cairns.  The intrepid explorers who sailed all over the Indian Ocean and around the Pacific, looking for continents and new discoveries.  I get that their footprint was a disaster for native people.   But I’m smitten by the botanists and the scientists and geographers who were mapping the world, making connections, uncovering entire bodies of knowledge that had never been known by western man before.   What must that have been like?  Imagine, right now, if there was suddenly an entirely new continent discovered, with entirely different birds and animals and all manner of wondrous new things.  What would that be like?

I want to read more about the Outback, too, and the people who live there and how they live and what it’s like to inhabit such a vast landscape.

I didn’t know I would fall so in love with Australia.  That I would find myself so enchanted by everything about it and so hungry to know more.  You think you might get a place out of your system when you visit, but I just want to return and know more, explore more, dive in more deeply.

Happily, it’s only a plane ride away, and I will be going back.  Yessirree.

Thanks for going along with me.