We Be Blogging

Lucky for me, the bus from Seattle to Vancouver had a wireless internet connection, which let me catch up with customers and make some adjustments to the blog..... Headed home, our minds begin focusing on the days ahead.

It was a great trip. We agree that we could easily turn around and ride the trains for another month without boredom or regret. But it's time to get on with the more ordinary side of life, to settle into the rhythm of spring on our home turf. Snowdrops are the first flowers of our year, and we return to find them happily abundant. Geese are flying. The cones of the deodar cedars are disintegrating, distributing their seed. The signs are all around. The season is turning. A few steps ahead, then one or two back, the inevitable turning.

Yes, we are ready to be home again, ready for that huge cooperative beautifully coordinated surge of life that is about to wash over us. We take joy in The Great Mystery. Hooray for life!

Portland Union Station

Leaving Portland,we admire their beautiful Amtrak station, restored and preserved. We arrive at the station by bus, and find it more crowded than any other station we've visited on this trip. The train to Seattle leaves several times a day, and is packed.

I was reading an advertisement the other day by a company called CSX. I'd never heard of it before traveling east, but it seems that it owns the track all over the northeastern U.S. Now, I don't know how they count, or if the number is entirely accurate, but their claim in the ad was that they move a ton of freight 432 miles on a gallon of fuel. I was impressed.

So I do a little math. The 432 miles is two and a half times the distance from Portland to Seattle. On average, six adults may weigh a ton. Let's call it five, including luggage. That means that if the train operates at CSX efficiency, then it can deliver twelve of us from Portland to Seattle at a cost of one gallon of fuel.

Could it be? And if it is so, or even if the real figure is half that, isn't it about time we wake up and get a little smarter about where our transportation money goes?

I'm looking around the train, and I'm seeing lots and lots of young people. They have laptops, they have cell phones, they have Blackberries. I am only guessing at what is in their minds, but I'm guessing that this is a new kind of train passenger -- smart, in touch, on the move, and very concerned about their influence on the environment, about how their choices affect the world. I am happy to see it.

But I don't think it's all about mere unpleasant moral duty. They've tasted the great pleasure of sliding down the rails, rocking in a rhythm they may not have felt since being babies in a carriage, admiring the countryside, doing a little work or a little play on the laptops, free of the tensions of navigating traffic.

Travel by train in North America is a model that has faded almost to oblivion. But here and there we find whiffs of resurgence. Very encouraging.

Congratulations Portland

Portland is wonderful! It has an amazing transit system. We usually rent a car to get around a city, but after studying the transit system a bit online, I realized there was no need for a car in Portland. Having one would be more of a burden than anything else. There's an extensive free zone in the downtown area, for buses, trains, and streetcars. On the day we needed to venture further out we bought a $4.75 pass good for the whole day. Only once did we wait more than two or three minutes for a bus or train. Early on we made fools of ourselves running to catch a train, which we missed. But along came another one before we could catch our breath!

Dinner At Catty's

So, is that art, or what?

Photo Opp

Once we got to Portland,that's where the digital cameras really began to work overtime. Do these two look like they're worried over how to keep track of all the snapshots being made? We're talking gigabytes.....

Jean Does Portland

Here Jean takes a break from her camera work for a chat on the phone. She may have been a little tired by this point, but really enjoyed herself, especially seeing the kids.

The Younger Ones

Jonah gives me a briefing on the details of Star Wars. He knows everything about everything about Star Wars.

A short time later his brother Ivan has eyes for my piece of dessert cake, having finished his own. Not wanting to give mine up, I am quietly thinking he'd feel satisfied already if he'd put a little more cake in his mouth instead of using it like skin lotion. Which just shows how out of touch I am with kid mind. But hey, all I know is I want my cake!

The General

Lynne, a.k.a. The General. We teased her about her pre-designed precision schedule, but we had also depended on her to coordinate our rendezvous. No one else takes that kind of initiative, with a unique combination of heart and clownish grace. She really did an amazing job of making Portland fun and not too burdensome for anyone, except perhaps herself. Actually, I think she had a good time too.

Sarah and Ni

Sarah and Ni share a tense moment over dinner in a restaurant where the majority of the customers seem to know and love Sarah. She's an artist, and this is an artists' haven. We feel great pleasure, feel her shining nature.

Nice restaurant, only the portions were small, as you can see for yourself.

The Portlanders

When we arrived in Portland, the cast expanded dramatically. It was a mini-reunion, of sorts. I am not seeing a photo with everyone in it. At the top is Elsa. Below are me, Sarah, Catty, Ivan, and John. (You all know who you are, and nobody else is likely to read this, I know.)

It's wonderful when you find yourself in the midst of relatives who are just the sort of people you'd be grateful count as friends even if you weren't related.

Columbia River

By and by we headed down the Columbia River. Do they call it a valley or a gorge? I can't quite remember. What I feel this morning is how very gray it is. Having lived in this part of the world for a long time, gray is OK. It's peaceful. We love the overcast, most of the time. Coming back here after a month of sunshine is a bit of a shock. It's like suddenly being in an Ansel Adams photo. But, yes, it has a beauty of its own, with so many color tones, so subtle, and so life-giving.

Ni Kicks Back

Ni spent some time painting on the trip. But she also spent a lot of time just being Ni, a continual bundle of tension, as we all know. Here she demonstrates her best posture for watching Montana go by.

Just Passing Through

We passed through Minnesota at night, and most of North Dakota too. By morning the landscape was open and windswept, showing yet another kind of beauty. We saw as many as 20 deer at one time, antelope, eagles. We saw towns, not too populated, towns that know how to survive, places that have seen waves of settlers come and go under a sky that is so big that it is hard to muster a sense of importance. Does it invite a feeling of freedom or a panic of insignificance? I guess that depends on the person.

There was a summer that I lived on a ranch in Utah. We could hear a truck coming down the road from about five miles distant. The sky was huge, blue, clear, silent. It was the first place I ever lived that was so quiet that I could not help but see my own mind.

No wonder country like this frightens people! It wants us to see ourselves.

Milwaukee to Portland

So we all got on the train and had a pretty good time of it. Jean made lots of friends in the dining car. She sure was independent, even in situations like the one pictured here, where she poses as a pro wrestler, trying to open a cookie wrapper that must have been designed by someone working for Homeland Security. Actually, I had to intervene, and was able to open it after only eight or ten tries. I ended up nearly pulling a few teeth out on the wrapper, before realizing I could insert a fork and rip it open just so.

The Lecture

This is the only time that I sat in the lounge car and delivered an unwanted lecture on politics during the entire trip! I think Jean is looking past me, at the countryside, which is no doubt more interesting. Must have had slightly too much coffee that morning....

Clouds

Ni is a painter. I am not. But if I were ever to try painting, I might specialize on clouds. So beautiful, such good friends to us. They can lift tons of water into the sky without any apparent effort and carry it hundreds of miles, then let it drop in just such a way to support all of life.

Like us, they sometimes give a wispy feeling, or are sometimes fat and puffy, appearing light or heavy, hurried or not.

When I was a kid, I used to sit for hours with a chess board and try to think of a new rule that would improve the game. Even with my weak little brain, it finally occurred to me that I would not be successful, that the game was already perfectly what it is.

Clouds are like that too.

Getting Away to Portland

The Madison destination wasn't only about seeing my dad, of course. We were being hosted by Jean. Not only that, but last summer, when we were first planning our trip by train, I suggested to Jean that she ride with us from Madison to Portland. It would be a great chance for her to see grandchildren and even great grandchildren. When I first suggested it by email, I thought she'd say no. Instead, she wrote back within about an hour saying she thought it was a great idea.

And so we made it happen.

Jean is 89. Maybe it's not fair to say her age, since I'm not bragging about my age or anyone else's. But this is in the "isn't she remarkable" department. She still does Tai Chi and is fiercely independent. For many years, until last summer, until it became totally impractical, she was single-handedly taking care of my dad.

On the way to board the train in Milwaukee, she told us that she had not spent a night outside of Madison in seven years. We could feel her excitement.

In The Windowsill

My parents' condominium apartment is perched on the fourth floor, over a nice stand of oak trees. Hence the name Oakwood. The windows face east. And in the morning light, Ni took this photo of flowers in the windowsill. So delicate! How do they DO that? How do they know what form to take, how to make food from light, how to make their petals translucent?

Sometimes you just have to stand back and let your mouth drop open in wonder and awe.

Trees of Madison

Madison has wonderful trees. All along the boulevards, handsome trees are planted and well maintained. Sometimes it's dreadful to see trees bared in winter, and sometimes it's a real treat.

My hat is off to the arborists of Madison, Wisconsin.

My Dad

In Madison we visited my Dad, who has lived in an Alzheimer's unit since last July. On the past couple of visits it was clear he did not know us, not in the sense of knowing what we do in life or where we came from or what our relationship to him might be. This time I did feel he had some knowledge that we are connected. But I got that feeling only from seeing it in his eyes. Conversation is not possible. He has none of the major concepts that make it meaningful to talk. And so we mostly sat together. He likes being touched, which was not the case earlier in life. So, yes, we just sat together a little bit, looking out the window at birds on the patio.

Although all of this is naturally painful, the truth is that we always had a painful relationship. For many years there was the hope that we could patch it up, and yet each of us had habits and attitudes and old grievances too powerful to overcome, it seemed.

If my Dad is suffering, I cannot tell. He has no moment to moment memory. That, of course, makes it impossible for him to take care of himself. On the other hand, the lack of memory has freed him from some of the mental processes that most of us find rather oppressive when we look closely at our own minds.

Any peace that I will be able to find about my father has to come from within now. There is no more possibility of solving the problems in an interpersonal way.

And for him, who can know what goes on? Sometimes I think this may be an important period for him, to just be, to settle out. I have no idea what comes after this life. Neither does he. If he ever had an opinion about that, it's gone now. If something new emerges after death, he's going to arrive like an empty vessel, peaceful, non-resistant.

That's about as optimistic as I can be after a visit that shook me a bit.

From D.C. to Madison

We had a great time in Washington, and ran out of time before we ran out of possibilities for museums, bookstores, or being in nature. Back on the train, this was the only major leg of the trip where we traveled the same route twice. We got on late in the afternoon, and were supposed to arrive in Chicago around 9 in the morning. The train turned out to be four hours late, which let us see some of the countryside we'd otherwise have passed in the night. We had an easy connection to Milwaukee, where we rented a car and drove to Madison.

Tree Mind

There are some trees that, like some people, look better with their clothes on. Winter tells all. The deciduous trees all along our path were fully exposed in the crisp winter air, and were telling lots of stories. Poplars like the one pictured here have a fairly confused nature to begin with. Or maybe it's better to say they don't waste excessive energy on creating symmetry. Add a little storm injury into the equation, or someone's attempt to limit the size of the tree, and you've got a tangled mess.

Although it is not a pleasant experience to pass by butchered trees -- tree after tree, mile after mile -- it is fascinating to study the trees as we travel along, to see how they have adapted and survived. If the train is traveling slowly enough, I can do forensics on the trees as we pass. In the less affluent areas, tree abuse is more common, though no particular income group is guiltless. Sometimes we pass areas of recent storm damage, and I can often tell if the breakage was from ice or wind or both. Other areas seem to be vulnerable to root rot. Occasionally we pass a park area where some really ace arborists must be employed, full of trees with impeccable histories of good care.

In some places there are trees I'd rather just see put out of their misery. I can guess about how many years ago a not very skillful person got up into the tops with a chainsaw to do damage that will never be erased as long as the tree is standing. But then, there are places along the way where people are probably grateful for any hint of shade in the summer, or for the winter winds to be slowed just a bit by their hacked up trees. It's not up to me that their top priority should be tree health, or the beauty of a tree manifesting its full potential.

But I must say, I have a hard time letting go of this issue. I do appreciate symmetry, whether in the forms of trees or buildings or rocks. And I do recognize that as a prejudice, at least in the case of trees.

When a tree by its own doing is not strongly symmetrical, I like to think about what the tree is trying to accomplish by taking the form it does. Trees have all different strategies, about how fast they grow, how much growth they shed, how they spread seed, when and where they germinate, how long they expect to live, how they react to damage, and so on. Sometimes deep symmetry is part of that strategy, and sometimes it's not. Poplars don't care so much.

And when the tree has been altered by hackers, there is an opportunity to admire nature's resilience even while squirming uncomfortably at the misshapen results.

D.C.

In the past few days we have done many museums, which were far more interesting than I'd expected. But tiring. Seems to me that museums must have a secret apparatus under the floor, like a vacuum cleaner, that sucks your energy mercilessly until you find yourself sitting in the museum cafeteria in a dazed heap, eyes glazed over, barely noticing that you've just ingested a double expresso as a pick-me-up.

We also got out on a hike, to some wetlands, which are showing off all the beautiful subtle gold-brown-red colors of late winter. Nearby woods are maple, sweetgum, oak, ash, beech and other species that I can't quite identify in this season. Our walk on the frozen snow is crunchy, like a loudspeaker announcing to wildlife that we are coming. After standing quietly for awhile and tuning in, it's clear that there are many life forms all around.

Today is for one more museum, and some quiet time at home.

Kitchen Girl

Alison took us on an ambitious tour yesterday. Today it was snowing, she went to work, and we decided to rest.

However, Ni hit her stride about mid-morning and has been cooking ever since. I think she's got things just about synchronized for Alison's return....

Dinner At Alison's

Good food, nice place.... Hey, whose art is that on the walls?

Little Falls of the Potomac

Two of my favorite women pretend they are not cold on our walk through a surprisingly rural area within a short distance of downtown Washington....

Woodacres

We visited our childhood home the other day, where Dad planted the beech tree as a sapling. Now it dominates the yard. As an arborist, I wanted to knock on the door and show the current owners why they need to trim that lowest large limb. A considerable portion of the trunk is going to be pulled away from the tree when that branch lets go.

But, of course, I was too shy to say anything.

National Portrait Gallery

See how excited Alison is? There's a feeling in the air here. "Hope" pretty much sums it up.

National Portrait Gallery 2

Fur

Alison's apartment is graced by the presence of three VFC (Very Furry Cats). There is also a bit of static electricity because of the heating system. My cotton/polyester pullover is being converted into a fur coat. In fact, we may have all-fur clothes before we leave. Here's hoping there are not misunderstandings with animal rights advocates when we get on the streets with our remodeled wardrobe.....

Old Glory, Union Station

It wasn't hard to find an American flag to pose with.

When in Rome....

Arrival In Washington

We floated into Union Station, Washington D.C., on about two hours sleep. Tired, yes. But excited too. We hadn't seen Alison for about three years.

Slept well that night.....

Union Station, Washington D.C.

This station has recently been remodeled in an exquisite way. We were stunned.