You’re halfway up Vancouver Island. You only have a few days before heading back to the mainland–not enough time to get out to the Wild West Coast, nor down to Victoria. Where do you go?
How ’bout here?
This is Englishman Falls Provincial Park, just a hop & skip off the main highway between Campbell River and Nanaimo. And yes, that disappearing waterfall is even more insane in real life. Here’s what it looks like face-on:
Hold up–WHERE is that river going??
…and from the top, just above the drop:
Who, me? Just a boring old clear Canadian river…
That little park was one of several blips on the map of east-central Vancouver Island that, in classic Canadian fashion, fail to call attention to themselves…until you are standing there with your jaw a-drop.
Campbell River–the actual river for which the town is named–is dammed, but not only does it offer the salmon a big side-channel to bypass the dam, it provides guardians for those fish on their passage:
Not as good as a wild, free river–but way better than nothing
Further inland, Strathcona Provincial Park certainly shows up on the map, but this little waterfall? We only found it when directed there by a volunteer docent we happened to meet.
No one else was around. Just me and that pool.
We’d intended to camp in Strathcona, but the weather went sideways. No problem backpacking in the rain, but wet car camping? That just feels stupid. So we got in a short hike…
(I can just imagine that trail repair crew going, “Eh…good enough! Let ’em climb.”)(forcing myself to resist the biggest Chicken-of-the-Woods mushrooms I’ve ever seen!)
…and rode our bikes along the 14-mile long (and unfortunately-named) Buttle Lake…
Bit wet; still pretty
…before heading back to Campbell River, where we’d scored one of those cheap hotel deals at a NOT-cheap hotel, Painter’s Lodge.
as seen from the lodge’s dock, at very low tide
On that dock we found this map–WONDERFULLY helpful for orienting ourselves in BC’s bewildering array of islands:
Not our usual type of stay, but we took full advantage. Especially because the part we stayed in seemed to be a mashup of our last name & our favorite BC island:
Of course the rain stopped when we got there. But then it came back. Phew.
Luckily for us, they let us cook our cheeseburgers out in the patio area!
“This counts as camping, right?” (Quadra Island in the background)
Our last day, after those amazing Englishman Falls, we found a very cool bike path–along the highway, yes, but screened by bushes & trees, with plenty of curves and hills giving it a very adventurous feel.
Some of those bushes had blackberries on them, and I was shocked at how sweet they still were, in September! So: lunch.
Peanut Butter, Honey & Blackberry Sammy!
Our final night on the Big Island (move over, Hawai’i–actually, never mind, you’re already pretty far over) we spent in Nanaimo, in order to catch our ferry next morning. I walked all over, discovering the best kind of quirks, like this Flower Wall:
Just an apartment building, far as I could tell
Along with flowers, Nanaimo boasted its own poster-of-random affirmations, because I found a number of these type of signs, here and there:
Why thanks, Nanaimo. I’ll try!
Next week, the exciting BC conclusion: University of! Thanks for riding along.
As Staycations go, this one would’ve had a hard time failing.
Not CGI
A few months ago we paid for two nights at a rental house at Lake Quinault, only to have our travel companions cancel due to illness.
The view from that house
The renter allowed us to change our dates, so we invited intrepid friends: Ben & Lynn from Asheville, whom we’ve known for decades. They said YES!
Walking in W. Seattle’s Lincoln Park while we waited for their flight, we discovered this altar to LOVE. Seemed a good omen–Brussels sprouts & all.
Since our friends were coming clear across the country, the least we could do was take them all the way around the Olympic Peninsula—a.k.a. part of our Big Backyard, across the Strait from our island.
Ben & Lynn–helping give some scale to the Lincoln Park madrona trees
Starting with the rainforests, at Quinault and the Hoh River, we all re-introduced ourselves to some big friends.
Well hello up there!
Ben & Gretchen agree, things are looking up.
In those wondrous, drippy forests, the enormous conifers–fir, spruce, cedar & hemlock–get most of the attention…
…whether alive or helping younger trees to be alive…
…but shoutout to the hardwoods, okay? The mosses seem to love the maples best.
Is that a hobbit hiding in there?
One of the nice thing about traveling with another couple is…
…couple photos! We tried not to take TOO much advantage.
Moving up the Olympic coastline from Quinault, one has an embarrassing pick of beaches. Beach Three’s our favorite, for its tidepools, but the tide was too high this time of year. So we got to focus on other wonders–like this natural water feature.
Isn’t that the coolest little pool? We needed a 4 year-old to play in it.
Rialto Beach might be the most in-your-face breathtaking, if ya like that kinda thing
I have another photo of Lynn doing pretty much the same thing!
It was hard to leave the serenity of Lake Quinault. The northern shore of the lake was 95% deserted–all those empty vacation homes, what’s up, people?
And the sunrise didn’t hurt either.
But after our two nights, it was on to the furthest northwestern point on the Lower 48: the Makah Reservation at Neah Bay.
Along the way we stopped in Forks for groceries [not pictured: amazing apple fritters] and a hike to Third Beach (not to be confused with Beach 3).
Third Beach is the jumping-off point for a magnificent hike, out toward a garden of seastacks, up & down some rope ladders.
We just stayed put and admired ’em from afar.
Somehow, we did just fine.
Never any shortage of seats on these driftlog-piled beaches!
Up at Neah Bay, more choices: Cape Flattery, the very tippy-tip of the Rez, involving a 1.5 mile round trip walk, or Shi Shi Beach…which would’ve required a 2-mile slog through mud just to get to the start of the pretty stuff.
Guess what we chose?
Cape Flattery is difficult to describe without gothic-novel purple prose: surf crashing upon crags, mist and spray and boiling, roiling, heaving, breathing seas…
…or you could just look at the pictures.
After we’d been there an hour, taking every conceivable photo, the sun came out. So what else could we do but start over?
Fine, if we must…
The best photos from Cape Flattery are videos, which capture all that roiling/boiling/heaving stuff I mentioned. But those are harder to embed into this blog, so I’ll just leave you with this one Lynn took:
Is it just me, or do you also see a whale in that rock? Right?
After our dalliance with the Cape and a lengthy visit to the Makah Museum (which was hosting a holiday craft fair), our crew was ready for a rest. But with the sun making such an unexpected appearance, I simply couldn’t resist one more beach visit, this one a simple drive & stroll on my own, to Tsoo-Yess Beach.
See what I mean about that sun? Tsoo-YESSSSS!
I couldn’t stop taking photos of the least little beachy items, which the sun rendered…let’s go ahead & use the term “glorious.”
“just” a piece of kelp, with foam on it
gargantuan log, turned into yet another water feature/sandbox (oh, where is that 4 year-old?)Sand arrows? Maybe kind of appropriate, on the Rez
Once more, it was hard leaving Neah Bay, especially with the sun out, and the thought of un-visited Shi Shi Beach. So we’ll have to come back one day…with better mudboots.
Meanwhile, it was on to a midday walk at Dungeness Spit, in Sequim (pronounced “Squim”):
It’s FIVE MILES long! No mud to slog through, but also not the most changeable scenery, eh? So we mostly stayed put.
Our final overnight stop was the ridiculously pretty town of Pt. Townsend.
also nice & quirky
The upper half of town, where the “proper” folks lived (as opposed to the rough & tumble crowd on the waterfront) is famous for its Victorians.
This was NOT our inn…at least not on this trip. I did stay here once with my HS Besties, years ago.
Oh, and did I mention the deer? I counted fifteen on a ten-minute walk through the leafy part of town.
These never budged as I walked past.
Our weather stayed amazingly clear, gifting us both a Mt. Rainier-silhoutted sunrise…
…over the ferry dock…
…and a Mt. Baker mid-morning, looking north from Ft. Worden State Park.
And if you moved the camera a little to the left, you’d be looking at Lopez Island!
Back in Seattle, we had one last hurrah of a meal w/ our adventure buddies, then left them at their airport hotel while we spent the night with Son Two. Our great fortune: he was dogsitting!
Even better than a 4 year-old!
Back home next day, after a week away, The Mate & I marveled at the deeply exotic beauty so close to our home. Then we looked around our little village and saw these community-crafted, recycled-bottle luminaries everywhere…and thought,
Y’know that “no place like home” thing?
I’ll say it again: (Cape) Flattery will get you. So will Tsoo-Yess, and Beach 3, and Third Beach. That whole peninsula is magical –and we didn’t even visit Lake Crescent, or the Elwha River, or the Sol Duc hot springs. We didn’t even drive up to see snowy Hurricane Ridge (road closed).
There’s just SO MUCH.
So if you go? Bring your camera. But try & bring a 4 year-old too.
It was hot. That SO goes without saying…except for people like me & The Mate, who live on an island surrounded by a nice, chilly Salish Sea. On Lopez, our summer temps rarely make it into the 90s. So this drive was a bit of a shock to our systems.
First stop, seeing old friends in Eugene…where it was a mere 94.
I resisted the urge to plunge into the Willamette, but later I regretted that choice.
As we drove, The Mate & I made use of our Toyota’s A/C. Again: DUH. But again: We are NOT summer road-trippers. We haven’t used A/C regularly in DECADES. I can see how that stuff might catch on.
Next up: Redding, CA.
Our favorite bike path along the Sacramento River, which we rode @ 7:30 am, due to the 104-degrees we’d driven into town on.
Down in San Jose (more old friends), the mercury fell to a blessed 80 or so. Thanks, San Francisco Bay! We rode along Los Gatos Creek, where I was heartened by this sign at a homeless encampment:
Of course I wouldn’t violate the privacy of the inhabitant, but she didn’t mind me sharing her sign.
California never ceases to offer up visual encapsulations of itself. Like these citrus fruits left to be picked up by the San Jose Sanitation Department:
When life gives you lemons…have them driven to the landfill???!!
From San Jose, we made our way up to Marin County, where our Oakland cousins scored a dog-sitting gig for the summer. Well…we THOUGHT it was a score, till we learned that Marin is actually a good 10 degrees hotter than the northeast side of the Bay. Guess all that water really does the trick.
Pretty, yes…but pretty HOT, being so far from that nice big body of water!
Walking was better in the evening, we found.
…especially with a full moon rising next to Mt. Tam
Next up, of course: Sacramento, and Mom’s meet, which you’ve probably already read about. Thank GOODNESS her final event ran @ 7:30 in the morning…after which we hugged, took pictures, made sure her plans were secure, and hit the road before the sun could get too high.
Quick, back to Redding!
the famous Sundial Bridge, where the bike path takes off from
Get the bikes out, there might still be some shade!
Amazing how much difference shade makes when it’s 100 out.
This time I played it smarter, hopping off my bike to stand in the nice cold Sacramento before riding on.
Ahhhh….
In the week between our southbound & northbound rides on this path, though, wildfires had ballooned. Compare the sky in this picture with the one near the start of this blog post:
Oh jeez. Get me back to my island!
Worn out from a hot day of driving (but energized by a certain lightning bolt of political news, July 21), we spent the night in Roseburg.
*not pictured: Roseburg & their darn good pizza
Our final day took us back into Washington, where the sky clouded up, the temperature sank back to a nice, “normal” high 60s…and we celebrated by going for a long walk down the incredible boardwalk of the Nisqually Delta.
Well yes, that’s the Delta (reclaimed for Nature, from previous dikes)…but what’s that about a boardwalk?
Oh, you mean THIS boardwalk.
We spent that night catching up with Son Two, enjoying wearing shirts with sleeves again, and snacking on quintessential Pacific Northwest snackage in his Seattle-area neighborhood:
Waiting for the ferry to take us back to Lopez, I took a walk along the shore, where I was greeted by these stunning goldenrods. Since “Goldenrods” is the name given to my graduating cohort at Antioch (they’re doing flower names now–Hydrangea, Iris, Lilac, etc.), I took these flowers as a sign.
Get back to work, Gretchen!
This blog post is a down payment. Back to the novel tomorrow! But good luck out there, all y’all non-islanders out there dealing with “normal” summer heat. Stay safe, stay cool. (Go wading!) And thanks for riding with me.
But by the time we’d crossed the northern border into Virginia, our plans were already changing. Our lovely recreational plans: stop at West Virginia’s New River Gorge State Park, camp there, then on the next day to the beautiful Hocking Hills of southern Ohio.
We only did one of those things.
Stop, yes. Camp–no.
It’s not that Vanna can’t keep us warm in sub-freezing temperatures, which is where the mercury was headed by the time we got to WV. It’s just that the campsites on offer there didn’t involve electricity, and we didn’t want to be running our generator to stay warm. Too high of a learning curve there for me & The Mate.
But I got a good hike in.
Knowing this would be our last with eastern mountains for another year, I made the most of their easternness, like my favorite: rhododendron thickets!
If there’s a better word for this than “thicket,” I’d like to hear it.
The woods seemed to know as well as we did that winter wasn’t quite ready to release its grip.
Hang in there, lil’ buddy!
Faced with blowing snow as we pressed northeast, we opted to spend the night in a motel. Gretchen was SAD…until she discovered this motel offered FREE SOUP and a COOKIE.
[not pictured: soup, nor cookie. But you can imagine: it was creamy chicken with big, fat noodles. Not quite enough to make up for not camping…but close.]
Next day dawned colder, with wind gusts closing in on 30 mph. Not a day for recreatin’. These through-the-window pictures are all I got of Ohio, for now.
Cute…but COLD.Near this farm, an Amish horse-and-buggy trotted past, but I wasn’t swift enough to capture them.
The wind was HORRIBLE. The Mate & I agreed it was time to get in touch with my Seester in Ann Arbor and ask if we could arrive a day early. She said sure, so we arrived that afternoon.
[not pictured: Seester]
Seester moved her car so Vanna could take her spot.. She BARELY fit. Who’s a big girl?
Being my Seester, she understands about the importance of the Daily Workout, so she & The Mate went to the gym while I went for walk along the Huron River.
Huron the right track now! (sorry)
Always before I’ve been on my bike there, so for the first time I walked on this WONDERFUL pedestrian–only boardwalk trail down in the river’s flood zone wetlands.
The woods are full of bluebirds now!
Isn’t it the coolest? It even goes under the railroad bed.
“Adventure awaits” is what this picture says to me.
Not many signs of spring yet, other than the bluebirds…but this pitcher plant looked hopeful.
My favorite, though, was this MASSIVE oak, which called to me through the woods. Oaks like these are one of the Five Things I Miss about the east (yes, Michigan still counts as east to me).
All hail.
As of today, Road Trip XII is undergoing a change I should probably mention. The Mate has an important commitment in Seattle next Monday, and given Vanna + weather, we knew trying to get home that fast was a terrible idea. That’s where my Seester comes in. This morning I put The Mate on a plane from Detroit to Seattle, and Seester’s going to take his place helping me drive Vanna home.
The Mate and I know already what fortunate folks we are. But when we come back to the Blueridge of NC, we REALLY know it.
Our friends’ big blue backyard
Thanks to accidents of history and confluence of taste, we have an embarrassment of dear friends in these mountains, and this year we were able to spend time with most of them.
Vanna, not so much. Our first set of friends live up at 3,500 feet; the drive up was only half as terrifying as the drive down. And their driveway?
fugeddaboutit
Because they’re wonderful people, our friends were able to secure a parking spot for Vanna at the edge of a neighbor’s property. We left her there for 3 days, schlepping our stuff the remaining 1/4 mile up the mountain on foot.
What happened to dancing w/ her what brung ya?!
This mountaintop neighborhood is a wealthy one. Some of the houses are, in my opinion, ridiculously large–especially when I learned that this one is empty more often than not.
But I have to admit, it’s pretty enough that I took its picture.
The lots up there are large enough to protect the sense of mountain-ness, and care was clearly taken in building the road.
Shouldn’t all roads be like this?
Aside from the fact that we adore our friends and they spoil us rotten, this was simply a very peaceful spot to hang out. It’s always hard to leave Butler Mountain.
Yes, that is the moon hanging out, waiting to say Good Morning to the sun. Honestly.
But our next stop was a picnic date with one of my VERY oldest friends (from Middle School) + husband + sister, down a few thousand feet at the French Broad River, which flows through Asheville. We chose this spot because we knew we couldn’t get Vanna into our friends’ driveway either. (slightly embarrassed eyeroll)
Lucky for us, the French Broad boasts a terrific bike path! And it was a gorgeous day. All this plus good friends & a picnic too.
Asheville is super trendy right now, and expensive, but I did find myself intrigued by this row of what I take to be “Tiny houses” down by the river.
Cute, right? But probably not a Tiny Price Tag.
From there we journeyed an hour to the northeast, to the South Toe River valley, home of the Celo Community and the Arthur Morgan School. I wrote about my Celo history two years ago; you can read about it here if you’d like some background (or just to learn more about this cool place).
South Toe River
THIS friend’s driveway was, finally, fully Vanna-accessible…as long as we took it slowly.
Also magically mossy. Believe it or not, our friend is not an Elf.
The sunny blue of Asheville departed at Celo, but the wintry woods are just as beautiful in fog.
The Mate doing his best impression of a rhododendron
To know these woods with such intimacy…to stare at them from a kitchen window or a sofa, to walk right out the door, to say the names of the creeks and the peaks…this, to me, is a privilege far beyond the simple joy of SEEING this place. That is our greatest gratitude, to the friends who have sunk roots here, allowing us to return again and again.
Till next time, White Oak Creek! Don’t you change.
When it comes to vehicles–hell, when it comes to MOST things except politics–The Mate and I are pretty conservative. Comfy with routine. Change-averse. Sure, we have our “ooh, shiny!” moments…but they’re mostly about stuff like new rain gear or boots. Maybe lawn mowers and nice casserole dishes.
But not cars.
“Who, me? Your devoted Red Rover who just got passed from Son One to Son Two?”
We’ve owned a good number in our nearly 45 years as a couple, and we’ve usually hated every minute of buying them. Our favorite moments come when our car hits that comfy-old-shoe phase. That’s our sweet spot.
Pictured: a sweet spot (Road Trip VIII, Great Basin NP, Nevada)
Since 2011, when we began our annual Road Trips from Lopez Island, WA to Durham/Chapel Hill, N.C. (where I grew up and where The Mate and I met), any car we buy becomes our official Road Trip vehicle. Starting with our then-car, Kiwi the Ford Escape hybrid:
R.T. I, hangin’ out at Jumbo Rocks in Joshua Tree NP…
She served us well.
It was cold enough in Zion NP, back in 2012, we considered sleeping inside Kiwi!
At the end of 2012, Son One’s hand-me-down car broke down once too often, so he inherited Kiwi, and we treated ourselves to the first-model Subaru Crosstrek. Who knew what trendsetters we were! You’ve already met Red Rover, but here’s one more look at her doing her Road Trip thing:
“Road-tripping to Vermont in March, REALLY? Who ARE these people?”
Lil’ Red drove us faithfully every year from 2013 to 2020–the year we headed home super-quick, in the middle of the first wave of COVID lockdowns, fearing our island might be quarantined by the time we got home. Later that year, Son One had to leave Costa Rica and refugeed on Lopez near us, so we used him as an excuse to hand-me-down Red Rover to him…and told ourselves we were doing our part to boost the economy by buying a Toyota RAV4 hybrid.
In 2021, of course, RAVie didn’t get out much. Vaccinations were just beginning. Her first road trip had to wait till 2022. But she got there!
RAVie in the Badlands: “So THAT’s what this road-trip gig is all about. I’m in!”
Today, RAVie is a sprightly four years old, roomy, running great–the perfect road-trip car. What’s NOT perfect: my back. Even after surgery, sitting hour after hour has proven to be…a challenge. Add to that the fact that, road-tripping in February and March, our camping gear only gets used a handful of days despite being lugged around the country for 6-7 weeks, and you get…
...the great Camper Search. Yes. Once The Mate and I decided a campervan would be the best solution to keeping cross-country road trips in our life, and once we’d gotten over our sticker shock of even USED vans (forget new ones!), I started looking at vans. So many vans. Van porn, it felt like. Facebook Marketplace and TheVanCamper.com never had such a faithful viewer.
And that’s how we met Vanna Grey. But! Before I introduce you, I just want to underscore how incredibly off-brand she is for The Mate and me. I don’t mean brand as in Chevy Roadtrek–which she is. I mean “brand” as in habit.
Example. Here’s the pair of new slippers The Mate got me for my birthday, because I specifically asked for them:
They’re Tevas, and they’re amazing.
But now go ahead and ask me: “Gretchen, for WHICH birthday did you receive those slippers?” I will tell you: “2021.” And if you follow up with, “So WHY haven’t you worn them yet???” I’ll respond:
“Because my old ones haven’t actually worn out yet.” Yep–over 2 years after I thought I’d need new ones, these are still going strong.
NOW you’re ready to meet Vanna Grey. NOW you’ll understand just what a momentous life change this is for me & The Mate.
Vanna Grey: more than a new car. SO much more.
To say we are a little intimidated is putting it mildly. We’ve never been RVers; our learning curve is STEEP. Bring on that comfy-shoe feeling!
“Just remember, if Vanna’s too much for you…you can always come back to me! Unless one of the Sons gets there first…”
But we’re also conscious of our incredible good fortune to be taking this step, and so very grateful to all the help we’ve had along the way. See you on the road!
It’s official: COVID-19 is no longer cool. It’s hanging out with me and the Mate.
8 days and counting…
Understand, we’re the kind of folks who started watching “The Office” in its fourth season. Who are only now talking about maybe watching “The Mandalorian.” Want to know why Facebook’s been on a slow downward slide among young people since 2010? That’s when I joined. (The Mate is actually cooler than I am; he’ll never join.)
Luckily, we have a whole bunch of “luckilies”: We were in good health. We both got only mild symptoms (the Mate, mostly fatigue; me, a juicy head cold with a lingering cough). While we did have to cancel some parts of our lives that affected other people (sorry, my fellow bakers & musicians!), we didn’t have to miss anything huge like a family gathering (or, I don’t know, an MFA residency). Most importantly, we have not, to our knowledge, spread the virus to anyone else.
Also luckily for me, thanks to my MFA homework, I have a voracious appetite for all the extra time COVID has gifted me. For example, here’s what I’ve read since I came home from LA just under a month ago:
I especially recommend Euphoria & the nonfiction Strangers in Their Own Land
I’m also super grateful for having to isolate myself during such stellar weather, as Lopez Island is (so far) not suffering from the heat wave overtaking most of the rest of the globe.
…because it takes extra time and attention to spot the small, subtle Elegant Reign Orchid
I do confess to being VERY tired of the gunk in my lungs. But it also reminds me of my English teaching days, when I’d introduce a Shakespeare unit by teaching the kids about the “Four Humors” of medieval “medicine.” Depending on which planet you were born under, one of the liquids running through your body would dominate the others, thereby determining your personality.
Those four humors? Blood, yellow bile, black bile, and…wait for it…phlegm.
Image courtesy Wikipedia
We still carry the vestiges of the Four Humors in our personality adjectives today. You can be sanguine (cheerful), bilious or choleric (angry), or, my own humor–phlegmatic! (Students were much less grossed out once they learned this meant “deep” or “hard to read”.)
As an on-the-cusp Scorpio, I’ve never felt very in tune with my sign. But right now, thanks to COVID, I’ve never felt more phlegmy–I mean phlegmatic. And I’ll take that Humor right now, thank you very much. Gotta accentuate the positive till it finally turns negative.
My first day back in the Evergreen State after returning from the first residency for my MFA in Creative Writing, I went for a short hike in the Cascade foothills.
Southern California’s beautiful…but man, I missed THIS.
As I headed up the trail, I glimpsed a cliff through the woods, and hearing voices, stopped to look. Of course: a climbing group was gathering at the base. I couldn’t make out their words, but I assumed they were talking about routes, or gear, or who was going to try what. Since I’m a hiker, not a climber, I headed on up the trail, silently wishing them safe fun.
Then it hit me: that giddiness from the steep learning curve of my first residency? That wasn’t just fear of inadequacy or excitement over reaching new levels in my art–though yes, it was also both. That curve is even steeper than I’d thought. And what’s really happening is, as a writer, I’m trading hiking for cliff-scaling.
For the past 25 years, I’ve been step-by-cautious step, trudging up a marked path…
Granted, that trail can get plenty gnarly, and it has!
…but now, I’m going vertical. Straight up. I’m trying things I’ve never tried as a writer, and I’m all in. No more dabbling, fitting writing in where I can, taking whole seasons off. No more excuses. I’m learning craft, and my teachers are going to expect craft back.
…that same cliff those climbers were preparing to scale. And I gave myself this little pep-talk:
“Yes, you’re spending a huge amount of money and time to learn to write the kind of book you most want to read. But you have new tools and a crew now, you’re all roped up, and you get to spend the next 2 years discussing routes and gear and who’s going to try what. Yes, you might fall, but you won’t die, and your crew will help you find your way back up.”
(or words to that effect)
If you look closely at the bottom of that cliff, you’ll see them there: my imaginary writing crew.
Now imagine me halfway up that cliff, scared to death, but finding my route. Here we go.
There is a word…but not in English. Here’s one to add to your list, along with Schadenfreude and Cafuné (Portuguese for running your hands through the hair of someone you love, according to 41 Fascinating Words From Other Languages We Should Definitely Import to English) :
Dayenu. Or, as it says on our refrigerator magnet,
right there where I’m sure to view it 100 times a day 🙂
Jews and other folk who participate in Passover will recognize this word from the Seder ceremony. In Hebrew it means, roughly, “It would have been enough…” with the added connotation of, “…and yet, God did even more! Wow!”
Passover may be behind us for this year, but the season of Dayenu is just getting going, at least here on Lopez Island. Our normally gorgeous woods and fields have somehow become even gorgeouser (hey, I just invented Word #42 for the list) with wildflowers.
Like our woodlands even needed decorating–let alone by hot-pink orchids that look like something invented made by fairies…
possibly why they’re known as Fairy Slippers
…or golden-blooming succulents whose leaves want to get in on the color wheel action themselves:
And those are “just” the wildflowers. Then there are the lilacs planted all over our island, some 100 years old. Don’t get me started on lilacs. Or better yet, do–then read about them in this blog post I wrote some years ago on that heavenly-scented topic.
Like I said, “some years ago”. Note the stolen lilac sprig in the pony tail. Not sorry.
Extra color, extra scent, in a place which makes daily work of overloading our senses, year ’round? What else is there to say? At a loss for ways to express the feeling, I wrote this song–again, “some years ago.”
Dayenu, Dayenu
Had the rising sun not overwhelmed me…Dayenu.
Had my humble daily bread not filled me…Dayenu.
Had your arms not simply held me…Dayenu.
Dayenu, Dayenu.
Had the lilacs never breathed so sweetly…Dayenu.
Had the wild fawn not leapt so neatly…Dayenu.
Had you not loved me so completely…Dayenu.
Dayenu, Dayenu.
It would have been enough,
It would have blessed us to the core.
Had this morning been our only gift,
We would not have needed more.
Dayenu…Dayenu… Dayenu.
Dayenu…Dayenu… Dayenu.
Had the sunset not shanghaied my breathing…Dayenu.
Had the starlight not adorned the evening…Dayenu.
Had you not promised never leaving…Dayenu.
Dayenu…Dayenu
Dayenu…Dayenu.
So my “Dayenu” these days–apart from my Mate–is spring flowers, wildand tame. What are yours? What’s better than sharing a cup that’s runnething over?
Costa Rica, I’ve learned, is the size of West Virginia. But with such diversity, it’s really better to imagine all of California scrunched into the Almost Heaven state. Which is why, just a few hours after leaving the mountains with down vests on, we were sweating in our tank tops down on the beach.
Luckily for us, Son One’s company, Liana Travels, is all about lesser-known spots, so instead of parking us on the obvious stretches of sand we were driving along, he guided his rental car down a very iffy road, crossed a stream, and introduced us to Windows Beach, Playa Las Ventanas, where we could splash, but then rest in the shade.
One of the “windows”–a tunnel through the cliff to the open sea.
Our overnight was Hacienda Barú, a wonderful private preserve, reclaimed from cattle pastures and rice fields by an American, starting in the 1970s. (Ahead of his time, that guy.) He planted a ton of trees preferred by wildlife, and slowly, over the decades, lured the monkeys and sloths and coatis back.
2-toed sloth in a mango tree–very unusual to see it AWAKE and MOVING during the day!
Some of the trees were just plain pretty…
Arboreal fireworks
…and some, like this spiky monster, I learned were a sloth favorite.
I hear the fruit is delicious.
Seems the mama sloths, when they want to wean their babies, go into the spiky forest and leave their babies. The babies take much longer to work their way out of the spiny trees, and by the time they get home–all done, no more nursing!
The cabins themselves were worth the stay…
…but the best thing about Hacienda Barú was its trail system.
Wonderful to have Son One along, but these trails were pretty self-guide-worthy.
I went out for a solo walk the morning of our departure, and just dug the heck out of the quintessential jungliness.
Look at this lil’ guy trying to dig its roots right into the middle of the trail!
Our last lowland stop, before disappearing into the REAL jungle, was the town of Sierpe. Son One booked us a kayak tour down the Sierpe River.
Not pictured: the baby crocodile we saw, nor the juvenile caiman, nor any of the three species of monkey who came to greet us. It’s hard to paddle and take pictures!
Since rivers aren’t necessarily his thing (yet), Son One booked us a guide, Henry, who also happened to be a member of the Boruca People, indigenous Costa Ricans especially famous for their mask-making and weaving. From Henry, we learned subtle differences in the habits of herons, and Boruca legends.
Thanks, Henry!
By the time we returned to Sierpe, I was thrilled with all the wildlife, but ready to get out of the sun.
Approaching Sierpe from upriver.
After a cool drink, it was time to condense our stuff into smaller bags. Leave the iPad in the rental car; no wifi where we were heading. But maybe…just maybe…one of these guys?
…wha…???
Tune in next time for Parte Cuatro, o, el fín emocionante.
Wing's World 