Look for me in the 1967 Britannica
bindings coming undone at the touch of a fumbling
tween seeking to be not free but queen
reading of operas and ballets in a Dhakaiya living room
Denver the last dinosaur leading to western woods and mountains
where I could never belong
maybe I could be an empress, a French lady
or maybe I could be Charlotte Bronte
words about words
about novels not in my library
looking for a cure for my chronic illness
maybe I could be an empress

Posted September 29, 2008 7:29 PM by Sajia Kabir

Continuing the hiking:

On the last day of the trip I took to Japan with some friends last year, I decided to walk the back way from the train station to our lodging. The walk wasn't particularly long (a leisurely hour or so, I suspect), nor particularly meandering. It was, however, enough to reveal to me the marvel of a store dedicated entirely to artists' brushes, with racks filled with every size and style an artist might need, Even better, nearby I found not one, but two pigment shops, their walls filled with jars of every color you might want to use. Had they been open, I might have braved the language barrier just for the satisfaction of shopping in such places.

Posted September 29, 2008 7:39 PM by Glen Fisher

Following up on: hiking.

I was on a hike with about twenty kids led by my father. While we stopped for a break, my brother wandered to a spot where the ground dropped off and started throwing pine cones to watch them fall, as young men will.

I imitated him, as younger brothers will. In order to be able to see the cones fall better, I scrambled down to a little ledge.

Two minutes later, my father called my name and carefully asked me to come back up. I looked down and saw my situation clearly for the first time: the ledge was very narrow and the "drop" was a 200 foot cliff.

When people say "the young think they're immortal", I think back to that day when a seven year old boy realized how very mortal he was.

Posted September 29, 2008 7:40 PM by Andrew T

On walking, from #2:

I spring from hard hot summer clay, the dusty smell of grass.
Heel and ball and toe and balancing,
inhabiting the ground in every breath.
These long white hills and roadside silences
have formed the patient pressure of my step.
The interstate walks coarse and slow and wide,
but foot by foot the miles are broad and warm.
The thorn-choked hills between the parking lots
where earth asserts her mud, and uncontrolled
I walk forbidden or forgotten, free.
My soles take root, take flight. These secret ways
where no one walks, and yet the ground is real.

Posted September 29, 2008 7:45 PM by Caroline

Yet another hiking story:

In my youth, I was a Boy Scout. One summer, my troop decided to go to the Philmont Scout Ranch. This was the Cadillac Eldorado of Scout ranches and it had quite the national reputation.

My hiking group was feeling wild and free. We had decided that we would march as fast as we can down the trails. Mutilated versions of Led Zeppelin's "D'Yer Maker" were our marching songs.

But our adult adviser (who was from my troop) kept slowing us down and frustrating us. Eventually, I asked him why he was so slow.

"Just look around you."

Sudddenly I saw the gorgeous wilderness; tall pines reaching for an sapphire sky and faroff mountains studding the horizon.

Funny enough, I don't remember whether I slowed down or not.

Posted September 29, 2008 7:52 PM by Rob Thornton

from Rob Thornton's gorgeous wilderness (#5):

When I was 15, my family went out to California for my grandparents' fiftieth anniversary celebration. That Sunday, the whole extended family--23 of us--went to their fancy society church service, which I suffered through politely. A few days later, my immediate family was at Yosemite Park. Walking around under those huge redwoods was like being in a cathedral. Only a few yards from the road, there was a tremendous hush. I remarked to my mother later that I felt much closer to God out under those trees than I had felt in church on Sunday. She agreed with me.

Posted September 29, 2008 8:00 PM by Mary Aileen

50th Anniversary:

I attended my parents' 50th in 2004, in beautiful Santa Barbara, CA. They'd reserved us all hotel rooms facing the water, but it rained every day we were there. We spent the entire weekend eating beautiful food (as in, you almost hesitated to eat it because that entailed destroying the presentation on the plate in front of you).

I took a lot of pictures, mostly stormy cloudscapes. One of them is the background picture on my screen as I write this. I spent an afternoon just hanging out with my parents. (Yes. Hanging out. With my parents.) I had a great time. That was a revelation to me. And a joyful one; I've enjoyed their company on several occasions since.

Posted September 29, 2008 8:12 PM by Xopher

my favorite hiking experience: looking down from a mountain top and seeing a fireworks display on july 4

Posted September 29, 2008 8:13 PM by Erik Nelson

Andrew's immortality, #3

It is any hot day in Miami, along the flat hard bank of one of the canals. Helmets are not yet de rigueur for riding on the flat. His ancestors were easy-gaited mountain horses; his mane is long, but his strides are short. My ancestors were subsistence farmers; at 15 I am already far too tall and heavy for dreams of riding race horses. But these are the thoughts of one who remembers, along with the recollection of just how hard and far away the ground was, and just how slippery the bare back of a horse is.

I lean forward and grab a handful of stinging mane, and he launches into memory.

Posted September 29, 2008 8:16 PM by Ambar

More hiking:

My ex-husband and his family were all great hikers and campers. I am... not. But one time, just so that no one could say I hadn't given it a fair try, I agreed to go on a trip with them to one of the state parks, where they intended to take a cabin and hike several trails over the course of a long weekend.

It wasn't awful. The cabin was nice (indoor plumbing, yay!), and the weather was lovely, and they didn't hike at a pace I couldn't keep up with because part of their enjoyment was looking at the wildflowers. But it was still a lot more walking than I was used to doing in a day, and some of it over uneven ground where I had to pay attention to where I was putting my feet. And sometimes it really did seem to be uphill every way we went!

At one point, my MIL turned to me and said something to the effect of, "Lee, I'm really glad that you seem to be having a good time doing this." And I couldn't resist -- I looked over at Tom and very quietly hummed the opening riff from Christine Lavin's "It's A Good Thing He Can't Read My Mind".

Well, we both cracked up, and his parents were confused, and we couldn't really explain. But it was a funny and memorable filkish in-joke moment, and one that I still remember with great fondness. Eventually I wrote a pastiche "hiking" verse to the song!

Posted September 29, 2008 8:18 PM by Lee

#8 Fireworks from above:

I spent my third year of college in Tuebingen, Germany, and another American student who became a friend of mine had a room in a high-rise student residence in the student village at the top of the high ridge above town. I remember spending New Year's Eve, 1994, on their balcony, looking down at the town lights below - the rolling landscape so foreign to me, child of the Louisiana swamp and its slow black curling rivers, this crumpled folded land thick with fir trees and things for which I had no names in English and so could not look up the German, dusted with fine snow - and we drank too much beer and watched the fireworks: single shots of green and red, a volley here, a burst of sparks over there, a flash on this side and an echo in a further valley beyond, echoing and reflecting off the clouds, the fitting and most proper use of gunpowder chemistry.

Posted September 29, 2008 8:23 PM by Thena

My name is on a CD inside Mars's Pathfinder.

Posted September 29, 2008 8:25 PM by Serge

On pine cones (from Andrew T @3)

Two towering Douglas Firs
Shed their cones for years
Piling up deeply, slowly decaying.

A father making a garden offers
For the effort of his daughters
A penny a cone, bagged for disposing.

Which is exhausted first?
Years of cones,
or the patience of children?

Posted September 29, 2008 8:27 PM by oliviacw

Race Horses @9

I have been working at the track as a groom/hotwalker for a few months now. I have figured out how to give a bath to a race-horse one handed and which ones are nutty and which ones are just dumb. It's almost noon. I've been working (and walking) since 5 and the King Nutjob decides to lose his mind on the back side of the barn, rears up and clobbers me right in the head. I estimate a 1/2 inch to the left and I wouldn't have a whole skull.

Would you believe they wanted me to go travel to a race that afternoon?

Posted September 29, 2008 8:28 PM by dido

Concerning monasteries -

I was young, back then. My cousin and I decided to take a walk by ourselves - unsanctioned, of course, by the elders in the party - and went off into the sloping woods behind my great-uncle's summerhouse, in the opposite direction from the pastoral fields and vineyards that stretched out to the other side, deliberately choosing the 'wilderness'.

Except that it wasn't, really. Our trail led us to the edge of the woods, which were alive with birdsong, and out onto a steeper clearing from which the view broke across the hills and the green valley below. Around us were moss-overgrown ruins - an ancient abbey had stood here once, long ago. All gone, now, except for the broken walls of stone and the moss and nodding wildflowers that grew in the crevices.

But faith dwelled here once. We could feel it. The birds were singing of it in the woods at our back while the sun spilled across the valley at our feet.

Posted September 29, 2008 8:29 PM by Alma Alexander

Languages, barriered and otherwise:

I was twelve, and in Germany by special dispensation (my mother was leading a group of high school foreign exchange students and I got to come along too). We visited a walled city and did a lot of walking, at least it seemed like a lot to me at the time. I have no idea now where we were, but I remember that we walked along the Rhine. After the tour of the walled city, the group dispersed for a bit. I was left alone near a small shop. (Why was I allowed to be alone? In memory it doesn't make sense, but it felt natural at the time.) I was thirsty and they had a sign advertising Coke; I went in and asked how much it cost. The shopkeeper smiled at me and replied slowly enough that I could understand. I paid and left, immensely proud of myself for having completed the transaction in German.

Posted September 29, 2008 8:31 PM by Liza

#8, Fireworks

I was in Disneyworld with my high school band, and the well-off mother of one of our friends gave a small group of us a great gift we hadn't even known was possible - dinner in Cinderella's Castle. I remember nothing of the food, but what came during dessert lives bright in memory - fireworks through stained glass. I watched them in awe, and in that moment anything seemed possible for me.

Posted September 29, 2008 8:37 PM by LizT

Following up on: Pictures, desktop backgrounds, buildings with history:

My favorite desktop background is of a small brick enclosure on the senate side of the US Capitol's back lawn. It's called The Summer House, and it was completed in 1881 to shelter travelers from the district's oppressive summer heat.

Inside there's a fountain, and a window into a grotto where water splashes down over the rocks and under the building. Even in the middle of August, when the temperature's over a hundred and you can see the humidity rising in waves off the pavement, there's always a cool breeze coming through that window.

I used to take my lunch there when I worked on that side of the hill. I'd sit in the grotto window with my sandwich and read a book. On my plain Quaker dress days, tourists would come through and tell me I looked like something out of an Austen novel, or a costume drama, or just "something out of the past." And I would smile at them. Because everything in The Summer House looks that way.

Posted September 29, 2008 8:46 PM by annalee flower horne

Following Lisa's post (#16):

In my first year of Spanish class (7th grade), we all got T-shirts with slogans on them in Spanish. I chose "Naci para bailar" (I was born to dance.)

That summer, my family went to Tijuana. We were wandering though a market when a poncho vendor, reading that T-shirt and seeing me sitting in a wheelchair, laughed and asked me if I spoke Spanish. When I said Yes, he asked if I knew what my shirt said. I managed to get across that yes, I did, and I'd chosen that shirt on purpose. He grinned and broke into a flood of Spanish far beyond my paltry stock of vocabulary words, even when he slowed down to...about...this...speed. But I was so proud of having had at least part of a conversation in another language-and when I realized that I was the only one in my party who'd even understood that much, it began to dawn on me that language is magic.

Posted September 29, 2008 8:48 PM by Melissa Mead

#8 ::: Erik Nelson

my favorite hiking experience: looking down from a mountain top and seeing a fireworks display on july 4

It was July 4th, back awhile, watching the fireworks over Lake Estes [Park, CO] from the ridge above with a fair-sized crowd. It had been misting/raining lightly as we got out our deck chairs, blankets and ponchos. As the display began down below us, punctuated with our "oohs" and "aahs" and occasional applause, a huge thunderstorm moved in along the Front Range and the Divide with strikes and sheet lightning. Suddenly there was a purple-magenta pulse that circled entirely around the bowl of mountains with convulsive sequential concussions. We could feel the air vibrating in our lungs.

We exploded, clapping and cheering.

Posted September 29, 2008 8:48 PM by Carol Kimball

Languages:

Munich, 1984, a cold and rainy afternoon in the midst of a two-week American Express bus tour of Mittël Europa. I've been walking around the city for about two hours, and I'm starving. I know no German at all. I see a Wendy's burger joint on the street up ahead and think that's gonna solve my problem. So in I go and try to order a burger and fries with a Coke.

I got the Coke, but somehow got a cup of chili instead of the burger. I instantly decided that given the weather that was probably even a better idea.

Later in the trip, confronted with an Italian menu when lunching on the shores of Lake Como, I recognized the word entrecôt from an Alistair MacLean novel and was thus treated to a good steak. My parents were impressed.

Posted September 29, 2008 8:49 PM by Linkmeister

Hiking and monasteries, joining the strings of pearls once more:

Four of us went hiking in the Central California portion of the Coast Range, the week after we finished our freshman year of college. We were happy-go-lucky. We were carefree. We were 19. We found ourselves, at 3 PM, at the wrong trailhead... but did THAT stop us? It did not.
We identified what looked like a suitable alternate trail, whose terminus was the evocatively-titled "Tassajara Hot Springs". Hot springs! Why, we could already picture ourselves soaking in the hot springs....
The trail was all ups and downs; it required deft crossings of the rivulets that wended their ways down the hills, and sharp eyesight to avoid the bushes of poison oak festooning the whole National Park.
I mention the difficult going only because it heightened the surprise when, at the end of the trail's loop through ever-more rugged terrain, we found ourselves at a Zen Buddhist monastery. Full of yuppies, apparently there on a weekend retreat.
They wouldn't let us use the hot springs, but they DID give us tea. Which was nice of them, all things considered; not even Zen Buddhism prepares one for unexpected teenagers.

Posted September 29, 2008 8:50 PM by Nicole TWN

#7 Rain and hanging out with your parents

Once when I was very young, my parents and my sisters and I gathered in the living room to watch a storm. We moved back the coffee table and sat on the carpet in front of a bay window that looked onto the youngish maple tree in the center of our front lawn. Our neighbors, the Mastersons, lived across the street, and their trees were far enough back from the curb that above our maple you could see a whole swath of sky.

I don't remember now whether the power was out or whether we chose to turn out the lights and watch the storm, but in either case, the lightning was wonderful. I do remember that this was one of the times that my dad chose to show us how he could call thunder. He would see the lightning, raise his arms, and then shake them when the thunder came. We would squeal.

Although my parents were both big fans of us kids learning about nature, my dad never explained his miraculous powers to us. That was up to a National Geographic series of books.

Posted September 29, 2008 8:51 PM by flynn

Monasteries... In 2003, it had been almost 9 years since I had last seen my friend from the days when I used to live in the Bay Area, a period of time during which the Internet came to be. I googled her name, found it mentionned on the site of an event of the Society for Creative Anachronism. The event was at least one year old. Still I wrote to its creator asking if he could somehow put me in touch with my friend. Nothing happened so I decided that that was that. Suddenly, one day, when things were not going well between management and me, I got an email from my friend. We've kept in touch and make it a point to meet every time I go to the Bay Area.

Posted September 29, 2008 8:58 PM by Serge

I grew up backpacking, and took my first solo trip when I was about nineteen. I chose a remote canyon in N. Arizona and really wasn't that worried about the solo aspect -- like I said, I had plenty of wilderness experience. And I knew this canyon very well from many trips as a child.

It was a wild, beautiful, relatively untouched place. Despite it being three day weekend, I saw no one else, and there were no other cars at the trailhead except for a forest service work crew. It was just me and my dog once I left the parking lot.

The second night of the trip was unnaturally quiet. The air was crystal clear, and there wasn't any sort of sound. No frogs, no night birds, no deer or elk bugling, no coyotes, no crickets or cicadas, not a hint of wind ... nothing. Utter and total and complete silence.

It was unnerving. Silence in wild places makes me nervous. Usually it means bad weather.

However, over all of it, there was a moonless sky filled full of the brightest stars you could ever imagine. There was no sign of bad weather.

Sometime around midnight, I fell asleep. Uneasily.

Then, in the wee hours, the dog EXPLODED into rage-filled barks and yanked the sapling she was tied to over. The tree toppled onto me, and I heard something very large crash through the bushes and then splash through the deep, sluggish creek I'd camped next to.

The only thing I could think of was: BEAR!

And now there were noises out there: cracking branches, splashes in the water, and periodically the dog would burst out barking. Something. Was. Out. There. All night, I heard something out there and I was just sure it was a bear.

Morning showed something different: elk tracks! An elk had walked right through camp -- I could tell exactly where it had spooked and bolted -- right in the middle of the game trail next to my bivvy sack.

And that was the trip where I learned not to sleep next to a game trail.

Posted September 29, 2008 8:59 PM by Leva Cygnet

Traveling to Europe:

I am visiting my childhood best friend in Paris, during my junior year of college. We walk down to the Latin Quarter for dinner, and end up at the Cafe Latin, offering a prix fixe menu for 15 euros (then almost exactly $15). Everything is perfect. It's a quality of food I've never had in the U.S. The salmon has a skin that's crispy, dry, savory, rather than tough or burned as it often is; the fish itself is tender and luscious. My goat cheese salad tastes like it came from a dairy next door. Even the creme brulee has the perfect caramelized crust; just enough to snap, but not burned or too thick. With it we have a Cotes du Rhone, a 12 euro bottle. I am 20 years old and it is the first time I have ever drunk wine. It is utterly perfect.

I am still chasing that food, that wine, every time I eat at a restaurant. I've never recaptured it. My friend tells me that she went back to that restaurant after I left Paris, and even then she couldn't recapture it. Something magical happened there.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:00 PM by Caroline

Thunder and rain:

Years ago, my parents had the use of my grandparents' "summer cottage" north of New York City. It had a screened-in porch out back, and I was afraid of thunderstorms. My mother and I crawled into her bed, which was on the porch, and watched the trees swaying in the wind, the rain driving against the screen windows, the lightning over the whole area, all from the safety of under the covers. I have never been afraid of them since.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:00 PM by Ginger

from #16, Liza: Linguistic triumphs

No matter where I go, it seems, I get asked for directions. I guess I look competent and friendly, and I'm usually a solo female traveller, so I suspect I'm often taken as a native.

My favourite occurrence of this was in Paris, when I was asked where to find a 'carte bleue' (ATM). Not only did my laboriously learned French enable me to understand the question, but I was also able to correctly direct him to the nearest machine. I couldn't help but get a ear-to-ear grin on my face at my success, and a moment later yet another Frenchman saw me and exclaimed, 'Quelle belle sourire!' ('What a beautiful smile!')

Posted September 29, 2008 9:01 PM by debcha

On Britannica:

The things one does
Just to prove oneself worthy
Of notice and respect
Get stranger each year.
For myself I read articles
And magazines and Wikipedia
As if my education and accomplishments
Were not enough.
My grandfather, sixth-grade education that he had
Read through every Britannica he purchased
Not to prove anything
But because he was worthy of such.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:05 PM by Kelley Shimmin

On hiking/walking and feeling closer to something greater:

I went to a writer's workshop in Taos Ski Valley last year. I drove, and stopped in Albuquerque on the way. In the Old Town part of town, I happened upon an art store that had some reasonable Native American flutes for sale, and me, being a musician, wanted one. But then the owner took me back to his "secret" room where he had professionally made flutes and lots of other expensive artwork. One was of cedar, blessed by a tribe with the name "Trail's Friend," which I thought very apt. I bought it.

Once in Taos Ski Valley, the flute and I went for a walk a few times. Near the lodge us writers were staying in was a lovely little path by a stream, so I walked and played whatever came to mind. And the coolest thing? The flute was in tune with the stream. Such an amazing, nifty feeling to be in tune with nature. So never have I felt more at one with the world than I did on those walks.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:05 PM by Traci C.

#15 Old Houses of Faith

When I was 35, I ran away from an abusive marriage. I had no money, no job, a 32-year-old car, and a toddler.

With nowhere else to go, we ended up at a shelter for abused women and children. It was an old nunnery: a two-story building with rows of narrow rooms upstairs, each with a closet just big enough for two outfits on hangers, maybe three. Downstairs housed spacious public rooms and the shelter's offices.

I was in crisis, full-on panic mode, but the stone walls exuded peace. We stayed for a weekend, sharing chores with the other women and laughing about the crazy things our partners did -- things I never dreamed I could laugh about. On Monday, the staff fed me breakfast, packed a lunch, gassed up my car, gave me enough gas money to get a day's drive down the highway toward my parents' home, and made arrangements for me to stay at a shelter that evening.

Traditionally, the stone walls of that building held a group of women who prayed from faith. For me, those same walls sheltered women who prayed from desperation - and found faith.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:06 PM by Katrina Stonoff

quelle belle sourire - and languages

Last weekend, the California Avenue shopping street in Palo Alto saw not the usual farmer's market, but instead a Jewish Street Festival. I went there, to see the sights and amuse myself. At one point, I decided to go and get myself a bottle of water to keep up with the rather hot day.

As I approach the beverages stall, one of the volunteers greets me with "My, you have a BEAUTIFUL smile!". Soon thereafter, she continues to ask me where my dialect comes from. The best guesses they could produce was "Polish - because that's the only country in Europe I know."

I drank my water, went back to the stage I was waiting for, and participated for a few songs in the dance of the spontaneous Freylekhs that formed at that stage.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:09 PM by Mikael Vejdemo Johansson

Naught to do with monastaries, but a hiking one...

Went back to South Africa last year; my first visit in 13 years and my first as an adult. Among other things, we went hiking for three days in the Cedarberge, where it froze every night and was 30 C every day.

One of the younger cousins came along, nine, his first multiday hike. He did very well, carried a small pack most of the time, and had fun.

Except that we got him drunk... one of the freezing-cold evenings a few small bottles started making the rounds - Bailey's, brandy and muscatel, I think. The half-dozen adults got enough to get a bit buzzed, slightly warmed up, then went to bed.

We hadn't monitored the nine year old's drinking... he'd had "a few sips", that was all. Except that that night, at a freezing oh-dark-hundred, he woke up "not feeling well" - and promptly upchucked on his father's sleeping back.

It's going down in family history as "the time we took the kid up the mountain and got him pissed", which I'm sure he'll remember most of his life.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:11 PM by Wirelizard

#9 horses

I firmly believe that one of the most important lessons I've learned in my life, I learned from a horse.

Our horse had an illness that required a few days of hypodermic injections into the big muscle in her neck -- something the vet entrusted us with after a demonstration. Lady was a very gentle horse but spooked easily. The first time we were going to give her an injection, my parents and I trooped into the woods to find Lady. Someone had to hold her while my father gave her the shot. He and my mother basically both milled around wondering just how much of a fuss Lady would make at the sudden jab into her neck, and what would we do about it? Lady had been placid enough when we arrived, but all the uneasiness among her humans clearly made her agitated. Maybe I just got impatient, but even though I was generally not assertive as a child, I stepped forward and grabbed Lady's halter. Lady immediately calmed, and when my father stuck a needle into her neck, she never quivered. Subsequent injections went uneventfully.

I'm not sure what the lesson is. Maybe that when you need to get things done, it doesn't matter who takes control, as long as somebody does. Maybe that it's OK to step forward and do what needs to be done. But even though I don't know what the lesson is, I feel I've learned it and it's bettered my life.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:13 PM by Cathy Krusberg

#20 fireworks

My college offered a "Civil War Bicycle Tour" one summer: get your history credit and your PE credit at the same time. Since I was a history major and needed that last PE credit, I went along. Much painful bicycle riding (though by the end of the trip I was peddling along pretty well.) We went through Virginia and Maryland and Gettysburg up in Pennsylvania, but the trip was timed to put us in Washington DC on the Fourth of July.

And when the fireworks begun to burst over the Washington Monument, the crowd on the Mall spontaneously broke into song.

A quarter-million voices lifted in the Battle Hymn of the Republic -- and many other songs, but that's the one that sticks in my mind.

Song, and fireworks, and all the voices of America one choir; the glory is still with me a quarter-century later.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:19 PM by Tony Zbaraschuk

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew,
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

(Gerard Manley Hopkins, Inversnaid)

Posted September 29, 2008 9:22 PM by Sherwood Smith

Linguistic triumphs and smiles:

I was walking to my car with a friend in Connecticut. We had spent an evening reminiscing about our childhood educations in the French system of schools abroad (she in Lebanon, me in Montreal), and we chattered away in French--we were perhaps a bit halting, but happy to have a chance to practice. We passed a group of men in their early twenties, obviously out celebrating. We grinned at their high spirits. "Come join us!" they called. "Can't," we replied. "You'll be missed." And that evening, we both felt thirty years younger.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:24 PM by AliceB

Rain...

Earlier this year, round about May. On a Friday morning. My partner and I rush to get ready, him for work, me for a morning of errands. He rushes out with his backpack (rain jacket tucked inside). I have me, my bike and my purse. Basket included, coz my basket is *always* included.

I trail after him (cause the alternative is I misplace him in less than a mile), and about halfway to the first stoplight... it starts to rain. By the time we make it to the light, it's pouring. No lightning, for a mercy... and I'm mistrustful, so I decide not to turn round and add on the extra yards to go back and get *my* rain jacket. It pours the whole way along the bike path. My partner really puts on the speed, because he hates rain. It pours the whole way up Mills St. It pours while I'm on Dayton, and I dawdle because he's peeled off to go to work. But not *too* much dawdling, because it's raining so hard I can barely see. It pours as I ride further into the University.

I park at the Muscle Biology building, and duck into the butcher shop. The students (who see me every week) are amused, because I'm soaked to the skin and rather drip on the floor. I'm happy as a clam, because it RAINED. My pork and beef try to freeze my t-shirt to my skin, but fail. We stuff my panniers full.

Then it rains the whole way home, and I zoom up the hill to the hospital, and coast back down. Riding a bike in the rain is *fun*.

(the rest of the summer is full of too much lightning for it to be safe to ride... *sigh*)

Posted September 29, 2008 9:25 PM by Emily

#15 Old Houses of Faith

I visited the Hase-Dera temple in Japan, which is dedicated to Kannon (Kwan-Yin) and Jizo, the bodhisattva of children and travellers. The temple is covered with tiny statues of Jizo lovingly wrapped in red clothes: vests, hats, scarves. Each statue represents a child stillborn, miscarried, aborted, or dead before the age of two. There are thousands.

I hiked up to the main temple on a hot summer day, the sea sparkling below. It's a long walk through bushes and gnarled trees. I finally entered, grimy, sweaty, short of breath. The room was silent and dark, lit by a few candles. A massive golden statue of Kannon greeted me, 11 feet tall, camphor wood covered in gold leaf. And in that moment, I felt the a grace within me as I had never felt any religious thing, and started crying at the feet of that shadowy, golden statue.

My husband rolled his eyes and said: "What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing," I said, and wiped my eyes.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:27 PM by Catherynne Valente

On food, in France:

The host family I was staying with in Normandy in early 1987 had a family birthday party, celebrated with an enormous feast. It was the first time I'd ever tried raw oysters (didn't much like them that time, as I'd grown up accustomed to steamer clams), or encountered celeriac (that was GOOD) or the tastiest red meat I've ever put in my mouth, accompanied by a sauce which may have been Cumberland sauce or may have just been some sort of red-wine reduction -- it was reddish-purple and thick and fairly sweet, but full of flavors I couldn't describe or isolate, even as I appreciated them. But just the meat itself, without any sauce, was astonishing.

It wasn't exactly red, either. I thought that just meant that it was well-done and not rare, and perhaps was some sort of pot roast, just better than any I'd ever tasted before.

My enjoyment must have been obvious, because they asked if I knew what I was eating. I hazarded "boeuf," and they said, "Sanglier." This was not in my vocabulary. They tried to explain that there was the head of one displayed on a wall in the other room. I thought that meant I was eating venison, but they managed to convey that that wasn't it. I grew more and more confused until one little old lady (a great-aunt?) piped up from the far end of the table, "Porc sauvage!"

Wild boar. And yes, there was such a trophy.

I have tasted wild boar since (although I suspect it may have been farm-raised) and it has never truly come close to that "porc sauvage" I ate when I was seventeen.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:28 PM by Rikibeth

Nicole TWN at 22: Tassajara Hot Springs

One of my lovers went there fairly regularly in the summer, and one year I went with her. It's a marvelous place (especially the skinny-dipping hole about half a mile down the river). Two odd wildlife experiences: I saw a bright blue fly/hornet (big: about 3-1/2 cm long!) with fluorescent orange wings, and we ran across about a 1-1/2 meter rattlesnake sunning beside one of the paths. I've never been able to identify the bug, and I've never seen a larger rattler in the wild. Tassajara was a wonderful place to eat as well -- marvelous vegetarian food, and they'd make up lunches if one wanted to picnic. And the bread, as you should know, was marvelous.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:28 PM by Tom Whitmore

SO many hiking stories, so little time. The Christmas after I turned 18 my parents gave me a winter sleeping bag as a gift so that I could go on a back country ski trip later that winter with Dad and his friend, Randy, who at that time had lived in a teepee for several years. Our trip, in February, took us up the Tonquin Valley in Jasper National Park, and we ended up digging a snow trench and then pitching a tent instead of digging a full cave mostly due to the snow conditions. We skied and skied and skied and had a great time, more fun than I thought was possible to have with Dad (in those callow, youthful days).

The highlight, though, was meal time that first night. We had each brought only a mug and a spoon, and the first dish was a tuna and macaroni salad. We followed that with hot chocolate, which caused gales of laughter, seeing how we hadn't properly washed out the mugs, and hot chocolate tainted with tuna and macaroni flavour is not something to be enjoyed except in a maniacal, I-can't-believe-I've-done-this fashion. Scared te hell out of the chickadees and the weasel that had been coming by, I imagine.

Dad's been unwell for years, and he had the lower half of his right leg amputated early last year. He still rides his bike, and he swims, but those days are lost to me now, and so I cherish memories such as this one. Thanks for the opportunity to bring it back to the fore.

D

Posted September 29, 2008 9:29 PM by Derryl Murphy

Following - Germany, castles, magic moments

For a week we had traveled in Germany and this day had stopped in Heidelberg. My high school German class was slowly making our way to Cologne, where our home-stay was. It had been a scary week to be so far away from home. The day before we watched on two TVs in Munich the tanks roll over the border into Iraq, and had come up from the u-bahn from dinner into a protest.

I was sick, coming down with my usual 1-week overseas cold. I remember getting off the tour bus, calling my parents, and walking through the gates of Heidelbergschloss. I remember looking around that old, half-ruined courtyard and seeing the old glory that it had been. And I remember looking at the eastern wall of the courtyard, at the main body of the palace, and thinking, They really managed to paint that ceiling in there a stunning blue. I wonder how large that room is?

Then I realized that the room was infinite and the ceiling was the brilliant deep blue of a clear March sky.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:30 PM by sisuile

of monasteries:

My sister who is a Buddhist, is part of a monastery in upstate New York housed in an old 1920's-era lodge originally built to be a Young Christian Males retreat. During my first retreat there, we gathered for a communal meal, taking out plates to sit outside on the steps carved into the hill. People gathered in groups of three, four, and five, quietly talking. The sun was warm but it was cooler in the shadows, and a few dogs moved from group to group, politely begging handouts. In the garden just behind us, I noted a statue of Buddha, looking up. I followed his gaze and looked up as well. Cut into the side of the building over the door we had come out from was a more-than-life-size carving of Jesus -- the gentle teacher, not the tortured martyr, his gaze looking out and down at Buddha as though the two figures were old friends having a thoughtful conversation.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:31 PM by Laura Anne Gilman

On the travelling abroad/travelling with parents thread:

Ten years ago my parents and I went to St. Petersburg to visit family. It was the first time I'd been out of North America. There are a number of highlights from that trip, but the one that's been sticking in my mind recently has been taking the overnight train to Moscow.

It was my first cross country trip by train and I loved it. We were with my Russian family and we traveled the way they were accustomed to. There were four bunks in a room and we brought food with us, only buying tea. The inside of the train looked like the ones I'd seen in films (as opposed to the LIRR trains I'd grown up on) and the parts of the trip when I wasn't asleep, I spent watching the scenery out the window.

Recently I've been wondering why I never followed up on my plans to do some long train trips in the US, so I'm planning a trip to Toronto at the end of next month and seriously considering either a trip to Albuquerque to visit my parents or a more roundabout route that will also enable me to visit my brother in Sacramento for next year.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:36 PM by Hilary Hertzoff

fireworks: the most fireworks I ever saw in one evening was at a Westercon in San Jose, where the party suites let out on decks on both sides of the hotel so we could see several different shows. But the \best/ show I ever saw was an accident, over 30 years ago, when I was young enough to try to get close to the Boston show (not much room, and typically a third of a million people). They always end with the 1812 Overture, and add maroons to the close and the following display; this one year there was a flat calm, so the smoke from the first maroons stayed in place as more went off in it, making a giant, flickering, thundering cloud underneath the more elaborate shells.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:36 PM by CHip

fireworks:

One year I was flying home from Fourth Street into Westchester County Airport. By the time we started to descend, it had grown dark and looking out the window we could see fireworks from all over the New York metro area. Every time the plane banked or turned we had another amazing view. By the time I got home, the village fireworks were over and the crowds had dispersed, but I didn't feel like I'd missed anything.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:45 PM by Hilary Hertzoff

Singing, and travelling to Europe, and houses of faith

I was in Rome with my husband. It was our first time there together, although we had both been separately as children with our families. But I had spent more time there, so I got to be tour guide, showing off my favourite places in my favourite city.

We were in St Peter's basilica, looking up at the dome, when a tour group casually standing around nearby, on some pre-arranged signal unnoticed by me, burst into song. I can't even remember what they were singing, but it was beautiful, in that beautiful place.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:51 PM by Nancy

Horses:

When I was a kid I would help out at the stable while my friend took her riding lesson. I loved currying, combing, feeding and petting the horses.

I wouldn't even consider sitting on one, though--as friends, horses were sweet, but as vehicles they were terrifying.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:52 PM by Mary Dell

Concerning monasteries and hiking:

My husband and I travelled to Ireland this past year, and visited rural Mayo County as part of our trip. Although less famous and accessible than most of the rest of the country, I did my masters research there and loved its rugged, tough beauty.

We spent one day walking through the countryside, along the roads with few cars and fewer walkers. We had a map that indicated points of interest, but most of them were piles of rocks that were once castles or burial grounds. But the one that intrigued me most was labeled as an abandoned abbey. Hoping that it would be worth the effort, we detoured off of the "main" road, walking down a dirt, pothole-strewn road. On the way, we saw several abandoned buildings, never quite sure which one was the abbey. At first, we only saw a sign and a rusty gate. Then, as we went through the gate, and walked around the spit of land where the grassy land met the ocean, we saw it. It had been abandoned for untold years, yet some of the carvings seemed like they were made just recently, despite the closeness to the ocean. And for the longest time there, we were the only people, experiencing this lovely, mystical place where you could still hear the monks chanting somewhere on the wind.

The experience also resulted in this quirky photo, which we will frame someday: http://www.new.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=34439224&l=232d2&id=405889

Posted September 29, 2008 9:53 PM by Shannon

Concerning monasteries, and cities and maps.

I used to deliver pizza for Domino's (back in the say when all they sold were pizzas, and coke, with a 30 minutes, or you get a discount).

Got an address, looked it up on the wall map (nice map, gridded and labled, well indexed and almost impossible to get wrong), and hit the road.

Addess is not to be found. I mean nowhere. There are no even numbers on any of the houses

I go to Gelson's (Hayvenhurst and Ventura, for those who know the SF Valley). Get directions. They tell me to go up the block and look for the extra wide driveway and follow it up to the even numbered part of the street.

So I head back up the road (a cul de sac) and peer about (as the early autumn light is fading, in the way it does on the north side of a range of hills) and find such a driveway, which leads out of the cul de sac and winds around through open green lots; hidden in the midst of residential houses, otherwise cheek by jowl.

Finally (maybe a 1/3rd of a mile of winding road) I come to a building. I go to it, asking if this is the place. The man tells me know, and he has no idea where it is. I was at, it turns out, a monastery, hidden in a dale of the San Fernando Valley. I've not been back, though if I ever feel the need, I know the way.

But I know it's there, a little space of peace, in the bustle of the valley; where contemplation is the simple rule of the day.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:56 PM by Terry Karney

Of God and chorus and reflection:

This is my song, O God of all the Nations,
A song of peace, for lands afar and mine;
This is my home, the country where my heart is,
Here are my hopes and dreams, my holy shrine;
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

I never heard this hymn (to the tune Finlandia) until last fall - a raw cold Sunday, the second in November, Veteran's Day weekend and as it happened that Sunday was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. We had guests that Sunday, a group of Canadian UU's down on a shopping holiday from New Brunswick, and in the commonwealth tradition they wore red poppies for Remembrance Day - the woman who sat in the pew before me had a lovely enameled brooch in the form of a red poppy pinned to her coat, and it caught my eye: bright red and gold and lacquer black against the camel tan.

Our interim minister spoke of war and peace and remembrance, her voice raw as she wove in the news that - only a few days before - her nephew had been killed in Iraq. And I could see in my mind's eye the acres of poppies in the Flanders fields, where I have never stood and likely never will.

World and time are simultaneously so wide and so small.

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine,
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine;
O hear my song, Thou God of all the nations,
A song of peace, for their land and for mine.

Posted September 29, 2008 9:58 PM by Thena

Following thunderstorms and fireworks:

In 2006 I managed to fail to charge my camera before a friend's wedding with the result that I had no pictures from the reception. A bit disappointing for a shutterbug.

So I was apprehensive to hear that the fireworks show in Spokane might be cancelled due to the approaching storm. But half an hour before the show was to begin, it hadn't started raining, so we started walking down...

And the show started twenty-five minutes early. And fast. So I crouched down on the ground so my little pocket tripod could be steady and started taking pictures. And then the flashes began. And I got them!

Here and here and here.

Posted September 29, 2008 10:00 PM by B. Durbin

monasteries ...

On a trip to India my companions and I had had enough of ruins and ancient statues by the time we reached Varanasi. So our guide took us to a new Tibetan Buddhist monastery outside Sarnath, where the Buddha first taught. The colorful place was non-touristed, such a relief. But it was on our ride back into Varanasi that I saw a large haystack walking down the side of the road.

Underneath it, perfectly centered, perfectly straight-backed, and moving with unstoppable purpose, was a woman ...

... wrapped in a beautiful sari, and carrying the haystack home on her head.

Posted September 29, 2008 10:04 PM by cherish

On languages and hot springs -

I spent two years in Japan, stationed there with the Navy. To my shame, I only learned a little Japanese.

One weekend, I went up to a small inn in Nagano to see a shipmate get married. Half the guests were from the ship, half were teachers at the school where her husband taught English. It was the only wedding I've been to with drinking during the ceremony.

After dinner, we all went out to a hot spring. While there, we were approached by three older ladies, curious what we were so happy about. None of us knew much Japanese, the ladies knew little English. But through mime we told them of the wedding, and they offered congratulations and luck to the unmarried girls of our party.

Posted September 29, 2008 10:07 PM by affreca

I have to riff off the original, I think.

***

While working on an archaeological dig in Winchester, England, I was visited by my best friend/adopted sister, who was in Oxford for the summer, studying Shakespeare. She and I went for a walk out of town to the monastery of St. Cross, where, to this day, you can ask the porter for the wayfarer's dole, and be given a piece of bread and a small cup of beer. (We opted for water instead, being teenagers and -- even now, years later -- not inclined toward beer.)

And on the grounds of that monastery, there is a courtyard, and in the courtyard is an enormous old tree, and around that tree is the best grass in all the world: thick and soft and emerald green. My sister and I exchanged wordless looks, and half a second later we were both flat on our backs in the grass, staring at the perfect blue sky, with the tree arching above our heads, enjoying a rare, perfect, English summer day.

Posted September 29, 2008 10:08 PM by Marie Brennan

Building on youthful realizations of mortality:

I was, perhaps, ten years old, and Mom had arranged for me to attend YMCA Summer Day Camp with the children of one of her friends. On the day I'm recalling, the day trip took us to Big Bear or Lake Arrowhead...for ski instruction.

After several dismal hours that included falling down in skis on a short (but intimidating) sawdust-covered slope, and burning my hands on the rope-tow, we all headed for the ski lift to return to the bus. And I couldn't get situated on the seat of the lift. The little hop-up-and-backward wasn't getting me anywhere, and the drop was getting closer. Finally, one of the attendants raced over and SHOVED the seat under my butt, and all was well.

Until about 9:00 that night, when I realized I could have been swept off the edge and killed.

Still gives me cold chills. And is it any wonder that I'd much rather hang out by the fire in the lodge with a good book and hot toddy to hand, than ever put on a pair of skis?

Posted September 29, 2008 10:11 PM by Syd

Wildlife on camping trips, inspired somewhat by Leva Cygnet's @ 25:

I was camping with my dad and stepmom -- nowhere particularly wild, we were just sleeping in a dome tent rather than a hotel in town when we went to see Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We stayed up an hour or two after dark; my stepmom read several chapters from _Crewel Lye_, by Piers Anthony (my first Xanth novel). Then we went to bed.

Then there was a ... a noise, or rather a series of noises, implying strongly something huge, scary, and snuffly was, well, ransacking our camp. After ten or twenty minutes reminiscent of many monster movies you may have seen -- when he heard the brick we'd put on the cooler lid fall off -- Dad grabbed the lantern and went charging out. Some shouting, rustling, and a LOT of random other noises (and swinging shadows on the tent wall later), he came back, said brusquely, "It's gone," and unceremoniously went to sleep, as if it were nothing.

My stepmom and I blinked at each other, speculated a little, and tried to quit being freaked out.

In the morning, he told me what'd happened. It was a raccoon, apparently. And instead of doing anything RATIONAL, my dad had charged at it bellowing. It ran away, then up a tree, and dad had ... peed, around the base of the tree, and as high up it as he could hit.

It was still there in the morning, staring down at us rather as if wondering if we were going to turn into bears and come after it.

Posted September 29, 2008 10:23 PM by Elliott Mason

There is a Benedicine Monastary in Lacey, as a matter of fact, The Abbey of St. Martin, and a University founded by the order.

The red brick three story hulk of Old Main sits on what looks like a bailey, but is actually an esker. It is a familiar landmark, but the members of the order are much less so- to the extent that I was startled, once, cutting through the grounds on my bicycle on the way to school in the last few weeks of my senior year in high school, when I encountered a very old man in long black robes, saying rosary as he walked along the path past the wrought-iron gates of the abbey cemetary.

The only thing I can compare it to is looking up at the noon-day sky and having an owl suddenly fly a few feet over my head.

Posted September 29, 2008 10:27 PM by JESR

Traveling to Europe (Caroline, #26) and other languages (specifically from Linkmeister, #21):

On my first and only plane trip across the Atlantic Ocean eastwards -- for a family wedding in Edinburgh -- we were flying Aer Lingus. They had the cheapest flight, by several hundred dollars, but we had to change planes in Shannon, with a bit of a layover.

I managed to sleep on the plane, but was extremely groggy when waked several hours later. We came down through a thick cloudbank and I saw the greenest ground I've EVER seen; apparently it's not called 'the Emerald Isle' for nothing.

Just as I was barely starting to understand the flight attendant's question about which 'breakfast sandwich' option I wanted, the pilot came on.

We all know what they say at such times. "Hi, I'm your captain. We're landing. It's such-and-such time and temperature, locally. Thanks for flying us. Fasten your seatbelts." However, though the phonemes were all familiar, I could NOT for the life of me process the words!

Thankfully, I had a realization. I leaned over to my husband and whispered, embarrassedly, "Please reassure me he's speaking Gaelic ... and not backwards?"

He was.

Posted September 29, 2008 10:31 PM by Elliott Mason

Walking in Japan, from Glen Fisher, and Jizo-sama, from Catherynne Valente:

When I was studying in Kyoto I had a short walk to the train station to school. It took no more than ten minutes, but in that ten minutes I passed three shrines of Jizo-sama: A small wood shelter over a vaguely human-shaped block of rough stone with an apron tied around its neck. I wondered whether the person who had built each had built it for the travellers or for the mizu-ko, or water children.

There was also a Shinto shrine planted on a tiny plot of land, with a tiny little wooden house and a huge tree that towered over it. Beside the Shinto shrine was a house with a black BMW parked in front. The BMW's license plate number was [se] 666. Every time I walked by the car (clearly the devil's) next to the shrine, I expected a story to come, but it never did. It's okay, though. I can wait.

***

Another pearl from that time:

One day in spring I was walking to school. There had been snow a few weeks before--wet snow that had hardly lasted a day, which quited disappointed Alaskan-born me. More recently the cherries had blossomed, and were just starting to fall. I passed through a playground where the petals had started to gather in drifts on the ground. The wind picked up and they swirled whitely around the swings and merri-go-rounds, more like snow than the snow had been.

Posted September 29, 2008 10:40 PM by heresiarch

On food in France:

The one night I ever spent in Paris, my traveling companion and I were too tired to stay up and get seated in the good restaurant recommended by our tiny hotel, so we picked a place at random and had a singularly unmemorable, not even good, meal. I was very sad, as I had thought Paris would be a source of fine food memories.

The next morning, we got up and went to the Gare d'Austerlitz to board a train to Madrid. On the way through the station, we spotted a stall vendor selling saucisses, and bought a bundle. Once we sat down on our train, I reached for les saucisses and took a bite.

I looked at Alan and said, "You know how you always get the extra potstickers? These sausages are payback." They were the best I'd ever tasted.

We found them again, or ones very much like them, three years later in rural France. I can taste them when I think of them.

Posted September 29, 2008 10:58 PM by Debbie Notkin

Re: linguistic triumphs

The year after I was graduated from college, I went to Europe. My six week trip turned into six months (I sold my first book while abroad, had them send me the check, and embarked on a series of weird temp jobs). At the end of my stay, I met some people in the hostel I was living in, and wound up traveling with them: six of us (two New Zealanders, two South Africans, an Australian, and me) wound up going from London to Morocco and back again, and I did the translating when translating was needed (this with three years of High School French, two years of college Spanish--I did find that it was easier when I'd had a glass of wine or two). When I finally split from my traveling companions I went to Paris on my own for a week, happy to be translating for myself alone, and in only one language.

I went to see Napoleon's tomb and the arms and armor; after, as I was leaving, a guy came up to me and asked if the building I'd just left was Napoleon's tomb. Told him yes it was, but that the entrance was on the other side of the building; told him where to get tickets, even told him how much they'd cost for the adults and the kids. He thanked me kindly and we parted friends.

It wasn't until a few minutes later that I realized that we'd carried out the whole conversation in Spanish. And I was sober, too.

Posted September 29, 2008 11:16 PM by Madeleine Robins

From #21, Linkmeister: Languages and travel

Strasbourg, 1981 I live in Canada, so am used to occasionally seeing restaurant menus with English on one side and French on the other. In Strasbourg, I'm presented for the first time with bilingual French/German menus, and am struck by how comfortable the French suddenly seems.

Sophron, western Hungary, 1992 I encounter bilingual German/Hungarian menus, and suddenly German doesn't seem so incomprehensible any more.

Pecs, Hungary, 1992 In this town in southern Hungary I'm confronted with bilingual Hungarian/Croatian menus. I order by pointing at what a man at the next table is eating.

Posted September 29, 2008 11:29 PM by Greg Ioannou

Speaking of traveling around Europe to tombs of dead people: I spent six weeks as a student in France one summer, and went on a trip to Arles. A fellow student and I went down into the catacombs and had wandered fairly far through the tunnels, past gaping holes in the floor and dripping ceilings and all sorts of creepy little alcoves, when all of a sudden the lights all went out.

We froze where we were in the pitch dark, listening to the water drip, and discussed how there was no way in hell we felt safe moving, much less had any way of finding our way back to the entrance. I have never been anywhere so dark in my entire life.

Fortunately the lights came back on about three minutes later. It was a very looooong three minutes, though. I imagine there was some caretaker standing whose highlight of his day was waiting for all the tourists to be really far back in the catacombs before throwing the light switch.

Posted September 29, 2008 11:31 PM by Suzanne

#8 fireworks, #5 boy scouts:

There are places one should not
pitch tents and make your camp;
lest your scoutmaster and associates
scramble to extinguish the embers
of the fireworks holding you enrapt.

Posted September 29, 2008 11:59 PM by geekosaur

On maps...

When my sister and I went to Spain, we took the train to Cordoba, where we had a reservation to stay in a hostel in the historic quarter near the Mezquita. At the train station we stopped to get a map of the town, but though the street we were staying on was listed in the index, the area on the map the index referred us to did not show the street.

The woman at the information booth told us she could not help us, that we should go to that area, and then ask. There were many little streets too small to show on the map.

So we walked through the narrow white streets of Cordoba. We stopped at a bookstore to see about getting a bigger map, but it still did not show our street. So we walked past La Mezquita, and we were as near as we knew how to get. I stopped next to a cab and asked the driver (in Spanish) if he knew where our street was. He was not sure. He pointed in a direction away from the Mosque, and told us to go that way a few blocks, and then ask again. Baffled that a cab driver could not be more specific, this is what we did. A few blocks later, a store clerk told us which fork of the road to take (roads split off at random angles in this district) to find the road we sought.

In the end it worked, and we found the little hostel, and had a very nice stay in Cordoba. And I am secretly delighted to see that although the satellite view shows the intricate mess of narrow streets and walkways, google maps cannot report on the street names to a fine enough resolution to support the inquiry we had to this day. Even with my iPhone I would still have to go there, and ask. And maybe that's a good thing.

Posted September 30, 2008 12:01 AM by Anne KG Murphy

From #63, weird temp jobs while living abroad:

I spent my junior year in college studying at the University of Munich. The money my parents sent me every month barely covered my rent and expenses, so in order to have the werewithal to travel in between semesters I spent the first chunk of the break hauling my ass every morning down to the "Schwarzarbeitsamt", where all kinds of under-the-table day labor was doled out to foreign students on a first-come, first-served basis.

The two days spent in a freezing warehouse sorting oranges pretty much sucked. The day spent standing on a street corner during the morning, noon, and evening rush hours counting cars for the city could've been ok, except the corner to which I was assigned was right along the river and it was a cold, raw, windy day. Eventually I got a steady job working at an antique coin auction house, helping them catalog coins and process advance bids for their upcoming semi-annual auction. That one was a lot of fun, and I gained enough data-entry skills that I actually put it on my resume when I got back to the States.

But by far the day I hit the jackpot was the day I was hired by a little old lady to go stand in line for her on the day the Symphony tickets went on sale. My instructions were to go straight to the Gasteig (where the Symphony box office was located) and get the best possible spot in line, then 15 minutes before the box office opened that afternoon she would meet me. I spent the entire day sitting in a hallway outside the public library, reading the books I had miraculously thought to bring with me, surrounded by other young people similarly hired by longtime Symphony-goers to save places in line. And right on time the little old lady appeared, all dressed up and ready for the box office. She thanked me for my time, slipped a banknote into my hand, and sent me off on my merry way.

It wasn't until I got to the U-bahn that I noticed that the note in my hand was DM100. More money than I had made in the past two weeks combined. I immediately went to the nearest student travel office and purchased my Eurail pass.

Posted September 30, 2008 12:24 AM by meredith

Following up on Germany, Tuebingen, and old buildings:

In November of 2005, I was visiting friends in Tuebingen with my family, and we decided to go to the Christmas market at the Schloss Hohenzollern (a real castle, rebuilt after an earthquake in the 1800s to Victorian Gothic standards), which isn't that far away. It was uncharacteristically cold, with snow on the ground, and my feet were frozen. The schloss is on top of a small mountain, and when you stand on the ramparts, you can see all around, across fields and small forests, all the way back to Tuebingen. As the cold wind whipped my hair about my face, I kept thinking of the song "All Along the Watchtower," and of how long you would have to wait, once you saw the riders racing across the fields below, until they reached you and told you what they had to say.

Posted September 30, 2008 12:29 AM by Kristen Chew

Horses:
When I was learning to ride, at age nine, one of the horses there was an old while pony misleadingly named Dash. She would very seldom go faster than a walk, and never faster than a trot. When the riding teacher unhitched her and led her towards a student, she would drag along behind, rolling her eyes, and I used to think "Whither thou goest, I will go."

Posted September 30, 2008 12:40 AM by Vassilissa

Summer, old churches, camp

I remember the Chapel of the Transfiguration at Camp Mitchell -- sweeping the leaves out before a service, taking the kneelers out of the bin, smelling the dust of them, and the cool smell of rain on the way -- watching the great vultures circle out over the cliff-edge behind the altar -- and silence, and peace, and an utter absence of division: us and the chapel and the wind and the stone and the earth and the trees and the weeds and the cliff and the birds and the wholeness, all one.

Posted September 30, 2008 12:43 AM by Gramina

From #57, Syd, fear of falling:

Many years ago I went rock climbing with a friend in the Cascades. It was an easy climb, and my friend was experienced, but I'd never done a real ascent. We went up as far as he thought I could handle, which turned out to be a bit farther than *I* thought I could handle, and despite all the blue sky and gnarled grey beauty lofting us into it, I was glad to turn back.

Many frightened minutes of descent later, things got less precipitous, and I thought, "Whew -- if I fall now, I'll only break a few bones."

I try to remember how that felt, now and then, how sweet it was to only worry about being maimed.

Posted September 30, 2008 12:48 AM by Chris Willrich

25 years ago, in early November, I was traveling across the state for a high school debate tournament. After the long drive after school, and the first rounds of competition, the usual custom was to collapse in sleeping bags on the floor. (Because the host team would have at most a dozen families, sometimes only 4-6, and needed to find room for many travelers.) But our coach's sister lived just north of the town where this tournament was being held, right next to the lake. She was very kind to us, and her house was beautiful.

I slept under a down comforter, with the window half open. As it turned out, I didn't sleep much. I wasn't uncomfortable (in those days before I lost my cold tolerance), but the cold lake smelled so interesting it was distracting. All my previous experience of great lakes had been close and warm, when they smell of fish and compost and mud. This was different, at the top of the house on the hill, with the frost in the air. I didn't want to take my glasses off until the moon went down.

(That was the first time I slept with a down comforter. I liked it so much I acquired one a few years later, and still use them in winter. Northern Lake Michigan is not so easy to take to bed with me, though.)

Posted September 30, 2008 1:00 AM by Adrian

On menus:

When I was in college, I traveled in France one summer, and one night I was eating in a restaurant where I could understand most of the menu, except for one item that I didn't recognize. I asked the waitress, and she tried to describe it in English--she said it was a "savage rabbit". Wild hare, I think it must have been, and it was delicious, but I couldn't help thinking of Monty Python all the while I was eating it.

Posted September 30, 2008 1:20 AM by y

On singing:
I miss the way music felt when I was a junior in high school, before my voice couldn't blend, before I got angry about it. I read Sharon Shinn's Archangel and Connie Willis' "All Seated on the Ground" and the posts here about Happy Birthday and cathedrals and it makes me sad that I don't know how to get that joy back.

On fiftieth anniversaries:
My mother grew up with neighbors Marge and Jim. I know them, too-- when we visit her family back in New York, there's a visit next door, too. Jim decided to throw a surprise party for their fiftieth anniversary. Got a banquet room at the hotel, invited people from all over, including my mom's family, the works. This was scheduled in July or thereabouts. Everyone was sworn to secrecy. Nobody slipped.
In November, months before it happened, Marge answered the phone. It was the hotel, calling to confirm the reservation.
Every day, she took her walk around the neighborhood and laughed to herself. She had a wonderful time-- she felt like a spy. Everyone was being so careful, and she never let on that she knew what was coming. The party was wonderful, all sorts of memories and friends come back, but the previous months were just as good.

Posted September 30, 2008 1:29 AM by Diatryma

On travel, and language, and people asking for directions.

In 1996, I was in Paris for a week, overseas for the first time, traveling alone.
A local asked me the time, a woman asked where a shop was, an American family sent their best French speaker to ask me how to buy a Metro ticket, relieved that I spoke English. I get that a lot, too. Maybe we look like we know where we're going?

I sat on park bench near my hotel, and an old man joined me. I asked him to speak more slowly, my French isn't good at speed - and he repeated himself. I got most of the words, it is very [something] today, isn't it? I repeated what I'd understood, and he repeated what I hadn't. Then he stood and waved his arms from side to side - oh! Windy! Yes, it is very windy today!

He told me about his daughter, and asked if I was Italian. (Everyone asked if I was Italian. Maybe my accent wasn't as good as I'd hoped.)

On the flight back to DFW, the women behind me talked about how rude everyone was, how they pretended not to understand English, how awful the trip had been. I remembered that quote from someone, something about wherever you travel, you still take yourself with you.

Posted September 30, 2008 1:31 AM by Sharon M

Hiking, wildlife, English summer:

Just this Sunday I took a trip to the far side of the city, to Richmond Park. It is the wildest place in London.

The great boreal forest of my home is beautiful, in a magnificent, awful, austere way. This English forest is lovely, rabbit-nibbled grass golden with sun, vast savannahs of grass and bracken, ancient oak trees, the air is sweet as flowers but with a spicy, acidic, autumnal edge -- oh God, life here could be so sweet, so easy, falling on you like leaves, not hewed out of ice and swamp and Precambrian rock.

I am tromping across a hillside near Kingston Gate through bracken as high as my head, and suddenly come out into the open, and RIGHT THERE is a deer, a full-grown buck, shaggy and hale and crowned with twelve points, so close I can see every hair on his solemn face. He freezes. I freeze: "Oh shit please don't kill me." After a long moment he turns away and grazes, and presently lays down peaceably on the hillside. Tremulously I lay down a few feet away, propping myself up on my elbow, and we watch the sun set through the oaks.

Posted September 30, 2008 1:34 AM by Tlönista

From #21, Greg Ioannou: Languages and travel

It's 1982, and Krakow, Poland, was still under Communist government. The pensione I was staying in with my then-husband and our Italian friend, Piero, was a non-licensed one in a private home. Friends from Warsaw had booked it for us, and the owner, a woman, turned out to be very nervous about having illegal foreigners on the premises. It didn't help that we couldn't speak any Polish, and she didn't know English, Italian, French or German.

I woke up one morning delirious with fever, and Ted and Piero (an MD) were reluctantly considering taking me to a Polish hospital, even though that would have meant waiting a day or two for admission. The pensione owner, realizing that something was wrong, was ready to put us out on the street. When I peered out of bed and said to her "Gorączka," Ted and Piero thought I was babbling nonsense. But the Polish woman hurried off and came back with a thermometer and a glass of water. Somehow, I'd remembered seeing in a guidebook the Polish word for "fever."

Posted September 30, 2008 1:34 AM by K. G. Anderson

From #21, Greg Ioannou: Languages and travel

It was 1982, and Krakow, Poland, was still under Communist government. The pensione I was staying in with my then-husband and our Italian friend, Piero, was a non-licensed one in a private home. Friends from Warsaw had booked it for us, and the owner, a woman, turned out to be very nervous about having illegal foreigners on the premises. It didn't help that we couldn't speak any Polish, and she didn't know English, Italian, French or German.

I woke up one morning delirious with fever, and Ted and Piero (an MD) were reluctantly considering taking me to a Polish hospital, even though that would have meant waiting a day or two for admission. The pensione owner, realizing that something was wrong, was ready to put us out on the street. When I peered out of bed and said to her "Gorączka," Ted and Piero thought I was babbling nonsense. But the Polish woman hurried off and came back with a thermometer and a glass of water. Somehow, I'd remembered seeing in a guidebook the Polish word for "fever."

Posted September 30, 2008 1:35 AM by K. G. Anderson

On traveling in Europe, and St. Petersburg...

When my husband and I were preparing to fly back from St. Petersburg to Paris, we were detained by a series of events involving a small lacquer bowl, the Air France counter at the airport, and me being looked at by a number of Russians with submachine guns while my husband disappeared with the AF supervisor to eventually be told that we were a) stuck there another night and b) out my airfare (since it was a frequent flyer ticket). The entire story is a) long and b) depressing.

The next morning we took the opportunity to go to St. Isaacs', a Russian orthodox cathedral that had been turned into a museum. There are always two prices for everything in Russia: the Russian price and the tourist price (which is okay by me: it's their cultural heritage). St. Isaacs was no different.

The elderly Russian lady took my husband's money without comment, then looked at me. "Priest's wife* ," she said, beaming, and refused to accept payment.

"No, I'm not a priest's wife." "Yes, priest's wife."

Finally, the woman next to her pointed to the cross I was wearing. "In Russia, only priests and priests' wives wore crosses. It used to be not safe."

The first woman finally relented and allowed me to pay the Russian price for admission. I went in feeling guilty and with a new appreciation of what the First Amendment means.

*Roman Catholic priests do not marry; Orthodox priests do -- in fact, my sister is married to one.

Posted September 30, 2008 1:35 AM by pat greene

On hiking:

I moved to Washington a few months ago. I remember how new and exotic northwestern forests seemed to me after having grown up in the Midwest. They were full of ferns and bright wild flowers I'd never heard of. And the trees... egad. I had never felt small while inside of a forest until I saw the ones here.

The first time I explored one, I was with my girlfriend. We made our way up a steep hill. Near the top, I gave her a small white daisy. She tucked it behind her ear.

Somehow the image of that flower set against her red hair sticks out more in my mind than anything else I saw that day.

Posted September 30, 2008 1:44 AM by Aud.

Language (sort of) and travel:

My then-wife and I were chatting with Mrs. Houlihan, who owned the little B&B in Dingle (a redundancy; there are no large B&Bs in Dingle) that we were staying at. We wanted to know more about the town, but she had two Americans in her grasp, and all she wanted to talk about was O.J.

We were kind of mortified. Here we were in this tiny, remote little town at the western tip of Ireland that looked as though it had undergone no significant changes in the last 300 years, and the O.J. trial had followed us there.

I remember Mrs. Houlihan inveighing against "that rascal Johnnie Cochran," which is how I think of him to this day, but what really stuck with me was her summation: "And he's going to go free, you know? And you know why? Liars. Because of the liars."

Then she gave me a long look, and said "You're not a liar, are you?" For a moment I stood there, transfixed.

Then it hit me. Lawyers.

Posted September 30, 2008 2:31 AM by Bob Rossney

Languages:

I was a military brat my first 17 years, and followed that, after graduating high school, with my own 4-year stint in the Air Force. From 1971-1974 we lived in Bangkok, Thailand, where I managed to learn some Thai. My parents took advantage of this by having me act as a translator with taxi drivers as they bartered over the fares.

Cut to 2003: I'm now living in Georgia, just north of Atlanta. I'm attending a new church and am in their membership class. At the beginning of the class, we're all asked to share something about ourselves. As this unfolding of tales works itself around the class, one gent mentions that he used to live in Thailand. My ears perked up, and I looked in his direction. When my turn came, I made a point to mention my own time in Thailand. We look at each other, both of us obviously making a mental note to talk to one another afterwards. After the class is over and everyone is mingling and talking, he and I get together to compare notes, to learn when each other lived in Thailand. Turns out we were not only there at the same time, but attended the same school. He was but a year ahead of me. I then turned the conversation to an old Thai Pepsi jingle that I remembered hearing on the television all the time. Next thing everyone knew, he and I were singing it together.

Cut to 2004: I'm now living in Maryland, but working in northern Virginia. One of my co-workers, I learn, is from Laos. We get to talking, and the conversation drifts to languages, and I learn for the first time that Laos and Thailand share the same language. He helps me to remember how to say 100 in Thai, and I later learn how to say 1000, which increases my knowledge of how to count in that language up to 999,999.

Cut to 2007/8: I'm still in Maryland, still working in northern Virginia, but for a different employer (thanks to a layoff, one of the wonderful benefits of working in telecom). One of my co-workers is from China. We're talking about languages one day, so I mention my meagre knowledge of Thai, and I tell him the story of how I came to relearn how to say 100 in Thai, mentioning in the process the number 99. He gives me a wide-eyed look and tells me that it's the same in Chinese. (There is a difference among the other Chinese numerals—I'm not sure where all the differences lie—but in this one instance the words are either very much the same, or sound very much alike.)

Posted September 30, 2008 2:34 AM by G D Townshende

Hiking, fireworks (of a sort), magic moments:

The first time I went to the Big Island of Hawai'i, three friends and I drove across the saddle road from Kona and went hiking across the lava field in the middle of the night. At this time, there were a lot of surface flows about 5 miles from the end of Chain of Craters Road (well, from the current end of it). We didn't realize they were quite that far away, and we kept scrambling over rocks towards that distant glow that just wasn't getting any closer. Luckily, there was so much surface activity that a small hot spot formed near us, with lava bubbling up and flowing for a good hour or so.

We were the only ones around for miles, and there was no other life around -- the lava field was so new that there was no scrub yet, and no bugs. In front of us, there was just the earth regenerating itself, and behind us, just the moon rising over the ocean. It was like this glimpse of a prehistoric world.

Posted September 30, 2008 2:42 AM by Becky

France and food.

When me and my brother were old enough to travel without parental supervision, our grandfather took us on a trip - as he did with all his grandchildren. His way of sharing his joy of travels - which were noticably intense.

We got to go with him and his wife to Paris, where we lived in a dinky little hotel close to Place Pigalle. One day, while walking up to the Métro, he told us to take a look inside one bar - and notice all the scantily clad women waiting for customers at the bar.

But the anecdote was going to involve food!
We found, one day, a small and very unassuming restaurant hidden in a back alley between our hotel and Place Pigalle. On the first day, the food was good, but not very generously served, and our requests for still water earned us the sale of a litre-bottle San Pellegrino.

But we liked the food, so we went back. On the second visit, the servings grew noticably and we got a large pitcher of tap water under eager jokes about eau du mere/mère (lake water / the mayor's water).

And on the third visit, the proprietor stormed out when we arrived to chat with us and the servings were enormous.

Progressing from "stupid tourist" to "regular" in three days!!

Posted September 30, 2008 2:56 AM by Mikael Vejdemo Johansson