nerd’s eye view

Postcard from Alaska

Alaskans have a really complicated relationship with their government and they will tell you all about it. Repeatedly and in great detail.

It is possible to eat salmon every day for a week and not get tired of it.

Distance is relative. I’m sure there’s an equation that multiplies road condition by miles divided by weather then multiplied again by the number of moose spotted to determine how long it takes to get somewhere.

A lot of the cliches about Alaska are true. It is not hard to encounter gold prospectors and subsistence homesteaders and scrappy women with rifles and bearded guys with bluegrass hearts and bush pilots who speak in poetry about the landscape.

And that landscape will knock the hyperbole right out of you on day one, leaving you with “Yeah, it’s amazing” because it takes, perhaps, a long winter to think through the color and the mountains and the sky.

Disclaimer:  My trip was paid for by AITA.

5 Comments | Posted in » Alaska

From the Archives: Fish Wednesday: Hawaii Edition

Hey, are you reading my Hawaii blog? Coz you should be, not only because today’s post is a Fish Wednesday post, but because World Hum is a GREAT travel site and when you’re done reading my stuff about Hawaii, there’s lots of other good stuff to read, too.

It’s here – Hawaii: Holoholo Wale

No Comments | Posted in » Seattle

In the Sky

I don’t put much stock in horoscopes but a few things amuse me. I’m a Capricorn – that’s the mountain goat – and we’re supposedly stubborn and ambitious. We’re climbers, and though I know that’s meant to be figurative, I like to take it literally, especially when I’m above the tree line.

I am slow and out of shape, so I was a bit out of breath while we walked back to the chairlift that takes you to the top of Whistler Mountain.  But I was supremely content, surrounded by that Kodakchrome sky above, the tops of the clouds below, my feet on the ground. I don’t like to fly, but I do love altitude.

I love the high places best during the alpine summer. Patches of snow stand out white on black stone. Everything is tough at altitude, even the tiny flowers. Heather, in pink and white, purple lupine, paintbrush in an almost fluorescent red – cover the meadows, scrubby little snowdrops cling to vertical cracks. If you are lucky, from a distance, you will see bears, grazing in the meadows – if you are not so lucky you will see them from much too close. The bugs are hungry and aggressive; I have a welt the size of a dime on my wrist from a horsefly bite. And the sun is unfiltered, brighter, adding a warm edge to the air, or is it the snow that’s adding that cool undercurrent?

Walking away from the crowds at the top of the lift, we look out across the valley. There is a shark fin of black poking through feathery clouds; updrafts pull gray strands along the cliff edges into the sky where they dissolve in to the blue. The trail crunches under our feet with the sound of broken glass and then the sound of snow as we turn up, following a foot track to a rocky outcropping facing the opposite direction, back towards the village, back into town. There’s a lake, green, and some blue roof tops, and a sea of condos and hotels. The scraped brown paths of ski runs are clear on the opposite mountain. Over the course of the morning, the clouds have disappeared and all around us are a ring of peaks, peaks blanketed in glaciers, black and gray and white against the sharp blue sky.

Back at the bottom of the valley, the village is packed with activity. There’s a mountain bike festival on and the plazas are packed with boys armored like turtles, and girls, too, all tough as nails, dirty and tattooed and taped and bruised. But the noise is too much for me, the crowds, after being in the sky, are close and every time someone bumps up against me, I want to scream. “You can be IN THE SKY! Why are packed into this crowded shopping mall?” I haven’t eaten enough during the day, and that’s made me edgy, a meal fixes my mood and I don’t mind the valley as much anymore.

This morning in camp, the sky is cloudless. The same peak I saw as a needle threading the clouds is completely visible; the entire mountain is outlined against the pale sky of the lower valley. There’s an ice field below, and leggy lodge pole pines and from across the slopes, the noise of the highway. In town there is coffee and more crowds, more bikers, more shopping. But in my head there is the warm grippy stone under my shoes, rusted and gray with lichen. There is the smell of altitude, snow and bristlecone pine and cloud, all twisted together into the air, all of it going up, further up, still further, until it dissolves into the blue.

Practicalities:  You can walk up the mountain, but why would you when you can take the lift?  If you plan in advance and, buy your tickets online, you can get quite a good deal. If, like us, you just show up, buy your tickets at the visitor’s center in the lower village – you’ll save a few bucks over the ticket line at the gondola. There’s a lift station at each end of the spectacular Peak2Peak gondola, so you don’t have to bring anything at all, but it’s good to have bug spray, a water bottle, sun sunscreen, and snacks. Don’t be a moron and go in flip flops, wear running shoes at the absolute minimum and bring layers in case the weather changes.

Disclaimer: Our trip was organized with assistance from Camping BC. They covered our campgrounds and transportation expenses. We paid for all of our own activities.

2 Comments | Posted in » Canada, Passport Travels

Lytton, British Columbia

1 Comment | Posted in » Canada, Pics

Nature’s Grace

As soon as I was old enough, I made plans to take a road trip to a secluded spot in Northern California that I had fallen in love with while on a family trip years before. I remembered that the confluence of the two rivers where we rafted was called Ishi Pishi Point, and I convinced two friends to drive the 600 miles south to go camping there with me. We arrived late at night, having passed the last traffic light or street lamp hours before, and were grateful to find the entrance to a rustic campground. In the morning we were pleased to discover that we were the only campers there.

Each day, we would roll out of our sleeping bags when the morning sun began to turn our tent into a nylon oven. We would wash up in the water spigot and make coffee before hiking down to the swimming hole. We spent a blissful week there, the same simple routine, broken only by occasional trips three miles down the road to the pay phone and roadside general store for ice and a quick call home.

On our little private beach, I would lay in the sun until my skin was taut and dry from the heat. Then, I would roll myself off my towel and head to the river’s edge. I would stand there for a minute, letting the water lap at my feet, as I scanned the cliff’s high edge for movement. I had been fortunate enough once to catch a glimpse of a bear, close enough to get my heart racing and far enough away to prevent panic. Another time I had been awoken from shallow sleep by the sound of splashing. Sitting up, I found two bear cubs playing in the river, not twenty feet away. They startled and ran when I stood up, and mama bear never made an appearance.

Wading into the river, I would stop before the water reached my hips, to draw a deep breath and then dive in. Underwater, I would swim forward to a spot deep enough to sink down without touching bottom. I would swish my head back and forth to allow the water to fan my long hair around my face. My limbs soft, they would sway just enough to keep me suspended slightly below the surface.

It was in these moments, the river’s cool current awakening each of my body’s skin cells, my hair floating all around me, my arms and legs supported without effort by the water, that the separation between me and the world would disappear. I would melt into the space that I imagine we all lived in before our birth, when there was no separation between self and creator. I would stay there, in that magic space, until the need for breath would rush me back into my own singular body, instructing my arms to reach up and pull me back to the surface.

I returned to our camping spot every summer until the year before I got married. Now I dream about the time when my children are older and I drive them the long trip through two states, off of the interstate onto the twisting country highway, and off the highway onto the narrow road winding into the mountains. I hope that there is still a place with trees as far as you can see, and water clean enough to drink, so that they too can find nature’s grace.



No Comments | Posted in » 29 Guests

Bear Safety

1 Comment | Posted in » Canada, Playing Outside

Mistakes are Tuition

a.ka. The Time I Missed My Flight. Twice.

Natalie Taylor is currently revamping her blog.  You can find previous writings/portfolio here. She likes words such as “curmudgeon” and “janky” and dramatic rose ceremonies.

“It’s me Nat. So, um, I’m in Prague right now, and I missed my flight. Twice. I’m going to be okay. Yeah, you know it’s fine…Hope everything’s good at home! It’s going to be okay…. Bye.”

Click.

This is my most embarrassing voice-mail to date. There really was nothing else to do while waiting for the train to Berlin, but send awkward messages of denial to my ex-boyfriend that I was independent in a crisis; that I didn’t need his re-assurance to make me feel better about myself.

My denials occurred at The Chinese restaurant around the bend from my hostel in Holesovice. Feeling satiated from the sweet and sour chicken in the empty dining room, it was a good time to double check my flight times for my return to Amsterdam the next day. I was responsible! I was saving money on a seat sale!

I was supposed to be on a plane two hours ago.

Sheer panic surged through my body. I immediately darted my eyes to the waitress, helpless, secretly wishing the daily special was “Free return to Amsterdam. Unlimited fried rice.”

After frantically booking the cheapest return for 7 a.m. the next day, and obliterating the good travel cents I had scoured originally, I realized I had no cash on hand. There was no ATM nearby for a much-needed drink.

“What’s wrong sweetie?” the hostel’s mole and resident bartender T. inquired.

“I missed my flight. I have no money on hand.” I reeked of despair.

T. consoled me with a drink. He later tried to console me with more (to no avail).

The cavernous subterranean surroundings of the hostel’s cellar bar were ideal to soak in self-pity. Krishla – a former hut mate in Greece with whom I had unexpected reunion – became a confidant. The perfect anti-dote, in my brilliant mind, was to pull an all-nighter. I’m not exactly a morning person.

The next goal was to coax the 12 unusually anti-social Scots to show their true (imbibing) nature.

“You’re in a hostel bar playing cards with each other and not socializing with the bevy of beauties around here?! You’re not drinking?!” I yelped. They listened.

T’s specialty was the A-Bomb, a shot of the green-fairy dropped into a glass of Red Bull. The boys were ambitious to try the A-Z bombs. I lost count after “A.” Cackling and incomprehensible Scottish brogues ensued. I didn’t understand. I didn’t care. My worries were a distant memory.

“I’ve got to pack,” I sleepily slurred, many hours of giggles later. An empty hostel dorm is a god-send to a solo-traveler – except when you have a 5 a.m. wake-up call and nobody with an alarm to wake you when needed. My watch was underneath the bed. It was 3 a.m. Then I turned the watch around. The reality was mirrored back to me: 9 a.m. A stunned reflection in the looking glass.

Double Trouble: two missed flights by two hours each. No refunds.

Krishla was not impressed by the morning-wake up call. “Berlin is a four hour train ride from Prague. Go. If you’re still here after 1 p.m., I’m personally sending you on the train.” The train station was a five minute walk. I had nothing to lose.

I couldn’t venture back to Amsterdam now; Anne Frank Huis waiting for me in the foggy distance.  My set itinerary of simultaneously using the rest of  my Eurail Pass days on bordering countries was failing me. In retrospect, I learned just as much from the walking tours of Berlin than I did from the hallowed walls of Anne Frank Huis.

I was scared of my own ignorance; that I wasn’t prepared for the history lessons and that I thought I should be. Diving head-first without any plan into a known yet unknown culture was the climax of the surprises my travels had un-earthed for me.

I didn’t have enough time to explore Berlin at my own pace: its hauntingly romantic atmosphere; its sorrowful yet triumphant deep-rooted past, and a mainstay as a hotbed of culture. I also didn’t realize that, in the end, I was okay, and stronger as a result.

Why I like this story: Yeah, I missed a flight. Once. Or maybe twice. I ain’t sayin’.

No Comments | Posted in » 29 Guests