Souls in the Rain

The soul needed a day in the rain. Low hanging clouds cruised past the granite boulders outside the windows from first light, beckoning. Who was I to argue?

A new trail was in order. New trails make me smile, for all the obvious reasons but also because if there’s a vague trail marker, or none at all, I will take the wrong fork. I calculate an extra 20 minutes for just that purpose. So if you ever hike with me, be prepared to laugh, as I channel consternation, moving in circles, chasing my tail in the red dirt like a puppy stung by a bee.

The beauty of low clouds is you can’t see how far to reach the summit. The mystery will keep you concentrating on the gifts right in front of you.

 I found myself confused in the first five minutes at an unmarked fork, followed the wider trail uphill, turned back, tried the other one with more footprints in the dirt, and saw other humans ahead, so kept on.Then had to laugh when the trail markers appeared but weren't much help either.

Below me, fishermen cast lines onto a windblown lake; I couldn’t help wonder where the cigarette dangling from one fisherman’s lips would end up. Because this was Poway, the trail was immaculate, with trashcans and outhouses. Too bad people couldn’t be compelled to use them. Piles of dog poop dotted the trail. I’ve always thought if you can’t care for a pet, you should have one. (I feel the same about humans, but I digress).

Rain was only light mist at first. A necessary cool during the climb. By the time there were no more forks to decipher, I’d hiked into a stronger rain. The trail narrowed, got steeper and a couple came down from the mist, laughing, enjoying the wet weather. I was the only one wearing a rain jacket, and felt embarrassingly overdressed. But after we passed each other, I heard the woman pointing out the duck’s back rain cover on my pack, so I felt less nerdy.

 Most of the next two miles were mine alone: me, chaparral, the sandstone boulders like Easter Island sentries appearing out of the clouds and fields of white sage.

Rain adds holiday ornaments to leaves, berries, the underbelly of spider webs. Colors and textures dance together: the spiky yucca leaves and the gentle sweeping angel hair grasses around the base of a burned Manzanita stalk. All were relishing the rinsing of dust from their shoulders.

At the famed potato chip rock I met two young women in hoodies, one popping candy in her mouth and letting the wrapper fall as she photographed the rock. She grabbed the wrapper back up when she saw me. At least the youth are hiking, getting some exercise, I thought. I met four more sopping wet young hikers half a mile further up the trail, and a few empty Clif bar wrappers, which I stuffed in my pocket, hoping to return them to their rightful owners.

  I stayed at the top long enough to grab some celery from my pack, and a scarf for my neck. The rain was serious now, and visibility was maybe 30 yards. The unsightly cell towers that adorn the summit were eery skeletons in the clouds. Not a pleasant place to rest.

  The few trees on this trail stand out, since there are virtually none. Most of it is wide open. Reviews I read warned of needing more than two liters of water, hats, sunscreen. Good choice to venture out in the rain.  A mile below the summit, the rain became a mist again. The whole world was a wide circle around me about 50-yards out: yucca, sage, sandstone.

 I would have liked to be around when they carved a trail through some of the massive boulder fields.

I passed another couple, he was ahead, she behind, clutching a thin sweatshirt around her waist, her cotton workout tights soaked. I wondered whether she was re-thinking the relationship at all. In another mile, I came across a drawing in the sand that wasn’t there on the way up: a big heart. Nah, she was gonna follow him into the clouds no matter where that led.

  Re-entry is a bitch after any soul-filling experience, but Lake Poway is not a bad buffer between lost-in-the-wilderness and bumper-to-bumper traffic leaving nearby Poway High. Rounding my last turn towards the lake, two teenagers nearly ran into me, laughing, and the third one, several steps behind, was concealed under a huge plume of fragrant smoke. He turned his back, put it out, we all laughed. At least they’re getting some exercise, I thought.

On the trail around the lake, the his and hers outhouses have spectacular views. Perhaps the City of San Diego can take a lesson… or not. Stopping to take lots of pictures along the way up and back, the hike was a gloriously well-spent three and a half hours that felt like a full day. Thankfully there’s a feast of leftover brussel sprouts and tofu in the truck. And at home: a hot shower and a glass of whiskey waiting. Perfect rainy day.

 

Invitation to a Storm

This is how the ocean looked this morning.

Small craft warnings; and we were small crafts. Or we had them. We wanted to race them here.

The only people crazy enough to be out on the beach in this 20-mph wind are the regulars who gather with their boards, our group, and some seriously mind-altered young people dancing over a fire pit.

  So we tucked our tails and moved our band of athletic water junkies south a few miles to the bay, where it was only blowing 15 mph, but with a surface less threatening for the beginners in our midst, and that would be me.

Dogs and people had to adapt to the winter rules in the park, meaning the bathrooms right next to us were closed for the winter, and dogs were not welcome in the park between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Huh? Dogs not welcome in a public park? Through the winter days? Really? Common sense would suggest putting people to work maintaining the parks would give them jobs. It would also encourage our overweight masses to use those parks. Maybe.

Despite the hurdles, race organizer Cheance Adair masterfully rallied us all into two successful races: a short course of 4 miles (that’s me), and a long one out into the channel and back (that’s the big boys and girls). Jon Brindle and I were still smiling before getting on the water.

  Our race took off with a nice following sea that lulled us into a false sense of speed. Once we rounded the first island we were now broadside to the wind swells. It got choppy. Waves coming from the shore collided with wind waves underneath me, and the paddler just ahead went over. He adroitly remounted his surfski and in an embarrassingly brief quarter mile, passed me again.

I set my sights, when I could, on the backs of the young paddlers that train at the San Diego Canoe and Kayak Team, with coach Chris Barlow, a former Olympian who’s dedicated every spare moment to training the next generation of Olympic kayakers. These kids are fearless and tough and fast. Needless to say, I only saw their faces when they had finished the race and were doubling back in my direction to cheer for members of their team still on the course.

Paddling a borrowed boat that’s wider and therefore more stable than my own, yet slower, was a good idea.  The sloppy wind chop tossed me around a few times and I had to brace three or four times to keep from dumping myself over. I straightened up and got a better pace about the time I reached the next island and my two good lady paddler buddies were standing on rocks cheering me on. Now, who does that any more? Dedicate their morning to cheering someone else on in a race or any endeavor, for that matter?  We are a selfish society, myself included, who can rarely be pulled from a me-centric agenda. I have most-excellent friends. The kind that make me want to grow up and be just like them.

  When my race was finished, I had enough energy to do it again; which makes me wonder how I should have been using that energy during the race. Darn it, now I have a new goal. Sigh, it’s a moving target. New goals every day.

This is Veteran’s Day, and the birthday of the Marine Corps, so our race is dedicated to veterans, especially the Challenge Athletes and Wounded Warriors. We had a few competing today. They are always an inspiration.

The wind was getting stronger. I drove out to the jetty to watch the racers navigate the open ocean. A guy was zipping around the parking lot on a skateboard by holding a small parasail, having a blast. I had to lean into the wind to stay upright. But the leaders didn’t seem to feel a thing. They just plowed right through the chop like it wasn’t there.

Paddlers are good people. Strangers helped each other bring the boats up onto the grass, no one complained (very loudly) the race was moved, nor anything else for that matter (except the bathrooms being closed).

  Hopefully my muscles will recover in time for the next one. And I can possibly work towards being as skilled as some of these killer athletes! But you know, there's rarely a bad day on the water, storm or no storm.

Doing the District Federale

 Boarding the plane from St. Louis to Charlotte are mostly young men and women in khaki uniforms, in great physical shape, heading towards some military duty. On the next leg of my journey, the first passenger I see on the plane from Charlotte to D.C., is a young African-American woman standing at her first class seat putting a bag in the overhead. She’s fashionably sporting an afro and a Yale tee shirt. I’m loving this East Coast thing. Too bad US Airways lost my bag. Otherwise I’d love them too. I actually watched the entire Giants-Eagles game till midnight, suffering through watching Michael Vick win a game, hoping to be awake when a courier delivered my bag. Alas, instead, I nodded off to the glow of a lava lamp in the bedroom I commandeered from my second cousin Michaela, staring up at her poster of Justin Bieber.

In the meantime, I was treated to a lively game of after-dinner Parcheesi. My three quick-minded second cousins are frighteningly quick at math. They at least pretended to be patient with their silly, slow cousin Peggy, as I counted my moves on the board. They knew all of their options and mine before I counted the dice. Olivia and Michaela were kind enough to explain a bit of strategy lest I suffer a terrible fate at the hands of their younger brother Chauncey. Multi-talented, they could do all this while texting on their cell phones until their turn came around again. My cousin and I are sort of text-savvy, but prefer a walk in the park with the family dog Lucy.

  Their Maryland home rests at the end of a sloped cul de sac designated the sledding hill by the rest of the neighborhood. Therefore when snow immobilizes the region, everyone’s streets get plowed but theirs. During the four-day long blackouts in recent years, neighbors brought them boxes of candles. They preserved perishables by simply putting them outside in the snow.

I love efficient metro transit systems. What I don’t understand is why, during peak hours, the D.C. metro costs $1 more. Cretans. You’d think they would make it cheaper; to encourage people using public transportation instead of penalizing us for using it during rush hour.

  Making the journey by metro underground from that rural Maryland enclave to D.C., I emerged into brilliant sunlight pouring through the jungle of buildings around Howard University. My dear old friend Jeff Miller, now Vice-President of Communications for the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, showed me around some classic landmarks before bringing me to the home he and wife Jill Schwartz share with fabulous dog Roxie. Schwartz is Director of Program Communications at World Wildlife Fund. Appropriately, their townhouse row home is full of beautiful artwork, restored original wood floors, a brilliant, colorful garden out front and a warm and cozy guest room. They bicycle to work. After all, that’s how they met: on an AIDS ride a dozen years ago. They walk the talk.

The hint of fall colors lined the Potomac around Roosevelt Island. Roxie towed us at the end of her leash, sniffing her way through the woods then leaping after sticks into the cool river. 

  Someone had laid a fresh rose at the feet of Roosevelt’s statue; we presume as a talisman to aid in his bobble-headed run for the plate in the president’s bobble-head competition; a distraction from a lackluster performance by the Nationals erstwhile real baseball games until recently. And this night, sure enough, the Nationals clinched the pennant, covering the photographers in the locker room with champagne, probably destroying any camera gear not wrapped in ziplock bags and duct tape.

My tour of U Street near Howard University included the historic Ben’s Chili Bowl, and landed us at Busboys and Poets for fabulous vegetarian food and beer.

Jeff managed to strategically beat both traffic and rain en route to seeing Los Lobos at the Birchmere, an intimate night club. Our group of five danced while these OG rockers played all the song off Kiko, marking that album’s 20^th anniversary. So they’re a little older, but their harmonies still rival the Beach Boys’.

The locals riding my bus the next morning seemed to barely notice the rain, dressing instead for the humidity. At New York Street, the driver opened the door to ask a woman about her mother’s health. A woman in the back of the bus loudly made herself an appointment with who-knows-who, promising to send a check that day, after she opened a new bank account and put some money in it.

I have so many old friends now working at the Washington Post it’s crazy. The photography that gets produced, therefore, is insightful, intelligent, heartfelt. And from the photo editors, it is encouraged, nurtured and even published. There is an oasis there at the Post, of excellent visual journalism treated right, and it gives me hope.  With the addition of immensely-talented video-journalist Brad Horn (my instructor!) an in the capable hands of MaryAnne Golon and Sonya Doctorian, anything is possible!

A brisk walk and insider tour of downtown buildings brought us to the National Gallery of Art. Jonathan Newton ushered me through the intricate maze of galleries to see George Bellows lithographs, some of the finest sculptures and paintings by Degas

 and Van Gogh

and Rembrandt (“light the way it’s supposed to be, ” he said, ever-so-poignantly) before we made our way into the evening through the wave of stars in the corridor to the East Wing. As we passed the Newseum’s display of front pages, we wondered if soon this would not be a sampling of newspapers, but rather a display of the only newspapers left in the country.

I know there are many great eateries and pubs in DC but I will always recommend Church Key for its great menu of microbrews. Leave it to the sports writers and photographers to know the best watering holes. And bless his heart, Newton had the energy, after covering the Nationals’ game and victory celebration in the locker room till midnight, to be my guide and share a brew.

The next morning my bus passed through the same neighborhoods, collecting some of the same faces, while the same folks buzzed about on the street corners. I wondered how often folks born and raised in a given neighborhood might venture out just for a day’s journey, and how far they might go, and to where, and how they might choose their destination.

  I’m not sure how far the walk was that I made from the White House to the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, then MLK Jr., Roosevelt, Jefferson rotunda…. 

Back up to the National Gallery of Art, the National Portrait Gallery… back to the White House and then from there with Pat Butler up to Mt. Pleasant, past the smallest dog park in the world.

Maybe ten miles. I think I earned the reward of a gin and tonic on the back patio under a strand of lights, the smell of humidity corrupting the leaves of maples beginning to turn amber in Pat’s neighborhood. What a smart move he made to buy this classy 1870s-built home with its hard wood floors, its outdoor porches, tall ceilings and secret doors. Good thing he has housemates. The place is probably haunted. And he’s never there, being that his job as Vice-President of Programs at the International Center for Journalists he is hopping from country to country all year.  And to think I knew him when. 

Pat shares my awe for the impossibility of art galleries in D.C. I mean, right there, at the Portrait Gallery, is THE portrait of George Washington that’s on the dollar bill. There a bronze head of Rachel Carson!

And in the National Gallery, THE portrait of Napoleon. And the galleries are all free. Our tax dollars paid for that. Free. It’s like a tollbooth being taken off a bridge once the bridge is paid for. So, when does that happen?
Jeff recommended the Roosevelt Monument, and I am so glad. It is beautifully arranged, through all four of his presidencies.

The quotations reflect the foundation of personal motivation that defined the character of Americans as they struggled through a Depression, a War and the Dust Bowl.  My favorite inscription should be front and center in today’s presidential debates: “Men and Nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of Nature throws out of balance also the lives of men.” And also, next to a wall of bronze men in a bread line: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” Amen.

A cab ride and an order for take out Thai puts all of us together in front of one big t.v. screen for the first presidential debate. After which, of course, we all left shaking our heads.

Back on that awesome D.C. metro the next morning, I barely broke a stride moving from the green line to the red line, as the cars were so sync-ed up. The rest of the day was a whirlwind of what life is like for my mother-of-three and still working cousin. 

We eat deli salads on our laps between a track meet (Michaela) and soccer game (Olivia), passing her husband Kevin on a side road along the way while he traverses from soccer (Olivia) en route to track (Michaela).

I do the only thing I can to contribute: I make dinner, while dodging Lucy, the family dog, who is the closest thing to a stuffed animal you can get, and as playful as a puppy.

I regret leaving the next morning. I’ve just gotten into the groove. But that’s easy when you’re on vacation isn’t it?