Why I Travel

As I walk through the security line at the airport, I notice the guy in front of me, athletic, all button-down shirt and casual cargo pants, with black thick-frame glasses that turn colors as you move in and out of the light. He  carries nothing through security but a black, almost perfectly square cooler. I figure he must have some affliction and he needs his meds kept cold (I know from experience). But appearances and our own biases can be (and very often are) deceiving. 

He pulls a plastic bag out of the cooler, with three (3) frozen solid bottles of Deer Park water. He puts them in the TSA tray and leaves the cooler open. The TSA agent warns the screening guy that “frozen water, coming up!” and moves on to help me with my bag. The athletic guy moves along through the people scanner, chewing gum, completely non-chalant and well-possessed, not even blinking. No explanation. No fuss. Like he owns the world. 

The guy behind me says to the TSA guy: “Excuse me. Umm...What is that, exactly? You are allowed to transport water bottles through TSA if the bottles are frozen?” The TSA guy goes “Yes, sir! That’s right!” The guy behind me says “Well, I don’t agree with it, but wow! Just wow!”

In my mind, I say: “Sorry, buddy, your authority nor opinion is needed here. Move along.” But yes, I am wowed too. 

After I clear security, the first thing I do is google “can you take frozen water bottles through security?” and lo and behold, yes, you can! This just completely baffled me. I have been traveling consistently by plane since 1998 - for those hard of math, that is 27 years. I have counted 10 one-way airline trips (some of them with multiple flights) this year alone and I have never known of such a rule. This was a lesson ... 

As I continue my journey, I come to my gate and we’re ready to board. They tell us, as they often do, nowadays, that the plane is full and to make sure we board quickly and sit down immediately, not to block the aisles, you know ... the usual. Then, they call people by “zones” (some airlines board by groups, some by zones). They call First Class, then Zone 1, then Zone 2. We all wait. And wait. And not one person boards in Zone 1, nor 2. I have never seen such a thing. Again, ever, in all my travels are whole “zones” completely empty with “a full flight”. The gate agent seems totally OK with this, but we’re all looking around like “are they still at the bar or what?”. I am telling myself “this is going to be a trip of firsts, I guess?”. 

After I board (with my zone - I can’t recall what it was, but I am at the end of the darn plane again, zone maybe 7 or some such unlucky number; as a matter of fact, let’s not be ungrateful - zone “never” might be unlucky; the fact that I am on a plane at all is a plus), and after all the people are in their seats, the pilot walks all the way to where I am sitting and hands over a goodie bag to a lucky passenger on account that they are a “first-time flyer”. No, not with this airline but ever. Not sure how they know this? Not sure how or if they verify this, but there it is ... I am shocked. How has someone nowadays, especially in the very large America where people are so spread apart from their families, living in this huge country, never flown? This person is not a toddler either. It’s a mature man with a head full of white hair. They are totally shocked and embarrassed and they accept the bag with a chuckle and applause follows. 

Then, to make it even more unusual, the pilot walks to two rows in front of the man he just congratulated, on the other side of the aisle, and hands over a second goodie bag to another first-time passenger completely unrelated to the first one. Now, I am thinking I must be in a dream: there is not one, but two such rare specimens on my flight. What??? You live and you learn, as the cliche goes. 

As we’re preparing to take off, they make their little announcements and there is a new one for me: they tell us that video taking is “absolutely prohibited”, and this is not an “airline policy, but an FAA policy”. And I pause. Well, if video taping is prohibited, then how come TikTok (at least this is what I hear, since I am lucky enough to not be tethered with such a curse as a TikTok account) full of videos of flight attendants being slapped by or slapping passengers all over the world? Or did the policy come in response to such videos and is new? I am not videoing but I am taking pictures, so I figured I am not in trouble, but my goodness, frozen water first, no videos second, airline rules are moving fast, even for this mildly-frequent flyer... 

As I leave the plane on my arrival to the other end of my trip, at my final destination of Orlando, FL (a destination, I feel, that should require a passport, if you’re coming from anywhere else in the US, even), I head over to the ground transportation area to call an Uber so I can head to my hotel. I was a late adopter of Uber - have been using it for about 3 years - but I have used it on two continents and tried using it on a third one, but the Gods of the travel agency protected me from using it in Africa. Long story, for another entry. 

A cheerful gentleman called Jose arrives and I see a new disclaimer on my Uber app - that Jose is “recording this trip”. Hmm ... Video forbidden on the plane, but obviously running by default in the car transportation. I do not like surprises all that much, but this trip seemed to have it all. 

These are just a few examples from my most recent trip. And this is all to say that one of the main reasons I travel (other than to get where my life takes me) is to learn. Travel is almost a free add-on or bonus of new lessons about how you should behave in the world, how you should carry yourself among other humans. It teaches you how prepared you are to just be a human firing on all your cylinders, and being the best you can be among your peers. It builds tolerance and empathy - which are becoming somewhat endangered nowadays - but this new world we live in, try as it may, I would never, as long as there is breath in my body, want to lose them. 

Travel allows me to make my thoughts, my whole being stop chattering and opinioning and just listen and watch. Assess and propose corrections in my own path. Or not. Travel keeps my senses alert. There are so many things we must be present for in travel - you cannot space out and get lost in your doom-scroll of Instagram when the TSA agent, or a passport control agent demands answers from you. You are forced to connect with the person in front of you and think. Although I like to think of myself as a minimalist when it comes to consuming social media, I still hate when precious minutes go to nothing but mindless scrolling. Travel is not mindless. It is focused, character-building (remember that 20th century concept anyone?) presence. If you don’t have that (presence) while you travel, your very life might be at stake. 

I travel  because I need new energy, from the outer world, to replenish and recharge my own depleted body which becomes stagnant after a while just being enclosed in myself. 

My sister and I grew up “in the mountains”, we call it. We were city girls by birth - born and raised in the second-largest (by population) city in Romania - but for about 3 months every year we would live with our distant relatives in the Northern Carpathian Mountains, with no running water in the house, working tireless every day for our food which came from cows, sheep, chickens, or foraging for wild berries and mushrooms in the woods. This is how we learned physical, manual labor. Life on the land was very different from life in the city. In the city, we learned how to be pedestrians and how to ride with civility in a public transport vehicle. In the mountains, we learned how to listen to nature, and know dangers unknown to the city dweller - like the call of a wolf, or the scratch of a mouse in the attic eating through corn, or getting splinters out of our soft, city hands when we split wood in the woodshed behind the house to make fires every night to heat our rooms in the wood-burning stoves or in our water heater boiler every week for our shower.

Travel reminds me  a bit of those times - when we were forced to live in a completely new environment and we were absolutely forced to develop a new set of skills that would not have been developed otherwise. 

I travel because I know my perception of the world is biased. And I need hard proof for the truth. 

I travel because I am consumed by wanting to know the truth. Is the world really as bleak as the media and social sites claim? Are people as angry and evil? Are they truly hating one another? Travel shows you a different picture of that. Or certifies it for you. But you will never know for sure unless it becomes your experience. 

I travel for food and for new-ness. For taking myself outside of my cocoon of safety and forcing myself to react, to feel, to truly know, and to truly form an opinion. I travel for the surprise of it and its shock value as much as I travel to realize that I had the weirdness and diversity of the world within my soul all along. But I just didn’t know it. 

Travel forces you to think quickly and outside the box. And make do with what’s in front of you. 

Travel forces you to look deeply into your soul and assess - do you like what you see? Here, there are alternatives, would you like to reconsider? I never speak to myself more honestly than when I am traveling - because it forces me to be present and to stay awake and aware for the simple reason to be safe. It also forces me to be awake because everything seems to be new. I cherish getting lessons from everything that I open myself up for. 

I travel because travel leads me to books. And books lead me to travel. And books have been the one, only, constant in my entire life that has never disappointed. Boyd Varty’s Cathedral of the Wild led me to Londolozi which changed my life. Then, Londolozi led me to The Elephant Whisperer which enriched my understanding of human kindness and nature kindness and nature intelligence as well. And the examples are many from so many of my other travels: the innumerable books I read about English and American authors growing up that took me to England and later America where I found my soul, eventually. 

Travel brought me to wonders like the South African wild this year - and what a quantum leap that was! I emerged transformed only with a fraction of my old self from the African bush. It tapped into senses I didn’t know I had. Our over-technological suburban world dims those senses, or, in some cases, completely exterminates them. But going out of our comfort zone (something that is intrinsic to travel) allows our minds and sometimes even our bodies, to develop abilities that otherwise lay dormant or are in danger of becoming extinct because of our lack of need to use them. When you are called to react to things you don’t encounter every day - like a leopard on the hunt, or a pride of 9 lions completely wild, with no circus director to tame them in sight, or a river full of crocs opening their huge jowls at you, or even foods you have never seen but are called upon out of respect to try - you cannot help but learn new lessons and new abilities that you might not have thought you had. 

I turned 50 this year. I read a lot of thoughts on what and who you’re supposed to be when you turn 50 or when you reach your mid-life. Some people are told they are old. Some people fight this concept and feel young or do meaningful things to feel young. Because I live inside this 50 year old body, I feel just like I did when I was 10 or 20. 50 seems to me to be just a number. 

For me, the one thing I want to be or to do going forward (which has not changed just because my ID says I am not a different age), the only thing that I hope will define me in my next decade and beyond and always is the desire to continuously learn. To avidly and voraciously keep learning, with every day, with every trip, with every person or any other being that I encounter. Keep learning and becoming and changing and morphing into who I will eventually leave as my finished “product” on this planet, once my time is up in this realm. 

I cannot think how I would be able to learn without traveling. Just like I have said many times before, stopping traveling is like stopping to breathe for me. I felt like I needed a reminder to reassess why I do it - I do it to remain whole and to keep becoming. Becoming is my now and my future. That is all ... And that is all that matters ... 

One of the places that stays with me, 28 years later: the thermal pools of Pamukkale (or “Cotton Castle”) in South-Western Turkey - I took this picture after I climbed this mountain barefoot with hot streams under my feet on a 100F degree day in August 1997. 

The Grand Canyon: The Yin and the Yang of The American West

All blogs have been past due this year. It's no one's fault but my own. I seem to find little time just to chill and write anymore, much to my heart's discontent and desperation. But delay no longer …

We returned to the Southwestern desert about a month ago. Lucky as I have always been, I have reasons to go back for work, and because work would be no fun without play, I plan to see a lot more of the desert when I embark on these mandatory trips. Although I love the trees of North Carolina, the rivers, lakes, and ocean, too, my soul craves the desert every so often. Just like you crave a sunburn in the dead of winter.

We drove down from Utah into Arizona, to see The Grand Canyon for the first time together. We made Page, AZ our base-camp, and we traveled from there to The South Rim the first day and to the North Rim the second day.

I have said this before numberless times: anyone should experience driving through the desert at least once in their lifetime. The open space, the desolation, the solitary confinement between you and God, the hopelessness of hitting nothing but red and dust and rock and short and spikey prairie grasses does things to your brain and your heart that you can only feel; I cannot put into words well enough to tell you what that feeling is like. Not to mention that it is probably different for each one of us. One thing that I know for sure is that the desert will never leave you untouched, unstirred to your core, and unmoved... It's one of those experiences that I guarantee will change your life, or at the very least your perspective.

Every time when I drive through the desert and I take it in through my eyes, and nostrils, and ears, my mind brims with its vastness and never-endingness. There is some similarity, in my head, between the vastness of the ocean and that of the desert. No wonder that they tell us that the desert was once an ocean … I don't find that impossible one bit.

Page is a little bedroom community, it seems, for folks vising the Lake Powell and Glen Canyon areas, or The Grand Canyon. I know one person who grew up there, but even he says “it was only temporary.” This is the land of The Southwest, where adobe houses and Mexican food are good friends, where Navajo Indians hail from, and where peachy-pink sunsets are born. If you're quiet enough, you can hear the many centuries of history this land endured, from the territorial wars with Mexico, to those of The White Men submitting The Indians. The thousand years of traditions that the Colorado washed by, most of them unknown and undocumented, but only undug and guessed at by curious, lonely, university savants.

As many millions or billions of people in the world, I had seen The Grand Canyon in many pictures, magazines, movies, commercials and the like. I had some idea of what it would look like. But of course being on the edge of this big gaping hole, seen even from Space, is different than looking at a postcard. The one thing that shocked me was the incredible difference between the South and the North Rims. They are truly as different as the Yin and the Yang of a Chinese symbol.

Grand Canyon -  South Rim 

The South Rim is what we saw first. This is the Yang, full of light, screaming bright red and orange hues, and flooded in sunlight. This is the poster child of Arizona, as we all imagine it. It was also the most crowded and busiest. As gorgeous as the landscape was, I would not be fair to not tell you, it was also the most touristy and somewhat cheesiest. If you looked past the human factor, it was as saintly and majestic of a cathedral as all the other God given beauties of the world!

Grand Canyon -  South Rim 

Our world got darker the second day, and not just because it started raining pretty much as you left our hotel in Page. Driving to the North Rim was incredibly similar to driving towards Yellowstone National Park or maybe Glacier National in Montana. We could tell we were much higher than when we were at the top of the South Rim, the day before: the pine forests and the ashes never seem to grow lavishly and freely under 8000 or so feet. Once we stopped at the Visitors' Center for the North Rim, it all seemed dead. Deserted and locked away for the winter. No facilities were open, and the handful of visitors were pretty quiet and reserved. Not the cackling crowd of the day before, on the Yang Rim. It was also cold. Bitter windy and cold.

Grand Canyon -  North Rim at Bright Angel Point

You cannot park right next to the rim in The North, like we could the day before. After you park you have to hike a ways through the parking lot, and then through trails to actually arrive at the end of Bright Angel Point and see the canyon below. The canyon walls here are closer to each other, and much, much darker: the landscape turns from the brilliant red and orange into dark greens and blacks in The North. It is as if you are not even looking at the same formation anymore. The Colorado is down there, you think, for you cannot see it, and the terraces slope down towards it, just like you would expect. Yet, the closeness of the two cliffs and the dark colors make you wonder if you are standing at the top of the Going to the Sun road in Glacier National, or truly at the top of The Grand Canyon.

On the North Rim you are in the midst of the Yin of The American Grand Canyon: dark, secretive, hidden, obscure and remote. If you ever saw The North Rim out of the context of its state, and were asked to place it in any American State, Arizona would never come to mind. There was a bluish – grayish haze in the air, maybe the earlier rain that day, or maybe the cold breath of the canyon vegetation. Who knows?! If the South Rim looked like a Florida naked body, scorched in the sun and ready for the next fruity drink, the North looked like an old, grumpy bear, heavy and dark, wanting to be left alone, back turned towards the world while entering its caverns.

There was a strange mystery about The North Rim, a secrecy that one could not decipher. There was an eerie silence and no sound except the breeze through the trees around us echoing into the deep, dark valley below. You could stand unmoved and think the world is dead around you. And then, a baby snake crossed our path reminding us the world is still very much alive, yet.

One thing you cannot help but wonder about when you oversee such ancient, wild, and untouched beauty is the passing of time. I always wonder what such land looked like millions of years ago – I am sure it was different, but I am also sure it was just as gorgeous as it is today. What I hope for the world is that we are smart enough to keep this incomparable beauty untouched, keep its secrets hidden, its trails crooked and trees afresh for the millions of people that will come after us.

What I felt at the top of this huge gap was lucky: to be alive, to be able to move and get there, to be able to see, and smell, and taste the cold, dry air of the desert. I also felt grateful and moved that I am equipped with the right emotional package to understand the depth of the world in front of me, literal, or otherwise.

I could write volumes about how I felt and what I saw and not a word of it would help you understand the same that I understood when I was there. All I can advise you to do is make time from your busy life and go experience it: drive through the desert, search for the spots the most hidden and let your heart listen; let your eye watch. And come back transformed.

My sister and I have talked for years about how we must go away for a while, periodically, remove ourselves from our routines and recharge our batteries. If we don't do this a couple of times a year, just go, hide, and listen to the wind in the trees or a river, or the sound of the ocean waves, or the sound of deep, unshattered silence under the starry skies, whatever … we would never be able to get out of bed and do our daily routines ever again. We would never be able to face this crazy world with all the bad, disappointing news in it. This was one of those purging trips! Recharged and life counter is now back to 0.

I will close with some wiser and more talented words than mine, just to give you a better description than I could put together of this wide-open, universe-famous, all American gem:

“It seems like a gigantic statement for even Nature to make all in one mighty stone word. Wildness so Godful, cosmic, primeval, bestows a new sense of earth's beauty and size. . . . But the colors, the living, rejoicing colors, chanting morning and evening in chorus to heaven! Whose brush or pencil, however lovingly inspired, can give us these? In the supreme flaming glory of sunset the whole canyon is transfigured, as if the life and light of centuries of sunshine stored up in the rocks was now being poured forth as from one glorious fountain, flooding both earth and Sky." (John Muir)

Grand Canyon -  North Rim
Click the picture to view the entire album from this trip 

When I Am in Love with the Mountains

You know, my least favorite day of the year, since I moved out West is that first day in late August, or could even be early September, when you go outside and you feel the first bite of fall. The air is cooler, the crisp is sharper, there is a chill down your spine and your exposed toes remind you they need to be covered: you got the wrong shoes on! 

It's a mean day, really, because as much as I hate the chill in the air, and the long sleeves, and the sweatshirts ... I love the mountains this time of the year. I love when the mountains and the trees are still deep, dark green (before they turn into the muted and deaf brown), and the prairie grass looks like the melted liquid balloon of the sun burst and poured all over it. The contrast between the gold and the green can only be achieved by one painter and one painter alone - and He lives up there, in the sky. 

Prairie grass and mountains outside our neighborhood

And speaking about the skies: that's another thing that makes me fall in love with the mountains, here in the West - and this goes for any season, really: the sunsets and the sunrises are out of this world eerie. The colors you see out here are impossible to find anywhere else - the deep reds and yellows, the crazy, tormented, confused and complicated clouds, moving at surreal speeds, and the height, this crazy Big Sky of the West that dwarfs you and makes you feel like an ant. 

September sunrise in my backyard

September sunset in my backyard

It's all love and helpless abandon. And all awe. And it's going to be imprinted in my brain, no matter how bad my Alzheimer's might get one day. No matter how far away from it all I will be ... 

From Life: A Cabin and a Mountain Town in the Fall

“I had daydreams and fantasies when I was growing up. I always wanted to live in a log cabin at the foot of a mountain. I would ride my horse to town and pick up provisions. Then return to the cabin, with a big open fire, a record player and peace.” (Linda McCartney)


There is something mystical and secret about sitting still by a mountain river, watching or hearing it hop from one polished rock to another. There is something of the old ages, a story or many told only to few of those who really listen, in an effort to become one with the big world. I crave this experience. I crave the sounds, the crisp air, the unbearable, headaching silence in the night, the dance of the squirrels on the branches, the chasing of the robins in the air. I crave the mountains, the stream, and a cozy cabin just about every day. But we allow ourselves the luxury to escape into this otherworld only about once a year. Not nearly enough, if you asked me, but the rarity makes these experiences that much more special. 
 
This year's cabin was on the Florida river, about 20 minutes from downtown Durango, Colorado. Before the trip, I told my husband I have never taken a trip to Colorado that I didn't love. And this trip was not going to break that pattern. 

This is a state cut out of a National Geographic issue, or an Ansel Adam's photography book, drowned in peace. If you have ever made a mental picture of Colorado after watching Western movies, reading Winnetou or watching The Wilderness Family series – then Colorado is all that times infinite. In my mind, the picture perfect Colorado starts with a yellow pasture where horses roam. They are framed by aspen trees, melted gold in the fall, over which the pine trees arise, and ultimately, the stony peaks of The Rockies. I could not have wished for anything more in the cabin getaway this year, than this. 

 

Timeless Colorado ... 

Our cabin was a duplex, but the neighbors we had for one night were ever so quiet and polite, we hardly noticed them. The sounds of the stream, the gentle wind through the crispy yellow aspen leaves is all I remember. There is something enduring, close and comfortable about log cabins. The raw-ness of the materials, the shortness of the walls, the hard stability of the dirt floors. It's like a cocoon, safe and sturdy, keeping you away from the big bad cold outside. Keeping you away from the beasts. There is restorement and rejuvenation after a solid night sleep surrounded by wood and woods. This is what keeps us going for another year. This, and the dream of another cabin to discover the year next.


I wish you all to find your cabin and your mountain. There is nothing that says “home” more loudly, and there is nothing where you're more “you-er than you”, than your secret, peaceful, getaway place. 

 

Colorado back country ... 

During our explorations around our cabin, we found several county roads that are hardly paved, that took us for miles and miles around horse farms and more log cabins. The hidden country of Colorado was alive and beautifully quiet on these hidden pathways. The silence and solitude reigned supreme, in a perfectly beautiful day of autumn. The air was soft and yellow, the bugs were lazy, trying to find their end-of-the-summer tired wings for one last flight, the deer and elk were everywhere, horses, too, but the people were off that day, tucked away in hiding. Even the windmills were stopped. 

 

Quiet windmill on a Colorado farm 

Mountains have always given me a sense of eternal timelessness. I go to the mountains I grew up in over the years and nothing ever seems changed, except for the new wrinkles on people's faces. The world, the land is still the same – beautiful and untouched, as always. You get this feeling anywhere else in the world, where there are mountains.


We stumbled upon Vallecito Lake, about 20 miles away from our cabin. It's tucked away, like a precious secret, circled by mountain ranges, and it's crystal clear and cold as a mountain lake should be. It reminded me of a diminutive Lake Tahoe. There is nothing I love more than getting lost on roads I don't know, and taking in the nature, and nothing besides. Driving around on Colorado back roads is like that. You're one with the trees, the deer and the brass leaves and you feel bad for intruding and disturbing the eternal peace. 

 

Vallecito Lake under the aspen trees   

 

Detail on one of the many carvings (in dead, standing trees) around Vallecito Lake

 

On the side of the road, crossing the stream, on one of our drives. Right before we got to Vallecito Lake

In between our nature retreating and watching, we dropped by in the town of Durango, if for nothing else, but for sustenance and a few drinks. We didn't ride our horse to town, for provisions, like Linda McCartney said, but we did ride the 11 mile highway every day, and almost every day we almost hit a deer or an elk. You are truly in nature, even when on a paved road, here. Massive concrete, steel and glass mega-buildings of Manhattan, eat your hearts out!


Durango is your typical Western mountain town. Old buildings, of wood and brick, with their wooden entryways, with no alleys between them, still flank the sidewalks. You walk under wooden overhangs, with Western cowboy-book resonance in their names like Lone Spur Cafe, Pine Needle Mountaineering or Duranglers, or El Rancho Tavern. To not disturb the quiet of the setting it's in, Durango is also a quiet, sleepy kind of town, too. Nothing much rushes here. Coffee shops have lines that never move and food takes a while to come to your table. 

 

Downtown Durango - this vision of a train teleported me right back to Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman's time 

It's a bohemian kind of town, where they can still keep in business two music stores within 10 feet from one another, still selling vinyl and cd's, and a locally owned, hopping book shop, with new books, not just antiques. The Mac store is called The Mac Ranch.


It's a “feel good” kinda town, too: puppies are not only welcome everywhere, but every store owner has treats to give them, too. There are two establishments (The Himalayan Kitchen and the gift store, Dreams of Tibet) that sell originally Tibetan, Nepalese and Himalayan food, clothes and décor to support the Tibetan people. It's like a World Market, but … not a chain.


And don't let me forget about the local grub and drinks! I had heard that Durango is famous for its breweries, and it did not disappoint in the selection of beers, everywhere. The Main Avenue Madness breakfast at The Carver Brewing Company tastes exactly like what The South West should taste like: it's a mess of all things you can find in your kitchen – which is the only way to go for real food, really: perfectly roasted potatoes, black beans, peppers, mushrooms, onions, verde sauce. Like everywhere else in The West, we looked for hours for trout. We finally found it at The Mahogany Grill in the historic Strater Hotel, and it was fishy perfection. 

 

The trout at the Strater Hotel 

The clocks spin by a totally different speed here. No rush and no high blood pressure. Just a smooth feeling of passing the days, from dawn till sunset. Just like the river which does not know what it rushes itself onto, people and much of the world don't either. They live, they die, and pastures are still filled with horses, deer and yellow, brassy leaves, every fall, unmistakably and unplanned.

You'll find that in all mountain towns people speak slower, walk even more so, and they smile more. Here, they have decoded the secret of life and there is no more rushing towards any other goal. A cabin on a river is the only reality. The Rockies. A lake. A hideaway long weekend. The love of puppies, cozy sweaters. A fireplace at the end of the day. A journal. The love of life. What more is there to seek?! 

 

The Florida River, behind our cabin, in the sunset. Click on the picture for more shots of Durango and around.

A Grand View Indeed!

People look at clouds to figure out their shapes and see their resemblances with other life forms. I look at rocks and do the same thing.

Especially since I moved to Utah and I started visiting all the National Parks, you learn that every rock has a shape, a name and a story.

This past weekend, we drove through Canyonlands, one of Utah's five National Parks. It was our first time there. We're veterans of Zion and Arches, and I personally go back and forth between which one is my favorite. And then you see Bryce and then you see Canyonlands, and every one of them trumps the other for various and different reasons.

I do not have the literary genius of someone like Charles Bowden (“Blue Desert”, among other things) to describe the beauty, the peace, the miracle of deserts. I do not know how to evoke and retell the story of every canyon I saw, every bend in the flow of the Colorado and of the Green River and every story they wrote on every wall of the rocks they carved through. But I will try to record this trip, in my modest writing way, if at all.

All I have to tell you is that I felt as small as a pebble, and as humble as a monk in front of such eerie and outer worldly symmetry, elegance and grace.

Canyonlands is a rocky red desert, in the South-Eastern part of Utah, shaped by the erosion done by the Colorado and the Green River, alongside wind and precipitation. All these forces patiently, like a stone carver with a chisel, carve out shapes in the rock, over time. You drive into the park on paved roads, which guide you to many overlooks, from where you can see an ever changing view of the canyons below.

Although you can 'get an idea' about what makes the park unique with every overlook, to truly take in the whole park you'll have to either four wheel, hike an incredible amount of miles, or boat across the two rivers, to access the more hidden places and see it in its entirety. Just like they say that you cannot see The Louvre in one trip – you cannot see Canyonlands in one trip, or even ten, either. At over 500 square miles, the surface of land feels truly endless.

We just explored one of several main roads, the one cutting through the “Island in the Sky” area of the park and stopped at the overlooks available on it, on this trip. And how fitting the name of this area is! The park looks like either Mars or the Moon, pretty much void of vegetation, bright red, rugged and unforgivingly hot, floating in the sky, up above, where the overlooks are. There is no way anything or anyone can live in the rock which looks like poison. And yet, as barren, lonely, remote and dark as it looks, it also tells a story and has a life running right through its veins.

With each area we stopped at, another scene from some frozen-in-time play would enchant the eyes and entice the imagination.

Buck Canyon looked like a giant V shaped crevice in the crust of the Earth, with taller buttes scattered on the flat surface. 

The huge "V" shaped Buck Canyon

Although not part of the Canyonlands State Park, but its own State Park, Dead Horse Point looked like a winding maze: the Colorado river keeps changing course up and down and up and down this plane, creating these huge swan necks 200 or so feet deep into the Earth. You keep wondering to yourself if the Colorado is tired (or drunk) from so much winding about … 

The Colorado River at Dead Horse Point State Park

Green River Point is a mix between Dead Horse Point (the Green River winding, this time) and Buck Canyon (the many V shape cuts into the Earth). 

Green River Overlook

The winner of all the splendid views is the Grand View Point Overlook: here, God is surely showing off, just for kicks! The scene looks and feels as if peeled from a medieval play, where all courtmen and women are standing around in the Grand Hall, waiting for the ball to begin. Some of the standing rocks clearly depict heads of people, complete with hairdos and hats. It looks as if some volcano erupted just as they were having a get-together and it clad them all in hot lava, cooled over time, which rendered them eternal. They're still waiting to be unfrozen, or un-earthed from the fondant hot spill that killed them. They look full of life, under there. 

 

Bringing into focus the insane perfection and beauty of the Grand View Point Overlook. 
 

The shapes in the rocks are definitely a breathtaking spectacle. But what is more overwhelming and impressive than that is the sheer size of the spread of the land. The vastness and massiveness of the never ending plane, the amount of the sheets of rocks standing tall, unmoved for millions of years, for as long as the eyes can see. And you – a small dot on this land, trying to take it all in, you poor devil, and your brain and your retina not able to process this all!

The buttes and the sheets of rock, massive, standing on the flatter than flat red sheet of land reminded me of Monument Valley. The totem pole looking rocks at the Grand Point Overview and The Needles brought back memories of Bryce. But despite all these resemblances, Canyonlands is a park all in its own right – unique and deserving of equal fame of its other sister parks. 

The Monitor and Merrimac Buttes 

 

The Needles

The paved roads that bring you to the overlooks are flanked by green trees (surprisingly) and pastures. But the overlooks are hot looking craters, of nothing but rock and emptiness. Gaping, gouged, desert massive eye sockets, dead from staring into the sun for millions of years. Along the two rivers, you can see some green trying to survive. The whole area feels dead, however. No creatures, not even birds, other than crows. And who can announce death better than crows?!

We got lost for a day in this earthen, if barely, wonder. This is one of those trips where you know for sure one has to be seriously mixed up if they're not believing in something better and more powerful and creative than we will ever be. So much art; so much care; so much gusto and so much talent – how can anyone in the right mind deny the existence of something bigger than we might comprehend?! It dwarfs you and renders you helpless! This all cannot be a mistake, or happened by chance!

What is the purpose of our lives, a mere second in the millennia whose testament is written in front of us? It swallows you and your identity whole. What else is there left for us to do, to contribute to this planet, if something this sublime already exists?! Nothing but humility and reverence.

No answers. Just speechless and breathing, and taking it all in. And that would be enough for this one, small life.

 

Vladimir Nabokov: “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”
 - click on the picture to see the full album from this amazing tour and more beautiful places in Moab

 

From Chrysalis to Butterfly

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland 

Have you ever watched a butterfly come out of the shell of its chrysalis? I mean, really watched it and really saw every single little detail of what happens? It's not pretty.

First, there is some oozing and “bleeding” and goopy stuff comes our, as the chrysalis cracks open. Then, the butterfly pokes a little bit at a time from it, first one antenna, then, another one. Then, a foot, then, another one. Then, the tip of a wing, and then another one, till it frees itself up from the straight jacket it's been in, which all of a sudden is no longer big enough for it.

But even when it's free, it's sort of in a shock. It just sits there, a little wobbly, kinda trying to figure out for itself what the heck happened and how it will be supposed to move and function in the new body it just got. It will look dizzy for a bit, a little shaken up, still with goop all over it, maybe still a bit in pain from the birth, but it will try to move about and try to find its new feet.

Like I said, wobbly at first, shaky, but pushing through it. It won't be for a little while till you see that Monarch spreading wings and taking off on its own. And it is what's it supposed to happen.

Although the drastic transformation is mostly internal, this is kind of what coming out of heart surgery feels like. You go in as you, no doubt (just as the larva thinks it goes in as itself). And they take you away in this … room you only heart about afterwards, because you won't remember… They, then, completely transform you and then, when you finally come to, you start noticing how much your body has changed. And you have no idea what's inside, either!

It's not pretty, at first. When I came to, it was probably 2 AM on February 12, in the ICU, and all I felt was thirsty. I never crushed ice in my teeth before, but then, it's all I wanted to do. I noticed a scar on my lip, scabbed over – I figured from the breathing tube I had in me during surgery. Then, I noticed my right arm had a brick taped to it with catheters going into my wrist. Then, I noticed I could not feel my left arm and leg. I said all these things to the nurses who were hovering over me around the clock.

I asked a lot of questions (the butterfly would, too, had it had a voice, I am sure of it!). I had no idea what happened after I had fallen asleep in the anesthesia room the day before – I asked if I had a stroke (no), if they did circulatory arrest on me (look it up, it's fun – they freeze you up so your brain won't eat up oxygen) (yes), I asked how long was I in arrest (38 minutes), if they fixed my heart (yes, 'I had a looong surgery' they said), if my husband was there (no), or the surgeon (no) – it was 2 AM and they had a long day, so they went home. I didn't ask what they did to me, but the nurses volunteered that information: my surgery was very complex, and very long (12 hours); they replaced my aortic valve, my ascending aorta, and they did a quadruple bypass surgery. I remember being scared: “Oh, my God, I have so many new and moved around parts in me! How will this all work?!”.

Then, the next day, I started feeling more and noticing more: three catheters in my neck, four tubes in my chest, another catheter in my bladder, bandages around my left leg, bandage on my chest and lots of scabs and lots and lots of bruises: my whole left leg was blue, my groin was blue, my stomach, too. I was an experiment. Will I ever come out of this? Will I ever heal? Will I ever come out of this bed?! All I wanted was ice – this is as far as I was thinking.

But I did come out. After 2 days in ICU I took my first walk and ate my first half of a banana and 4 grapes. After 7 more days of pain and grumbling and more tests, and even a random heart attack, just for safe measure, all in the regular hospital room, I got to come home, one chest tube still in me. I got to be driven home in our own car, and sleep in my own bed that night. Well, “sleep” is a metaphor for “laying there all night staring at the ceiling and whining in pain”.

After coming home, the process of breaking loose into my new “me” started. I was the same person, but my body had to learn a whole lot of new tricks to be able to get around. After two more weeks, the chest tube came out. After a month from surgery, I took my first nature walk and started shooting (camera, not gun) again. After 6 weeks, I drove for 10 minutes again. I thought it would feel freeing, but it didn't. It felt painful once more. After 7 weeks, this week, my cardiac rehab will be done. I built up endurance to walk up to 45 minutes at 2.8 mi/hour. I started (with the drainage tube in me) with 8 minutes at 1.8 mi/hour and I was sure I was going to heart attack again on the treadmill. But I didn't. I did all these in my new body, with new limitations I had no idea that were possible, with new pain, and new sensitivities everywhere. But I am not stopping. You can't stop once you're up straight.

I have two out of countless scabs still hanging onto me. The bruises are all gone.

How do I feel looking back?! I feel speechlessly lucky and breathlessly humble! After all that I just told you they did to me while I was asleep, I am alive, you all! I am breathing! I eat and lay down, and walk and hug my cat and my husband and I have my brain all here with me. Now that the strong drugs are long gone (gone with the tube), I am, in my head, the same person I ever was before. Hard to believe they drained my body from all the blood, moved it to a machine and put it back in me, changed the course of my blood stream, froze me, for crying out loud, and then put me all back together again to make me look to you all as me again.

How does that not just wanna make you cry?! I just want to hug my surgeon till I die and thank him forever for this. I don't know how many years I was given with this, but I am grateful for today. I am grateful that I kept my brain and that my previously clogged up vessels can now function and pump life giving blood to all my body. I am grateful that I get to see the sun every morning, still. I am in awe!

Just as yoga taught me a billion years ago, the hardest part, really, of all this was quieting down my monkey mind. I am born to be a control freak. So, my nature is to always put my mind in control of anything that happens to me. But with this, you completely have to relinquish everything (your body, your functions, your freedom, your health, your brain … everything you are) to strangers, and let yourself go down that slippery slide. You must trust them (and boy, what a lesson this is in trust!) that they know what they're doing, and trust God that He'll bring you back. After that monkey climbs down from your shoulder, and walks away, you can, too walk into the hospital and volunteer yourself for this life giving surgery. This body stuff, these pains and limitations, these are easy to manage – I am back in control now, you see. But the hardest part was that letting go, closing the eyes and letting the doctors transform my heart to prepare me for my rich, beautiful life to come.

Right now, I feel like the butterfly who came out of that shell, but it's still trying to figure out how it all works now. I am still wobbly. I still need help doing most of everything around me, but I can do more every day and definitely more than chew ice, like that first night in the ICU.

One step in front of the other. Just like the chrysalis doesn't kill the butterfly, it just makes it better, prettier, different, the surgery didn't kill me, much, much to my surprise. It didn't make me prettier on the outside (sorry, all), but I hear it did make my heart prettier. All I know is that it's beating and my surgeon thinks “my heart has completely no murmur (music to the ears of a heart patient who has been used to the murmur for 15+ years now) and my lungs are gorgeous”. I'll take that as inside beauty for sure.

One day, slowly, I'll grow into my wings. One day, I will fly again. For now, I am figuring out my limbs, two of which are still numb. Still, I am in awe of this miracle that the human body is and of its power to regenerate, transform and keep going. There is no way there is not something magical, something we cannot explain for ourselves, something beyond out ability to comprehend in this world to make us come back from something like this! No way!

Good to be back!

   

Before - the morning of the surgery as I was taken into the anesthesia room.

After - a month from surgery, walking on a nature path.