Returning to Old Places and Discovering Something New. Always.

I am writing this as I am sitting in my hotel bed somewhere in The Rockies after climbing up the elevator while listening to the hotel radio playing “Linger” by The Cranberries. I remember where I was the first time I listened to this song and fell in love with the Irish band: I was in Romania and the year was probably around 1990 something ... How long I have come! How far I have traveled! ... This life truly is a trip!

This is my umpteenth hotel in the past two months which have had me traveling from the Atlantic to The Rockies, to the Atlantic and back to The Rockies again ... How I could manage to do so much travel while dodging two hurricanes still boggles my mind, but that is a topic for another blog...

For this one, I just wanted to stop and remember the fun times we have had, the new places I found and the old ones I have rediscovered during these past few months.

We started this marathon with a return trip to Asheville. We had not been there together for 11 years. Just saying that sounds wrong, but it is true. 

Asheville seems both stuck in a timeless warp and anew and fresh with new blood at the same time. The streets are filled with hippies, Krishnas, dirt, music, joy, laden with history and memories; a bon vivant-ness flows in the olden streets at dusk on a Saturday; the breweries abound and lure the traveler in with summer brews waiting to be savored, the mountains are a stone-throw away, ready to be explored. At the end of August, Asheville was still very hot. The city seemed a lot more crowded and a lot more happening than I remembered it ... That was the new part.


The Biltmore was gorgeous, in its everlasting beauty. The only thing that rivaled its beauty and richness this time around was an exhibit of Chihuly’s works of art - stunning beauty creations of massive amounts of glass and steel. The glassworks paired with the natural beauty of the gardens and the mountains, juxtaposed with the carefully detailed architecture of The Castle gave us a wonderful escape from our daily grind into a world all its own - grandiose, rich, timeless.

Chihuly at Biltmore was one of those things you'll remember as long as you'll live. It was not on my bucket list, but it so should have been. If you ever have the opportunity to see this artist's work, don't hesitate! How something so fragile can withstand so much nature and abuse is amazing to me. A great reminder of every one of us: we're so brittle but we all weather storms.

We had brunch at The Grove Park Inn, and that was hands down the most varied and plentiful brunch I have ever had anywhere. I thought for years that the brunches in Sundance or Snowbird, Utah were well done, but The GPI has them beat.  Till proven otherwise - the best. I usually go for the smoked salmon at these feasts, but I had not one but three choices of smoked fish with this one: salmon, trout, and mackerel, alongside any other seafood you can imagine, from shrimp, to oysters and lobster ... This just to name one kind of the many kinds of dishes they offer.

The majestic stonework at The Grove Park Inn

It’s amazing that we did so much in Asheville just in a one-night weekend. I am so glad we are back in these parts where we could escape to so many places within driving distance from us, on impulse and be able to see and do so much!


In September, we went to our first Triangle Heart Walk, which benefits the American Heart Association and gives the money to the research in our communities. I have participated in it before in other communities, and this has been a cause which I have supported, for obvious reasons (if you know me) for years. All I can say about this event is that it ... was ... hot. Not just hot, but exhaustingly hot ... We were wimps and walked 1 mile instead of the 3 because it was brutal! As a heart patient, it was a great meet: I always like to hear the stories of other people “like” me - we’re really all unique and every heart condition is different. This was my first time meeting a heart transplant patient and being every bit as amazed, in awe, and overwhelmed as I always thought I would be when faced with such an individual. He was an inspiration. There is something special about people who get to die a little and then come back, there is no doubt about this. None.


Also in September I got to jump on a plane and come to Park City, UT for a conference. It has always been melancholy to travel back to the place I called home: my first married, happy home, for seven years. A place where I had always dreamed I would live. It’s a bitter-sweet feeling to go back: I miss these parts but I know, in my heart, that I don’t belong here anymore. Park City was cool and bright gold from the changing aspen; a perfect backdrop for the start of the fall.

Aspen mountains on the lake in Park City, Utah

Back on the East Coast it was time to take my sweet, amazing nephews to the SC beach - one of them for the first time in his little 7 year-long life! Call me crazy, but for a childless person, I have always enjoyed traveling with kids. It is amazing to see how they step out of their comfort zone and explore a world they didn’t know that existed. We started by barely being able to pull them out of the house, and pry them away from their devices with more or less force, and we ended with not being able to round them back up and bring them back in the room when they discovered how much fun jumping over the waves or floating in the lazy river, or sinking in the pool is. For two kids raised in the frozen tundra of Canada the beach was “pure paradise.” They said as much. To see the sparkles in their eyes with every new “different” restaurant experience or shopping adventure is rejuvenating. Reminds us, old, and cynical people, that the world should never cease to wonder us, as long as we stay open and come out to meet it.

First time together jumping the ocean waves - a breathless moment in time. So grateful to have been able to give them this and share this with them.

In Park City, I wore sweaters and scarves. In Myrtle Beach, SC, I wore a bathing suit and thought I was literally melting, decomposing, surely dying from sun exposure ...


Again, Myrtle Beach is one of those trips back in time for me, but I always make a point of finding something new to explore even in my old timey places. This time was the Pier 14 Restaurant which is literally on the Ocean (on stilts, part of a pier) and which did not exist 20 years ago when I lived there. The grouper filet and the mashed potatoes were to die for! I can say I got my seafood fix during this trip, for sure, and as any respectable coast town theirs doesn’t disappoint.

Blaga (look him up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Blaga) says that "eternity was born in a village." I say that we see eternity with our own naked eye in every sunset we watch.

There is something of that when the sun is being born from the immensity of the sky and it's reflecting its birth into the immensity of the ocean ... Time just stands still forever ...

And after all that adventure, I am back in The Rockies for more work and maybe some play, too ... As exhausting as these past two months have been, and as much as I still miss home, I am very fortunate, lucky and blessed beyond belief to be able to do this much. Not just financially, not just through the grace of my employer, but also through the grace of God and the knowledge of all my doctors who keep me going at this speed in my advancing age (aren’t all our ages advancing?!), with my advanced health problems.


I am also grateful that the world we live in is, still, allowing to some extent for us to mov about freely and explore it deeply. This is no small gift especially nowadays! 

I will continue to push on, open more doors, discover more of what this life has to give me. One page at a time.

“ ... if you could return, don't let it burn, don't let it fade...” (The Cranberries, Linger)

Re-finding Home

We have been back here, in The South, for five months now. It seems surreal to say the least how months just accumulate on one's journey through this life without one as much as noticing it or hearing it. But here we are. We've been Southerners for five months!

It's been a mixture of melancholy, excitement, sadness and joy that I have savored these months with – a mixture that has been, to be honest, unexpected. Joy and excitement I would have expected, maybe even melancholy, but sadness? That was surprising!

There is sort of a sadness to be back. There is sometimes sort of a longing for what we just left behind. I miss the mountains sometimes. I get lost dreaming about my next trip to The West. This, I did not expect.

There is sort of a reset button you have to push when you move anywhere, but especially when you move back to almost square one. But not quite. And it's not easy to do it. The sadness might come also from the fact that the time seems to stand still here. Not much newness in these parts, and my body is saying: “you needed new things, not more of the same old ...”. There is no smart response I can give to that.

There is also a personal time, a time that did move and did grow, and matured elsewhere. This time, all internal to me, lived in the hard and harsh Rockies for a while, got beaten down by canyon winds, and turned red from red rock dust in the desert. This personal, internal time, living mostly in my mind wants to be roaming and climbing trails somewhere far, far away, close to the aspen groves and the rocky peaks.

I try to bring my heart home – but home is now an elusive concept, I guess. I try to rein it in back into the slow flowing Southern hollow … and it keeps wanting to stay wild. And that's where that sadness comes from: being forced to reboot when all your heart wants to do is fly … It also comes, somewhat, from the fact that friends you thought you had seem elusive now and although pretty much next door, they are swallowed by their daily lives and there is no room for you. You have to start anew even with them. But people forget. In Romanian we say that “When people's eyes cannot look into each other's anymore, they look for someone else's.” Such is life!

The truth is, however, this damn weather! It's been horrible since we got back. Probably one of the worst winters we'll ever live to talk about, mostly because we did not expect it to be this cold. The cold alone is enough to drive you bonkers, the lingering cold for days on end.

We tried to get away from it by taking two trips this winter: one to the South Carolina beaches and one to Wilmington, NC. The two trips we took were the only windows we had into really taking in the beauty and the love and the warm welcome that The South has ready for us. The rest of the time, we have been cooped up in the house with the fireplace on and dreaming of far far lands …

If Jung's theory that our ancestors' experiences live deep in our brains amounts to anything, then at least one of my ancestors lived in the American South, at one point. I have no proof of this, and it is probably highly unlikely, but there is something awakened in me when I stroll an old Southern town.

Taking in the architecture, the live oaks, the huge magnolia trees, the endless amount of green lining the cobblestone streets fills my heart with a feeling of the familiar, and of the stuff that “home” is made of. There is a peace, a quiet lull in the speed of life here. The swish of the pine trees outside my house in the silent bright morning. Life is moving slowly here.

Alleyway lined by huge magnolia trees

There is something all-encompassing about olden like oaks. The stories they could tell. 

Strolling on familiar streets has a certain charm to it. Gaping the eyes wide open and losing my retina into the infinite Carolina blue skies connects me to God and beyond. It's a deep connection that I cannot let go of. A connection I craved for several years while away.

I love seeing cardinals in my neighborhood at any old hour. They're happy and feel at home themselves. I love the magnolia blooms which dared to pop despite the crazy weather.

In every grand outdoor staircase of every Colonial house, in every wrap-around porch, under every column, I see like a chimera at least one or two poofy dresses roaming about … Just for a second, and then they're gone. “A civilization gone with the wind ...”

Some of the grand old Colonial homes in Wilmington. You can hear history writing itself at an old rickety table with a squeaky old stylus

Spanish moss has me believing in ghosts again.

Time stood still back when the big mansions were built and they endure today. Manners are not old fashioned, and no one has ever met a stranger. Everyone's everyone else sweetheart, darling, or love. Even the grocery store lady calls us that. We have not met one person that was so much as indifferent to us. Everyone is nice and warm and we count our blessings.

This. This pace, this quiet land, the gratuitous smile of strangers on our weary hearts are balms that cure the longing for far away rocks. These are all reminders that old or new, like it or not, back-paddled or otherwise, we are home. And home is where you start over. And home is where you grow. Looking forward to some nicer weather and more adventures right here, in our new old back yard.

My American life started 20 years ago on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, about a mile away from this very spot. This year, I started my second coming to the South here, too. Just to get perspective, to think, regroup, and recenter. It was as breathtaking, daunting, scary and maddeningly exciting as 20 years ago. This is a sunrise .... 

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 ... 

The Summer of Open Ended Possibilities …

"Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day." -  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some people live for their Christmas and Thanksgiving traditions, I suppose. I live for the year round ones. I feared (I always do) that this summer was too short, just about as much as I always fear the winter is too long. Humans. Are we ever pleased?  

Always a planner, I had lists of new things to do this summer and I left room for the ordinary and routine as well. The hand that was dealt gave us both but not in the quantity we would have liked (again: just being human and expecting), I suppose: not enough newness and not enough oldness, in the end. Maybe just as much as our time and tired bodies could handle.

Even the mainstays take a new shape or form every year, depending on what changes happen in the local landscape, or how old and decrepit I am becoming to be able to handle them (differently) every year.

Other than getting away to Wyoming and to Snowbird for two weekends, we spent the summer pretty much around our area, just taking in the smells, tastes and trails of the mountains and cities close by. I remember when, living in the South East, my one and only dream was to travel to The Rockies and explore. The time and cash were always limited and I never got to do it when living there. Now, that dream is my backyard, and I cannot ever stop being grateful for everything my surrounds offer.

Every year, I am more and more amazed, surprised, thankful for everything I get to do around here. The “same” yearly things are not really the same – every sunset has different colors in it, and every rainbow a different shape. And every year, my eyes get older, and perceive new shades or stop perceiving the old ones – not sure. All the summer foods taste different every year, depending on how much or how little rain we got that season.

The aspen trees and pines are eternal in their beauty. The rocks are still towering and somber, protecting us, as good soldiers do, from winds, and tougher weather. But the air smells different and the wind feels different on our skins, with every season. I didn’t miss the desert fires this year, truthfully!  

There are some things that will be this year’s alone: this will be the year of lazy afternoons of canceled plans, and not-too-hot weather, but hot enough to call it “summer”. It was the first year (after 4 years of living here), when we actually had grass in the backyard. Well, weeds, mostly – but the year we had “green”.

 The unusual year of a poor tomato crop, but an equally unusual time of a huge herb and onions crop. Even peppers are better this year. The year of fresh Alaskan salmon grilled in the Payson park – I can still smell it! The year of discovering the peace and serenity of Payson Lakes, and the year we conquered part of the Timpanogos mountain. This will be the summer of my first rodeo, and of my first visit to a Mormon temple.

If this summer taught me one thing, it is, just like the song says: “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy”.

Really. Just step outside your door. There is always a trail waiting, a piece of skin left un-tanned,  a tomato stand peeking around the corner, a rose bush needed to be trimmed, a fruity drink waiting to be sipped, a sunset waiting to be watched…

There will also be lots of things we left undone on our summer list. But those are just cocooned possibilities for a later date. No regrets. Just our lives, in the future.

 

Tired and sighing, the sun is retiring for the season. The sunsets will be gentler and paler from here out, more shy, in the shrinking temperatures of the fall and then winter.

Click on the picture to see a brief journey, in pictures, of our 2014 summertime.

Sunset

When the breath goes, there will just be light ...

 

There is one thing I have not gotten tired of since I moved to Utah. Well, there are several, but one thing is a constant – and that is the largeness of the sky, its varied colors and ability to change in seconds, it seems, and create new ethereal celestial landscapes right above our head … For a weather that is pretty even and boring for long days on end, the sky definitely has tons of personality, here!

Just like the Eskimo language has tens of words for “white” or  “snow” the Rockies dialect of American English should have that many for “orange”, “red” and “blue” just to define what we see every day.

I always love the views from my back yard, in any weather, but the sunset is by far my favorite. It’s always new, and always leaves me speechless… And since we don’t have those many words yet, I am letting the pictures speak:

 

This is the Mount Timpanogos (first) and its little "baby brother" to its left, exactly across from my dining room patio. They are exactly at the North position in The Valley, so they don't get drenched in the sunset light . They are the more muted fixtures of this land.

 

The sun was completely set in this shot. I have no clue what that big, round spotlight is in the sky, but the sun it is not it! 

 

This is the view onto The West, right where the sun sets, over Utah Lake which you can see in some of the pictures.  Again, you see that spot of light in one of the shots (before last) which I have no clue how to define ...