Category Archives: Travel

Foodie Tuesday: And now for something not entirely different!

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Did you think that I would never, ever be done talking about lobster and lobster rolls? You might be right. A summer with trips to both the American northeast and Nova Scotia would be woefully incomplete for me, despite all of its charms and treasures, if it weren’t also a fully loaded lobster pilgrimage. So even though I made quite the pig of myself eating as many lobster rolls as I could lay hands upon while dashing through Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania, I had no compunction about keeping my eyes—and jaws—open for further lobster attractions on reaching Halifax.

This being my first visit to the Canadian Maritimes, I didn’t know for certain what to expect in this regard, although I was confident there would be some place I could get a bit of fresh Canadian (Atlantic) lobster. What I didn’t in the least expect was that it would be at the local outpost, right next door to our hotel, of a continent-wide and not especially high-end fast food submarine sandwich chain. That’s right: fresh lobster salad at SubWay. I’m just gonna go on record as saying that I have a new dash of respect for SubWay.

I like sandwiches and eat them reasonably often, but SubWay had fallen very low on the roster of places I opted to find my fix when I wasn’t making my own sammies. There are, in addition to any number of bistros and soup-and-sandwich specialty shops and cafes nearly everywhere in the western world these days, plenty of competing sandwich chains and most of them, in my opinion, more reliable for fresh ingredients and those, not as heavily processed as what I was getting for a while at SubWay stores. If this apparently annual offering of lobster salad (lobster meat with a minimum of mayonnaise binding it) ever moved close to where I was living, I would have to change my stance entirely, at least during the lobster event.

This is not to say that their sandwich would supplant, or even fully competes with, the lobster rolls that became objects not only of admiration but outright obsession at such places as Neptune in Boston—this, boosted, admittedly, by the house’s swell hand-cut fries—and Libby’s in Brunswick—my current chief heartthrob of lobster roll-dom, on the strength of a butter-toasted bun, options for cold-with-mayo or hot-with-melted-butter, and most importantly, the unsurpassable fresh and sweet perfection and massive quantity of lobster meat—these will not be usurped in the lobster roll pantheon by a mere sub shop lobster salad sandwich. But I owe the corporate sandwich emporium sincere admiration and kudos for giving an affordable and eminently edible, credible lobster sandwich. Not anyone’s run of the mill SubWay offering, that.

And if the chiller is refilled by the next lunchtime when I’m near enough to do it, I’ll buy it again. Because, as I’ve said before: Lobster.Photo: Lobster Again

Sorry, Texas!

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I’ve enjoyed these six years of living in north Texas, and I expect to enjoy the next whatever-number of years here, too. But after just returning from a roots tour of sorts in the Pacific Northwest, visiting family and familiar territory where I grew up, I am reminded that the riches of one’s birthplace can have no insuperable competition elsewhere in the universe if one has been as blessed with hometown wealth as I have been. I won’t say much more, because yes, I am happy wherever I find love and landscape enough to keep me contented, but I will leave you with a couple of photos as food for thought on the subject just the same. I suspect you know whereof I speak, no matter where your roots lie.

Photo: Mt. Rainier through the Lupines

Texas Hill Country has its magnificent bluebonnets in proliferation in a good spring season, to be sure, but are they any more exquisite than the carpeting of blue lupines on the flanks of Mt. Rainier in *her* glory?

Photo: Raingardens, Seattle

There aren’t *that* many cities where a mere parking strip is as likely as not to be a fully fledged Raingarden, loaded with a mass of flowers, vegetables and fruit, and xeric plants all exploding with texture and color.

Photo: Seattle Skyline from Puget Sound

A soaring modern skyline, the deep, cold waters of the Sound, and the beach life of leisure scented with fresh-caught fish and chips. Don’t tell me that isn’t pretty fine stuff!

Foodie Tuesday: Lobsterama 2015

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Digital illo from a photo: Lobsterama Nobody who knows I just spent two weeks in the northeastern states would have the slightest difficulty, if asked, figuring out what one of my main goals during the entirety of the visit would be: eat as much great lobster as I can find and afford. So yeah, that’s what I did. I don’t eat all-lobster-all-the-time, because it would be bordering on the criminal to ignore the great Italian food in north Boston or the regional favorites in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania (all of which we either spent time in or passed through on our road trip last week), never mind to skip all of the other fabulous fresh seafoods on offer. Fish and chips, sushi, New England clam chowder, grilled or roasted or sautéed or fried what-have-you. Fabulous, all, when beautifully made by experienced locals.

But lobster. Lobstah, as New Englanders tend to pronounce it. Heaven on earth, I say.

In the Northeast, perhaps the most signatory, elegantly simple, and delicious preparation of lobster is the lobster roll. It’s a sandwich. The standard definition of this is a split-top bun, hotdog style, filled with chunks of lobster meat. The commonest way to prepare and serve this is to either mix the meat with mayonnaise into a lobster “salad” to fill the bun or serve it otherwise entirely plain and put melted butter on it, either mixed in ahead or served on the side. Supremely uncomplicated, perfectly delectable.Photo: Lobsterama 2

Some restaurants and clam shacks serve this in any number of decorated and variably seasoned ways, the most familiar of which might involve some chopped celery and/or snipped fresh herbs, Old Bay Seasoning, minced onion, lettuce leaves, or some few other well-intended adulterations. Some vary the bread ever so slightly, toasting or butter-grilling its sides, or using something other than the typical soft white bread bun. But not many dare monkey substantially with the daringly exposed combination that is so beloved. One does not defy the gods of tradition with impunity, especially when the tradition involves something like lobster that in its pure form is so delicate and easily overwhelmed by fuss.

Photo: Lobsterama 3

The height of northeastern innovation: serve a lobster roll on a *round* bun instead of the traditional split-top hotdog bun. Whoa! What’s *next*???

This year’s first lobster roll stop was at a venerable institution which shall remain nameless, where in times past I had revered the lobster roll as one of the area’s best, and a hidden gem at that, because the house is mainly known for and devoted to quite other culinary traditions. It used to be a butter-grilled roll that, albeit the standard split-top bun, was slathered somewhat liberally in salted butter before being put on the griddle, and then the lobster meat served with nothing more than a small amount of very simple mayo or a splash of melted butter, and if I recall, a nice wedge of lemon on the side. Absolutely ideal, in my view. But new ownership and a new lead cook always like to offer the New and Improved, which is seldom really either, and so it was in this instance, a lobster roll whose newer identity was of a sandwich with chunks of lobster in it, hardly the pristine joy of times past. Ah, well. The meat was reasonably fresh and sweet, and certainly the chance to find a lobster sandwich of any sort under about $30 (USD) in north Texas is not only limited but possibly, ludicrous.

Photo: Lobsterama 4

Slaw on the side, fries rather than chips? Getting a little racy, aren’t we. A bit of green *in* the sandwich? My, what slippery slope is this!

After that, it was hit-and-miss hunting time, and the variations, while slim, kept the pursuit interesting. Another commonality when one’s lobster-rolling along is that most are served with french fries, or even more likely, potato chips/crisps, and a drink. Not more. A few places widen their scope to include slaw of some sort or perhaps even a green salad; corn on the cob; some kind of slow-cooked beans. Picnic fare, primarily. You might see hot sauce or ketchup or malt vinegar or other condiments on offer, and the drinks might be any number of things, though probably something equally picnic-friendly like iced tea, sodas, lemonade, or beer is the most popular. None of these is unwelcome, to me, but again, I don’t see any special need for any of them either. There’s a perfectly good reason that the tradition stands firm. Excellence. It’s all in the execution.

Photo: Lobsterama 5

Next thing you know, somebody’s serving *plantain* fries (kinda hard, if you ask me, and not especially flavorful—maybe a shot of that Old Bay Seasoning would’ve come in handy there—but kudos for trying) and smoked Spanish paprika in the sandwich mayonnaise. Pretty soon we’ll be seeing cats and dogs living together and the dish running away with the spoon!

And when anyone gets that down pat, there’s no faulting the grandness of the invention. We found lobster happiness in several popular and highly touted locations along our short road trip route, both in towns and seaside, in shabby old rustic sheds and in white-tablecloth establishments. We found slight disappointments in a few, too, though nothing drastic. If we saw something less than enticing in the lobster rolls being served up before ours, we could always opt for any of the other treats I mentioned earlier, and we certainly did, in large quantities. We even discovered one of the currently trendy spots favored for its semi-puritanical goodness, right on the cover of the Sunday supplement.

As usual, of course, the satisfaction of the find was greatest when we listened to a few locals mention in a sidelong way a place that is a genuine jewel disguised as the neighborhood convenience store, truly convenient in that it lay about five minutes by car from one of our rented places. Driving by there, you wouldn’t guess that at the picnic tables by the parking lot, let alone at those tiny tables and chairs squeezed in the back corner of the store by the shelves of motor oil and snack packets and aspirin, you can have what we found to be the freshest, least in need of further elaboration, lobster rolls we’ve had yet. But boy, did we—and that, three days in a row.

Photo: Lobsterama 7

When experiencing famous regional classics like lobster roll, one might be compelled to try some other regional specialities alongside. Like the unique Grandma Utz’s Handcooked Potato Chips, fried in 100% lard (yep, porky tasting) and a can of Moxie soda, a gentian root flavored carbonated beverage that lives up to its catchphrase of being Distinctively Different, though I can’t vouch (yet, at least) for its characterization as Nerve Tonic. Unless you count the fact that I’m widely considered to have a ‘lot of nerve’. Never mind the unusual accoutrements: the lobster roll at Libby’s is easily king of all I’ve had so far.

We’d’ve stayed the whole two weeks there (possibly just sleeping under the stock shelves) if we had known. The store owner’s lobsterman husband standing and cracking the just-caught, freshly cooked magnificence just a meter away from the service counter where we were ordering was the clearest possible <angels singing> moment of knowing that when we got our enormous lobster rolls we would be deliriously happy. And yes, we were. Even the “Small” (normal hotdog-sized) roll was jammed with huge chunks of sweet, sweet fresh lobster just faintly kissed with mayo (Days One and Two) or melted butter (Day Three, and the favorite, by a lobster’s antenna). The Medium and Large rolls were, well, too much of a good thing, but not so much so that we didn’t attempt them as well. As one should, because, well…  Lobster. Amen.

Photo: Lobsterama 8

Large enough to engulf the plate, but can one *really* have too much of perfection?

My Word on It

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Photo: Early MusicBEMF. Road trip. Wedding. Dad’s Day. Arguments. Home. Adventures. “I love you.”

What do they all have in common? One word.

Family.

I’ll bet you were going for: Love. And of course, you would also be correct, because that’s the very definition of family for me, as you well know. It’s not biology; it’s not pedigree and legal contracts and historical ties. It’s love. And love is not, for me, dependent on any of the aforementioned characteristics and descriptors, though it may—and I hope it does—have a close relationship with them more often than not. It’s respect and trust, support and kindness, even in the middle of stress and disagreement, illness, injury, confusion, and chaos. I am so very, very fortunate and blessed and grateful to find myself in the midst of an extraordinarily big, rich family network that comprises biological and legal relatives, yes, but also much more than that: a wide range of dear friends and comrades who are more than mere acquaintances or colleagues can ever be, each one tying me further to the next.

BEMF [the Boston Early Music Festival] was the beginning of the most recent two-week series of family events for me and, as in my previous times there, a joy from start to finish. As an arts event, it has very few peers in the world, being a week-long gathering of superb artists and dedicated audiences who converge for the love and celebration of Early Music and all of its many concomitant delights and beauties, all in a magnificent city. This biennial visit was a typically lovely one, starting with the gathering of our Early Music family from around the continent and overseas, especially the wonderful singers, players, producers, conductors, and other aficionados of the genre; they hailed from the university where my spouse works, well-loved Canadian spots, and many of the states and companies in which we have connected with such marvelous people. On arrival in Boston, we settled into our rented digs with a pair of our dear adopted kin and began the week with the rehearsal and performance of the university’s Collegium Singers and Baroque Orchestra friend-colleague crew whose concert was the impetus for the BEMF visit. And a wonderfully successful one, at that.

What followed was a week packed with beautiful music of all kinds set into the interstices between superb performances of the trilogy of Monteverdi operas and his 1610 Vespers, one of the most significant and exquisite foundational parts of the whole Early Music oeuvre and experience. The weather treated us all remarkably kindly, the food was as always inviting, varied, and delicious, and the historic and aesthetic pleasures of the city and immediate area renewed my love of being a happy observer and tourist there.

Next came renting a car and road-tripping to the Maine and Connecticut coasts, places I’d never been before and my partner, not in many years. Wandering gorgeous little towns and seaside regions like Brunswick and Bowdoinham, Maine, and Stonington and Mystic, Connecticut, and all sorts of big and little cities and towns around them with little specific agenda other than the rooting out of great seafood and scenery (more about both will surely follow here in many posts to come) was great post school year stress relief and entertainment in large measures. Spending time simply meandering in the wonders of the American northeast with my beloved, even better. A great time to reinforce why I love the guy so much and feel immeasurably blessed to live with him for the long run.Photo: Traffic Jam

Was there stormy weather and bad traffic in our two-week outing? Yes, both real and metaphorical. Nature dictates the occurrence of these things around us, and human nature, within us. We’re all designed to need rebooting from time to time, if not a good boot in the booty. Just before heading home after the whole two-week extravaganza of beauty, wonder, love, happiness, and unbelievably good things, I got into an argument with my most beloved spouse—really angrily, ridiculously angrily. Over absolutely nothing. We were both very tired, at the end of a whole school year of huge commitments and busyness plus two weeks of (great and glorious fun notwithstanding) travel and social events and the demands inherent in both, and knowing we’d come home to huge lists of chores and catch-up tasks for both of us.

I’m not lying when I say we are not a fighting couple. But we do disagree, and frequently. One friend cheerily calls us the Bickersons for our style of daily communication, and I’m sure is not entirely feigning his worry that we’re going to don boxing gloves and just duke it out any minute, being an equally balanced pair of supremely stubborn and finicky people. Most of the time we equably agree-to-disagree, because what we do argue about is virtually always, as in the above case, nothing. Often, it’s mere semantics, each of us saying pretty much exactly what the other is saying but in such different personal language that it sounds like we’re worlds apart, and when we really are on different pages, it’s not about anything crucial to the foundations of our marriage. We share our core values, no matter how the day is going.

So by the end of the hour yesterday, tempers cooled down, and by today, I was firmly reminded that I would do well to keep my trap shut long enough to realize how petty and pointless the disagreement is before wasting any energy on arguing a non-point. I never feared that we didn’t still love each other or that a grave emergency was going to occur if he didn’t see the light and agree with me forthwith, but you’d not have guessed that from the way I was talking. How silly of me, and how pointlessly rude. How sorry I am.

I’ll at least give myself the concession that this is how things go sometimes with those we love the most, our family. We put on the proverbial boxing gloves because we love and care too much to just stomp off into the sunset and never get back to I’m Sorry and I Love You. It hurts, yes it does, to argue, and perhaps the more so pointedly when I know in my heart it’s over something idiotic and meaningless, but I suppose it’s far preferable to not having enough passion to vent and relent.

This misadventure was followed by not only reconciliation but remembering that it was, of all things, Father’s Day. We weren’t in one place (with cell reception, anyhow) long enough to call our two fabulous dads right on the day and give them the fervently felt thanks and love they deserved on the occasion—though, arguably (no pun intended), we could have made a pretty quick call to at least one in the time we wasted arguing. Being longtime family members of the truest sort, Dad W and Dad S will undoubtedly forgive our tardiness and just be glad we get around to calling tonight with belated greetings for the occasion. They are both past-masters at the whole Real Love thing, anyway.

Which brings me back into the middle of the story. I haven’t forgotten that way back in the first line of this post I mentioned a wedding. It was the excuse for our road trip after leaving Boston…why fly home to Texas and then back north within a week if a week’s holiday in between beckons? It was also, and no surprise, one of the clear and dazzling highlights of the whole fortnight’s expedition. Two other dear members of our extended family (both former students of my spouse’s) now uniting in the contract of marriage, in a fairytale sort of wedding held in the bride’s parents’ garden where the long threatening rain consented to abeyance, not because to do otherwise would have been a crime against the sweetness of the day but because it was probably more appropriate that the tears being shed were all joyful ones by various members of the wedding party and fond attendees.

There was visual gorgeousness throughout, just as with last year’s wedding of another such pair of adopted-kin sweethearts that took us to Puerto Rico, and as in that instance, also perfectly thought out and enacted to fit and represent the couple in question. The settings were spectacularly prepared, music exquisitely performed by musicians near and dear to the marrying couples, the wedding parties looking like some kind of ethereal Hollywood-designer versions of how wedding parties usually look, and the after-parties a couple of ones guaranteed to be recounted for ages by everyone who attended. And the friend who performed the marriage ceremony for this week’s bride and groom, for whom I am told this was her first such duty, spoke simply and eloquently in the most appropriate of ways for the occasion.

The centerpiece of her brief address of the bride and groom was recognizing their deep and remarkable commitment to family. To the community of care and comfort and love found in people who have chosen each other and stand together willingly, if not willfully, through thick and thin. Those present on the day were a clear part and example of this way of life. And it was impossible not to respond in kind, to acknowledge the connection and delight in it, and promise together to continue to seek it out.

I promise. You have my word on it. That word, you know—Family.Photo: The Family Dance

Foodie Tuesday: The Not-So-Great Pretender

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Unskilled as I am at so many culinary things, my well-intentioned fakery in attempting to prepare favorite treats from various delicious cuisines is not only highly unlikely to ever be quite accurate in its representation of the real deal but also just plain goofy and messy. I apologize to any purists out there, but I’m not above stealing ideas from everywhere I’ve ever found foods to love. And often, putting my own twisted twist on them, too. Perfect accuracy may, after all, be slightly overrated.Photo: Korean BBQ

After a recent delicious trip to a Korean BBQ house here in north Texas, I got good and hungry for a host of tasty Asian-inspired treats I hadn’t had in a while. I particularly wanted to revisit a recipe I hadn’t made by hand in many, many years: Jiaozi, or potstickers. And of course, I wandered off on my usual tangents. Making the wrapper dough wasn’t my best skill even when I was supervised by my teachers in my Chinese language, culture, and cuisine workshop back in college, and I had it in mind to attempt a gluten-free version on top of that, this time around, so instead of getting a nicely malleable dough in which to wrap the filling and practice my dumpling pleats—the one part of the wrapping that I was reasonably good at doing, thanks to Mom’s early training of me in the arts of tender lefse dough handling and pie crust edge crimping—I got falling-apart dough that was more easily squeezed around the filling in highly abstract, squishy-squashy little dumplings.

Pretty, they were not. I will attempt to revise the dough with the addition of egg binder next time and report back. But I got my poor little raggedy jiaozi to hold together just enough to fry and steam them, and the ingredients were at least agreeable enough to taste passable in the event, so I will keep trying. Meanwhile, I give you these little wounded stegosaurs:Photo: The Homeliest Jiaozi

The Homeliest Jiaozi this Side of the Yangtze

Make jiaozi wrapper dough: 3 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour + 1/4 tsp salt + 1 1/4 cups cold water [+ 1 egg, probably, for future reference]. Knead well into a nice elastic dough, wrap and refrigerate to rest for a minimum of 30 minutes.

Make filling: cook 1/2-1 cup minced meat (I used lamb this time) with 1 T minced fresh ginger, 1 tsp finely grated lemon/lime zest, 1 tsp minced fresh jalapeño, 1 handful sugar snap peas sliced crosswise into small rings, 1/1 rib celery (minced), 1 tsp minced shallots, good splashes of Tamari, rice vinegar, and dry Sherry, and a small splash of toasted sesame oil. Drain and cool the mixture slightly.

Divide the wrapper dough into 60 pieces, starting work with 1/4 of it at a time and keeping the rest chilled until ready to prepare dumplings. Roll each little piece into a ball and then into a flat circle, about 3″ in diameter. Put a small spoonful of meat filling on the wrapper, pull the sides into a half-moon shape around it, and gently pleat the curved edge, sealing it with water, egg wash, and/or a fork’s tines. Or, if your dough behaves like mine did, pull it up around the filling and squeeze the sorry-looking little objects into submission.

Pour a little cooking oil (I used avocado) into a large, flat pan, place the dumplings curved side up in the oil like little half-moon sailboats with just a little space between them, and put the pan on medium heat. As the bottoms of the jiaozi begin to brown, pour a little broth or water over them (just about 1/4″ or so), cover the pan, and let them steam gently for a few minutes to firm up, watching that the heat doesn’t get too high, or the liquid will cook away completely or break the dumplings into mush. At this point, the jiaozi can be refrigerated in a covered dish to be finished later. I put mine in a microwave-proof small casserole that still allowed them to sit on their flat bases in one layer, pouring the remaining steaming liquid over the top, so that I could finish steaming them and, if needed, crisping their little bases, when I was about to serve them for lunch the next day. Or you can, of course, keep on with the steaming and crisping for immediate eating.

Serve them hot, with a saucy little blend of Tamari, vinegar, and a few hot pepper flakes or added crushed fresh ginger on hand for dipping them.

Rules of Travel

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Photo montage: Rules of TravelFrom my first days of international exploration, when I was still a wide-eyed college kid meandering Europe with my older sister, I recognized that whatever differences I see and experience in each place and on each expedition, there always seem to be threads of very familiar commonality as well. My sister and I dubbed these rather predictable elements of the journey our Rules of Travel. There is often a noticeably preset quality to certain places, events, and happenings that can make me feel, simultaneously, utterly out of my element and surprisingly at home wherever I roam.

For example, personal comfort is the lens through which I always view my current place in the world, so it’s only natural that such things as temperature, relative safety, quantity of elbow room, and other such characteristics always feel slightly less ideal than, well, my ideal. So one of our Rules went a bit like this:

Degrees of ambient temperature in the waiting area for a winter train are inversely proportional to the number of minutes before the train arrives.

That wonderful three-and-a-half month trip happened to be in the year of a record cold winter, when typically easy-rolling European trains were stranded or derailing, never mind having trouble keeping to a tight schedule, when towns that normally were undaunted by modest drifts of snow became isolated spots on a vast white map, unconnected by their accustomed transport and communications alike and filled with a cohort of folk ranging from the slightly mystified to the miffed, who were parked there perforce until such time as a bit of thaw or an intrepid snowplow should free them again. Needless to say, our itinerary moved in unpredictable fits and starts that found us standing for rather extended periods shivering on train platforms, huddled in our entire inventories of clothes layered together with a few sympathetic donations from relatives’ and friends’ closets, wondering not just when but if our train would ever arrive, and finding that it was essentially up to chance no matter how everyone tried.

Dashing through many a train station, airport, and tourist venue over the same trip, we had plenty of opportunity to observe a number of other repeated elements.

One obvious constant of student travel like ours was that funds were ever seemingly flush only in currencies not applicable in our present location; the corollary to this rule was that we always managed to arrive in said location on a Saturday evening, when the banks would not be open again for the exchange of funds into the local currency until Monday morning. By that time at least one of us was actively considering whether the peeling wallpaper in our shabby flophouse-du-jour had been applied long enough ago to have wheat-based paste behind it for the licking. Okay, that part was literal only once that I can remember, thankfully. The rest of it was pretty frequent, though, the Saturday arrivals happening oftener than they should to a couple of people who had somehow managed to get accepted for university studies. Sometimes, at that, arrival was on the tail-end of a marathon train trek meant to avoid overnight hostel fees en route but where we’d also regrettably neglected to pack more than one lunch for the whole two or three days, as the trains didn’t take our current currency either.

You see where this is going. Natural, practical brilliance, at least on my part, was never actually part of my traveling kit.

Another Rule: Escalator and pedway handrails are precisely calibrated to move at a rate relative to the underfoot surface that guarantees anyone holding a steady position of both hand and foot will arrive at the end of the stair or passage fully prone. For greater variety and increased adventure, some engineers build variable speeds into both surfaces’ mechanisms, providing the options of both ventral and dorsal arrival positions on the same equipment. It’s similar to the knowledge that all shopping carts worldwide are produced to assure that one wheel will consistently aim fourteen degrees further to the right, the east, or the direction of Purgatory than whatever direction the other ones are headed.

You might think from reading this that I am not fond of travel, or at least that I’m quite awful at it, but I’m really just more tolerant of uncertainty and willing to subject myself to chance than I generally give myself credit for being. In a way, I realize that I’m a living miracle. I am terrified of change and newness, easily intimidated, I have no natural compass sense, I’m forgetful and quickly confused, and I abhor discomfort. I stumble around, blundering little animal that I am, and forget all of the smart Rules I’ve ever known. But I’ve gotten to go gallivanting in a pretty good variety of really wonderful and interesting places, to meet fantastic people and see and do amazing things, and above all, I’m here to tell the tale. If that isn’t a fine endorsement of going with the flow as a traveler, I don’t know what is. That’s the only Rule that counts.

Postcard from the Edgy

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Digital illustration from a photo: PostcardMy Mind Wanders & So Shall I

I want to wander

To traipse and travel

Or else I wonder

If I’ll unravel

Make expeditions

I may

I must

Or my brain could bust

From Wanderlust

Let me sally swiftly

Flying forth

No matter whether

South

Or North

For I might implode

In irksome itches

The way my

Passport

Ticks and twitches

Can’t pause to ponder

What’s yon

Or yonder

My heart

Yells START!

And I want

To wander—

Sailing Ahead, Wherever That May Be

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The only time I’ve ever been on a sailboat was to sleep. There’s a great Tall Ship converted into a youth hostel in Stockholm where my sister and I bunked for a couple of nights on our college gallivant across western Europe. [Which hostel appears to have been recently renovated, and very nicely, if any of you should be interested.] While there may have been the faintest of motion rocking us to sleep in our on-board berths, I doubt it replicated very accurately the sensation of actual sailing. My next opportunity was during graduate school when I got a fan letter (one of the very few in my life, as you can imagine!) from a stranger who’d liked a gallery art installation I made so much that he offered to take me out sailing to the nearby islands. I don’t think there was anything predatory about him, but besides my still having a grandiose case of social anxiety in those days, there is the fact that the art show in question was entirely a walk-through, life-sized illustration of an espionage thriller; while I am doubtful that was his inspiration, I didn’t take him up on the offer.
Photo: Adrift on the High Seas

But whenever I see a sailboat, I do think it’s a beautiful representation of a genteel form of freedom that captivates my imagination all the same. Yes, I know plenty of tales of grueling trials on the high seas, no matter the size of the craft; even some of my close friends and relatives have such stories to tell, thankfully, having survived them. And I know, too, the old joke about testing one’s real interest in boat ownership by dressing up in a rain slicker and standing under an ice-cold shower for a couple of hours while flushing hundred-dollar bills down the toilet. But I also know that a vast number of people who could jolly well choose to spend their money and time on less demanding, safer, and far less expensive pastimes still choose boating. There’s clearly a strong pull to counterbalance any such negatives.

I, too, have spent some happy times on boats, just not sailboats. As a coastal kid, after all, I grew up thinking time spent on the ferries was as much pleasure and sightseeing as it was commuting or transport. I have been fairly miserable on a North Sea ferry in stormy seas while I was recovering from the stomach flu, but it did not so permanently scar either my psyche or my stomach lining that I didn’t look forward to the next time I got to be on a slow boat cruising along the shore, or perhaps best of all, in a rowboat or canoe, dipping the oars or paddle in with the rhythmic soft splashing that accompanies my reveries.
Photo: All Ashore

Living far from any natural body of water as I do these days, I am beached like an old craft whose hull is no longer seaworthy. But like those old boats I see, dry-docked on the beach or alongside the tumbledown barn or in a weedy field, I keep in my soul a firm and loving memory of every good time spent with the waves rocking me softly from below, telling me stories of their own and inviting me forward, ever forward, wherever that might take me.

FutuRetro

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One of the things I so love about travel and touring is getting a much more powerful sense of history; standing in and on the places where events and lives long past have happened, whether grand or insignificant, utterly changes my understanding of those people and occurrences. My first trip overseas, that Grand Tour I was so privileged to take in college with my older sister, was an awakening I never expected. I hoped the trip would be a cure for my sophomore blues, and indeed it was, beyond anything I could have planned or dreamt before, but more than that I was startled by how connected I felt to history.

The drizzly and cold autumn day when we visited Canterbury Cathedral was atmospheric enough in its way, but I remember standing on stone steps worn into a soft bowl by the thousands of footsteps that had passed over them in the centuries of its existence, looking up into a palely gold ray from a lamp, seeing the motes of dust whirling in it, and feeling that time itself was floating down around me in delicate pieces, that the spirit of every person who had ever set foot on that same smooth hollow in the stone was present there with me in that very moment. It was almost as though I could hear their voices and see the scenes of the past play out in the faint gloom around me, all overlapping and yet perfectly present. I felt my own place in the whole of the human timeline in an entirely different way than I ever expected, tinier than ever, yet surprisingly more concrete and tangible.

This was reinforced later in the same journey many times, as we passed through or visited (not necessarily in this order) England, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland and stood in the very footprints of many a person, going down the winding passages and cobbled side-streets that had seen multitudes of significant moments long since fled. As this was the first time I visited Norway, the rooting ground of my ancestors from every branch of my family tree, it is no surprise in retrospect that many of those potent realizations came to me in that place—but as usual, hindsight is ever so much clearer than was my youthful wisdom in those days. It was moving, more meaningful than I can express, to get to know the relatives in Norway with whom my family had maintained contact: my maternal grandfather’s sisters and brother-in-law, nieces and nephew. These were days before cheap telephonic long distance, let alone email and internet communiqués, so we had only briefly even met most of these people when they visited America once in my younger years, yet they not only took us in as visitors, Tante Anna and Onkel Alf kept my sister and me with them for a full month and took us to see the family’s two longtime farms, the graves where many of our ancestors were sleeping underfoot. This was incredibly touching, a genealogical history lesson, but the more so because it was taught by the eldest of our remaining family there.

What moved me the most, in fact, was when on arriving in Oslo at our mother’s cousin’s home before we even came down south to be with his parents, we explored the great city a little on our own during the days, while he was at work and his wife and children off having their own day of adventures. It was all so humbling and so magical to feel for the first time that I understood a tiny bit more of my own family lineage and how our people fit into the larger world. We did visit many of the obligatory and famous tourist sites, knowing that there was no direct link to our ancestors, only cultural ones. So I was quite stunned when we visited the Viking Ship Museum and, standing before these ancient vessels, I was absolutely electrified with a sense of shared history coursing through my veins. My forebears were undoubtedly humble subsistence farmers, not the bold and violent and adventurous Viking strain we know through film and television, never mind through the great Sagas—but I felt for the first time something connecting me to those long-gone people all the same.
Photo: Enter the Time Machine

By now I have traveled a fair amount more. I have been on this planet more than twice as long, and I think I might even be a little bit wiser through my experiences in that life than I was back then. But I approach every narrow stone passageway, every weathered door, every window with its rippling antique panes presenting everything that’s beyond them like a warped post-impressionist fiction of itself, I expect to learn something not only about what is there in front of me and around me, but what is inside me. And I know that I will learn something, too, about how I fit into that larger, and ever so mysterious, world if I am wise and patient and alert enough to notice it. So much has gone by. So much remains ahead, yet unknown.

Any Old Palace will Do

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As self-crowned, self-proclaimed Empress of Everything (mistress of none), I have always enjoyed the ease and luxury due my supposed station. I eat well, travel relatively often, and keep the finest of company. It’s only appropriate that I should also live in the palace of my own choosing, or better yet, in various fantastic palaces in different fabulous parts of the world whenever I happen to be there. Of course, the locales and the company I keep in them determine my level of happiness far more than the buildings and their furnishings do themselves. Isn’t that always the way? No matter how plush it is, a glamorous structure is only a gilded cage if it allows no light of love and adventure into it and no correspondingly venturesome, happy soul out of it.
Photo: S:kt Jakobs

So far I’ve managed to establish my string of palaces remarkably well, along with fulfilling my many other requirements of that life of luxury I don’t necessarily deserve but am quite capable of desiring. I’ve stayed in, lived in, visited, and wandered through many a grand, gorgeous, impressive place. I’ve designed many on paper and in my mind that would knock the socks off of any person who saw them. Yet I still can’t understand the people who look at glorious, showy homes and think only of whether the places would genuinely suit as their own dwellings. If your energies are devoted solely to thinking that “this master bedroom is too small,” all I can think is that your imagination is too small, your life too tightly fitted around what you perceive as Impressive Enough, to allow you to find your palace in whatever motel room or suburban house with one bathroom your life lets you land in at the moment.
Photo: Davenport, Spokane

Many of the palaces I’ve inhabited I have done only as a passerby, a visitor, a tourist. And I have nothing against that at all. After all, wherever I close my eyes to sleep, even the most cramped bedroom with a creaky, narrow, deeply bowed bed where the very middle of the mattress is the only almost-level spot to rest, I can turn it into any one of the palatial places I’ve visited, or continue to invent my own. The roof I am under is irrelevant in determining the luxury of my existence, so long as it’s safe and not lacking a place to lie down without breaking anything (furniture or me; I prefer to keep both intact) and not hideously cold or hot or wet. In my dreams, I remain Empress, and there I can build and inhabit the most astounding of palaces if I choose to do it.

As such, I am also constantly grateful for the many wonderful places I’ve visited, stayed,  and/or lived, and especially for the extensive ranks of friends and family and acquaintances who have through their immense kindness consistently supported my ability to live—and feel—like royalty.