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Archive for the ‘Favorite Places’ Category

A Healed Heart and Cacti

Posted in aging, Birds, Favorite Places, Journeys, Writing, tagged on April 16, 2024| 12 Comments »

Yellow is the color of happiness and sunshine, both of which I intend to enjoy whenever I can. — Photo by Pat Bean

It’s morning. I’m sitting in front of my computer, writing. It’s exactly where I belong. And it feels wonderful. A feeling I haven’t had in quite a while.

The truth is, I’ve spent the past year slowly dying – and not knowing it. My heart was failing me, but without any symptoms, which I’ve been told isn’t uncommon for women, I simply attributed my sluggishness to being 84 years old, and a worn-out knee, which was successfully replaced on March 20.

Eight days later, I had a major heart attack, which in reality probably saved my life. Thanks to today’s awesome medical technology, I had three stents placed in my heart, and when I looked in the mirror this morning, I saw something I hadn’t been seeing for months.

A happy old broad, who will turn 85 in two days, was staring back at me. Hair mussed, wrinkles in abundance, but blue eyes sparkling and a smile that cheered my healing heart. And a saggy body that didn’t feel like it wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep the day away.

Picture of the Day

Gypsy Lee parked amid the cacti at New Mexico’s Pancho Villa State Park. — Photo by Pat Bean

To give myself an incentive to start blogging regularly again, I came up with the idea of sharing one of the pictures that drops into my email daily as a memory from the past. The one I’ve chosen today is one of my RV, Gypsy Lee, in which I traveled fulltime around the country in from 2004 to 2013.

She is parked among the cacti in New Mexico’s Pancho Villa State Park, a treasure located near our border with Mexico. It recalls a peaceful week there enjoying the history and beauty of the area and as always birdwatching, an activity I took up when I was 60 years old.

Gambel quail abounded, and there was a roadrunner that frequently perched on a fallen branch in full view of a window where I ate my morning breakfast. Thrashers, red-wing blackbirds, cactus wren and white-winged doves were often seen.

As I think back now on those treasured days, I’m ever so thankful I didn’t miss one of them. Life is for living as well as dreaming, although I think all my adventures did begin with the latter. If I had to mark a beginning to my wanderlust dreams, I think it began when I was 10 years old and read a book called I Married Adventure by Osa Johnson.

It took me awhile to figure out that one didn’t have to be married to have adventures, but we’ve come a long way since I read that book back in the 1940s.

And now, thanks to modern-day medicine, I’m hoping to discover that adventures are still possible for 85-year-olds.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

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Wrong Turns, Maybe Not

Posted in aging, Dogs, Favorite Places, Journeys, road trip, Travel on September 29, 2023| 1 Comment »

Cumbres Pass on an autumn day. — Photo by Pat Bean

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.” — Douglas Adams

Aging My Way

Some of my best travel moments have been the result of a wrong turn. One example is the day I did just that in Chama, New Mexico. By the time this directionless-nitwit figured it out, I was driving through a scenic landscape that kept me going forward with no intention of turning back.

Facebook, with its post and photos from the past, brought back all the good memories of that 2009 day, which had me driving through the 10,000-foot Cumbres Pass in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. It was a colorful autumn day, traffic was almost non-existent, and my then canine companion Maggie and I took a walk and breathed it all in.

Of course, I was driving and living in a small RV at that time, and had no daily deadline to meet.

 In a way, that’s kind of how I’m still living my life in retirement — although without an RV. And by the way, I cuss out myself often for selling it, especially since a recent road trip had me realizing how much I loved traveling.

But the bonus of that trip was I came home energized, ready to get this arthritic old body out into the world more, something I was actually still doing until Covid hit and isolation and staying home became a habit.

It’s time to get on the road again, even if it’s just day trips around Tucson. To misquote Dr. Seuss, I have brains in my head, shoes on my feet — and I should know where to go. Maybe I’ll even be lucky and take a wrong turn.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

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My Unspectacular Cottonwood Tree

Posted in aging, Favorite Places, Journeys, tagged on March 8, 2023| 5 Comments »

I walked past this tree every summer for three years when I was a campground host at Idaho’s Lake Walcott State Park. I call it the tree with a split personality. — Photo by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

When I read the following, I realized I had not yet hugged the large cottonwood tree that grows in my small yard, even though it’s one of the reasons I love my new apartment. Wrote Ayn Rand, in a book I read many years ago:

“It had stood there for hundreds of years … Its roots clutched the hill like a fist with fingers sunk into the soil, and he thought that if a giant were to seize it by the top, he would not be able to uproot it, but would swing the hill and the whole of the earth with it, like a ball at the end of a string. He felt safe in the oak tree’s presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his greatest symbol of strength.” — Atlas Shrugged (1957)

I bought my last home, the one I lived in before I sold it to buy an RV when I retired, because of the magnificent elm tree that grew in its backyard — and the tall ponderosa pine that stood in the front yard helped sealed the deal.

I admit it. I’m a tree hugger.

Looking at the photos I took over the years, I find many pictures that contain simply a single tree. Some of them famous, like an ancient bristle cone pine in Great Basin National Park which I stood beside; or the General Sherman Sequoria in Sequoria National Park, which I first saw when I was only about 12 years old.

Then there’s The 2,000-year-old live oak on Goose Island State Park called simply The Big Tree. If I had to name my favorite tree species, it would definitely be a live oak, whose branches seem to wiggle as they grow and can spread out as wide as the tree is tall.  

Another of the trees among my photos is a big old limber pine I saw up near Monte Cristo in the Wasatch-Cache National Forest. My old bird-watching mentor Jack Rensel, who sadly died three years ago, called it the Old Dude, and said it had been around before Utah had gained statehood.

That’s just a sprout compared to the limber pine identified near Utah’s Alta Ski Area. That tree, named Twister, is at least 1,700 years old.

My cottonwood tree comes nowhere close to being as spectacular. And it’s fallen leaves have been a nuisance to sweep off my patio and to rake up in the yard. In addition, the tree is raising havoc to the sidewalk and my gate, as its roots stretch out to reach the generous irrigation water used on a patch of grass diligently maintained in my apartment complex.

I suspect the tree is a wanderer that put down roots a bit farther than usual from the nearby Rillito River, or perhaps another tree hugger planted it.  A cottonwood tree can drink 50 to 200 gallons of water a day, which may be why the one in my yard is the only one of its species in the complex.

I’m thinking I should go hug my cottonwood before it’s deemed a nuisance and cut down as some other trees here recently were – after one of the trees in the complex decided to grow up into the living room of an apartment unit.

It’s an old complex, as are many of the trees that grow here, many of which are spectacular. Perhaps I should hug some of them, too.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

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Forest Gump Point

Posted in aging, Favorite Places, Journeys, road trip, Travel, tagged , on January 31, 2023| 1 Comment »

Forest Gump Point — Monument Valley from Scenic Byway 163

“There is an eternal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives.” — Josephine Hart  

You know how you see something, and your mind gets stuck on it, and then you keep seeing the same thing over and over again.

That happened to me this past month. It started when I read an Atlas Obscura story about Forest Gump Point. The story was accompanied by a photo which showed a scene I had passed by at least a dozen times and had even stopped to explore a few of those times.

The Point, illustrated in the article, is the view one gets when traveling the 64 miles of Scenic Highway163 through Arizona and Utah, 44 miles of which goes through Navajo Nation land and Monument Valley. I purposely took this route many times — simple because the magnificence of the views awed me.

The red-rock mesas, buttes and spires are the remnants of rock formations that were over 25-million years in the making, according to geologists. Some of these wonders can be seen in the background where Forest Gump stopped running.

But long before Tom Hanks portrayed Forest Gump in the 1994 movie, Monument Valley was a favorite of movie directors. Probably the most famous use of the spectacular scenery was in the 1939 film Stagecoach starring John Wayne. It can also be seen in movies like The Searchers, The Eiger Sanction and Easy Rider and has even been featured in the popular television series Dr. Who.

In recent weeks, I’ve seen images of the scenic valley more than half a dozen times. Each time made me want to take a road trip – enough so that I looked at a map and discovered that it’s only 462 miles away from my home in Tucson.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

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Learning from Experience

Posted in aging, Books, Favorite Places, Journeys, Morning Thoughts, tagged on November 12, 2022| 3 Comments »

Watching the Sun creep towards the Watchman Campground at Zion National Park. — Photo by Pat Bean

Aging my Way

Not sure what my brain was up to this morning, but after reading some words by Eleanor Roosevelt — “You gain strength, courage and confidence in every experience … You are able to say to yourself, I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along” – I thought of a few things I had lived through.

Like falling asleep in a hot bath and dropping the book I was reading into the water. Or sitting out a windstorm in Amarillo and being thrown six feet onto the ground by a huge gust when I opened the RV door.

I guess what I learned from those experiences was to not fall asleep in the bathtub, and to stay inside when the wind was gusting. Of course, I did continue to read in the bath (it was a safety zone away from my five children) and I still go outside on windy days.

Knowing is not always doing.

Then I remembered a horrible, horrible morning back in 2009 (that was how I referred to it in my journal) when I was camped out in Zion National Park. I had spilled coffee grounds inside my tennis shoes, used hand lotion instead of conditioner on my head, and then discovered my RV wouldn’t start because I had forgotten to turn its lights off after coming through Zion’s mile-long tunnel. To make things even worse, I couldn’t find my driver’s license.

Then a friend came along and got my RV started, and then found my driver’s license. While he couldn’t do anything about my hair, he fixed us both some coffee – with fresh grounds – while I dumped the ones in my tennis shoes in the trash.

As we sat outside and drank the coffee, with a little Irish Cream added to ward off the chill until the sun creeped up and over the red-rock ridges to our east, I knew what I had learned that day. It’s good to have a handy friend.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

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List-Maker – That’s Me

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Books, Favorite Places, Journeys, Lonely Planet Pathfinder, Writing on March 24, 2022| 5 Comments »

The Meadowlark and the Chukar: I wrote a bird column for three years back in the early 2000s, and a chukar I saw on Antelope Island in Utah’s Great Salt Lake was the first bird I wrote about. — Art by Pat Bean

 My mornings start with my to-do list, which is a carry over from the day before, and the day before that, and the days before those. Eventually a dreaded chore finally gets done because I’m tired of looking at it.

The daily list actually is two lists in one. The tasks I need to do, or simply want to do (like watch a bird cam located in Panama), and the list of the books I’m reading, or want to read.

As an old broad, my body appreciates many breaks during the day, and the reading list gives me something to fall back on besides computer games – which according to my self-imposed rule must not be played before 4 p.m. This rule, because I love playing games is often broken. So as a reminder I have a note taped to my refrigerator that says “You could be reading.”

 Besides the daily list, I keep lists of books I’ve read, places I’ve been, the proverbial bucket list, menu lists and an idea list, from which I always can find a topic to write about.

But one of my favorite lists is the one I begin on April 1, 1999 – the day I joined the world of avid (translate crazy) bird watchers.

 I keep a list of every bird I’ve seen, noting the place and the date. But thankfully, I’m not like the birder who once passed me on a favorite birding trail. I was dawdling along, watching red-winged blackbirds flash their scarlet marked wings while listening to a couple of breeding male meadowlarks trying to out sing each other.

Barely slowing his pace, a middle-aged hiker came upon me and asked if I had seen a chukar. I replied that I often saw this partridge-like bird in the rocks near a bend up ahead. About 10 minutes later, the man ran past me going the other way. 

  “Got it … that’s 713 birds for me now.” His voice was like the rumble of a passing freight train.

How sad, I thought, that he didn’t take a minute to admire the flashy scarlet markings on the blackbirds or to enjoy the melodic voices of the two meadowlarks.

 Numbers and names on a list are only that. It’s being present in the moment – seeing the golden yellow on a meadowlark’s throat as it tilts its head toward the sky in song, or the magic of a sunrise slowly coloring the sides of a canyon – that make my heart beat faster. And I’m thankful I enjoy such wonders whether I’m seeing them for the first or the hundredth time.

 Seeing birds is always delightful – but then so is getting my oven cleaned after seeing the chore on my to-do list for three weeks running.

  I’m glad I’m a list-maker.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining. 

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What is Joy? Let Me Tell You

Posted in aging, Dogs, Favorite Places, Journeys, tagged , on February 11, 2022| 4 Comments »

   Joy is watching cacti flowers bloom in the Sonoran Desert. – Photo by Pat Bean

  A few years back I started listing things that bring me joy, then the list got put away and forgotten. I came across the notes this morning, however, and thought I would share some of the things I wrote down back then.

 Joy is getting up in the morning and putting on Helen Reddy’s I am Woman, Hear Me Roar, and loudly and off key, singing along with her. It gives my day an extra boost.  

Joy is watching a sunset from my third-floor balcony window as it goes from a pale glimmer into an explosion of oranges, reds and purples. It’s also watching a sunrise out my back window while still in bed. It’s a paler version of the evening show, starting with a golden glow that then turns the sky briefly pink.  

Joy is books and magazines that take me to faraway places, engage my brain and teach me something new every day.

Joy is having a 14-year-old grandson cheerfully carry a large load of groceries up to my third-floor apartment, then baking his favorite lemon cupcakes for him in return. That was seven years ago. Today I have my groceries delivered, so Joy is the smiling delivery person because I tip adequately.  

Joy is my Spirit Players group that reads a play once a month, such as Alice in Wonderland in which I got to read the part of the White Rabbit. Just for the record, joy is not Covid, which halted this and several other activities in my life.

Joy is a hot bath in a deep tub hot enough to turn the skin pink and send warmth and ease all the way down to my bones

Joy is solving and fixing a computer glitch all by myself — after an unsuccessful hour on the phone with a computer expert.

Joy is watching a sliver of moon shining down like the Cheshire Cat on me and my canine companion as we take our O-dark-hundred first walk of the day.

Joy is sitting in a rocking chair or on a couch and holding one of my recently-born great-grandchildren. I’ve gotten to do this with six of my seven. Dang covid kept me away from the last, who lives in Florida.

And finally, Joy is the sights and sounds of nature that even an old broad can enjoy without going far from home. Joy is all around. We just have to look.

May you all have a joyful day.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.

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My Phone’s Not So Smart

Posted in aging, Dogs, Favorite Places, Journeys, tagged , on January 28, 2022| 6 Comments »

Now who in their right mind wants to be found when they are exploring this beautiful country we live in. Photo of my parked RV taken by me while exploring the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in 2010 with my canine companion Maggie.

Or Else Its User is Dumb

I missed two zoom meetings recently, and didn’t notice I hadn’t received my normal 2 p.m. phone call from a son until about 6 p.m. – which had him calling my granddaughter to make sure I was OK.  And this is not the first occasion that I’ve let time run away from me.

My phone, which I also use as an alarm clock to remind me of things like zoom meetings, and when to take my clothes out of the washer and put them into the dryer, and for timing my writing, was out of order. But I didn’t discover that until I tried to call my son. Instead of ringing through, a message came up saying the device had no Sim card, and then said I should update the phone and reboot it. I did, and I, miraculously, had phone service again.

This is the second time in a month it’s done this to me. Did I mention that I actually hate smart phones. They’re not so smart, or else they have a dummy for a user. I’ll let you decide which.

I used a simple flip phone almost forever. I even went back to one when I retired from the traveling life. My son had bought me a smart phone when I was traveling because he wanted to know where I was at all times. I’m blessed that he loves me, but when you spend most of your life coming and going as one pleases, being tracked takes some getting used to. It also irks me that my children suddenly think I’m old and can’t take care of myself.

Meanwhile, what everyone else is doing on their phones today, I continue to do on my computer. The screen is larger and easier on old eyes, and I know how to use it, something I can never get the hang of with smart phones.

My children jumped at getting cell phones when they first came out, even when they were as large as breadboxes. I didn’t get my first cell phone until my work finally demanded it, and paid for it.

 Maybe I that’s why I kind of think of cell phones like a kind of ball and chain. I didn’t always want to be found. 

I don’t carry one in my pocket when I walk my dog, which my son says I should do. And I often forget to take it with me when I run errands. I’m trying to change that because I realized that if my car broke down, I haven’t memorized any phone numbers but my own — because they’re all stored in the $#&*@ smart phone.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.

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Believe in Yourself

Posted in aging, Favorite Places, journalism, Journeys, tagged , , , , on January 17, 2022| 2 Comments »

Shoneshone Falls, as painted by Thomas Moran. One of the nicest things about Twin Falls, Idaho was its scenic location near the Snake River Gorge and this waterfall, which was located just six miles away from my home in town. The original of this painting was found in the local library during my two-year stay in the small Southern Idaho town. I remember those days, and my former boss, Steve Hartgen fondly.

Men do, Too Many Women Don’t

I recently received news that Steve Hartgen, the former managing editor of the Times-News in Twin Falls, Idaho, where I worked as regional editor for two years in the mid-1980s, had died.

I had accepted the job at the small local newspaper during a transitional time in my life.  It was the first time that I was entirely on my own. Divorced and with all my children on their own in the world, I was kind of full of myself.

Steve was a hard-nosed newsman who didn’t go easy on his reporters when he didn’t think they were doing their best. I respected him, and we got along well, mostly I think because he allowed me to stand up to him when I thought he was wrong. I never thought of him as sexist, but several of the female reporters did. They complained to me — because I was a woman like them and would understand — that our managing editor was harder on women than he was on the male reporters.

I didn’t see it that way. There was no question in my mind about Steve being hard on the female reporters, because he was. But as I saw it. Steve treated both the men and the women exactly the same harsh way. So, what was the difference? I asked myself this question, and then began to look for answers. It didn’t take long for me to come to a conclusion.

 When the men received a lecture from the managing editor, they listened, nodded, then afterwards shrugged it off, not convinced they had done anything wrong, certainly not something they should worry about. The women, meanwhile, took every word of the boss’ admonitions to heart, some even crying about it. They feared being fired, and always promised to do better.

The difference was clearly the amount of self-confidence the men had, and the lack of self-confidence the women suffered from. It was something I had seen before but not understood, and something I would see again many times during the remainder of my journalism career.

I learned a lot from working with Steve Hartgen those two years, especially the need to stand up for myself because no one else probably would. As to Steve, he will be missed. The news media needs more of his kind today: Hardnosed newswomen and newsmen who believe facts and truth are important for readers to know, but especially those whose only agendas are truth and facts and not their personal agendas.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.

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Spiders, Hummingbirds and Jellyfish

Posted in Birds, Books, Favorite Places, Journeys, Travel, tagged on December 13, 2021| 2 Comments »

Jellyfish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. — Photo by Pat Bean

Connections

I just learned that when the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum renovated its hummingbird aviary in 1992, the new hummingbird nests kept falling apart. Museum workers scratched their heads for a while, but finally realized why this was happening.

 During the renovation, all the old vegetation inside the aviary was   removed, and replaced by new plants. The removal took away any spiders that inhabited the vegetation and the hummingbirds needed the web spiders produced to hold their nest materials together. The problem was solved by workers gathering branches that held such webs, and placing them inside the aviary until the spiders could reestablish their presence.

While digesting this bit of information, I came across a mindfulness tip about how to stay calm during these chaos-filled days when the news is all about Covid, political shenanigans and tornado deaths. It came from TV writer Cord Jefferson, who said traditional meditation didn’t work for him. What did, he said, was to just get lost in the gentle pulses of jellyfish for a short mindfulness break during his workday,” Cord then noted that Monterey Bay Aquarium has a jellyfish cam that can be bookmarked on a phone or laptop browser.

I’ve watched hummingbirds at the desert museum and the jellyfish at the aquarium in person, and found both these things calming. I think it’s just letting ourselves get out of our heads a bit that does the trick.

But reading these two stories back-to-back, made me realize how interconnected we beings on this world are. And by beings, I don’t just mean we two-legged sapiens. It’s certainly something to think about. Meanwhile, if you’re in Tucson or Monterey, you might want to check out the desert museum and the aquarium. Both are great places to visit.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.

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