Pat Bean's blog

Faulty Little Gray Cells

December 8, 2023 by Pat Bean

***One of Rick Steves many travel books about European countries.***

Aging My Way

Reading and Googling go hand in hand for me these days. It’s one of the good things about the internet. No longer do I have to wait to go to the library to find answers to my questions, all I have to do is type them into a search engine.

It helps, however, if you know the right questions to ask.

This morning I was reading an essay in Best American Travel Writing of 2020 about Rick Steves. The author didn’t immediately identify Steves except by name, and so I Googled him. Only from the short time I went from the page to my phone screen I goofed and typed in Steve Reeves.

That was a blast to my past. During my younger days, I had watched Reeves, a bodybuilder and actor, portray such characters as Hercules in movies many times. But I quickly realized he probably wasn’t the person I was looking for and a quick glance back at the book informed me of my mistake.

Googling the correct name, I discovered Rick Steves is a popular American travel writer famous for his European travel guides. I guess. because I’ve never visited Europe, is why I had never heard of Steves, even though the article by Sam Anderson described him as an amazing person and writer.

Meanwhile, I’m still wondering how my little gray cells jumped from Rick Steves to Steve Reeves. My guess is that at 84, and always being insatiably curious, those cells of mine are densely crowded, allowing wires to easily get crossed. At least I hope that’s all it is.

I wonder if the internet has something to say about that.

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.

Posted in aging, Books, Journeys, Travel, Writing | Tagged Rick Steves, Steve Reeves, Travel writing | 1 Comment »

One Is Not Like the Other

November 13, 2023 by Pat Bean

***The Monastery in Petra, a place that has fascinated me ever since I got a sneak peek at it in an Indiana Jones movie. Photo by Diego Delso***

Aging My Way

I do a lot of armchair traveling these days, looking at photos of and reading about places, which at 84, I know I will probably never be able to visit in person. It’s an enjoyable hobby that continues to feed my insatiable curiosity about the world and the people who live in it.

What’s lacking, however, is the feeling of accomplishment one gets from actually walking through an unknown cityscape, standing atop a mountain you’ve just climbed, or learning to communicate with a local whose language you do not understand. There is value in sweat and effort.

Susan Orlean pointed this out in a story about the remains of Petra, the cave-like capital of 4^th century Nabateans, being made into a virtual reality model. Wrote Susan: “Technology makes it easier to see the world almost as it is, but sometimes the hardest parts are what make travel memorable.”

As I read Susan’s words in The Best Women’s Travel Writing: Volume 12, I thought about my recent bird-watching walk around a small lake here in Tucson. It was a flat trail, just a half-mile in length, and I had to use my rollator as a steading hand and a place to sit every once in a while, but the feeling of accomplishment I felt at the end was significant – so much better than watching bird cams, which is also something I do regularly.

One is not like the other.

Which is why, because I can’t physically do all the things I want to do, or financially afford to travel to all the places I still want to see, I’m thankful for modern-age technology. If nothing else, the years have taught me to be flexible. It’s one of the ways I can continue to experience life zestfully, if not gracefully.

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.

Posted in aging, Birds, Books, Journeys, Travel | Tagged Petra, Susan Orlean | 1 Comment »

Just Another Scamp Story

November 7, 2023 by Pat Bean

At 17 pounds, Scamp fit nicely on my lap, which he promptly adopted when we first met. I was eager to have a dog after losing a beloved one, and he, a skinny, matted dog eager to escape shelter life was ready to adopt his forever person. — Photo by my friend Kim Perrin, whose chickens he chased.

Aging My Way

My canine companion Scamp is the most challenging dog I’ve ever owned. For one thing, the shelter advertised him as an eight-month old, 17-pound, female schnauzer mix.

I instantly fell in love with the photo that went with the Facebook ad and from that point forward, there was no turning back — even though he turned out to be a male dog, one of which I said I would never own. Things went downhill from there, beginning with the fact he wasn’t house-trained, loved destroying toilet paper, and chewing on the legs of my dining room table and chairs.

Thankfully those problems got solved pretty quickly. He now has chew toys and he knows which things are his.

But while I was expecting an eventual 20-25-pound dog, he continued growing. A DNA test showed he had no schnauzer in him, but was 50 percent Siberian husky and 37 percent shih tzu.

shih tzu legs on a stout husky body. When he roughhouses with another dog, which he loves to do, he often limps around the house for a day or two.

In addition, he usually brings home a bad report card from the groomers. He simply doesn’t like to be out of my sight.

Last year, when I suffered a serious bout of leg nerve pain, I was forced to abandon my third-floor apartment and move to a ground floor unit. I chose an apartment in a small complex that had its own small, fenced patio yard.

The idea was that Scamp would use the yard to do his business so I wouldn’t have to walk him. I guess I house-trained him too well because no way will he pee or poop inside the fence. And to prove it, he went two whole days without doing his business, at which point I conceded the battle.

My granddaughter says he’s as stubborn as I am.

On the plus side, I think I needed a challenging dog to make my life more interesting. And Scamp’s the most lovable, cuddly dog I’ve ever owned. Although he weighs 45 pounds, he thinks he is a lap dog and finds a way to prove it.

He is also an excellent traveler and a good guest.

Well, unless the person I’ve visiting has chickens, which my good friend Kim has. Three of them. At the first opportunity, Scamp broke through a fence to get to them and a wild chase ensued, with feathers flying everywhere.

Thankfully, Scamp never latched onto anything but those feathers, and the chickens all survived, although one hid beneath a pile of wood to escape Scamp and Kim couldn’t find her for an hour.

I can’t wait to discover what he will be up to next. OK, maybe I can wait.

Posted in aging, Dogs, Journeys | 2 Comments »

Travel Books: Inspiration and Memory

November 1, 2023 by Pat Bean

***Tioga Pass view from top of Tioga Peak***

Aging My Way

I’ve been reading books in the travel genre since I’ve been a kid, and have oft quoted Dr. Seuss saying “Oh! The places you’ll go and the things you’ll see!” – And I did, from exploring the neighborhood on my bike as a kid to watching wild elephants and hippos on an African safari.

The first travel book I read was I Married Adventure by Osa Johnson, published in 1940, just a year after I was born. I was 10 years old at the time, and having escaped the children’s side of the library had migrated to the dangerous adult side, where the lions Osa and her husband were filming resided.

By the time I hit my 50s, any list of the Best Travel Books I came across found me having read most of them. And the ones I hadn’t read, well they went on my to-read list. And what I read made my bucket list get longer and longer.

I’ve pretty much read everything written by Jan Morris, Bill Bryson (whose A Walk in the Woods inspired by own years of hiking), Paul Theroux, Robert Louis Stevenson, Peter Matthiessen, William Least Heat Moon (His Blue Highways inspired my own travels in a small RV around North America for nine years) John Steinbeck (whose Travels with Charley inspired the title of my own travel book Travels with Maggie), and my all-time favorite adventurer Tim Cahill.

And then there are these three travel writers who were writing travel books long before I was born, and during a time when respectful women didn’t travel alone, as they so successfully did.

My own favorite, perhaps because we share a journalistic background, is Nellie Bly who in 1888 went around the world in 72 days – and wrote about it 15 years after Jule Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days was published.

Then there is Isabella Bird, who wrote A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains that was published in 1879. It was her fourth, but my favorite of her books. I found it at a national parks’ visitor center, which is an ideal location to find obscure travel books.

And finally, for this blog but not for the list of great women travel writers, there is Freya Stark, who wrote more than two dozen books about her travels in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Of her impressive writings, Valley of the Assassins, published in 1834 is my favorite.

While at 84, my traveling days are mostly over, I’m still reading travel books. The current one is Vagabonding in the USA by Ed Buryn.

It was first published in 1980, so is not too useful as an actual travel guide. But it is, I’m discovering, chockfull of advice that transcends travel. And, like many travel books for me these days, a catalyst for bringing back awesome memories of places I have already visited.

The passage below, for example, let me relive the delight I had in my own cresting of Tioga Pass, where I got out of the car, stretched, felt the breeze blowing my hair about, took in the magnificent view and simply felt glad to be alive.

Wrote Buryn: “I am … driving down from Tioga Pass where California 120 tops the Sierra Nevada and heads east. It is dusk. In the clear mountain/desert air, the alpenglow to the east over Nevada seems almost phosphorescent. Mono Lake shimmers in the darkening distance, with barren ranges endlessly beyond it. … It is the first sundown of another road adventure…”

Posted in aging, Books, Journeys, Travel, Writing | Tagged Freya Stark, Nellie Bly, Tioga Pass, travel books, travel writers | 2 Comments »

The Yellow-Headed Blackbird

October 23, 2023 by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

I saw six yellow-headed blackbirds last week. They were flying around Tucson’s Lakeside Park with a flock of Brewer’s blackbirds that they were bullying, shoving the smaller birds around whenever a tiny morsel of something to eat was found.

I guess some birds can be as unkind as some humans.

Nevertheless, watching these easily identified birds brought back memories of the last time I had seen them. It was during a trip to Antelope Island in Utah’s Great Salt Lake where they usually hung out among cattails and reeds at water’s edge.

It was after one of those earlier sightings that I painted the bird seen above.

While the blackbirds’ yellow feathers stole the show as they flew among the Brewer’s at Lakeside Park last week, the smaller birds also had some show-stopping qualities. You just had to look a little harder.

First there was the Brewer’s yellow eyes, and then the iridescent sheen of metallic purple and blue that make the bird’s black feathers seem to sparkle in the sunlight. People don’t always give these birds the respect they deserve because they’re such a common sight. They are often that little black bird you see in a parking lot or alongside a road.

And as humans, we too often value the rare over the common.

Meanwhile, if you go looking for either of these two birds, I’ve only described the males. The females of both species are brown. You can see some yellow on the head and neck of the blackbird, but the Brewer’s eyes are dark.

I usually have to see a male Brewer’s first before I can identify the female.

And happy birding to all.

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys | Tagged Brewer's Blackbird, Tucson's Lakeside Park, Yellow-Headed Blackbird | Leave a Comment »

A Memorable Memorial

October 3, 2023 by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

After nearly 25 years, I recently laid my mother’s ashes to rest beneath a pine tree with a scenic view of a river flowing past. My mother loved water, and the peaceful site was along a route we had traveled together.

To commemorate the occasion, my good friend Kim, and I decided to have a margarita on the balcony at Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park, while watching Old Faithful put on its impressive eruption. It is one of the last joyful moments I remember spending with mom.

Things, however, didn’t go well from the beginning.

For one thing, I got us lost because I had Kim drive to the Old Faithful Lodge instead of the Inn. While I immediately knew we were in the wrong place, renovations at the park, including a new visitor center since I had last visited, meant it took a while before we found the inn – and then after a couple of minutes of confusion before turning a corner, the balcony that I remembered.

Since I had been using my beloved rollator, which allows me to comfortably walk around on level ground, the next problem was getting it up the stairs to the balcony. That was solved by Kim folding the 16-pound device and carrying it up while I held onto the handrail for balance to get up the stairs.

When I was finally seated on a front bench, Kim went off to find us margaritas. The ones I had shared with my mother were served in tiny glasses, and were quite tasty as I recalled. But the ones Kim came back with were in gigantic glasses and tasted like roadkill. Neither of us could do more than take a few sips as we toasted my late mother.

So, now, let’s put the icing on the cake.

After watching Old Faithful do its thing, Kim and I departed down the stairs, me in front holding on to the railing and she in back carrying my rollator. As I neared the main floor of the inn, I missed the last step, something I was just as likely to have done at 34 as I did at 84.

In fact, it might have been my habit of always being so clumsy that had me quickly tucking and rolling in somersault mode — and ending up with nothing but my pride hurt.

After a minute or two, I was even able to pull my own-self up, to the consternation of those who wanted to help me. All I can say is I get my stubbornness from my mother.

Meanwhile, in my head was her voice saying: “Patsy Lee! You always were a klutz.”

Well, Mom. You can’t say your memorial wasn’t memorable!

Posted in aging, Journeys | Tagged mothers, Yellowstone | 2 Comments »

Wrong Turns, Maybe Not

September 29, 2023 by Pat Bean

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.

Posted in aging, Dogs, Favorite Places, Journeys, road trip, Travel | 1 Comment »

Unfinished Thoughts

September 8, 2023 by Pat Bean

Sitting on a fence with my thoughts. — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

I was looking for an idea for a post, and found at least a hundred of them on my own writing to-do list. All those possibilities were on the list, however, because I didn’t yet know how to flesh them out.

Ideas are as plentiful as the leaves currently dropping from the giant cottonwood tree in my yard, but turning them into an essay can be as difficult as keeping my yard leaf free.

As Maya Angelou said: “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”

Here are just a few of the potential ideas that have intrigued me, or that I need to finish. First there’s an essay based on the theme unfinished. It has a September 16th deadline, but there are so many unfinished things in my life that my mind has become a muddle in a puddle.

Other possible essays ideas fermenting in my brain include:

Questions vs answers – which are more important?

Why is it that the same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg? Reasons to own a dog, like pizza crust ends. I’m working on this list.

The times when you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

Why at 84 I still read Outside Magazine? Maybe because if I can’t hike to the top or a mountain or backpack 30 miles to reach a natural arch or a majestic waterfall at this stage in my life, I can enjoy the thrills vicariously. Hmm, maybe I should focus my writing efforts on this one for now. The muse has started buzzing around in my head.

But then that’s what brainstorming is all about. Thanks, treasured readers for listening. Now if you have any ideas about the theme unfinished, whose deadline is fast approaching, feel free to share.

Posted in aging, Art, Dogs, Journeys, Writing | Tagged to-do lists, Unfinished | 2 Comments »

A New Frontier to Conquer

September 1, 2023 by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

Even if you’re not a Star Trek fan, you’re probably familiar with the phase “…to go where no man has gone before.”

That’s exactly where I feel I’ve taking a journey to and through — in the here and now. While the feeling certainly has to do with aging, that’s not all I’m talking about. I’m constantly being bombarded with new thoughts, new ways of thinking, new words, new ways of working, new ideas and new gadgets.

The world is changing faster than I can keep up. And while the good old days were not all good, these days aren’t either. As in almost everything, yesterday and today have both positive and negative attributes.

Getting from there to here has been a chaotic journey that continues to have this old broad dodging potholes to stay on the right path, the one I’ve chosen to travel while still being kind. thoughtful and updated.

Life has had me discarding misconceptions about almost everything, from race and gender to religion and morality. I even had to disregard my high school geometry teacher’s conviction that man would never make it to the moon, never mind traveling in space farther than that.

So, Captain Kirk and Captain Picard I’m ready to board the Enterprise, because I’m going where no 84-year-old woman has gone before. I’m greatly looking forward to the adventure.

Posted in aging, Journeys, Writing | Tagged Star Trek | 4 Comments »

My Dog Scamp

August 22, 2023 by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

One of the best things about being retired is that you are not usually beholden to someone else’s schedule. And one of the more dubious things about being retired is having a full day ahead of you and deciding how to make it count.

I’ve been retired for 19 years now, and you would think I had that aspect perfected. Ha!

It was easier the first nine years, when I lived in my RV full time and had road trips to plan and all of this country to visit. It was even easier for the next five or six years when I was more mobile and could still hike a trail.

But my mobility became a bit restrained this past year. I’ve become mostly a nest dweller. Now, it’s a nice nest, with good neighbors and a caring granddaughter and her wife living just next door, so I’m not complaining. The truth is, I’m really enjoying this period of my life.

But that still leaves me waking each morning and wondering how I’m going to spend the day. Not so easy as it seems – especially because I’ve never wanted one day to be like the next. It helps, however, that my activity basket is quite overflowing – and my daily self-generated to-do list is always too long to finish.

I do art, I write, I review books, I judge books, I birdwatch, I watch TV, although I read much more than sitting in front of a screen. I also listen to audible books. I keep up with all my own household chores except ones requiring heavy lifting, and I even do a little yard work. I email and have snail-mail pen pals. I journal and moderate a writing chat group. I cook. I visit the library, go to a play, attend a movie, or even party with friends. And I walk my dog, which gets me outdoors where I can do a little nature observing. I also try to learn something new each day, even if it’s just a new word.

But I’m always open to something different. And I found it a couple of weeks ago. I’m taking a poetry class – me who in all my nearly 60 years of writing never wrote poetry. So, here’s my first assignment. Of course, it’s about my canine companion.

My Dog Scamp

A lap full of hair

A nose full of sniffing

Four prints in the sand

And a tail always wagging

A tongue full of kisses

A belly full of rumbling

Brown eyes that melt hearts

And ears up for alerting

A balance to my life

A companion worth having

Posted in aging, Dogs, Journeys, Writing | 9 Comments »

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“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

Pat Bean is a writer, avid birder, hiker and passionate nature observer with wanderlust in her soul. She spent nine years living and traveling in a small RV. She now lives in Tucson with Scamp, a rescue who was supposed to be a Schnauzer mix but turned out to be a Siberian Husky-Shih Tzu mix who is as stubborn as his owner, her granddaughter says. She was also a journalist for 37 years, and can be reached at patbean@msn.com
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