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The Victory-Lap Years

Posted in Books, Journeys, Nature, tagged , , , , , , on January 31, 2012| 5 Comments »

 “Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.” Louis L”Amour

While I haven't taken a walk through Alaska's wilderness, I have driven the Top of the World Highway past Chicken. It was an awesome drive. -- Wikipedia Photo

Book Talk

I just finished Lynn Schooler’s “Walking Home,” a true story about Alaska, Mother Nature’s fierce side, a crippled grizzly bear that wanted to eat a human, and coping with loss.

Lynn survived the bear, plus a raging creek, and heart-wrenching, although self-imposed, solitude – I’m not giving away the ending because of course he had to survive to write the book – with the comment that his next adventure might just be a drive in a rented car around Hawaii.

“Why not? I am fifty-five years old; they are all victory laps now.”

He said a whole lot more that resonated with who this wandering/wondering, nature-loving old broad is, but that comment made me laugh with joy. I’m 72 years old so certainly my life is now nothing but victory laps. It’s fun to think of it that way.

And I spent all day in a bus traveling this road in Denali National Park to Wonder Lake. Mount McKinley, shown above, hid behind the clouds for most of that day. -- Wikipedia photo

Lynn said it after surviving an awesome environment that suddenly turned mean and realizing that his wife no longer wanted to be with him.

His book, one of those slow-reading ones so you have time to ponder the words, made me think of the things I had survived. While nothing so deadly as Lynn’s adventure, I had survived my own marital breakup, teenage-children with rebellion in their makeup, 37 years as a journalist and even being thrown out of a raft in the middle of a raft-eating rapid on the Colorado River as it flowed through the Grand River.

These are indeed my victory-lap years. Thanks Lynn for allowing me to think of them this way.

Bean’s Pat: Everywhere Once: American Safari http://tinyurl.com/7932lx2 Who said you had to go to Africa to be on safari?

 

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Wildebeest Afraid of the Water Today

Posted in African Safari, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 15, 2011| 4 Comments »

 “Most of us don’t need a psychiatric therapist as much as a friend to be silly with.” – Robert Brault.

 

Sharp-eyed Kim spotted this serval in the bush. It was a rare daytime find. -- Photo by Kim Perrin

African Safari: The Rest of the Day

Joseph picked us up after the hot air balloon ride for yet another exciting Safari day. Right off Kim spotted a cheetah – No, we quickly saw it was a serval, a rare daytime find, said Joseph, who quickly followed it off the road to give us a better look before it slunk off.

Then we watched a river full of crocodiles dining on a dead hippo, the same dead one we had seen them guarding the day before. Joseph had told us that hippos’ thick hides were too tough for the crocs to eat, and that they were waiting for it to rot a bit so they could tear it apart.

I thought you might enjoy this picture of a live hippo enjoying its spa day better than the one of the dead hippo being chomped up by crocodiles. -- Photo by Pat Bean

And that’s exactly what they were doing. Several toothy snouts had hold of it and were twisting their bodies in circles to tear off chunks. Really gruesome to watch, but Kim and I were fascinated.

Our big event for the day was to watch wildebeest on migration cross the Mara River. We watched for hours but it never happened. All it would take is for one wildebeest to start across and the all the rest would follow in a mad dash. Such a crossing is prime dinner time for the Nile crocodiles, but the mass swim allows most of the wildebeest to survive the day.

The animals make the crossing twice a year.

Today's wildebeest preferred dry land to water -- Photo by Kim Perrin

But this day, despite many a wildebeest approach right up to the river, they all skittishly turned back.

Finally Joseph gave up, as disappointed as Bilal was at not finding rhinos for us to watch, and went in search of lions and cheetahs for us to watch. He always found them, and watching their feline ways was never disappointing.

It was a wise choice because we heard over dinner that night the wildebeest never did get up the nerve this day to cross the river. The cat-watching, meanwhile had been great, Among other things, we got a glimpse of a hyena that was stalking a cheetah that was stalking a tommy.

The gazelle ran, the cheetah slinked away, and the hyena decided there might be easier prey around and trotted off as well.

Pink-backed pelican -- Wikipedia poto

Toward the evening, Joseph lingered in a swampy area of the park, where birds were plentiful.

I spotted what I thought was a pink-backed pelican, which would be a lifer for me. Joseph, however, thought it might be a white pelican, which would have been a lifer for him.

So off we went for a closer view. While I felt sorry for Joseph, I’m glad my identification proved right. It would be one of only two lifers I would get this day, the other being a black-chested snake eagle. I was still happy, however. We saw lots of birds I had seen earlier and it was becoming easier for me to recognize the common ones.

Back in camp, Kim and I bemoaned that our African Safari was coming to an end. We only had one more wildlife drive with Joseph in the morning and then we would be flying back to Nairobi, and from there home to the United States. .

We made it a two Jack and Coke night, celebrating both the adventure and the fact that our friendship had survived over two weeks of 24-hour togetherness. Given how quirky and different from each otherwe are, that was as important to celebrate as was our fantastic safari.

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Jack Kerouac: His Writing Perplexes Me

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 10, 2011| 2 Comments »

A yellow-headed blackbird seen on my morning walk with Maggie makes me go "Awww!" -- Photo by Pat Bean

 “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the muddle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’” – Jack Kerouac

Travels With Maggie

Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” is listed in almost every version of the 100 Best Travel Books. And on all of the various lists I’ve come across in recent years, I’ve read well over 50 percent of the selections.

But I haven’t read “On the Road.” That is I’ve never finished it. I’ve started the book several times but have never gotten beyond a few pages before laying it down and forgetting about it.

While there are quite a few of Kerouac’s quotes in my journal, such as the one above that I absolutely love, I can’t connect with this author like I do with say Tim Cahill, who has me rolling on the floor with laughter, or Charles Kuralt, whom I consider my travel soul mate, or John Steinbeck, whose down to earth writing draws me into his circle, especially since he writes about traveling with his poodle, Charley, and I write about traveling with my cocker spaniel, Maggie.

But I don’t, except for an occasional quote, get Jack. I keep thinking I will if I just read more than a few pages of “On the Road.”

Perhaps one day I will. Perhaps I’ll even find that copy of his book I bought a few years back to give it a fifth or sixth try. It was at least the third copy of “On the Road” that I’ve bought over the years, and I honestly have no idea where it is now.

And a patch of colorful pansies lights up my eyes as well as a fireworks display. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I recently read a book in which needful books kept turning up magically for one of the characters. I wonder what it means when books disappear. Or how come I can’t get into a book that so many other people think is a great classic.

Perplexing questions to which I have no answer. But I do love Kerouac’s above quote. It’s a whole book in itself.

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A Great Lake That Time and Nature Vanquished

Posted in Journeys, Lakes, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 29, 2011| 1 Comment »

 “I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.” E. B, White

Thirty-thousand years ago, only the very tallest peak of Antelope Island, which now sits in Great Salt Lake, would have been visible when Lake Bonneville covered nearly all of Northern Utah. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

My laptop computer finally began misbehaving too badly to ignore any longer. Since it’s my lifeline to the world as a full-time RV-er and daily blogger, and because it had given me four years of decent service, I decided it was time to retire it.

Since I’m rather in the boonies here at Idaho’s Lake Walcott State Park, 45 miles away from the closest Best Buy, I decided to drive 160 miles instead to Ogden, Utah, where I had a geeky-in-a-good-way friend whom could help me set up a new computer.

The historical marker at an Idaho rest stop that got me pondering the ever-changing face of the planet we live on.

It was a beautiful drive, sunny albeit a bit windy, mostly through land that 30,000 years ago lay beneath Lake Bonneville. A large historical marker at a rest stop just north of the Utah border tells travelers all about the prehistoric lake, whose shorelines are still in evidence along Interstate 84 which I was driving on this day.

The majority of the 1,000-foot-deep prehistoric lake was in Utah and its two distinct levels were clearly visible from my front porch when I formerly lived in Ogden. I can’t help but notice the ancient shorelines – there’s two distinct levels – every time I return to this city I loved.

The lake took up a huge portion of Utah and smaller bits of Nevada and Idaho until it broke though Idaho’s Red Rock Pass east of 84 about 15,000 years ago.

Great Salt Lake is all that’s left of Lake Bonneville today. It’s average depth is only about 25 feet.

Because I had stopped at the rest stop and seen the sign, I pondered as I drove, about how Mother Nature, with her floods, tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, and water and wind erosion is constantly changing the nature of this planet we live on.

I had long ago given up believing I was ever fully in control of my life, and now felt sorry for all those who hadn’t yet reached that conclusion. All we can do is take life a day at a time.

This day was a good one. I even got into Ogden in time to purchase my new computer. It’s a beauty, with more bells and whistles than I will probably ever use. But, everything didn’t go as planned.

Murphy showed up just to show me he could. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

.

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