You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
Five volunteer departments responded, “The whole hill is on fire!” – only to discover a brilliant sunset in the woods. Five, all of the members dropping their daily activities to dash off on an emergency mission.
Now the caller was running for sheriff.
~*~
All these years later, I can’t remember who won.
There are many approaches when it comes to travel. Some folks like the big cruise ships. The Jet Set, well, flies off to chic-chic hot spots – and skips everything in between. For more down-to-earth vagabonds, there are camper-trailers and the like, and a whole range of campgrounds geared to their needs. Add to that bus tours and trains or the ol’ family car or even a bicycle or motorcycle.
And the destinations can be just as varied – from big cities, foreign countries, mountains or seaside, resort or casino, dude ranch or nature preserve, family or friends.
That’s even before we throw in factors like snow (either to escape or use for skiing) and sunshine.
My preference leans toward the back pack in one way or another. When I was “on the road” covering 14 states in sales, I used to call my valet bag a businessman’s back pack, for good reason. On my own, I’m likely to be using my sleeping bag, too, so you get the picture.
Maybe now that I’m retired I’ll even get back to some backpacking in the nearby White Mountains. We’ll see. I learned the lessons well as a Boy Scout.
~*~
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Ever look back and wonder when you first encountered an item that’s now one of your go-to menu items?
Oh, I can remember when pizzas first invaded our neighborhood – the smell of oregano easily triggers that preschool memory!
But the Greek wrap called a gyro – and pronounced HE-ro – remains a mystery. I may have discovered it, along with souvlaki, in the late ’70s in the University District of Seattle, back when we’d visit from the interior desert. Or it may have come from a takeout place we ordered from at the newspaper, a decade-and-a-half later.
I do remember a heavenly example from a wood-fired stove at the Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine, back in 2002 – along with a wait in a very long line.
More recently, it’s been the highlight of dinner before our weekly choir rehearsals in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Just remember, no onions on mine, please.
In the early ’80s, when I lived in the Rust Belt, we chanced upon a small Greek bakery in the middle of a residential area – just five or six blocks from our house, actually.
What an incredible discovery! Along with the realization it made no sense to try to keep anything over an additional day – that honey soaks through the flaky phyllo dough too quickly! But, oh my, before it does!
As I said at the time, all too long ago now:
Preserved and mature, how tall the great trees along the Northwest rim: the redwood, red cedar, Douglas fir.
Too often a memory, the tall-masted vessels as well, billowing in the current.
~*~
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No Friends Meeting is ever the same – whether with the same body of people, in the same location, or while visiting around the world. This awareness casts a new light on the concept of expectant worship, in that you never know exactly what to predict, other than the possibility of being blessed by something wondrous and remarkable.
Traveling among different strands of Friends expands that concept.
In one pastoral Meeting, for instance, I encountered “silent singing” – no, they did sing from a hymnal, but the room was awfully quiet. Maybe all of their best voices were away in Philadelphia that weekend.
In one Evangelical Friends Meeting, as the pastor told me the following week, the Holy Spirit had been so powerful he had to put his sermon aside; I’m sure he wasn’t expecting that!
Or I was introduced to karaoke, of a contemporary Christian vein, in a midweek Meeting in central Pennsylvania. Who’d a’thunk.
So what do you say, greeting the stranger at our meetinghouse door, ready to sample Quaker worship for the first time? This is what not to expect?
“Maybe we’ll have a rare, totally silent worship,” seems to be as good as any. You never know.
The delight of watching from our dining room as a hummingbird goes from one bloom to the next in a tithonia beside the window – observing the balanced hovering of what looks like giving each one an injection of a special nectar and then moving on, to repeat the dance figure. And then, it’s gone.
It’s the joy of embracing a rare moment before it’s gone. And then? It’s a lesson in appreciating life itself.
One of the biggest lessons I carry from backpacking as a kid is the importance of traveling light. Take no more than you need. Be resourceful.
In those days, I should add, everything weighed more than today’s high-tech, lightweight gear and dehydrated food packets.
On our week along the Appalachian Trail, I was a 12-year-old hauling a 60-pound pack in what seemed endless uphill marathons.
It’s a lesson you don’t easily forget, even when you’re going by airplane.
~*~
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The concept of community gardens, where public land is made available to individuals and families to raise produce and flowers, is a noble one. When it works as envisioned, gardeners get to know and respect one another while swapping advice and their harvests, families eat healthier and tastier, and a piece of ground is simply put to good use.
Of course, there are spoilers, as we hear.
One year, for instance, all of the purple cabbage heads kept disappearing from the different families’ sections at one site, at least until a restaurant owner was caught in the act.(The audacity!)
Another year, I think, some of the garlic was raided.
This year, a large blooming tithonia plant was dug up and taken. It’s a big plant!
And more recently, as one man worked his plot, he observed a woman going through the neighboring sections and filling bags. Excuse me, he said, those aren’t yours.
But it’s a community garden, she retorted.
You’re stealing, he said, dialing his cell phone. I’m sure the police are perplexed by this one.
She was well-dressed. Her Audi was full of produce. She’d driven more than 30 miles from her home.
Does she really have no awareness of all the work that goes into ordering seeds, starting them indoors, transplanting, weeding, watering, weeding, watering, weeding, watering, staking some up … oh, well …
I’m waiting for the rest of the story. For now, I just can’t wrap my brain around this one.
Making the orchards bloom was a labor of irrigation. No matter how fertile the volcanic soil of the valley, water was the missing element man worked to provide.
~*~
There’s good reason the rattlesnake-infested, corrugated humps encircling the orchard valley are pale brown: they receive none of the snowmelt impounded from late March into July in the high mountains. Agencies release and distribute that water through blazing summer into October. Green agriculture parallels the river and irrigation canals, defying the tough, roasted inclines above, where sagebrush and bunchgrass stroke tawny eternity. In this compass, wind rarely precedes rain. Beyond lucrative strips of orchards, the principal agriculture involves herds or hay; because of irrigation and unfettered sunlight, five mowings a year are common; bales are trucked to dairy cows and pleasure horses on the rainy side of the tall mountains. Desert has few chickens — and no pigs to speak of. Somewhere out there, Basque shepherds elude the heat. Forests begin at the top of high ridges observed fifty miles distant.
~*~
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