I couldn't resist posting this picture of a mother grizzley bear I took as I struggle to master the digital zoom on this new camera. Yesterday we saw 6 bears, 4 black bears and 2 grizzleys, and the grizzley had 2 cubs with her. Apparently that's when they're most aggressive. Warnings are up for hunters with dogs, but no warnings for hikers. I guess we rank lower than the berries the bears are eating like crazy, getting ready for hibernation. Seeing these bears in their natural habitat is thrilling. Yesterday while driving through Waterton, we saw a brown bear just ambling along a ridge line, several hundred feet from the road, completely alone, nose up, sniffing for food. Later, we saw another black bear sitting in a patch of berries, the last berries before winter. People were stopped everywhere along the road, and the bear was just about 20 feet away, a little too close for me, but he ate unconcernedly, ignoring the cameras and other crunchy snacks.

We're in Fort McLeod now, after collapsing the tent yesterday in Waterton. A fierce wind storm took out one of the tent poles, so after decades, it's time for a new tent. Of course we get hot water, a bathtub and access to internet as part of the motel -- I won't say anything about the continental breakfast as I'm grateful for the granola and yogurt in my breakfast box.

Yesterday we also visited the Smashed-in-Head-Buffalo-Jump Center and were awed by the vista of the plains stretching out east before us for we are now on the eastern side of the Canadian Rockies. What a communal effort it was to bring down and butcher these bison and how that work enabled survival. Natives have lived and hunted in this area for more than 5,000 years and new discoveries are being made every year. I liked best the sacred painted buffalo skull, black and white dots pointing to eternity.

Today we go to a Japanese Garden here in Fort McLeod, considered to be the best in the Westsern hemisphere, then we head back to the State and tent-hunting. The sun is shining, all is well with the world. I hope all is well with you and yours. Beth

PS Matt, thanks for the comment. Send me an e-mail!

PS If you want to download a picture of Mother Bear, go to my webshots (see link upper right)

My feet are tired from today's 4 mile hike, but I couldn't resist posting these two pictures of some of the incredible mountains here in Glacier National Park. In 1850 some 150 glaciers decorated the mountains; today, we're down to about 25 throughout the park, with these expected to evaporate by 2030, another testament to the reality of global warming. With the hottest temperatures posted in 2007, rangers are seeing changes in not only in animal habitation and migration, but the dreaded beetle disease that has devastated so many thousands of acres of Canadian forests in appearing here as well. Even so, the mountains are beautiful, and we did see mountain goats up close and personal, even though they are quite wild, and a mother grizzley with two cubs. I was too excited to use the digital zoom, so my pictures of the bears are rather blurry.

It's hard to write about the sense of wonder that we feel as we hike through these mountains. Fall will come quickly. We see the first yellow leaves in quaking aspen and birches, ferns are fading to brown, and flowers are rare, bear grass, wild asters, Indian paintbrush, and fireweed, all seen rarely now. But the mountains soar above all, and after a 3 or 4 hour hike, the world seems more a place of beauty and peace. Beth

At the same time that dear colleagues are headed back to school for in-service in 90 degree weather, Allen and I are hiking in Glacier National Park. Yesterday snow dusted the mountains, and today the high was in the 70s. Yesterday also brought excitement not found in LBCC hallways. We were taking pictures of a mountain goat along side the road when we spotted a grizzley bear ambling along the hillside. Just for a few moments we could see this magnificant wild creature, surrounded by high mountains.

I also conquered my fear of heights by hiking along the Highline Trail, not difficult in terms of length, only 1.5 miles, but the trail wound along a sheer cliff. One side was rock, the other straight down. Only perseverance and those little iron rings that "real" climbers use kept us going. But the views were magnificent. Altogether the hiking has been spectacular -- as I hope the picture shows.

So do I miss teaching yet? I'm still getting used to the reality of retirement, where each day is entirely open. Tomorrow we'll hike in the upper portion of Glacier National Park and then go on to Canada. I can report that very quickly when we're camping I have renewed appreciation for the small things in life -- like hot water, showers, and access to the internet! For now, I wish you all a very good school year, one filled with the very best of students, good colleagues, and short meetings! And I hope to see you on the road! Beth

August 27, 2007. Monday morning, 4 days before the U-haul arrives.

Some of my friends are having a hard time understanding why we are leaving such a beautiful and peaceful community to go on the road for some ambiguous time -- three to five years without a fixed plan, just with tent, car, and box of books -- and a laptop.

In ancient and medieval India, men who reached a certain age, sometime after 50, would, with the blessings of their family, assume a wanderer’s robes and begging bowl to seek enlightenment. Here in the United States, "Go West young man," was a compelling call to adventure for many young men and families too. Perhaps the California gold rush of the 1850s contributed, but many families packed up, eager to become landowners. And before a United States existed, religious persecution drove some out of Europe to the west, to the new land before it was the United States.

But this doesn’t exactly get at why I want to go. When I grew up, we moved often. I remember attending 6 different high schools and moving too many times as a younger child to count the grade schools I attended. We were not itinerant farmworkers, but divorce in the 1940s and 1950s, when divorce was unthinkable, led my Hollywood starlet mother to pack her two daughters up and move. Somehow she always made such moves an adventure. She showed us something beautiful, a window in a different place, a new toy, the adventure of crossing railroad tracks at dawn, our very own room. I felt comfortable in the world most of the time. So I grew up rather footloose and bookish. After all, books were portable.

When I met my husband 32 years ago, he dazzled me with tales of world travels. I was ready to go. India. South America. Nepal. China. All beckoned. We began with Mexico. Then our daughter Rachel came into our lives. And we did travel – Hawaii, the land of Jack Lord; California, from Los Angeles to San Francisco, urban Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, several times to Mexico, and then from the affluent suburbs of New Jersey to Ecuador where Rachel attended kindergarten with Quechuan and Spanish children and the only people from North America living in Otavalo, Ecuador, who were not missionaries, was our little family. Both of us felt once Rachel was old enough to go to school, she should have the experience of growing up in one place.

So we returned to life in the United States, I pursued my degree to teach, and we have lived a quiet, very happy life in Corvallis -- close to friends and family, and teaching first at Oregon State and then my teaching home for the last twenty three years -- Linn-Benton Community College. We still traveled in the summers, mostly camping and studying trips -- Alaska, Mexico, northern Canada above the Artic Circle, and I took a two-term sabbatical to seven countries in eight months (Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Italy, France and England). Rachel went on to become a musician, attending the University of Oregon, meeting and marrying a wonderful man, Nick. Our family expanded. And then I retired.

Teaching is, for me, an immersion experience. For the first time, with retirement, writing becomes a real possibility. Unstructured time without a schedule and so many places in this world to see and try to understand. So this first year we begin our travels, a new laptop, a crate of books, our tent and the United States.

Our destinations this first year spread from the great Southwest to the wilds of Maine, with month-long stops in Florida and New Orleans. I’m hoping for opportunities to visit far-flung family, for some volunteer work, and for every day a good place for reflecting, writing, hiking, and experiencing the wider world, looking at the connections between people, places, culture and history. This promises to be a grand adventure. Some friends will join us for parts of the way. Others will stay home. So it has always been. Make it a good day! Beth

This week I'm focused on taking my library down. I think there are about 3,000 books here, with concentrations in Latin American lit, African lit, the humanities, art, and history. Plus a giant pile of books I haven't read yet, everything from The Secret Life of Bees to The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. Right now I'm reading Sheri Tepper's Singer from the Sea, whose intrepid heroine somehow seems much more accessible than that in David Guterson's Our Lady of the Forest, but I haven't given up, being 2/3rd's of the way through.
Some books go into storage, some on the road, some to Rachel and Nick (and friends), some to the library for their book sale, and some reserved for the garage sale. All the process of letting go. I started with books first as I thought that would be harder than dishes.

Anyway, some have requested I post a schedule for our first trips . . . so here are the "fall" trips:

SEPTEMBER 2007. We start about Sept 3 in Spokane, going to Waterton (Canada) and Glacier National Park (Montana), then down to Yellowstone and the Tetons (Wyoming), Craters of the Moon National Monument (Idaho), Hell's Canyon (Oregon) all in a grand loop of camping back to Spokane by Sept 30, Rachel's birthday. This gives us a dry run on all the camping gear.

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2007 begins the Southwest tour, starting about October 2-3, Great Basin National Park (Nevada), then to Utah for the rest of the month of October. We'll explore five national parks -- Bryce, Zion, Capitol Reef, Arches and Canyonlands. We cross the border into Colorado to visit Mesa Verde National Park and then head south to New Mexico where we visit Aztec Ruins National Monument and possibly Chaco Culture National Park. Then we hit Four Corners and jump into Arizona for the month of November. Highlights will include visiting the Navajo National Monument and Park, the Grand Canyon, Walnut Canyon, and Wupatki (the petrified forest). We'll continue on to the Petrified Forest National Park, the Hubbel Trading Post, Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Phoenix, then to Casa Grande Ruins and finally Tucson for Thanksgiving with my sister, Wynn, Alfred and family. Visiting the Amerind Museum in Tucson will be a highlight as will Tombstone and Kartchner Caverns. Whew!

In December, we head north and east to Philadelphia by Dec. 15th with a few stops in Mexico and Texas, including, hopefully, a stop in our favorite restaurant in San Antonio, the fabled Biga on the Banks, my first five-start dining experience.

Somehow writing will fit in all this traveling and hiking and taking photos. At this point I'm excited about continuing the mermaid stories (5 stories more or less finished and 4 on the research/notes level). Every culture seems to have a mermaid story, and every time I find another link, another image, I'm intrigued by the connections, but wonder if I will find mermaids in the desert. Hi from Beth

Mermaid bridges or gates are found in seaports all over the world, marking a half way point between this world and the next, the world of the sea and myth. I found this mermaid "gate" at Paris, Paris in Las Vegas at a friend's wedding; it made me think of the old neighborhoods in Paris, with small, crooked, winding streets where a turn opens up to a small square with a fountain or a bakery or a mermaid gate.

Efforts to track down the inspiration for these two mermen led me to a bridge built in 1846, now torn down in St. Petersburg, and then to Karen Valentine's blog and her just published novel, The Old Mermaid's Inn, which looks like a fascinating read well grounded in Gloucester's seafaring history, Breton myth, and solid writing -- and self-published through her own press.

One comment that keeps surfacing over and over again in my readings about writers is how we must persevere. The workday begins with some sort of writing, some sort of commitment to time and focus, even if the writer has no real direction. The casting about, the writing itself is its own reward. And most writers confront doubt. Maybe not every day, but real doubt entertwined with a sense of accomplishment.

I just finished my first real draft of "Rusalka," a short story set in the pale of Russia, drawing from the myth of Rusalka and the pogroms of the late 19th Century. Rachel read it and said, "Mother, why are your stories so sad? Think about audience." So I've been pondering the reality of mermaids -- that they symbolize generally both destructive and seductive forces. For me, though, mermaids suggest sheer freedom, the luxury of "life" in the sea, its storms and its vastness. And I find the connection between mermaids and humans fascinating -- even in story form. Perhaps her request for a "happy" story leads me to confront this wall of starting the next story. I have no easy resolution. But finding a mermaid bridge in an old French quarter may be a beginning. Beth