Monthly Archives: July 2016

63, or, The Blog Post that Turned into a Book Review

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Picked up Alastair Humphreys’ book Grand Adventures yesterday and reading it now. An absolute joy. Lucid, convincing, inspiring, practical (without sounding like a “guide”) and humorous in places (often self-deprecatingly so). This book is a must-own for anyone who has even had the slightest inkling of a consideration of embarking on an adventure, odyssey, journey, whatever, grand or otherwise.

Grand Adventures can be broken up into four parts, some of which overlap. The first third of the book consists of practical matters, and the point of it is to convince you, the reader, that yes, a big adventure is possible, and yes, you can find the time, money, etc. to go on one. The second two thirds of the book is broken down into modes of transport, or types of adventure—travel by bicycle, by foot, by watercraft, etc.

What could the other two parts that comprise this book be, you may now be thinking to yourself, since I’ve obviously covered the entire length of the thing from front to back. Well, Grand Adventures is also arranged in such a way that each of the subsections are broken down into two formats. Each is introduced by Al and his thoughts on the matter at hand, and then, and here’s the real genius of the book, supplemented by the thoughts and anecdotes of certain people, average human being and Grand Adventurer alike, he questioned who have gone off on these adventures themselves. I almost don’t want to say “supplemented by” because these stories and bits of advice from others make up the bulk of the book. They’re also the bits that when you read you can’t help but be grabbed by the guts with the desire to immediately fling everything, all previous engagements and responsibilities aside, and run out the door prepared or not. Each section is then neatly concluded by Al summarizing stories and pointing out similarities, differences, and unique points of view between them. It’s a neat little bow on a tidy package full of gifts of inspiration and motivation.

If you’ve never rowed across an ocean before (and I’m pretty sure that accounts for about 99.99999 percent of the population of the world) you might find yourself wanting to. If you’ve never gone on an (ant)arctic journey before, maybe that now sounds exciting and possible. If you’ve never walked farther than from your front door to the nearest bar, then perhaps walking across your country of residence (or any country for that matter) sounds like it might be up your alley. Of course, maybe you think it might be better to row across a smaller body of water than an ocean, to start with, or maybe make a visit to southern Greenland rather than attempt to trek around the arctic, or pick a shorter distance to walk than across a continent or country (unless your country is small, unlike the United States), although, the wonderful thing about walking (or cycling) is that you don’t need any more experience in doing it than you already probably have.

There are no lengthy kit lists here, just a very simple one covering some of the basics. That’s not the point of the book anyway, which is mainly to convince and inspire, and this it does exceedingly well. If you as a prospective adventurer are set on going on a particular adventure, the web contains vast surpluses of information for recommending specifics in terms of kit (along with the lengthy debates that often accompany them).

The photography in the book is, on the whole, excellent. At its worst it’s bland and prosaic, but does still cover its most basic function of describing or detailing further  a particular story. The great bulk of photographs though are far and away better than this, many of them being jaw-droppingly gorgeous, particularly the two-page full bleed spreads (I’m thinking of a particular image of Iceland right now). These images not only enliven particular vignettes, but also make one envious of the subject in the  photograph, or of the photographer himself, and oftentimes both, while additionally, and perhaps most importantly, evoking a wide array of feelings, from daring and desolation, to danger, but also quietude, peace, joy, and fun. Above all though, they inspire adventure.

To wrap this all up I think I’ll repeat what I began with in my opening paragraph. And maybe add a few bits. If you’ve ever at any time in your life thought about going on an adventure, big or small, you should own this book. But even if the thought has never crossed your mind to go on an adventure, you should own this book; it’s likely that you need one but just don’t realize it. Perhaps you’re feeling life’s gotten a bit dull, lost a bit of its sheen, is too predictable or repetitive, but you can’t quite pinpoint why this might be. There’s this itch you have, but you can’t quite figure out how to scratch it. All this is pointing to one thing: you’re desperately in need of an adventure. But you didn’t know this because you either don’t know someone who’s been on an adventure, or you haven’t read a blog or a story by someone who’s gone off on an adventure. In short, you haven’t been exposed to the adventuring world. But no worries. Now you know. And with this book you can get to thinking, pondering, picking, and planning. This book will be your constant companion, at least until you leave, because by that point you will be no longer be in need of it. But, while you’re planning, or just pondering an adventure, or even after you’ve returned from one, you will always go back to this book, for it is filled with the seeds of your own personal journeys that you’ve finally discovered you so badly need.

62

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Monday 06/06

With a knee injury (or, any injury for that matter) one has essentially two choices to make: abandon the trip and go home, or adjust things accordingly. I am adjusting accordingly. Thankfully, cars here in New Mexico are fairly cheap, and I have enough money in my account to cover the cost of one and its assorted peripherals. So, yes, adventure by Subaru Legacy Outback. It doesn’t sound terribly adventurous, and it’s certainly not nearly as physically demanding as cycling, but who’s to say what an adventure is or isn’t anyway? Besides, I may end up run/walking the west coast from Seattle to Berkeley, but that, at the moment, is neither here nor there.

The car, despite cutting into my “budget” (which can be solved by selling it later), makes me more mobile, and gives me greater flexibility and range of travel. I’ll be able to camp out of it and go on hikes, visit monuments, parks and forests I would not have otherwise. I’m actually quite excited, though that could just be wanting to get on the road after having been stuck in Taos and Santa Fe for the last two weeks. Just so long as it doesn’t break down!

Additionally, I’m going to spend some time around Breckenridge, Co (Frisco, specifically) where a friend lives, so who knows what I’ll see on my way to and from there. And then there’s the whole west coast, and house-sitting in Berkeley, and I’m really getting ahead of myself.

61

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I want to write something about the house I’ve been staying in, or at—my first few nights were spent in my tent—but I don’t know where to begin….

It is a largish property, at least in comparison to the house which is a squat, adobe, two room affair, usually dim inside, with wooden rafters supporting a ceiling slanting up at five or ten degrees from the south wall where there is a series of small rectangular windows, to the north wall where there are none but within which a set of double doors is installed.

Much of the property is bounded by cottonwoods and other native deciduous trees. Most of the lawn is sandy, dry and hard-packed, covered in a patchwork of different, unmown grasses, like an old tattered sweater with many holes in it. There is an apple orchard on one corner of the property which has been neglected so much so that the apple trees planted there are hardly leafing and will need a fair bit of care if they are ever to produce fruit in their lifetime. On the more wild, southern portion of the property which borders her neighbor’s yard where a few horses wander, the grasses and weeds grow more thickly, taller, and greater in number. Amongst all of this are large, sandy cones of course granules, like grains of salt that have agglomerated together with the help of a bit of water, about twelve inches high and in the shape of perhaps a cubist breast or a bra worn by Madonna in the 80’s, and fire ants scurrying in and out and all around them.

Near the clothesline where I camped for a couple nights is a mound of firewood that had been clearly dumped and forgotten. On the porch by the entrance to the house is a neat row stacked waist high. A rain catchment basin is situated at a lower corner of the house, gutters directed into it. From the stack of firewood where I’m standing writing all this I can see scattered about all over the yard are piles of dried cut twigs and plant detritus, an empty plastic bucket, gallon water jugs (also empty), dog bowls and flowerpots, an old Radio Flyer full of sticks and torn up weeds, two plastic trash bags filled (with weeds, presumably) and knotted off… Mainly it gives the appearance that a rather confused and disorganized person was in the middle of yard work before being summoned off somewhere with no time to organize or clean up.

The air is cool and almost always filled with the song of crickets, doves, magpies, the occasional chatter and drumming of a woodpecker, and the buzz of a fly or two. I’ve just spotted a Western Tanager (a first!) and some sort of flycatcher. A truck rumbles down the dirt drive, and a neighbor’s cat, two in fact, are on the prowl along the treeline bordering the lawn, one seated on a downed log peering at me with that disinterested, disregarding look that cats are so expert at, while I stand here writing this. The air is clear. It is always clear. Rain was forecast for today, but never materialized.

Sitting and Writing, A Dove

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There was
A White-tipped Dove
Hooting before I walked inside
To get this pad
To get this pen
And now
I’ve returned to my spot
On the little wooden steps
That lead nowhere
Among the tall, green grass
Which the morning sun shines through so well
Next to the old Cottonwood
Adventurous, onyx-black ants venturing
Up and down
Climbing into and out
Of canyons in its gnarled, crevassed bark
And the dove is silent.

Instead, the screech and chatter of magpies
And the rapid, staccato hammering of a Lawrence’s Woodpecker
On the old tree behind me
It’s tallest limbs naked, dry, bare
Prodding at the sky like an historical monument
One without a plaque, without a name
Without much significance at all
Largely unknown but to those
Who know to look.

And the soft “churr” of crickets
Nearly imperceptible in the background
The background which we move upon
That an arm, a leg
A gesture
Thrusts up from
It is the background against which all our monuments
All the daily minutiae manifests itself
Expresses itself in relief
If one sits still long enough the dove may return
To softly whistle her call amongst
The cacophony of the day.

60

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Things have gotten simultaneously simpler and trickier since hurting my knee. I’m going back to Taos this evening for the weekend. Staying with Jeanne. Haven’t yet determined whether I’ll rent a car in Taos or Santa Fe—I can take a bus from one to the other if necessary. The only reason, at this point, for renting in Santa Fe is that I may need to order some things and have them shipped there. I can really only be in Taos until Tuesday, AND I want to get on the road. Hopefully this car rental thing goes smoothly.

The reason I’m ordering things is because I’m selling things. Shrinking and lightening up my kit. Hopefully it all goes, especially the trailer which I’ve been tired of for seemingly ages. The lighter my kit may be the sooner I can be back on my bike again.

59

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I’ve been lucky to have stayed with great people during my journey. I suppose to say “I’ve been lucky” is false, for most everyone who belongs to the WarmShowers network is an understanding, sympathetic, and generous host, often going beyond what any rational person’s expectations of kindness and hospitality might be. One might think that after experiencing such fantastic hospitality at host’s place after host’s place that I would have adjusted my expectations accordingly, but I never do; it always yields such sweet surprises to expect so little and receive so much. I would imagine too it would be more difficult to play the gracious, thankful guest if I just assumed so much to be normal behavior.

I’m currently writing this at Ten Thousand Waves, and I am sitting here outside, in a lounge chair by the communal bath: a hot water pool with a cold one next to it separated by a low wall which one might hop or slide over from one to the other. After sitting in the hot water bath for ten minutes, maybe longer, getting nice and cooked (and very relaxed), taking a dip in the cold water bath is marvelously refreshing. It’s a frightful shock as well, and wonderfully stimulating, especially if one sits for about an equal amount of time as one had sat in the hot water pool. Most people don’t do this however, and spend little more than fifteen or twenty seconds partly submerged in the chill of the cold water. These persons’ experience of the baths is resultantly hollow and lacking by comparison. Unfortunate for them, I guess. But this strikes me as so typical of the 20th/21st century (and other centuries too, but I wasn’t quite alive then so can’t comment, or I could, but then this would turn into some sort of long essay about the aristocracy of centuries past, and how as we’ve moved into the twentieth that aristocracy developed into the rich, upper class which the ever growing middle class wished (and wishes still!) to emulate, and then there’s the whole “keeping up with the Joneses” thing, and yadda yadda yadda), developed nation attitude. So many of these people want all the comfort, warmth, and luxury available to them, but don’t want the slightest bit of discomfort to get in the way of that. They want to be coddled, and wrapped in silk undies and lingerie, and sleep on their thousand thread-count sheets with their 900-fill down duvet. Life to them, I should think, is accordingly felt less acutely. It is a thin attenuation, and no matter the width of their televisions, the suppleness of their automobile’s suspension, or the loft of their pillows they lie their heads on, nothing can broaden that stripe. The easier one’s life becomes the more one expects it to be so, and the harder it is to willingly insert hardship or difficulty into it.

Anyway, the spa is located up in the mountains, a few hundred feet higher in elevation than Santa Fe proper. Lounging in the pool one’s view is an assemblage of Piñon Pines, Cottonwoods, Maples and Oaks which grow just beyond the boundaries of the property. Up above, nothing but a big, mottled, blue and white sky, the white bits mutating, always in flux, changing shape, drifting by lazily like manta rays in the sea, or aspen pollen in the mountains. The experience is one of complete luxury. I’ve never experienced it before and I suspect it will be some time before I do so again.

58

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Lying on the couch yawning madly. Matt is coding in the other room, his bedroom, which is hardly another room because the doorway has no door and I can see him sitting there in his chair working away in front of his monitor. Meanwhile, I’m here, lying on this couch yawning madly. The front door several feet away is open, and I am listening to the crickets chirping madly. It is cool out. I wonder if there is a degree of cold at which crickets stop chirping but don’t die and just grow silent. Like the energy required for that activity is too much to be continued below a certain temperature, or the act of maintaining homeostasis becomes more difficult as the temperature decreases, and so only the most necessary, vital activities are continued. It seems too cool tonight to me to be hearing crickets chirping so.

Santa Fe seems to me a bit of a tourist trap of a city, and an expensive one at that, though that is nothing out of the ordinary. I wonder how the crickets find it to live here. I suppose I could find work , but I haven’t found any decent coffee yet*. Too bad I don’t have the money to open a business.

Tomorrow I plan on spending much of the afternoon at Ten Thousand Waves: a spa where one might get all sorts of skin treatments,  face masks, massages and the like. I’m just going for their outdoor, communal bath. Matt has a free voucher he’s offered to me, so I won’t have to spend a dime (thanks again!). The establishment I’m told is inspired by Japanese mountain hot spring resorts, so I’m quite excited as I have had for a long time a fascination of all things Japanese. There is also a restaurant attached, in the style of a more upscale izakaya, which obtains most of its meat and produce from local purveyors. I will probably eat there too.

I have lots of coordinating, thinking, and planning to do as well during the rest of my stay here since I have a bum knee and won’t be cycling for a good long while.

*I found some excellent coffee a week later at Collected Works books—Iconik Coffee Roasters. It’s on par with the best stuff I’ve had on this trip, which has been little and far between, unsurprisingly.