Monday, July 11-Wednesday, July 13

First, I would like to retract a statement in the last blog, which said that in addition to representing Absolute Beauty, Yosemite “is Exhibit A of how we humans tend to screw everything up.” That is not fair. My failure at the time of that writing was due to a paradigm confusion, that is, thinking of Yosemite Valley as a wilderness paradise. The more appropriate comparison is Times Square. Once you understand that, the accomplishments of this extraordinary park become even more impressive.

The average number of people who visit the park in July is a tad under 600,000 or 20,000 people on any given day, and 99% of them end up in the valley. That is a lot of people in a relatively small space and accounts for the bumper-to-bumper traffic and over booked parking lots. To relieve the congestion the Park Service runs free shuttles every 10 minutes on a 22-stop route that connects all the villages, and the buses are packed. The easy trails are also usually crowded as is just about everything else in the valley. But once you understand that the goal is to allow as many people as possible to enjoy the park, you realize that not only is it remarkable that the Park Service pulls this off without ruining the park experience, it adds to the fun—especially if you like people watching. And if you are a wilderness person, you are only minutes away from a trailhead which will take you far away from the maddening crowd. The national parks are a treasure and evidence that government can and does do a lot of things right.

But, of course, everything does not go right all of the time. Take the “Curry Village/Half Dome Village” name confusion. Well, it turns out that just about every name in Yosemite has been changed due to a trademarks dispute. Yosemite, like most national parks, uses private management companies to operate the hotels and campgrounds and provide food service. When the Park Service was not paying attention, the former private management company, Delaware North, proceeded to trademark under their name virtually every historic place in the park; and when they were replaced by Aramark, they offered to return the trademarks to the Park Service for a mere $52 million. (Does this sound like something Trump would do?) In fact, there is no such thing as Yosemite National Park anymore because Delaware North trademarked that name as well; so it is now just “Yosemite.” Lawsuits, counter lawsuits, and outrage by park visitors will probably continue for a while before this is resolved. In the meantime all the new names are on signs that are designed to look temporary.

***

The four days we spent in Yosemite with our daughter, Jessica, and her kids, Jasper(age 11) and Josie (age 8) were fabulous. The first two days of tent camping  –contrary to my expectations– were actually fun though the first night when temperatures dipped into the 40s, I thought I was going to freeze to death. The first day the five of us took a hike to Vernal Falls, billed as a 1.6 mile “moderate” hike with a 400 foot elevation change. I should have paid more attention to the elevation change since my strained knee is still a problem. The paved “trail” was quite crowed with people coming and going almost in a continuous line, but the views of the stream and valley walls were spectacular. The uphill part was manageable but coming back downhill very slow and painful; and at times I was wondering if I might become one of the 200 hikers each year who are carted back to the valley on stretchers. But I made it. Jessica and Jasper kept going another five miles (out and back) to Nevada Falls, an elevation gain of 2,500 feet, and returned later in the day, exhausted, to join us at the Half Dome Village pool.

The second day we all hopped in Jessica’s car and drove 50 plus miles on winding roads up the mountain to Tuolumne Meadows, which is the center of the high country, at an elevation of almost 9,000 feet. We were disappointed that we came too late in the season to see the magnificent wild flowers but had a pleasant walk in the meadows, and enjoyed a picnic lunch beside a meandering brook where the Ellis family all took a dunk in the ice cold water. I was pleasantly surprised to see so few people there, unlike the congested valley.

On the way back to the car, two serious hikers approached us. You can easily tell a serious hiker because of the heavy back pack, the walking sticks, hiking boots and a look of determination and resolve. They move steadily as if on a mission and keep a sharp eye on the path ahead. These two guys looked older than most of the serious hikers, a bit bedraggled, and their pace was slow. They stopped to ask if we had any idea if there was a visitor’s center around; and when pointed to it a few hundred yards away, they suddenly became elated, confessing that they had been hiking for five days, were already a day behind schedule, and ready to go home. When Embry asked if they had had a good time, one responded, “Well, yes and no.”

While his hiking partner chatted with Embry and Jessica, I asked him about what it was like, hiking in the back country. He grimaced and said: “Are you kidding me? It should be against the law to let anyone over 70 do something like this—and we both turned 70 this year. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. You can’t believe how steep the paths are, and they go on forever. You round a bend and think you are at the peak and look up to an endless path even steeper. You fry during the day and freeze at night. You walk on narrow paths where one false step will send you dropping thousands of feet. You are thirsty all the time and can’t get enough water. We are from Minnesota where the altitude is 900 feet, not 9,000 feet like it is here. All I can say is thank God we made it here. Would I ever do something like this again? Never in a hundred years. Now where did you say the Visitors Center is…?”

We wished them luck and hoped that could find someone to give them a lift to their campsite where they started.

Day 3 was the transition day for us. Embry and I are saying goodbye to our tent and the Half Dome Village. This was part of the deal we negotiated way back when we planned the trip; and I was ready for it. It was not that it was freezing cold in the middle of the night or that our neighbors were two feet away on each side, or that you could hear every word being said within 20 feet of your tent, or the stopped-up toilets that left water standing several inches deep in the rest rooms. Actually it was the energy level. There was so much going on and so many families coming and going, kids playing everywhere, serious hikers off on a trek or staggering home to their tents, the gatherings for dinner at the massive dining pavilion, and streams of people at the shops or café or laundry mat or amphitheater. We needed a break. The solution: off to the “Yosemite Majestic Hotel” formerly The Ahwahnee Hotel, an historical landmark.

Josie protested that it was not fair for us to leave them even though she and Jasper had already made friends their age and they were perfectly happy.

“Oh come on, Pepe, suck it up!” she said. “You can stick it out a couple of more days.”

The Majestic Yosemite Hotel and the Half Dome Village represent the alpha and omega of tourist accommodations at Yosemite or practically anywhere else for that matter. The hotel was constructed in the 1920’s and underwent a $12 million renovation a few years ago. It was what I was expecting the Crescent Hotel in the Ozarks would be like: huge formal dining room with tall ceilings and high windows, a walk-in fireplace, dinner by candlelight with superb service, a vast lounge area and beautiful grounds. Our room on the fifth floor shared a huge balcony with one other room and looked out on Half Dome. The décor was elegant but understated. The food was not quite up to the level of the environment but certainly not bad. We hosted Josie, Jasper and Jessica for one breakfast and one dinner and heard no more from Josie about sucking it up.

On the final day, everyone but me went biking in the morning and rafting in the afternoon. I spent the time catching up on the blog and riding the shuttle bus. It took almost one and a half hours to complete the loop with passengers crammed in like sardines most of the way, struggling to get on and struggling to get off. More languages than I could count were spoken and complexions were every shade of white and brown. I do not know the split between residents of the U.S. and visitors, but it was about as diverse a population as you will find on one bus or, for that matter, the Planet Earth. This, I thought, is what makes our country great. To try to return to “good old days” when white folks ruled the roost is a pipe dream. As they say, that train has done left the station. How we adjust to the new normal is, of course, in part what the election of 2016 is all about and right now, Hillary and The Donald are tied in the polls at 40-40. Scary.

Tomorrow we leave Yosemite for points east. It has been a magical four days. Yosemite is a magical place in a vast and beautiful country. We Americans are blessed.

 

 

 

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Sunday, July 10

Up early for breakfast in the lodge, then a short drive to see the largest tree in the world, the General Sherman Tree, 2,200 years old, 275 feet tall, and a circumference of something like 150 feet. This involves a 30 minute walk, a 150 foot change in elevation, a lot more big trees and probably 150 or so other people, a good number speaking languages we understand—French, German, Spanish—and a lot that we don’t—probably Korean, Japanese and Chinese. It turns out that Sequoia is no longer a best kept world secret, not that it ever really was.

When you look at a map, Sequoia/Kings Canyon and Yosemite appear to be only a few miles apart occupying prominent spots in the Sierra Nevada. Because no roads connect them, however, you have to go down the mountain all the way to Fresno, about 80 miles, before heading northeast to Yosemite, another 50 miles before entering the park, and then 40 more miles to the famous Yosemite Valley. By the time we reached the Village we had traveled over 200 miles much of it on winding, precipitous roads with spectacular views and no guard rails.

When you say “Yosemite,” what do you picture in your mind? Half Dome? El Captain? The meadows with wild flowers and bubbling streams in the valley, the waterfalls, some dropping over 200 feet? Has anyone not seen the iconic Ansell Adams photo of the valley as you emerge from the Highway 41 tunnel? I have been to Yosemite twice and am a big fan of Ansell Adams. So I think I know Yosemite. Hardly. I am not prepared for what we see when our car emerges from the long tunnel, and there is the valley below with enormous granite cliffs on three sides rising straight up almost a mile above the valley floor. The stone mountains are gray, shining in the late afternoon sun. The valley is all shades of green. You can see winding blue streams meandering through the meadows. The cloudless sky is Carolina blue. The temperature is in the mid 80s with very low humidity and gentle breezes. Could this be the Garden of Eden?

Worth the price of admission, as they say. You can turn around right now and go home and will have experienced a thrill of a life time.

Now there are many dimensions to Yosemite. It is a complicated place. On one hand it represents the closest thing we humans have to experiencing absolute beauty and at the same time is Exhibit A of how we humans tend to screw everything up.

Our first challenge is finding our campground, which Embry booked over my objections. (The historic hotel sounded pretty nice to me and we eventually compromised with two nights each place.) We are meeting our daughter, Jessica, along with Jasper and Josie (Peter had to return to work.) who have been visiting friends in San Francisco. Embry correctly thought it would be good to be near them and they are supposed to arrive at Curry Village about the same time we do. The first question is where is Curry Village.

After descending from the viewing area to the valley floor, we suddenly find ourselves in stop and go traffic, complete with traffic cops, madly trying to direct confused tourists, and who are not pleased when you go in the wrong direction on a one-way road as we did. We holler at one cop, asking where Curry Village is and he points back to the way we just came. I study the map for the tenth time and see Curry Village distinctly marked. We must have passed by it several times. How could we have missed it?

Surrendering, we dart into the registration parking area for Half Dome Village, a place we had passed at least a half dozen times to witness 50 or 60 people waiting patiently in line to register. Embry remarks that she is not going to wait in line for an hour at Half Dome Village only to be told we have to go to the other side of the valley or wherever. So off we go again until we return out of desperation to the Half Dome Village parking lot where there is now a huge sign which reads, “All Parking Lots Full in Yosemite. No Additional Parking Allowed.”

“Well, this is interesting,” I remarked.

Embry spots a young woman, rolls down the window and asks if she knows where Curry Village is. She tells us that this is Half Dome Village. We tell her we know that, but where is Curry Village, to which she answers casually that there is no Curry Village. When we ask what she means by that, she says there used to be a Curry Village, but they changed the name in March to Half Dome Village.

Oh.

Things now start looking up. The registration line is down and it only takes about 20 minutes to get checked in. The clerk is sympathetic and supportive, commenting that no one knows why the maps have not been changed. Apparently most everyone   drives a an hour or so desperately searching for Curry Village before figuring it all out, arriving despondent and angry. We find a space in the no-spaces-available parking lot, drag our luggage to our tent, just as Jessica turns into the parking lot. She did know of the name change, learning about it when searching on line for park information. Since we are all starved and it is now approaching eight p.m., we go straight to the jam-packed pizza house, our third pizza in a row, but this one is actually hot and pretty good.

We collapse after dinner, wondering what the next three days will bring.

 

 

 

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Friday, July 8 and Saturday, July 9

We awake to hear the news of the Dallas massacre. It appears that instead of subsiding, the violence in the U.S. is only getting worse. Since revenge is a basic human emotion, you know that there will be retribution, then more violence—all facilitated by elected officials, owned by the NRA, which encourages a culture where there are more lethal weapons than people. The rest of the world thinks we are nuts.

Today we begin the National Parks leg. We have reached our farthest western point, Santa Barbara, just under 4,000 miles and 23 days on the road, and are heading back East. The first park on the list is Sequoia, about a six hour drive, which we wisely decide to split up into two days. Route 101, the old Coastal Highway, will take you all the way to San Francisco, but we bail out at San Luis Obispo, a quaint, touristy town exactly halfway between L.A. and San Francisco. This highway could well be the most scenic highway in the country with golden hills, punctuated by occasional wineries and cattle fields. Perhaps most remarkable, except for the brief periods when you drive through villages and towns, there are no billboards and no advertising. I conclude that the state of California must have figured out how to accomplish what is so tragically rare in most of the rest of the U.S.

The hotel in San Luis Obispo is a 25 room, bed and breakfast, with gas burning fireplaces, and large, tastefully decorated rooms with a Great Britain theme. (Ours was “The Devonshire.”) and probably the nicest hotel so far. The trip the next day, Saturday, July 9, took us first over the Coastal Range and then down 2,000 feet to the vast, flat, irrigated fields of the San Fernando Valley. Here fields are measured in square miles, not acres. Canals provide water. Where irrigation is not provided, there is only bone dry dirt. I can’t help wondering how long it will be before water becomes the scarce resource oil is now. If the canals and irrigation cease, we who depend on this rich valley for food—and that is just about everyone in the U.S.– will be in deep trouble.

We see few houses but a surprisingly large number of “Another Farmer for Trump” signs.

After a couple of hours of speeding along at 70 miles an hour on a two-lane, almost deserted highway, we start to climb again and the golden hills we saw on Route 101 start to reappear. The hills get larger, becoming small mountains and then in the distance we see the silhouettes of the towering Sierra Nevada. It is not before we reach an altitude of around 4,000 feet that the gray sage and arid conditions suddenly and miraculously give way to pines and firs, which every few hundred yards of steep incline seem to add 10 feet in height. A deep valley is to our right with giant mountains upwards of 13,000 feet visible on the other side.

One troubling part of this part of the trip is the number of dead and dying trees. Their demise is due to a blight caused by the mountain pine beetle infestation, which tends to occur every 40 or 50 years but this time is much worse due the five-year drought affecting most of California. Hundreds of thousands trees must be affected in this park alone. Another sign of global warming?

It is not far beyond the 4,000 foot mark that we enter Sequoia National Park and then sharply start to climb to what will be 7,200 feet. This is about the altitude of Santa Fe and Flagstaff but it surely feels different. The narrow two-lane road curves back and forth with one hairpin curve after another. Since it is late in the afternoon, you would think people leaving the park would have been well on their way by now, but this is not the case. Cars are almost bumper to bumper going up the mountain and down, creeping around the hairpin curves and trying to stay on the road while not running into another car and still catching brief glimpses of steep valleys and giant mountains when you can. It is a driver’s nightmare. When we finally arrive on the top of the mountain at 7:00, we are both completely exhausted, and I am a nervous wreck. Even though our nerves are worn thin, we can’t miss gawking at the beauty of the forest and at the size and height of the Giant Sequoias. They are the largest trees in the world and are found only on the Western slopes of the Sierras. Many are over two thousand years old, some as high as 25 story buildings. I remember being here before twice—once when I was around 13 with my parents and once when we took our own kids here when they were youngsters. It is puzzling that I can’t remember many of the details but that allows me to experience this again as if it were the first time.

We find our lodge—very basic, but comfortable—and check in. Too tired to walk down to the main building, for dinner we decide to finish off the three pieces of cold pizza, which we boxed up from our meal in San Luis Obispo, which Embry immediately proceeds to drop on the floor, face down. No problem. She carefully picks up the mushrooms and pepperoni and places them back on the crust, then searches for a hire dryer, which she finds and  is surprisingly efficient in warming them up.

What permitted this from being a complete disaster was the extended happy hour, which began after we removed all perishable items, “including all alcoholic beverages” from our car. When you check into the lodge you are provided all sorts of information about the park including the bears, who are apparently so smart and so skilled that if you have anything that can be eaten or consumed in your car, the next morning the eatable and drinkable items will be gone. For some reason the  items that must be removed are alcoholic beverages–even if the bottles have not been opened.

The only conclusion that I can draw is that there is something special about bears and booze. The image of a black bear walking up to your car and examining its contents through the window and spotting a bottle of Tanqueray gin must drive them crazy. They will do anything to get in, break your car window, and you will walk out the next morning to your car to find a 500-pound black bear, passed out on your hood with a smile on his face.

We dutifully avoid such an encounter, rewarding ourselves for finally making it here, one of the most beautiful spots on Earth.

 

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Thursday, July 7

The big day of the Systemetrics reunion. Sue with Embry’s nudging and assistance is the host for this event, which is held on the Goleta Beach and includes over 50 people. Most are now retired and no one currently works for the firm, which has merged with larger firms doing health care research and computer stuff too many times to count. It was sold again this year for over two billion dollars, along with the myriad of sister companies that had been rolled up. Lots of money in health care nowadays.

What is it about these West Coast people? They tend to be cheerful, friendly and without a lot of the ego that we on the East Coast seem to have. Maybe it is the climate. In Santa Barbara there are only four questions asked about the weather: Will there be any morning fog? If there is morning fog (usually unlikely), when will it burn off? Will the afternoon highs settle in at 75 degrees as they usually do (with very low humidity of course), and will it ever rain again? The last question is the most serious since almost all of coastal California is experiencing a prolonged drought.

This crowd is especially West Coast and love their California crunchy-Granola lifestyle. Who wouldn’t?

Almost everyone has contributed something to the pot luck. I grill hotdogs. Lance has provided a couple of cases of beer. Embry, Sue and Bruce do the set up and take-down. The event which started at four p.m., winds down around 8:30,just as the sky over the Pacific is starting to turn pink. By all accounts it is a great success.

For any readers who are counting, you are probably concluding that these reunions will never end and probably are a bit worn out by reading about whom we saw when. You can breathe a bit easier because we are about to enter the next phase of the Road Trip: the National Parks. At the same time there is something special about these gatherings and reconnections and something melancholy as well because in too many instances we realize that this could be the last time we see old friends and former work colleagues. You can’t help wondering where the time went and how short life is.

 

 

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Wednesday, July 6

The day gets started with “The Good” as we get an early start, under cloudless blue skies heading down I-15, the major interstate linking L.A. with the western desert. Steep, barren mountains line both sides of a deep and narrow canyon providing spectacular views as we descend from around 5,000 feet to 1,500 feet. Suddenly the road takes a sharp turn to the right through a pass, enabling us to get our first view of the greater Los Angeles area. You can imagine how thrilling this might be, but that is all you can do, imagine, because L.A. is enshrouded in a brown cloud of smog. I thought the smog problem was pretty much under control in L.A., but not this day. The air is as bad as anything we experienced in China last year. Call this “The Bad” phase of the journey soon to be followed by “The Ugly.”

Before we know it, we are driving 85 miles an hour, trying to keep pace with traffic on a 12-lane, divided highway, tailgated by an 18-wheeler, with cars and behemoth trucks speeding along at break-neck speeds all around us, bumpers within inches of each other. Welcome to L.A.! Periodically red tail lights light up and the pace slows down to a stop-and-go, then without warning we are off to the races again before the next jam happens. All just a typical morning in the second largest city in the U.S. I am thinking that if we can actually make it to Santa Barbara without a collision, we will be lucky.

And we are lucky because we do not get run over by an 18-wheeler; and as we circle around the city going north and then west, the cars and trucks thin out and the smog diminishes allowing us to see a blue sky for the first time and breathe fresh air. As we head west along the coast to Santa Barbara, the houses jammed together in vast subdivisions with tiny yards on curved streets gradually disappear, and suddenly we are in the country again with steep hills and beige grass, dotted by giant green, live oaks and olive trees.

We are staying with Sue and Bruce, old and dear friends from way back when Embry and Sue worked together in the 1980s at Systemetics, a startup health care and social science research firm headquartered in Santa Barbara with an office in D.C. where Embry worked. In the 1990s Sue followed Embry to Mathematica , a similar firm, with offices in Princeton, D.C. and several other towns ; and we have remained close to them for over 30 years, with something like eight or nine vacation trips together to various exotic places. Sue is an expert photographer, and Bruce was a judge until his retirement a few years ago. He is a master gardener and still plays tennis several times a week at a near championship level. I always look forward to getting a free tennis lesson from him when we get together but not this time due to my bad knee.

Sue and Bruce actually live in the neighboring town of Goleta, where we arrive around four p.m. about the same time as Lance arrives, another Systemetric researcher from the 1980s, whom we have remained close to, now living in Seattle. A few years back he and his wife, Diana, joined us for a sailing cruise among the San Juan islands, north of Seattle. The third connection from the 1980s who joins us for dinner is Jim, one of the founders of the firm, and his wife, Eve, who have retired to the Bay area where they live on a house boat in Sausalito, and have a small apartment in Greenwich Village. They are all interesting people, still very much engaged in all kind of pursuits and living active, vital lives, despite health issues, some serious, that are part of growing old as happens to us homo sapiens on the planet Earth.

We enjoy a delicious dinner outside at a beach-side sea food restaurant, talking about old times, new times and this fragile and dangerous moment in American politics. We retire early to rest up for the big day tomorrow—the Systemetrics reunion.

 

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Monday, July 4 and Tuesday, July 5

Mile 3,390. Off to Santa Barbara—another 800 miles — where the next reunion will take place on Thursday, July 7, with two interim motel stops along the way. We drop Cousin Lynn off at the Albuquerque airport and then get back on I-40. The story line for these two days is the vastness, emptiness and extraordinary beauty of the American West. You drive mile after mile after mile seeing very few signs of any living creature. Hundreds of miles separate tiny settlements; and where there is an occasional gas station at an exit ramp, often a blue sign will be posted noting the distance to the “next exit with services.” Usually it is well over 50 miles, sometimes as much as 75 miles.

Several people told me that we would be really bored during this part of the trip since the scenery was described as being pretty much the same. Wrong on both counts. We were not bored, and the scenery varies a lot, though in subtle ways, determined largely by altitude. We descended from 7,000 feet at Santa Fe to around 5,000 feet in Albuquerque where it was much more arid with less sage brush. As we climbed up again, it became greener with larger, olive-colored bushes and then browner as we descended. This pattern repeated it self again and again. The mountains and the desert change colors from gray to olive to brown to purple depending on the angle of the sun. The vast sky is constantly in flux with tiny white puffs, towering thunderheads and high cobweb wisps. Temperatures range from the mid 70s in the higher elevations to 115 degrees in the valleys.   In other words change is always happening, and at times I felt I was experiencing infinity. There is no way to do justice to what it feels like when crossing this magical land. It can only be experienced and should be on everyone’s bucket list.

The evening of the Fourth of July we stayed in Flagstaff at a small motel which Embry booked through Hotline and spent the evening exploring the town. To get to Flagstaff, we climbed again to 7,000 feet where we found ourselves for the first time surrounded by towering pines (some dying) and occasional streams and ponds. The town itself has a vibrant, historic town center, reminding me of Ashville, NC. There are lots of coffee houses, cafes, boutiques, art galleries and stores selling mountain gear. Hip looking people are milling around, eating ice cream and casually watching guitarists playing ballads and folk music. A poster advertises a blue grass festival in August, and some middle-age guy in a cowboy hat is asking people to sign a petition supporting a local ordinance that would prevent the chief executive of the local hospital from earning more money than the President of the United States.

On July 5, we descend to lower grades and 115 degree temperatures as we enter California and the Mojave Desert. It is so dry here that it feels like we might just as well be on the surface of the moon, though there is beauty here too—just more barren and stark.

By late afternoon we are passing through Barstow where I-40 suddenly merges into I-15. We have been traveling on I-40, starting in Asheville almost three weeks ago, and have traveled on this road for over 3,500 miles. Suddenly we realize that this part of the journey is over. Goodbye, I-40, you have been a good friend. We will miss you!

We stop for the evening at another motel Embry booked on Hotline at a dusty, cluttered, shabby intersection in a town called Victorville, where every fast food establishment, gas station and motel known to humans is represented in all their ugly charm. We decide to eat in (Popeye’s Fried Chicken) after being warned by the guy at the liquor store (Episcopalians don’t miss happy hour.) that venturing outside after dark is very dangerous and we would be risking our life.

We retire to news accounts of Hillary’s email problems, reminding us that we are now back in the real world.

 

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Sunday, July 3

I guess you could call this the official reunion day. After a huge brunch at our cousin Rick and Karen’s condo, everyone went their separate ways, walking down the hill to the historic center of Santa Fe with all the museums and galleries, milling around with locals and tourists, who are here for the July Fourth weekend. Having been to Santa Fe several times, I used the time to get the blog up to date. Around five o’clock folks meandered back up the hill, exhausted but in good spirits. The sons, Erik and Rich, both now in their forties, were responsible for grilling hamburgers on the back porch overlooking the city. By seven o’clock there was more food on the table than anyone could eat, with Karen filling in with salads and casseroles. After dinner all eighteen of us walked across the street to the suite where Erik and Michelle are staying with their three youngsters. Erik is a professional documentary film editor living in L.A. and he showed a 15 minute video he had made honoring Dash, his grandmother. The video used the PBS Story Corps format with Dash talking about her life of 98 years illustrated with photos and film clips. It was extraordinary (as you would expect from a seasoned professional), about an extraordinary woman who continues to be an inspiration to all of us gathered for the reunion and my guess is to a lot of others as well.

During the course of the evening I managed to have brief conversations with several of the cousins regarding politics and religion, sometimes taboo topics, especially at family reunions when there are differences of opinion. I guess you could say that I could not help myself. I was relieved that no avid Trump supporters were among us, but I was aware that some of the cousins have world views which are in fact different from my own. One cousin is an evangelical Christian, whose faith is profoundly important to him and another is a devoted conservative, who under no circumstances would ever vote for Hillary (which this year will probably mean not voting at all).

What came through for me was this: no one has an exclusive claim on the truth, and just because you don’t happen to view the world in the same way does not mean those who disagree with you are inferior in any respect. The cousins with differing political and religious views are people who have solid values. They are loving and kind and want to do the right thing. They are good people. They are family. They are friends.

Living in a bubble in Washington where practically everyone we know is a secular liberal (even many who attend church regularly), it is too easy to embrace an us versus them attitude. Because of our education and our various “achievements,” it is all too easy for us urbanites to think that we are better, more enlightened, and intellectually superior. One of the things that I am reminded of as we cross this great nation of ours is that this is not the case. Good people can and do have different takes on life.

And as Embry pointed out, friendship and family “trump” politics every time.

 

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Friday, July 1 and Saturday, July 2

We set off from Ghost Ranch with Jasper exchanging contact information with his buddies after breakfast. The drive to the airport is uneventful as Embry deposits him on the plane to Oakland where he will meet his parents and sister for a week in San Francisco where they are vacationing. We will rendezvous with them in 10 days in Yosemite.

Our next stop: The McMichael Reunion in Santa Fe.

Now to fully understand the significance of this event, you need to know something about the McMichael family. Embry’s Uncle Jack was her mother’s only brother and the youngest of four children . They were the children of a country doctor, practicing family medicine in Quitman, Georgia in the 1930s and 40s. This town is about 30 miles from Baker County where we worked in the Civil Rights Movement in 1966. So the logical conclusion would be that since we humans are products of our culture, the McMichael family from the Deep South in the era of Jim Crow would be hard-nosed reactionaries and probably outright racists. Not so with this family. All four children turned out to be quite progressive. Uncle Jack, however, was an outright radical. He received a MDiv from Union in New York City, became a Methodist minister and was actually studying at Union the 1960s working on a PhD at the same time I was a divinity student there. His and his wife, Dash, were involved in many left wing causes in the 1950s, putting them at odds with the McCarthyism of the day, ultimately leading to a career-threatening appearance before the House of Un-American Activities Committee. So you could say they are not your typical Southern family.

Embry’s mother’s siblings produced a bunch of first cousins for Embry, with whom she remains remarkably close. The children of Uncle Jack, however, are the ones we are closest to—especially Rick and Karen—who are hosting the reunion for the Uncle Jack /Aunt Dash line. We are so lucky to be here. There are 18 of us participating in the reunion including Aunt Dash, who is 98 years old and living in a retirement community in the Bay Area. She is now partially blind but otherwise is in extraordinarily good health for someone her age, still getting lots of exercise, and just as smart and as sharp as any of us. Rick’s brother and sister and their spouses are here along with three members of the next generation and four of Aunt Dash’s great grandchildren. We have come from all over–the Washington area, Seattle, the Bay area, Sonoma County, Los Angeles, and south Florida.

It is a fine weekend of relaxed conversation and reminiscing, mostly sitting on the deck of Rick and Karen’s condo overlooking the city with magnificent views of the valley and mountains in the distance. I spend Saturday morning at the urgent care center, getting a cortisone shot for my ailing knee and antibiotics for my infected ear. I was very impressed with the quality of care and somewhat amazed when one of the doctors told me he had spent several years living in Annapolis where he was an avid sailor, racer, and yacht broker and also worked for a while as a yacht charter captain in the British Virgin Islands working for a company that sold out to Sun Sail(where I got our current sailboat, “Second Wind”.) Small world, as they say.

The highlight of Saturday was an evening at the Santa Fe Opera. The whole gang, except for the great grandchildren and their parents, took in a meal and lecture (Rick and Karen are members so we got in the exclusive event.) followed by a stunning performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, returning to our hotel (across from Rick and Karen’s condo) at one a.m., exhausted.

Long day but rich and full and great to be again with lifelong friends and relatives. This adventure is turning out to be a nostalgia trip with the reconnection theme becoming a main story line

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Wednesday, June 29 and Thursday, June 30

Life at Ghost Ranch begins to take on a  predictable rhythm as people gather in line before meals (very good food, by the way), sit around after meals talking and watching Ultimate Frisbee and soccer, stroll off to morning worship and then to activities, and just hang out the rest of the time. I can see how this could grow on you and understand why people come here year after year.

For the week that you are here, you are in your own world. It is a safe world with old friends and loving people, surrounded by natural beauty that surely must be a sign of a loving and peaceful God. There is no TV (at least that I know of), limited Wi-Fi and cell phone access; and to find out what is going on in the larger world you have to really work at it, which as far as I can tell few people do. (Except for me, of course, but after another week in Paradise, I am sure that even I would not care what The Donald is up to or who won the Nats game.)

These two days Embry and Jasper do Pottery, which I skip to get caught up on blogging and rest my wounded knee. We are getting to know a few people—all very nice, especially Joanne and Jenny, two women from Hawaii. In line with the blog theme of “…In the Age of Trump,” I can’t help gently bringing up politics. Everyone we talk to is a kindred spirit. You are not going to find many Trump supporters here—and probably not all that many Republicans—and I suppose that figures. Ghost Ranch is known for its intellectual, artistic, and spiritual pursuits and attracts like-minded people. People seem to steer clear of controversial topics, however, lest the atmosphere of peace and beauty be disturbed. I can’t disagree with that. But as a reminder that we are not in Paradise, it seems a whole bunch of the women we have talked to are single parents, many raising kids more or less on their own. Some of the counselors we have chatted with—especially the young men—seem to have stumbled on Ghost Ranch by chance and are here temporarily, somewhat adrift, with their future uncertain. The imperfect world we will all return to in a couple of days will have the same challenges we all left behind.

At noon today we are joined for lunch by the McMichael clan, driving up from Santa Fe–Rick and Karen, Embry’s first cousins with whom we have traveled to India and Southeast Asia and sailed with in Tahiti and the Grenadines—and Cousin Bill and his wife, Lynn. It is great to see everyone. They arrived yesterday in Santa Fe for a family reunion starting tomorrow, which we will attend after dropping Jasper off at the airport. In the middle of lunch a major thunderstorm hits (We could actually watch it approaching.) sending us scampering for cover indoors as winds gust into the 40s and hail the size of mothballs pound the heads of those playing soccer and Frisbee, including Jasper, who was drenched. I could almost hear the parched grass saying, thank you, thank you.

The on-again-off-again showers dampened the afternoon and evening activities, giving us time for some needed rest before the driving continues, starting tomorrow. Jasper sprawled out on his bed and read his book all afternoon, even though his buddy, Chase, came up to the room twice to coax him out. Jasper has been going pretty hard from the time he gets in line for breakfast at 7:15 a.m. until the forced bedtime of 8:30 p.m. I suspect he needed the rest more than we did. I wonder if the bonding of the Fabulous Three will last. What I guess is most special about the week for him is having free time with kids his age from noon to eight everyday, allowing them to explore on their own the magic of Ghost Ranch.

 

 

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