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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Monday, June 27 and Tuesday, June 28

The sky is steel blue and the temperature is in the mid 60s as we get in line for breakfast, typical temperature for a morning in the high plains. We are at 6,500 feet above sea level, about the same as Mt. Mitchell in NC, the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi. We look up to mesas 1,500 feet above us and at mountain peaks in the distance around 11,000 feet high. Even though the temperatures will reach the mid 90s by the afternoon, the low humidity and constant, gentle breezes allow you to feel comfortable in the shade, which is fortunate, since I have seen no sign of air conditioning anywhere. (In the sun is another matter, however, and practically everyone here walks around carrying a water bottle.)

Jasper quickly finishes his breakfast of scrambled eggs and cereal and darts out  to find his new friends. Our first breakfast may be the only time we eat with our grandson as he and his two buddies—Chase from Tulsa and Aleyah from Baltimore—begin eating together at a table they choose, usually sitting with other children their age. This behavior seems to be universal at Ghost Ranch since we see few kids over five eating with their parents or grandparents.

Our room is in the “Cottonwood,” one of two guest rooms above the library and only a few hundred feet from the dining hall. It is spacious with windows on three sides affording stunning views of the meadow, dining pavilion and towering mesas, and allowing good cross breezes. “Cottonwood” is an apt name since these trees are clustered around the dining hall and most of the other buildings; and this time of year the air is filled with white puffs carrying tiny cottonwood seeds, creating a magical effect.

At Ghost Ranch family week, organized activities occur every morning from nine to noon, following a short religious service for anyone who is interested. The service today, attended by 75 or so people of all ages, is much like the first one—guitar music with drums and singing, at first lively, sounding to me like rock ‘n roll, then more mellow. There is lots of clapping and swaying with the music. It seems like everyone knows the words to all the songs. The music then tones down as people sit down and listen attentively as the chaplain begins her mediation. We are asked to close our eyes and feel the spirit of God in our souls as we, “who are made in the image of God” experience the beauty and holiness of this place. We breathe in deeply, touch our hearts to feel our own heartbeat, and link arms with our neighbors in what can only be described as a sublime moment—until a cell phone goes off and the chaplain pauses just for a split second before saying cheerfully, “Do you think that could be God calling?”

A minute later the service is over, and everyone rushes out to a morning activity. Our activity—and we insist that Jasper join us instead of going with his new friends to “Kids Games”—is “Dinosaurs.” We head down to the museum where we meet Alex, the paleontologist. He is pudgy with a bushy white beard, balding, and walks with a waddle. He is worth the price of admission. With a twinkle in his eye and a wry wit, poking fun at just about everyone and everything, he never crosses the line to cynicism, though at times he comes close. He is what you would call a kind and gentle curmudgeon and is especially good with children. (We later learn that he grew up in Arlington, VA, worked in DC  at the Smithsonian before discovering Ghost Ranch and moving here permanently in the mid 90s.)

There are 12 of us in the class, 7 kids and 5 adults. The oldest kid is 13 and wears a tee shirt, which on the back says, “I am autistic, please be patient with me.” He and his two younger siblings are accompanied by their 80-something grandmother from San Diego, who can walk circles around me. Over the course of the two days we get to know all the adults– all are women and are from all over the U.S.– and find them to be kind and gentle people. Jasper fits in nicely with the kids and adds to his new friends list.

Over the course of these two days we do a lot of things in our dinosaur activity: We make molds from fossils of dinosaur bones found on or near Ghost Ranch. We learn all about dinosaurs, rocks, and the various periods of prehistoric Earth. We hike a mile up a steep path to the site where the ceolophysis fossil–a small meat eater– was discovered, the only dinosaur fossil of its type ever found. The second day we take box lunches and drive an hour and a half–most of the time on a steep, deserted, one-lane, dusty road–to an old, abandoned quarry on the top of a 10,000 foot high mountain where there are thousands of rocks containing fossils of tiny sea creatures who lived some 350 million years ago.

Holding several of these small, round fossils in my hand, I pause for a moment and let my eyes wander to the meadow below and the forest on the other side. I can’t help wondering how long we humans will be around. What kind of creature will be examining our fossilized bones some 350 million years from now and what will they conclude about us and about our civilization?

***

Afternoons are free at Ghost Ranch so everyone sort of does his or her own thing. For Jasper this means reconnecting with his two buddies—eating lunch together at the same table, which only works when they secure an early spot in the cafeteria line, followed by an hour or so of three person soccer, then a hour’s rest, enforced by his grandparents, and then off again in mid afternoon to explore the ranch. It is not until around five that he reappears, smiling, just in time to get to the dinner line early so the Fabulous Three will have their table. The hour after dinner is more kicking the soccer ball around on the large field in front of the dining room, shared with serious Ultimate Frisbee players (mainly teenagers), requiring Jasper and his buddies to duck every now and then to avoid a sailing round disk. At seven pm a bell rings, the Ultimate Frisbee game concludes as people head to various evening activities like canoeing on a nearby lake, pottery, trail rides, rock climbing and yoga, and the Fabulous Three disappear again. We were worried the first night when Jasper disappeared and at 8:30 was still nowhere to be seen. Frantically, Embry and I visited every outdoor activity, but no Jasper. Just as the sun set he showed up to get his camera. He and his buddies had been at the stable area. We then established the let-us-know-where-you-are-going rule.

The grandparents spend the free time resting, napping, reading, blogging and wondering where on earth Jasper might be.

 

 

 

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Sunday, June 26

Oklahoma soon blends into the Texas panhandle, and for the first time we begin to see wind farms, one after the other, containing thousands of giant, white propellers, all standing at attention and gently moving as if they were part of one vast orchestra. So far we have not seen one oil well, a sign, perhaps, of the future and our survival as a species.

Yesterday for lunch we stopped at the Mid Point Café, a tiny restaurant located in Adrian, Texas, a speck of a town with handful of desolate houses situated on the original Route 66 halfway between Chicago and LA and recommended by Susan, Ashley’s wife. She was raised on a ranch herself near Lubbock, about 40 miles south of Adrian and described the Mid Point as a rare gem. It was. Tastefully decorated with Route 66 memorabilia, it had about 20 tables and booths, about a third full of tourists and locals when we arrived–which was late for lunch, around 1:30. The 50-something owner greeted us warmly and noted that if we had arrived 30 minutes earlier, we would not have found an open table.

After we finished off a “Famous Mid Point Burger” and a chicken salad sandwich, he wandered over and asked where we were from. When we said DC, he asked where in DC, smiling and casually mentioning that he was born there and raised in the Maryland suburbs. If that was not enough coincidence, his primary home now is in Spring Hill, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville. During the next 30 minutes we pretty much got his life history. He was a landfill, sanitary engineer for years, working mainly in Maryland, got burned out, had serious health issues, drove by the Mid Point café on vacation five years ago and bought the restaurant the next year, having zero restaurant experience. He lives behind the restaurant in a mobile home and is assisted by his 20-something daughter (along with four others), who now lives in Amarillo. His wife visits occasionally, and he closes the restaurant from November through March, returning to Nashville. Not an easy life, but he has managed for four years and says he feels liberated from the East Coast rat race.

On Sunday we leave Santa Rosa, New Mexico, where we spent the night in a small Best Western motel, to head to the Albuquerque Airport to meet our grandson, Jasper. New Mexico is everything you would expect it to be—wide open spaces, high desert, multi-colored mesas, and purple mountains in the distance. Just before we crossed over the NM border, we checked my iphone app to see the elevation, which it turned out was over 4,000 feet. I could not believe it! I could not recall any ascent. It must have been a steady, gradual, uphill drive beginning in Oklahoma.

The rendezvous with our 11-year-old grandson worked out but was not without glitches. Embry waited in the car while I went to get a escort pass so I could get through security to meet Jasper, which I would have done except the Southwest attendant gave me a pass with Embry’s name on it, which I did not realize at the time, and which naturally kicked me out of the security line after I had been waiting for 20 minutes. Starting over, I hobbled back to the SW counter on my bum knee (strained ligament, about a month ago), and repeated the process, unsuccessfully pleading with an officer to let me through the shorter “TSA-Approved” line. (His response: “Are you kidding me?”). After finally passing security, I charged to Gate A-8, gasping for breath just as Jasper was coming out of gate. Hey, no problem, I thought, as Jasper gave me a hug.

The 100-mile drive to Ghost Ranch took just over two hours. Dark skies and thunderstorms followed us on both sides, but blue sky was directly overhead as we marveled at the beauty of the high plain—the subtle shades of green, olive, tan, red and gray mesas and purple mountains on both sides.

It was so great to be with our grandson, whose first comment was, “I am so excited to be here!”

We turned into the dusty road (Mile 2,330) leading to Ghost Ranch at six o’clock, just barely in time to check in and catch the end of the dinner line.

Ghost Ranch is a retreat center owned and managed by the Presbyterian Church, located about 50 miles northwest of Santa Fe. We are booked for family camp, which involves probably around 100 or so families, many multi generational, and many who come year after year. (There is also a youth camp underway.) The retreat center is situated on a 33-square mile parcel, about the same size as Arlington, Virginia. It was previously a dude ranch and sold to the Presbyterians for $1.00 in the 1950s. It is another one of those spiritual vortexes like Montreat (NC), the Pocono Lake Preserve (PA), Beersheba (TN), maybe Sedona, and (for me anyway) the island of Anageda in the British Virgin Islands. By spiritual vortex, I mean a spirit that is tangible when you enter the place, not necessarily a religious sponsorship. All I know is that if Marriott or Hyatt owned this place it would be very different. The houses and buildings are adobe and blend in with the colors of the towering mesas, which surround the camp center. Everything is understated and modest. Besides the housing, there are several camp grounds,  a large dining pavilion, the Agape Center (a lecture hall/church building), library, welcome center, paleontological museum, rope and wall climbing area, stables, several athletic fields, and buildings for meetings and hanging out. People are relaxed, friendly and move slowly. You know immediately that this is no Hyatt or Marriott.

Jasper finishes his dinner early and charges out of the dining pavilion to join kids his age kicking soccer balls , tossing Frisbees, and horsing around.

Dinner is over and we walk with everyone else to the Agape Center where an orientation will occur. The orientation starts off with two guitarists wearing cowboy hats, accompanied by a drummer singing lively Christian folk songs and hymns. Most people seem to know the words and sing along enthusiastically. A woman in her 40s introduces herself as the chaplain, says a couple of heart-felt prayers about the beauty of the place and its holiness and then talks about the week ahead. She asks people to standup depending on how many years they have been coming here. About twenty percent are first timers and the rest spread out with some coming here for more than 50 years. It is very different from the solemn, Episcopal high church service we are used to, and as Embry pointed out, is a whole lot more fun. I was pleased that no theology or hard core doctrine was part of the service. I would call it a non denominational, “Christian-lite” service–and genuine, though not what we are used to.

After the orientation we talked with a couple who was from the area who said they were a bit put off because their background was Islam and Native American. They were expecting an orientation but not a religious service. I wasn’t either and could see where they were coming from but thought the service could have been a whole lot worse.

After the service while the grownups were getting more camp information, Jasper ran off to join a group of kids engaged in more games. We all turned in around nine—eleven pm East Coast time (for Jasper).

This could turn out to be a pretty good week—and certainly a welcome respite from driving six or seven hours a day.

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