Handwritten and Ink Stained

Countdown to Montana

     The wedding invitations arrived from Montana. I think they're perfect: cream, modern, and just the right touch of "outdoors/nature" for the couple and the location -- Kalispell, Montana. They have cattails and leaves on them in brown and green. August 9, 2008 is the wedding day.

     This is my son, John's, wedding. He's been building a life in Montana for the last -- six??!-- years. He's 'way up in the northwest corner of Montana, less than an hour from the Canadian border, and right outside the west end of the Glacier National Park.  I've never been there; something I'm sad to say. He seems so very far away, and for the first four years, he came home every Christmas. He came home for his brother, Graham's wedding in 2003. His last visit was a 4 day, sad return for my dad's funeral. Getting home or going back to Kalispell is a long day of travel, and usually has cost about $600 roundtrip in airfare.

    Now we're making the trip for the wedding. It's a grand and happy occasion, to be seeing Montana for the first time (for me -- two of his brothers have been out to see him), and for the first time in many, many years, to travel and vacation as a family -- the whole shebang, which now includes his sisters-in-law and nephew (Nate, appearing as the world's cutest ringbearer) and his nieces (one beautiful flowergirl, Emma; one adorable baby, Maya).

     When I talk to John on the phone, he's full of wedding talk. He just got another raise -- he works for a landscape/hardscape developer as a stone mason. The company has worked booked out for the next 3 years on multi-million dollar homes that are rising like the new Rockies all around Whitefish, Big Fork and Flathead Lake. Montana has become home to John. It's been good to him. His voice has such happiness in it. He had to go all the way to Montana to find his perfect girl.

     The other day, looking through the old desk at my dad's and cleaning, we came across photos that I had given to my dad of John in Montana -- John in Glacier, the Swan Mountains, John's house. John was standing in the most magnificent country. You can see the Swan Mountains from his backyard. In just a few more months, I'll be sitting in that backyard, amazed at where life takes us, and wiggling my toes in the ocean of delight that is my family.

The Other New York, The Brits, and Gratitude

     The last place I ever expected to be on Friday night was in midtown Manhattan, being chauffeured by my niece, 22 year old Kate, on our way to meet my sister's friends, her goddaughter (all from Britain) and her goddaughter's friend (German) for dinner. It was a last-minute decision on my part to come along. I needed a break, a quick getaway from projects and deadlines to clear my head and (I hoped) get refreshed to dive back into work. So when my sister asked if I wanted to go, I threw some things together and we jumped into her Jeep for a race down the Thruway to make a 7pm dinner reservation. That's about a 5 1/2 hour drive, as my sister flies.

     My sister had warned me that I better close my eyes when Kate drove into NYC. Kate met us at our hotel in lovely Mahwah (love that name) "The Parkland of Bergen County" New Jersey on the death-defying Rt. 17 commercial corridor. Kate has been commuting in and out of NYC (Riverside) into New Jersey, where she grew up, for a long time now. But sitting in the back seat, with diminutive Kate at the wheel (think Kelly Ripa) -- head barely showing above the headrest -- I felt completely relaxed as she jockeyed for position in lanes, crossed the GW bridge (I think??) and flew right into the heart of the city. NYC cabbies have nothing on Miss Kate. She gives up no ground. Honestly, she is my new heroine.

     We ended up a party of nine at Ruth Criss on 51st St. Landmarks flew by -- Rockefeller Plaza, Times Square -- but the one I was most proud recognizing was the little church they used for a funeral in "Sex & The City", final season, when the "party girl" accidentally fell out a high rise window.

     I sat next to Alan, the other half of my sister's friends. Sharon and Alan live in a village In England that only has 100 people in it, in a country home. It sounds just the kind of place I've dreamed of visiting. Alan walks his Jack Russell for miles along the hedgerows every day. (A dog that is actually living  the life it was made for -- what a concept!) He used to be in banking & finance and was once a "suit" in the financial part of producing movies. He and Sharon have traveled all over the world. We talked about all kinds of things, and one of them was the gas prices here. (In NJ, gas was 30 cents cheaper than in NY). Alan put things into perspective when he told me that, compared to paying $11/gallon at home in England, gas prices, hotel prices, traveling prices here were a real bargain. They've been visiting some of the places they didn't get to see during their business travels and the time they spent living in New Jersey, when he was on assignment for his bank on Wall Street in the 1980's. Vermont, Pennsylvania, and Washington,DC.

     Francesca, my sister's British goddaughter, and her friend, Nila, were on their way home from a 6 month journey throughout Asia and the Pacific. 20 years old and already seasoned world travelers. This is the thing: How did they do it? Well, they worked and saved up money to do it. The last time I was abroad, I saw and spoke to many young people from all over the world -- Japan, Australia, Germany, Romania, England -- who were doing the same thing. Worked to save the money, traveled for months at a stretch, and then got jobs along the way if they ran out of cash. Most were gone for 4-6months at a time.  It seems here in the US we don't encourage that sort of thing, I think. With us, it's all about going to college, getting a degree by racking up huge debt, and then landing a job that will allow you to pay back the debt but never be able to leave or travel freely, getting the kind of education that Francesca and Nila got making their way in the world, the real world. Do our kids even want to know what's out there, or do they just want to experience the world via My Space??

     We said goodbye on the sidewalk outside RuthCriss, between 6th and 7th. Francesca and Nila headed in the opposite direction, to the subway, pulling an extra empty suitcase for their trip home, looking like models. We walked three blocks to ransom Kate's car from the parking garage, and Kate delivered us out of NYC back to suburban NJ like the whiz she is.

     Driving back up the Thruway, I was grateful to be able to have the experience of dinner in New York with wonderful companions, watching the New York spring unfold on the green and blossoming roadways, thinking about my niece and nephew who are so competent at negotiating their way in and around one of the world's greatest cities, and happily looking forward to a delicious breakfast on Sunday at the tiny Lafayette  Diner in Canandaigua, where the food is great and doesn't cost $28 for cardboard potatoes and fake ham like it did in the NJ diner on Rt. 17.

Watching the salmon..er... trout leaping. I think.

  On Monday, I went to the 2nd annual meeting of the business and travel tourism group, Canal New York. They chose the Red Mill Inn in the village of Baldwinsville, NY -- a place I've seen on a sign many times along the NYS Thruway on the way to Syracuse, but never really knew. Baldwinsville, I mean. I didn't know the Red Mill Inn existed, and I was in for a nice suprise. It sits on the banks of the Seneca River, along a part of the Erie Canal system. The day was not one of our Upstate best -- cold and rainy. (Hey! We had a whole string of sunny warm weather. We needed that rain.) But the Inn was warm and full of nice people who are passionate and committed to bringing the economic and tourism focus to this beautiful, underappreciated, historic and vital system of waterways.

     After the meeting, we went upstairs to a nicely appointed hospitality room overlooking the river, a dam and a canal lock. A pretty intriguing view even on a gray day. There was wine (New York, I hope) and tasty munchies.

     But I got one special moment sitting in my car after the meeting, while I was checking voicemail. Out on the raging spring water, with the perfect rocky perch, a blue heron hunted his dinner. That wasn't hard -- fish were leaping everywhere. I saw one try to make the dam, going upriver. The heron held a small fish in its mouth, gauging the size as the fish slapped and struggled. Then, in about four long gulps, the fish disappeared down the heron's throat.

     On the way home, driving on the Thruway (we may have our problems in New York, but the roads are good), I thought about all the wildlife we have here. Have you seen the Montezuma Wildlife Preserve? You drive through it on the Thruway. Black bear are frequent guests in my part of western New York -- in the Bristol Hills around the Finger Lakes. Deer, hawks, eagles, racoons, weasels, river otter, (numerous deceased possum along the roads), red fox, coyote, fishers.... The fish I saw leaping -- I thought they were salmon. Wrong place, I think. We have them in Lake Ontario. Trout, probably.

     Whatever they were, they were wonderful to watch. Serenity now.

View from a logger-- the traveling kind

     Here I am, parachuting into the blogosphere (can that be right?), a person on a mission. I'd like to say that I'm taking on a new venture in blogging that I hope will add to a project in educational tourism that I'm doing, but the truth is, I've been writing just about everything -- letters, postcards (with the smallest handwriting possible in order to cram the most greeting and info into it), notes, journals, and yes, logs of trips ... well, since I was a kid. Now I do it for a living. It's like breathing -- if I stop, I'll pass out.

     Where is the blogosphere, anyway? If you launch a blog, you must be aiming up, right? You aspire to write a blog, you aim your arrow of communication into the sky and hope it lands somewhere in someone's sphere of notice. Maybe they read the message tied to the arrow; maybe they don't. It's the same as writing essays or articles. You may not hear anything at all at first, any response to what you've put out there. Years later, you may meet someone who tells you the arrow hit him or her in the heart (one hopes in a good way), and it left a mark they never forgot.

     What's this got to do with travel, you say.

     By launching this blog, this small watercraft onto the ocean of humanity, I'm journeying into the world -- at times physically (I've been to Europe, Japan, Jamaica, and my favorite island on earth, Santorini, Greece. I've been to most of the states on the eastern seaboard of the US, Texas, California, and it looks like I'll be getting to know the New York State Canal system, made up of four canals that take you from the beginning of the Hudson River all the way to Buffalo. Even I didn't realize there were four, and I live in New York State) .. and other times, mentally and spiritually.

     And because I'm a writer, all journeys are worth recording, sharing, discussing. How about you? Who's out there? Where have you been? Where in the world would you like to go?