Peak Experience

"We do not take a trip; a trip takes us."

~ John Steinbeck, Travels With Charlie: In Search of America, 1962

July 20, 2006

Donahue Pass — 11,056 feet

  

The sky emerging from behind the ridge was black and boiling with angry clouds that towered over the eleven-thousand-foot pass where we stood frozen in place. I don’t know what we had expected to see when we crested the granite ridge, but we had not anticipated the storm clouds would be assaulting the very ground we needed to cross.

Not only did this wall of weather block our forward motion, but charging directly at us on an icy wind, it was moving so fast and furiously that we had no time to retreat to lower, safer ground. Instead, we three women would be forced to play out a scene from a clichéd disaster movie and hope that the experience didn’t end badly.

            Turning on our heels, we scurried back down the rocky path we had just labored up, backtracking to a small patch of green a few feet lower than the top of Donahue Pass, and prepared to hunker down and let the storm pass overhead.

            “Okay, Girls, what exactly are we going to do here?” Cappy shouted over the sky’s wild roar. Her eyes darted about, scanning the terrain.

            “Hell. I’m dumping this pack and anything metal I’m wearing. Then I’m going to that grassy spot to lie down,” I said, pointing with a tip of my head. I threw my hiking poles on the ground beside a waist-high slab of granite, unbuckled my pack, and wrenched it off.

            “It’s not much lower here than it was at the top!” Cappy shot back. She had already tossed her pack against the same broad boulder.

            “It’ll do,” Jane assured us both in her steady voice. Though she spoke calmly, Jane kept an eye on the rapidly changing sky as she rifled through her open backpack.

            I pitched my shiny new pack roughly against the rock slab and dug helter-skelter through its contents in search of any and all warm and waterproof clothing, scattering undesired items about on the ground. To my left and right, my two companions worked on the same mission.

            “All my warm clothes have metal zipper pulls and snaps,” I said. “Is that a problem?” No one answered. Maybe I hadn’t said it aloud. I thought the metal might attract the lightning. In the moment I stood considering, I realized how cold the air and my heart had gone.

Stripping off my shorts, I yanked on long underwear, layered myself with fleece and waterproof rain gear top and bottom, plus gloves and hat. I abandoned my watch and glasses, both metal, and zipped them into a small pouch on my pack.

Huge drops of rain began to splat around us. The wind brought the pungent zing of ozone, a sure lightning identifier, and shoved the rain horizontally with each gust. The black wall of clouds had followed us over the pass and hovered nearly overhead. Gray fingers reached downward from the clouds towards the spot where we dressed.

Together, we dashed to the deepest of the slight dips in the landscape, really no more than a low spot in the dirt. Huddled between a tiny snowmelt pond and huge piles of granite boulders, we ran down our lists of sage backcountry do’s and don’t’s.

            “I know we’re not supposed to stand under tall trees,” I said. Not a problem way above tree line. “But I also think we’re supposed to stay away from water and big rocks!  So, should I be closer to that pond or these rocks?” I couldn’t decide; I couldn’t move.

            “I don’t think it matters anymore. The storm is on top of us! Just spread out and get down!” Jane said. She threw herself down on the wet ground ten feet from Cappy. Unfrozen, I dropped into a shallow dent in the dirt.

Tugging my thick fleece cap down around my ears, I pulled my rain hood up and cinched it tightly around my face, leaving only a small circle for my eyes and nose. I curled myself into the fetal position, drawing my knees to my chest. Around us, engulfing us, the sky was battleship gray — the early summer afternoon had turned to night. The rain grew to a deluge that pounded the ground and drowned out all sound save the roaring thunder. My gloved hands covered my ears.

Lightning rent the clouds. Slivers of electricity, high above us, leaped from cloud to cloud, making intricate webs of light in the darkness. Thicker bolts slashed vertically to and from the twelve-thousand-foot peaks that surrounded us on all sides.

Each time Thor’s hammer slammed down, the Earth shook and the air reverberated with thunder. Light and sound struck simultaneously, not a nanosecond between them.

Flash, BOOM! 

Flash, BOOM!

On and on and on it went, my heart booming in rhythm.

Flash, BOOM!

At the peak of the storm’s fury, icy winds whipped around us, coming from all directions at once. Rain froze into a pelting hail that created a white carpet. Icy bullets shot from the sky, stinging through my layers each time they struck. Encircling us, the clouds grew thick and blinding. Wrapped in a ten-thousand-foot-high fog, I was alone. I could barely make out the lumps that were Jane and Cappy just a few feet away.

            I covered my face with my hands, peaking out between my gloved fingers in momentary bouts of bravery, slamming closed my finger-shutters with each repeated round of Flash, BOOM! Still, I witnessed plenty. 

            “What am I doing here?” I shouted in my thoughts, trying to hear myself over the storm. “What are three smart women doing in this predicament?  We know better than this!” 

            Prayers, pleas, and promises flew like charged liquid from my mind. I urged them upward and outward, hoping they would penetrate the ion-filled sky and find a sympathetic reception with the Powers That Be.  I visualized a golden igloo of protective light arched over and around us three, as we huddled, vulnerable, on that small patch of grass in the sky.  Repeating my words over and over like a mantra, I held the golden image steady in my mind’s eye, the wildness of the weather battering the glowing dome that protected us.

            “Protect us, keep us safe.

            “Protect us, keep us safe.

            “Protect us, keep us safe,” I chanted.

            Cold to the bone, even in my layers of fleece and plastic, my body shivered and convulsed. Gritting my jaws couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering.

            Had it been an hour?  How much longer would I be able to stay curled up on the ground before hypothermia set in? 

            I wiggled and rubbed my extremities in an attempt to raise my body temp, but to no avail. The shivering and chattering went on and on. The weak link was my feet; I was still wearing my Teva hiking sandals with thick, sopping wet socks.

            My ears pricked up. Did I imagine it? Or was there the minutest of pauses between the flashes and the BOOMS?

            I raised my head to watch the sky. The heart of the storm was moving to the north. We remained wrapped in clouds that sat on the rocky pass cloaking the peaks, but the violence and wildness was moving slowly away.

            At precisely the moment those thoughts filled my cold-addled brain, Cappy’s voice rang out, penetrating the storm’s din. “Let’s go! It’s moving north! Let’s go!”

            Galvanized, our three bodies leaped up like one, moving with focused energy. In mere moments, we had packs on. In the same way that distraught mothers are able to lift cars off the crushed bodies of their children, we tossed onto our shoulders, as though they were now filled with feathers, the very packs we had struggled mightily to hoist and buckle earlier in the day. Faster than I could have imagined possible, we scuttled southward across the broad granite pass, peering through the rain to find our way down the other side.

Frozen feet, impossibly sure-footed, rock-hopped downward over a huge ancient talus slope, the remains of an old landslide. The trail lay hidden somewhere among the acres of automobile-sized boulders and vast expanses of snow that spread across the steep slope before us. Hurdling downhill, I scanned the gray and white landscape for any sign of a trail — rock cairns, patches of brown, anything — but saw nothing, not the slightest hint.         

“See that tiny green square at the bottom edge of the talus?” Cappy shouted over the pounding rain and retreating roar of the storm. “That’s our destination, Rush Creek.” A thin gray ribbon of a river sliced through a postage stamp-sized green meadow.

Trail or not, my feet did not care, they fairly flew over the rocky rubble toward the distant spot of green, so eager was my body to “get down off this damn mountain!”

 “I have to stop!” I called out, halting on a flat rock slab. We were only halfway down the mountain, but I couldn’t take another step. My feet had been completely numb for over an hour, and my legs felt rubbery with exhaustion. With the immediate danger of the lightning and thunder past, and my adrenaline surge used up, my feet had become lifeless clubs, and I feared stumbling in the rock maze.

Jane and Cappy, hearing my shout, joined me where I stood.

“I can’t feel my feet,” I said. “I need to put my boots on and warm up my toes.”

The sky, still filled with clouds, had grown lighter and paler. The rain had calmed to sprinkles and showers.

Scanning the sky, and seeing its change, Cappy said, “My feet are freezing. I’m changing, too.”

Cappy and I sat atop a wet rock, the size of a bus, while Jane, who had worn her boots all day, scouted around for some suggestion of a path.

Though the trailing edge of the storm continued to sprinkle on us from high gray clouds, the hour-long run down the mountain had warmed my body. Only my feet remained frozen and unfeeling. I peeled wet socks from my prune-wrinkled feet and massaged my bare toes between gloved hands, encouraging the blood to flow into the clammy skin, but numbness persisted. I tugged on a new pair of plush REI hiking socks and pushed my feet deep into dry boots.

            Before I’d tied my laces, Jane called out, “There it is!” Standing on a broad slab of gray stone a few yards away, like a sailor on the prow of a ship shouting, “Land, ho!” Jane pointed with her whole arm and its attached hiking pole extension towards the green spot we’d been eyeing all the way down the mountain.

            “See how that thin brown line cuts straight across the meadow?” She paused, waiting until our eyes had caught up with her words. “Halfway between us and the spot where it disappears into the rocks, you can see a brown patch of trail… and then another patch a little closer… and a third.” All the while she was pointing downward at a series of brown splotches among the rocks.

            Cappy and I leaped up to see better. Sure enough, like a connect-the-dots puzzle, the trail stood out from the rock-covered slope as a brown dotted line pointing arrow-straight towards our perch.

            “I see it!” Cappy said, a smile growing across her face.

            “Wow! It’s right there!” I answered, breathing a sigh of relief.

            With warming feet, I felt my confidence return as I navigated the leaps and bounds over and around the heaps of stone. In response, my body stopped gripping itself so tightly, and my breath came easier. Pressing forward, we moved steadily toward the square, green bull’s-eye beckoning to us from a thousand feet below.

            Despite the day’s harrowing events, despite our blundering mistakes, and our utter exhaustion, we had survived. We had climbed up and over our first High Sierra pass. We had twice lost the trail, but had found it again both times. We had responded appropriately to a dangerous situation, partly of our own making, and come out unscathed.

            In the days to come, we would find ourselves repeatedly challenged by the physical demands of the wilderness through which we journeyed. There would be more mountains to scale, more rivers to ford, more mishaps to overcome. All that was to be expected, of course. Little did I know that afternoon that it would be my inner journey, where I would face my own personal mountains to climb and secret rivers to cross, that would prove to be the most daunting. 

             [Copyright 2018 - Opening chapter of my in-progress JMT-adventure-memoir.]

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Wah-Lee-Gee's Doodles and Painting

The Continued Anti-Anti-Clutter Campaign – The Stories Inside Of Things

    A civil engineer, my dad, Wally, in so many ways fit into the classic stereotype of all engineers -- a quiet, smart, mathematical, measured, and no-nonsense kind of guy. When I was little, every morning, he'd go off to work designing freeways for the California Department of Transportation wearing a dark suit, white button-down shirt, wing-tips, and a skinny dark tie, right out of the post-war Mad Men era.
     He was also a trickster -- a fun-loving, all-nonsense artist. He could doodle like nobody's business, creating margins full of critters and creatures that framed his planning meeting notes.
     "Draw me a giraffe," I'd ask, sitting at the dining room table with him or in a restaurant waiting for the waitress to deliver our meal.
     "Now a zebra." He'd pull the pencils from his shirt pocket and draw right on the scallop-edged white paper placemats at Pancake Heaven or at Los Delicious.
     "A Griffin!" Guiding the pencils to create a lion with the head and wings of an eagle, his thick hands and square fingers suggested a manual laborer, but their silky softness identified him as a man of arts and letters.
     He could create a menagerie with a few quick strokes of his mechanical pencils -- graphite and red and blue -- realistic renditions of actual animals or fanciful versions of mythical creatures straight out of stories.

     Every Christmas, Dad would recreate the family holiday card my mother had carefully chosen, enlarging it into a poster-sized door hanging. He'd shop for the perfect paper and cloth, ribbons and paints, measure and cut each piece precisely, then assemble the pieces with glue and pins, into a three-dimensional collage, finish it off with paint, a perfect enlargement of the Christmas message. I remember one year, around 1960, I was only five or six, when we lived in the Newton Street house in San Fernando, the Three Kings posed, dressed in rich fabrics and holding their golden, jewel-bedecked gift boxes, on our door. Another year, a colorful partridge, perching on a branch amidst golden pears, adorned the door.
     At the same time, he placed carefully cut pieces of red, green, blue, and gold tissue paper in the diamond-shaped windows of our garage. Switching on the garage lights at night, turned the windows into glowing stained glass windows for the holidays.

     During my teen years, in the mid to late sixties, Dad took up oil painting, for years going to weekly lessons at a studio in Chatsworth, while my sister and I swam laps at swim team workouts just down the street. The first painting he completed, a still-life of blue hydrangeas (or maybe they were chrysanthemums) in a blue glass vase, he gave to his mother, my Grandma Gladys, for her birthday on Valentine's Day. It hung prominently in her home for years; Grandpa kept it hanging long after her death.
      In 1984, in anticipation of the birth of my son, Dean, his only grandchild, my father painted a huge mural, floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, in what was to be the nursery. Two yachts, brightly striped spinnakers round and full with wind, raced across a blue sea. Smaller boats dotted the scene, their white sails pale and dwarfed by the straining, round rainbows.

     Like Dad, who passed away in 2011 at 89, the doodles are long gone. So are the door posters. The new homeowners have long since painted over the nursery sailboats. But many of the framed oil paintings remain. The half-dozen of Dad's paintings that hang in my home, clustered on my walls, turn my parlor into a colorful and warm art gallery. Everyday, their presence brings my serious-playful, engineer-artist father to life. They invite you to sit, get comfortable, stay a while. 

     The orange-haired clown with arching black brows and painted scarlet smile catches your eye first, inviting you to smile in return. Dad went through a clown phase, painting this one, its complementary twin in blue-and-gold, and a pair of clown sweethearts for my mom. The other two paintings live in other homes.
     Two overalls-and-straw-hats-clad boys, brothers and/or best friends, sit side-by-side, backs-to-the-viewer, fishing off a dock. Were they meant to be "the boys", as my grandparents called their two oldest sons, Wally and Bob? Dad wouldn't say, but that's what Mom always believed.
     A sailboat waits, hauled out and stranded in drydock, water just out of reach of its newly painted red keel. Traditionally dressed workmen labor around a wagon in an Okinawan street, a place where my dad was stationed during The Big War.

     A quiet, early-morning street awakens. It could be exotic Havana or our hometown of San Fernando, with its small park and adobe-colored buildings with arched windows.
     Engineer Wallace Griffin carefully labeled all his business papers in a precise draftsman style printing, while the artist Wally Griffin playfully signed all his paintings with a squiggled Wah-Lee-Gee.

 

 

Porcelain Flowers and China Figurines

The Continued Anti-Anti-Clutter Campaign – The Stories Inside Of Things

            Auntie Muz was a huggy-kissy lady, and that didn’t always go over well in our rather undemonstrative, stiff-upper-lip kind of a household. She was also a very generous Godmother to my sister, Diane, and me. Her real name was Mary Helen, and she’d been a chum of my mother’s since high school, back in the 30’s and 40’s. She doted on us girls, taking her assigned role most seriously, remembering us with little treats on each and every holiday, major, minor, or dreamed-up. Auntie Muz would pop by with little packages all wrapped up in bright paper and ribbons, hearts for Valentine’s Day, shamrocks for Saint Patrick’s Day, Easter, Hallowe’en, Thanksgiving, and of course birthdays and Christmas. She even brought a “consolation” gift to me on my sister’s birthday, and vice versa.

            I still have a Twelve Days of Christmas necklace and a silver heart-shaped box, a tiny handmade ceramic bowl and an even tinier enameled box. But my two favorite "Fairy Godmother" treasures sit safely behind glass in my china cupboard, a delicate and dainty china figurine labeled on the bottom “Sunday Best 2251”, a little girl bundled in her best winter clothes, complete with muff and hat, and a pair of bone china nosegays of spring flowers. Gifts from Auntie Muz were always chosen to appeal to my “grown up” side, never toys or games, always “young lady” gifts even when I was a little girl, which is probably why I still possess so many of them all these years later.

            Auntie Muz was a collector. Her home was filled to bursting with dolls and teddy bears she bought and sold at doll shows, a veritable dolly-and-teddy museum. I think she wanted one of us to follow her in her collecting footsteps.

            The Fairy Godmother was also a kisser, and my family, with Mom as the example, weren’t even huggers, so greetings and farewells at the door were often rather clumsy. Auntie Muz would exclaim her love and then reach out to wrap her arms around each of us in a sweeping embrace and plant a red-lipstick kiss firmly on each cheek. When we were little, Mom said we had to be polite and “take it”, but I watched her stiffen at the indignity of such an emotional display. For years, I followed her lead, stiffening and tolerating. But at some point in my adolescence, after observing most of my friends indulging in the fine art of the hug, I realized that hugging was sweet and could be comfortable, so I spent years teaching myself to be something of a hugger, using Mary Helen as my model. 

             My mom and sister continue to this day to shy away from demonstrations of affection, but as an adult, I have adopted the ways of Auntie Muz, greeting friends with a warm embrace, and sometimes even a peck on the cheek! Mary Helen, aka The Fairy Godmother, passed away a few years ago, but her legacy lives on at my house and in each one of my hugs!

Clowns, Crowns, and Pink Jeeps

More Of My Anti-Anti-Clutter Campaign

            On April 1, 1987, my family (my former husband, Tom, my son, Dean, and I) played an April Fools Day joke on the world by departing on what would grow to a three-and-a-half-month road trip through thirty-eight states and two Canadian provinces. Among other momentous events, Dean would turn three-years-old during the trip, as we wound around the country in a giant terrestrial loop in our cute little motorhome named Barney (which predates the purple TV Barney, so no relation).

            One of the first stops we made after leaving the safety of California was in Sedona, Arizona, half sleepy little artists enclave, half resort spa. (I understand that Sedona has changed drastically over the decades, but back then, it was a sweet little place that reminded us of Ojai or La Jolla before their own tourist invasions.) We camped among red rocks and evergreen trees along a little creek that had carved a path through the red sandstone, and bundled ourselves against the cold to explore trails headed into rocky wilderness.

            A highlight of our stay in Sedona, was our Pink Jeep Adventure, a wild ride in the back of a brightly painted Jeep that carried us bouncing and sliding and whooping and laughing for several hours out into remote canyons and creek beds. Dean, at two-and-a-half, was wildly excited and could not stop smiling. I do not know if he still remembers that adventure first hand, or just remembers the event from its hundreds of re-tellings and scrapbook viewings.

            Wandering through the artsy stores in town post-adventure, Dean picked out a gift for me. He labeled it an early Mother’s Day gift, but I was allowed to open it in April, more than a month early. He chose a music box decorated with a picture of a little boy dressed as a happy clown. The box plays “Send in the Clowns” when its lid is raised. Dean was so excited to find the box, so excited to be able to select it just for Mom, and giddy when later, back at the motorhome, he watched me unwrap it from its brown paper bag and exclaim over it.

            The music box, a favorite piece of my clutter collection, sits today on my dresser next to a photo of Dean I took just before we departed on our "grand tour" in 1987. He loved to play dress up, and that day he was wearing a golden crown and looks so much like the little clown on the box, giant blue eyes, serious expression of confidence, sincere happiness. Dean is now thirty-something and probably has few occasions to wear a crown or otherwise dress up (except at Hallowe’en), and I hope he doesn't mind a bit of nostalgia posted here.

My Anti-Anti-Clutter Crusade

            The most recent anti-clutter, get-organized-by-throwing-stuff-out, Twenty-first Century minimalist adaptations of feng shui, guilt-inducing, how-to handbooks are best sellers, but I do not subscribe to their message. On the other hand, I am not a shop-til-you-drop consumer who hangs out at the mall or online lusting after the latest and greatest must-haves-of-the-month.

            I don’t like a mess, but I rather enjoy meaningful clutter. I like gee-gaws, knick-knacks, tchotchkes. I like souvenirs, mementoes, keepsakes, and the stories they contain. I love heirlooms and hand-me-downs and collections; I really love collections.

            My home is filled with stories – short stories and epic novels – manifested in the physical forms of all the little (and big) treasures I’ve collected, gathered, accumulated over a lifetime. I have souvenirs from vacations and adventures, some purchased, some merely picked up off the ground and stuck in a pocket. I have hand-me-downs from old friends and deceased relatives. And I have mementoes chosen for their symbolic meaning at a significant moment in my life. I have ticket stubs, playbills, postcards, and handcrafted goodies.

            My treasures are arrayed, assembled, displayed all around my little home – in bookcases, on walls, in bowls, behind glass, on bulletinboards, in scrapbooks -- bringing me comfort, reflecting smiles, and reminding me of the great adventure stories of my existence and the dear friends who are characters alongside me in those tales.

            In a Grand Anti-Anti-Clutter Gesture, I intend to spotlight, one at a time, some of the gee-gaws and keepsakes from my trove.

Grandma Gladys’ Turkey   

            This large autumn-colored serving dish, in the shape of a proud tom turkey, sat center-stage at every Griffin Thanksgiving gathering of my childhood. Grandma Gladys was an extraordinary cook, having been raised on a Quaker farm, who produced vast spreads at each holiday, Thanksgiving being perhaps her finest.

            Succulent turkey, savory dressing, cranberries, potatoes, both sweet and mashed, gravy, three vegetables, and fresh rolls and colorful garnishes down the center of the large dining table, china and silver place settings around its edge, with several pies rested on the sideboard. Grandpa sat in his place at the head of the table, carving the turkey. Grandma sat at the foot of the table, nearest the kitchen, so she could bounce up and down to fetch more and more food. My parents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my sister and I, we surrounded the food with soft laughter and quiet conversation.

            “More turkey meat! More turkey meat!” That’s the excited line I repeated over and over from my telephone-book-booster-seated chair when learning to talk at my second Thanksgiving, in a story I’ve heard repeated every November for sixty years!  

             I am the second oldest of the nine cousins, so I watched as we squeezed more and more chairs around the table, until it could hold no more. Then, the Kids' Table was created in the den, and we older cousins had our own little party at our own private table!

Gladys Miles Griffin - My Grandma

            One year, my cousins and I began the tradition of sneaking into the dining room to snatch pitted black olives from their crystal serving dishes, handfuls each, to mount on our fingertips. Then we’d chase one another out of the dining room, Grandma behind us shaking a wooden spoon in our direction and laughing. She out-smarted us by holding back extra bowls of olives for dinnertime.

            My grandma passed away long ago, back when I was in high school. Griffin family holiday feasts continued, moving from one son-and-daughter-in-law’s house to the next, for decades. My cousins and I have grown, married, had children of our own, and spread out across the country.

Only on rare occasion do we gather as family, but each of us has created our own Thanksgiving traditions that carry on those Grandma nurtured in us so many years ago. Being a vegetarian, I no longer eat “turkey meat”, but still love the rest of the fixings. I still gather with my family and friends who have become family around an extended table to share our gratitudes and break bread. I’ve even been known to put black olives on my fingers and wiggle them, just like we did as kids.

            I am grateful to be the keeper of Grandma Gladys’ Turkey. Throughout the year, he sits atop a high shelf in my dining room, looking down on all the gatherings that take place there. I can glance up and look him in the eye when I’m eating my morning cereal and sipping my coffee and remember all those Thanksgivings Past. Today, on the first of November, he moved down to the coffee table, where, as the regal centerpiece, he is also the central character in one of my life stories.

Following the Lincoln Highway

        It was a wonderful scavenger hunt, as I traveled back and forth across the West from my home in California to Colorado, by way of the remnants of the Historic Lincoln Highway. Off the Interstates as much as possible, I searched small towns for Lincoln Highway signs and markers and landmarks.

        The Lincoln Highway, America's Main Street Across America, is 100 years old in 2013. A century ago, the highway stretched from New York City to San Francisco. It wasn't a straight line on the map, like today's superhighways or interstates. Instead, it was a line that connected the dots that were the cities, small towns, forts, and even ranches across even the emptiest spaces in the West and Midwest.

        Towns prospered during the highway's heyday. Motels and motor courts, gas stations and repair garages popped up along the gravel, then asphalt, highway. Thousands of American families took on the challenge of the road, answered the call of the wild, and created the unique American vacation, the road-trip. Over time, the highway was straightened and straightened again, and finally replaced by the numbered interstate highway system, which left all those little towns and their gas stations and motels behind.
 
        Celebrating the highway's 100th birthday, the Lincoln Highway Association has organized a pair of caravans, one departing from San Francisco and the other from New York City on June 23, 2013, that will follow the course of the old highway whenever possible before meeting in the middle at Nebraska. Inspired, I am taking my own road-trip from my home in Colfax, California, to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and back. (An article appeared in the Auburn Journal describing the passing of the caravan through town.)

I left California on Sunday, June 16, and arrived in Cheyenne four days later on Wednesday the 19th. After a side trip to Longmont, Colorado, for Meghann Adams and Josh Vela's wedding (the original inspiration for planning the road trip), I made the return journey, leaving from Cheyenne on Sunday, June 23, arriving home on Thursday, June 27.

        Using a variety of sources, including the Lincoln Highway Association website, wikipedia, and James Lin's Lincoln Highway site, as well as two tourist flyers I picked up along the way in Utah and Wyoming, I chose a "blue highways" route that left Interstates 80, 50, and 93 whenever the Lincoln Highway
route was available to follow instead.

        In the olden days, the length of America's Main Street was marked in a variety of ways. The Boy Scouts placed 3000 concrete posts with the highway's red-white-and-blue logo, it's large L, directional arrows, and brass medals that sported Lincoln's profile. Towns posted signs in the same colors and a large L on fence posts and lampposts. Farmers' fence posts were painted with red-white-and-blue horizontal stripes.
Today, only a very few of these markers remain in place. Some streets in some towns still hold the name Lincoln Way. Some businesses still carry the Lincoln name, too. But in large part, it's hard to follow and requires some trial and error meandering.

        The goal of my trip was to follow the trail of the Lincoln Highway as much as possible. To that end, I found myself wandering back and forth and up and down through towns and in the shadows of the Union Pacific railroad tracks and Interstate 80. I experienced frustration when I couldn't find a marker or a landmark listed in one of my sources, and I experienced joy and jubilation when I was surprised by signs and markers where I hadn't expected them. Along the way, I took a gazillion photos of what I saw: signs and markers, gas stations and motor courts, monuments and statues, and even stretches of the road itself. A few of those photos are shared here; others can be seen at my flickr page.
       
      

Holiday Greetings 2012

Dearest Friends and Family,

A book-on-CD is reading me a story while I putter in the kitchen. I am surrounded by an autumn plenty of newly harvested, fresh-from-the-earth goodies. Apples, once red, green, and yellow, now lay peeled and chopped in heaps and mounds on the cutting board, waiting to be transformed into applesauce in the slow-cooker. In the oven, butternut squash halves roast one rack below sizzling pans of cubed and sliced eggplant, carrots, beets, onions, and peppers, all destined for soup pots already bubbling with kale, chard, and other greens whose names I have forgotten. 

A highlight of my summer and fall has been my weekly CSA box of produce from a small local farm, Bakbraken Acres. Each large box, filled to overflowing with a seasonal treasure trove of colorful edibles, some familiar to my kitchen, some new or strange to me. I have delighted in the just-picked, fresh flavors, as well as the numerous opportunities to expand my cooking and eating repertoire. I learned to cook and eat beets, turnips, butternut squash, eggplant, persimmons, kale, and chard. I also thoroughly enjoyed summertime favorites like tomatoes and watermelon. Though this past Monday marked the last box of the year, and I’m feeling a bit sad, my freezer is stuffed with homemade pesto, applesauce, and a winter’s worth of savory, hearty soups! 

The year 2012 is chasing its predecessors at a rate so fast as to actually catch them; no year has sped faster than this one! It has been a full year, too; events seem to have stacked up on top of one another in my memory. I hope my annual holiday letter finds you healthy, happy, and surrounded by loved ones. I also hope that you will find time during this holiday season to find peace and inspiration in the annual traditions and rituals of your celebrations.

(Wally @ Big Game - We Miss You!)

This year has been marked by a number of transitions. We have celebrated milestones that mark accomplishments and new beginnings, and others that visit us with pangs of sweet nostalgia. Mom and I took two trips to Southern California. We drove to the San Fernando Valley in the spring to celebrate the long life of my Aunt Darlene, who passed away less than a year after my father. We communed with three generations of Griffins and took a driving tour of “old San Fernando,” prompting the telling of wonderful stories set in “the Valley” and in “the War” in the 20s, 30s, and 40s. A few months later, Mom and I returned for a reunion of former students and families of Christian Day School, the tiny K-6 elementary school I attended in San Fernando so long ago. So many people attended, people I hadn’t seen in 20 years, and we told our own generation’s stories about life in that sweet small town in the 50s and 60s.

(Class of 1966!)

In March, I moved from Lake of the Pines, where I had lived since we migrated north 23 years ago, to the small town of Colfax. I am now five minutes from work in a cute and roomy condo/apartment under the pines. I keep wondering why I didn’t do this a long time ago. The move itself was an arduous event, but well worth the effort. 

I continue to teach English/language arts to seventh and eighth graders at Colfax Elementary. I can hardly believe that I have been a teacher for 23 years! The children still inspire me and make me laugh, and despite the dire state of the educational environment at large, I continue to love what I do and cannot imagine anything more personally rewarding or valuable. (Thank you to everyone who voted yes on Prop 30.)

(Thanks, Tom, for the photo of us at Dean's Graduation!)

Dean has had a big year. In June, “Dr. Dean” graduated from Stanford with his PhD in Communication and an MS in Statistics. Dean has been at the university for nine of the last ten years, working, studying, researching, and teaching, so this event marks a major milestone for him. The last year was really intense, and ultimately extremely rewarding. Mom and I, along with Dean’s dad, Tom, and Dean’s bestfriend-since-second-grade, Chris, enjoyed watching as Dean presented his dissertation in May. How proud we all were! Tom and I returned for the graduation ceremony in June. Dean immediately began work as a scientist with Facebook at their new campus in Menlo Park, where he studies the impacts of social networking and peer influence.

(Thanks, Chris, for the photo of Dean in Nepal.)

Dean recently returned from a most excellent adventure abroad. Along with four friends (Chris, Amy, Wenzhe, and Russ), he traveled to Cambodia and Nepal. The short trip to Cambodia included a visit to see the many temples near Siem Reap. More time was spent in Nepal, where they went trekking through the Himalayas for over a week, before returning to Katmandu, where they enjoyed participating in a national festival celebration. The photos are stunning, but do little justice to the breathtaking scenery and the exciting experiences.

Dean also moved recently. Since May, he has been living in a large and beautifully refurbished old Victorian in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco, which he shares with three roommates. Since graduation, with his workload and stress levels radically reduced, he is enjoying having time to socialize and take part in the myriad of cultural events the Bay Area has to offer.

(Thanks, Dean, for the photo of your Grandma Louise!)

At this time last year, my mom, Louise, was quite ill with her second bout of Endocarditis, an infection in the heart. She ended up staying in the recovery wing at the local hospital for a couple of months, finally coming home two days before Christmas. Since then, she has been on the mend, a slow and sometimes frustrating path towards renewed health. My sister, Diane, lives with and cares for Mom in her home in Eskaton Retirement Village in Grass Valley. Mom recently “graduated” to a new-fangled walker, complete with handbrakes and a cushioned seat, which, by allowing her to be both safe and mobile, also encourages her to get out and about more. Mom and I dine at the Eskaton lodge dining room one evening a week and try for an “outing” most weekends.

The events of this challenging year have heightened my appreciation for the loving people who populate my world, and I am blessed to number you among those beloved souls. By being a part of my life, you enrich it, and I am deeply grateful. I am looking forward to a healthy and peaceful 2013 and wishing you the same.

May all beings be happy and free from suffering.

May all beings be healthy.

May all beings love and feel loved.

May all beings enjoy beauty and be at peace.

Namaste’ and XOXO

Joan