Sometimes a respite from all the jangles of our lives—the clicking, beeping, dinging, and talking heads—is necessary to preserve our sanity. Sometimes when we don’t know who to believe or even why, it’s a balm to mentally return to a time when certainty ruled people’s lives. A time when few expected a change in their status; when having a “brand” was not an objective. A medieval world most of us would find hard and confining but tempered by a close relationship with the divine and a secure place in the social order.
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I met a traveler from an antique land.
To be honest, I didn’t actually meet anyone in person but through the 1912 edition of Baedeker’s Palestine and Syria travel guide, a wonderful Christmas gift. I love old guides that reveal so much about conditions as seen through the eyes of whomever contributed to the text and what they thought would be important to the inexperienced traveler who had a case of wanderlust.
The red-covered Baedekers were known to be reliable and the traveler wouldn’t want to be without one – remember Lucy Honeychurch who was lost in Santa Croce without her Baedeker in “Room with a View”?
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California is shaky: nearly 7000 quakes in the last 365 days according to an earthquake site. Years ago, when I lived in Anaheim there were constant mini-quakes. I scooted out of my apartment building even though a neighbor said “No worry, it’s earthquake season.” I worried anyway. And like most people living in the Pacific Northwest, I’ve been through several. But the worst was in Rome where an interior wall in our apartment split from floor to ceiling (and far more importantly caused severe damage to the basilica of St.
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DESERT SONG – Part II, Pioneer Town and Joshua Trees
We’d enjoyed some of the cultural opportunities of the area and we’re ready to explore the desert (i.e. the area that hasn’t been turned into towns and golf courses.)At the top of our list was the Joshua Tree National Park which covers areas of the Mojave Desert on the western side and the Colorado Desert on the east.
We headed out toward the town of Joshua Tree, one of the park’s entrances but instead of turning into the park, we made a detour for more “culture”not far from the town of Yucca Valley—an exploration of Pioneertown, purportedly founded by Roy Rogers and Gene Autry in the 1940s as a movie set for their shoot-em ups.
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In desperate need of sun, we flew to southern California for some warmth and a change of scenery – no fir trees, no salt water, no gloom – for a week. There are nine communities clumped together in the Coachella Valley but we stuck to two: Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage for a dose of culture when we weren’t catching rays near the pool at our rented condo where hummingbirds investigated my red shoes.
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The area was settled by the Cahuilla peoples thousands of years ago, calling what we know as Palm Springs: Se-Khi” or boiling waters.
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What to do when you’re in the mood for a change of scene but don’t want to fly or spend hours in the car? We decided a ferry ride and 40-mile drive north up the Kitsap Peninsula was far enough. Our first stop was the tiny company town of Port Gamble located on the very tip of the peninsula. The town was founded in 1853 by Pope and Talbot, the lumber company that owned vast swaths of timber in the area.
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About the only activity in the port of Seward beside off-loading luggage was that of a nearby whale disporting in the quiet sun-lit waters of Resurrection Bay. The little town, first settled in 1793 by Russian fur traders, is named for Lincoln’s Secretary of the Interior who bought Alaska from the cash-starved Russians in 1867. The port was linked to the interior by the Alaska railroad in 1903. A few years later, news of a gold strike in the interior spread to the lower 48.
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My husband and I piled into our friend’s snappy red Alfa-Romeo for the short drive to Cortona. The town is at the top of my list of places in Italy to spend a day, a weekend, or forever. No matter how many times I visit I always want to return to enjoy the lovely ambience. This time it was a sunny late October day. It was early when we left, wispy bits of ground fog hung on low-lying fields and the distant hills were blue-gray.
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When I lived in Rome, my husband and I did much of our weekly shopping on Saturdays. During the week Glenn bought our vegetables at a stand set up on the sidewalk near our apartment where an old woman sat on a stool trimming artichokes while her husband helped shoppers select the freshest tomatoes. Our usual weekly shopping was done at a local supermarket where the eggs and milk were un-refrigerated, and there were dozens of kinds of pasta lined up on the shelves.
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The first time we visited Malta we saw a man with a falcon on his wrist standing by the side of the road. He didn’t look anything like Humphrey Bogart let alone Peter Lorre, but the falcon was truly a Maltese falcon. The Grand Masterof the Order of Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem, the ruler of the island between 1530 and 1798, had to “pay” a falcon as an annual tribute to the Emperor Charles V and his mother Queen Joanna of Castile as monarchs of Sicily.
Coins in the Fountain
