The Mystery Of Sage

Sense of Sage

When it comes to clothes, I rarely shop on the Internet, in fact, I never shop on the Internet.  If I received a one-hundred-percent assurance that my size would be reflected accurately in a single size that never changed from one style to another, if I knew with certainty that every designer used the exact same numbering system for my waist, bust, and hip sizes, if I could imagine effectively that the fabric would feel as soft, or sturdy, or smooth as I imagine it does on my screen, and if each item of clothes would appear as identically flattering when I lift it out of a cardboard box as it does on the web model, I might reconsider my choice to purchase every article of clothing I own only after evaluating its true appearance in a long mirror inside a dressing room previously occupied by equally intrepid online consumers.  And, of course, if I had any idea what color “sage” really looked like in person, rather than the various shades it encompasses on the worldwide web, then I might, just maybe reconsider online shopping.  But I doubt it.

Sage bumps into this same challenge in a variety of areas.  If you wanted to paint a wall in the earthy tone of sage, what would that sample look like from brand to brand?  If you added sage to a recipe, how much would you add, and would sage leaves taste different than ground sage.  Is the sage fresh, or has it been in a spice rack since the 1970s?  If you drive through the desert or cruise through the mountains, does sage even look like the same plant?  Darn it, sage, you are just too challenging to nail down – I just don’t know where you stand in nature, in the hardware store, in my kitchen, or in my wardrobe.

Smell of Sage

Mono Lake, nestled east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains on the eastern edge of California, feels less like a mountainous retreat and appears more like an aquatic dump.  Its environment and habitat hide a wealth of diverse plant and animal life, but unable to drain into another water connection, the salt content exceeds levels in many western waterways.  When I roll down my car window as I drive around its western edge, I expect an ocean aroma, but instead the fragrance baffles me with its sweetness.  As I continue around its southern exposure, I expect perhaps a change in the wind direction might lift its salty residue into the air, and yet the smells bombarding my nose confuse me.

When I finally pull off the road and take a closer look, or a deeper, unobstructed whiff, I find the culprit in this confusing sensual overload: sage.  The desert plant, while not in bloom, covers the low, dry hillsides beyond the water’s edge and for miles into Nevada and onward toward the east.  Nearly overpowering in its richness, the smell tantalizes me, and now that I am surrounded by the growth, I continue to breathe as deeply as possible, attempting to ingest as much of the aroma into my memory as into my lungs.  And with much success, I continue to recognize the sweet smell of sage years into the future, despite its nuances from the Great Basin into the high ridges of the Rocky Mountains.  Describing it in words, online, lacks the full enjoyment of its effects, the way it lifts above its stubby branches, the way it infuses the air and envelopes the wind, and the way it feels inside and around my being.  Yes, you just cannot understand sage on the Internet; you have to experience it in person.

360° Around Lake Tahoe (Part 2)

Circumnavigation

Telling Time

Everyone vacations differently.  For the past several years, a friend of mine has planned his big summer outing with his entire family (yes, some in-laws, a handful of cousins, etc.) by the edge of a lovely lake in North Carolina.  For his family, this outing marks the pinnacle of family time and he returns feeling refreshed and relaxed.  I marvel at the concept, as the one time I spent two nights with extended family at the Lake of the Ozarks, I noted the experience would be my last family reunion in a shared cabin.  More than a decade later, I stand by those guideline.  Besides, I’d like to see more of the lake than a single, shore-side view.

In the heart of Florida, Lake Okeechobee marks the crossing point between the drifting headwaters and the full-blown Everglades.  On a variety of mini voyages, I have seen vantage points from the southwest around to the south; specifically, I have driven around the entire lake from eight o’clock to six o’clock if one were to view the lake as a clock face.  Likewise, I have enjoyed a two-hundred, seventy degree view of Lake Huron, from six progressing around to three, also in multiple road trips.  And despite having even explored the inside of its clock face on Antelope Island, the  Great Salt Lake from eleven to five o’clock offered me only half of the full waterside experience.

Counter Clockwise

Even before beginning to plan my excursion to Lake Tahoe, I knew I wanted to drive the full distance around its shores.  Starting at the traffic-clogged southern tip, I break from the construction traffic to grab a bite of lunch (see “Where’s Jack?” from March 2013) at the six o’clock point before beginning my full-face assault.  I skirt the water’s edge counter-clockwise (on my vacations, I am allowed to break the rules of time travel) into Nevada and am bombarded by casinos – no need for a “Welcome to Nevada” sign here – the abundantly clear transition lets me know.  I continue to climb up to the rocky tunnel towards the three o’clock marker, and then just beyond to the crystal-clear pool of boulders.  As much as the full circle beckons, the below rocks, sitting blissfully in the   

cool mountain pool deserve their own moment of reflection.  The clock momentarily stops here.

At twelve o’clock high, I drive into California for the second time today.  The summer crowds have departed and the skiers are still waiting for the more substantial snows – not the dusting from a few days ago – so the roads are as clear as the skies.  I continue around to eight while the sun still lingers, and pause for a rest in my own little cabin just out of the sight of the water.  And shortly after the sun peeks from its slumber, I resume the final two hours on the lake’s clock face.  Somewhere around seven o’clock geographically I pull over for a final view of the American Alpine lagoon.  For years I wanted to be at this spot, at all of these spots, to make this three-hundred and sixty degree loop, and to see one small piece of America from every angle.  Back at six o’clock, I turn right and mark the time I circumnavigate Lake Tahoe.

An Ocean View Spoiled

Adding to the Adventure

More than once I have traveled for a medical procedure.  Not as extreme or distant as discounted heart surgery abroad, but often finding the right physiological provider did require a flight to a doctor’s destination (and once included a bump up to first class – how simply awful for me).  And as is common with most of my travel, I insert sightseeing into my itineraries.  Whether it is for business, joining a family reunion, completing my degree work (see “An Education at Gettysburg,” March 2013), or for a medical procedure, I stop at a historical marker, I voyage via a unique mode of transportation, or I take in a baseball game to add a little spice to my travel.  It’s what makes a routine trip a memorable outing.

Once I cruised Hollywood Boulevard after a two-day workshop in Southern California and happened upon a press-lined red carpet for a movie premiere at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater.  I dined on the waterfront after a meeting in Annapolis when I took with a side trip to Chesapeake Bay (see “The Ice Machine in the River,” July 2012).  I squeezed in a landmark outing in the City of Brotherly Love (see “The Vet,” November 2011), and I added a full day’s drive to the northern tier when I had just planned an overnight outing to Omaha (see “North Dakota on a Napkin,” November 2011).  My travel always has multiple purposes and selfish sightseeing.

Missed Sunsets

I land on Monday night and reach the hotel after sunset, sadly, since my hotel stands near the beach in practically perfect Santa Monica.  I barely close the door to my room and receive a call from the front desk updating me on the score from the Tampa Bay Rays game (why, yes, they did sweep the Red Sox).  Clearly this hotel will exceed my expectations if they can keep me apprised of the early-season series.  Hued in tans, browns, and white, with highlights of trendy green, this hotel may not ooze medical motif, but it certainly brightens my visit’s purpose.  I may not get to enjoy the fancy first-floor nightclub, but just being in Santa Monica will be a treat.

Morning begins with my trying to complete my homework in advance of finals week.  But certainly I will get a chance to get out to the beach or down to the pier.  By midday I am on my way to appointment one of two, followed by a social call from friends checking on me.  When adding in a little recuperation time, another sunset comes and goes without me.  Day two takes a similar course, substituting work on my final term paper for the conversational pop-in.  And by the time I lie down, I have caught only a snippet of the sun’s departure and none of the ambiance of the ocean.  The coastal taxi ride back to LAX affords me my only scenic pleasure during an excursion-less escape.  The sun metaphorically set on Santa Monica.

The Twins

Quirky Coincidences of History

Do you remember who won the World Series in 1991?  Wait, let’s take a step back.  Do you know who won the World Series last year?  Do you follow baseball at all?  Maybe it’s not about the sport or the teams or the scores or the victors or the spoils.  Maybe you’re not good with dates.  Many of my friends defy my geeky logic and profess to not being history buffs primarily because they cannot remember all those names and dates and places.  But I argue that historic moments cannot be rhetorically remembered by names and dates and locations, but rather by the circumstances of the events that help to remind us of the salient details.

President James K Polk (do we all remember that name?), the Commander-in-Chief during the Mexican/American War (do we remember the year that ended?), happened to mention in his State of the Union address that a spot in the American West (do you recall the place?) happened to produce a golden nugget – a nugget that would transform the United States’ destiny.  And that valuable mineral propelled people with promises of prosperity westward spurring the largest stampede that defined the growth of the 19^th century American West.  And how do I remember the key names and dates and places?  Easy: San Francisco, a city located west of the South Fork of the American River, hosts the National Football League’s 49ers named for the year those money-hungry settlers arrived en masse and that's the year of the California Gold Rush.  The year before that, 1848, the United States acquired the land that became the Golden State at the end of the Mexican/American War.  The year after, 1850, California had boomed in a transition from territory to state faster than any other in America’s history because of the rush of folks to the tantalizing gold fields.  And as for President Polk, his middle name, Knox, in one of the fun, quirky coincidences of American history, happens to be the same name as the site of America’s gold depository at Fort Knox.

My Mnemonic Device

Leaning history stems from more than clever coincidences, the memorization of facts, or even the names of NFL teams.  Our memories makes history truly magical and remarkable.  We recall the date of Pearl Harbor because our president (do you know which one?) told us the date would live in infamy.  Our children will remember the events of 9/11 because it may be their earliest memory of American history.  But not all history is tragic, or monumental, or even memorable to everyone.  Take the World Series of 1991.  If you are not from Minnesota, even a baseball fan may not recall the final outcome of that year’s playoffs, and while I am an aficionado of the sport, I would be unable to recall who won the October Classic in 1990.  I remember that particular year, though, (and similarly why I remember the winners in 1992) the way many people recall history – by having been there.

During the summer of 1991, I drove with my son (see “Rapid City, Rapid Change,” November 2011) from Denver, Colorado to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (see “The UP,” July 2012).  The route took me through the Twin Cities during August as the aptly named home team gave its finest effort to make the season truly memorable for the players, the fans, and the Land of 10,000 Lakes.  Baseball history, world history, American history, and my family’s history converged in the summer of 1991 and for that reason, I recall who won the 1991 World Series.  I also know what year members of the old Soviet regime kidnapped Mikael Gorbachev, and what year our family moved to Michigan.  And I didn’t have to memorize any names or dates or places; instead I experienced all of the above.  That’s what I adore about history: the way it comes alive in our lives, the way it becomes a part of who we are in large and small ways, the way it sticks with us and follows us, the way its quirkiness, its coincidences, and its own kind of storytelling excite me.  Don’t even get me started on what happened when Sacajawea bumped into her brother.

Crossing The Rivers

The Kootenai River – Idaho



 

The Tuolumne River – California

 

The Snake River – Washington

 

The Clearwater River – Idaho

 

The Lewis River – Wyoming

 

 

 

Between Here and the Channel Islands

Enriching My Life

Out on the water it’s mystical.  When sailing under a brilliant sunny sky, a trail of reflecting beams sparkles and flickers its magic upward.  Elsewhere, guided by the fierce strength of plummeting pressure, the water churned by a typhoon spins its moist madness into a churning fury.  And at its frozen edges, the coldest waters surround the polar caps tossing bergs effortlessly and angrily during their longest, darkest seasons.  Regardless of the weather, the tilt of planet earth, the illumination from above and the sea life living below, the oceans challenge and nourish the wellspring of the human spirit.

My passion for the sea, as I often profess, stems from my birth just blocks from the ocean’s edge (see “My Oldest Memory” from April 2012).  I still cling to numerous memories of the most powerful moments of my life and how the beach called to me to cross over from soil to water – my first pregnancy and later a lost pregnancy, an exotic cruise to slip away briefly from parenthood, an epic vacation from Canada to Florida – each a faceted gem that stay with me and enrich my life.  And when I part from its beckoning spell, I taste the brine left from the breeze wafting invisible salt against my lips.

Escaping My Life

Driving out to Ventura County, we find a small building marking the tiniest land-based tip of the Channel Islands National Park.  The surrounding docks lead us to boarding ramp towards the multi-hour excursion westward, and

today the mystical ocean, while clear at the shore, hides beyond the cloak of fog draped before the horizon.  Once away from the shore, the dolphins racing us towards the mist swoop above, below, and back above the water effortlessly and triumphantly.  In the distance, an oil rig appears ominous in the watery haze and the closer we approach, it reveals a less-menacing stature fixed and immovable against the contrasting, bouncing water.

When we cross the shipping lanes ferrying goods across the Pacific, the monstrous vessels tote hundreds of stacked semi-trailers floating away to China.  But we scoot on our double-decker minnow as the massive cruiser fades into the fog and we pull into the cove of the first island with only a ladder to reach the dock.  Shrouded on nearby rocks, we hear the barking of the seals pointlessly harassing each other as a few hearty campers disembark the craft for an overnight on the island. We aimlessly cruise around the smaller islands with their unique fauna and humble heights.  But most notably, these formations, surrounded entirely by the mystical, magical, magnificent source of my constant inspiration, peek out of the beautiful blue ocean, pointing skyward allowing me to feel a million miles away from my life.

My Oldest Memory

Theoretically

I have this theory that people are drawn to the types of climates into which they are born.  Granted my theory resembles other less-concrete ideas, like cookie fortunes and paranormal activity – only believable if they apply to you personally.  In my case, my theory applies to me personally.  Born in the sunshine and near the ocean, my ideal environment remains shore side.  I like driving along the ocean, staring at the ocean, listening to the ocean on my white-noise sound machine, and, of course, taking pictures of the ocean.  And to be clear, I am mesmerized by the ocean, but somewhat less delighted by the beach – it’s a sand thing.  But just sitting and looking at the ocean tickles me aquamarine.

And I love the moon.  In all its phases, when hiding in the brightest daylight or illuminating a dark road, when it is waxing or waning, when it saddles up to a planet to make a smiley face, when it dominates the skylight upon rising, and during the less-frequent occasions when I get to see it set, I absolutely adore it.  I often wonder if the correlation between the moon and the tide create a sort of bi-fortnight parallel in my brain.  Most likely, I love the size or distance each represents and how small I feel in comparison to both.

The Turtle

At some point in every person’s mind, when reaching back into the deepest consciousness, a thousand memories of the experiences of a life time are stored.  The brain – the world’s greatest hard drive – categorizes these memories and can cross reference them by date or time or place or people or emotions.  Say, for example, that I wanted to gather all of my great memories of the ocean.  I would retrieve a mental picture of a recent excursion with friends to Vero Beach, I would recall the boat ride to the Channel Islands with Son #2, I would think about the view of the Atlantic between Europe and North America from 30,000 feet, and I would reach all the way down to the bottom of the stack of memories and pull out my earliest recollection.

At less than two years of age, filed under both “beach” and “California,” the image of a moment exists in my mind when I try fervently to make sand fit into the shape of a plastic, yellow turtle mold about the size of a saucer.  For the life of me, every time I remove the turtle, the sand falls away from the mold and looks nothing like the shape in my hands.  In hindsight, I do not know if I feel frustration at the dry sand remaining faithful to its physical properties, or that an adult does not assist with the activity by adding water to my sculpting.  And so the pile of loose grains remains every time I lift the yellow plastic shell to my toddleresque dismay.  Perhaps my lack of success in creating the shape of the turtle in the sand explains my lack of excitement about the beach.  More likely this oldest memory resembles my fascination with the ocean, because whether two or twenty-two or forty-two, I try to wrap my head around how small I really am.

Desert Dust

Unpacking

It’s like washing all the dishes after Thanksgiving dinner.  It’s like taking the trash out with the bows and wrapping remnants of Christmas.  It’s like those billy-goat vacuums that follow a parade sucking up the last shreds of the festivities.  Usually within forty-eight hours of arriving home, I unpack the laundry from my vacation and begin the process of completing the last travel-related activities.  I don’t enjoy it, but it needs to be done.

When the unpacking commences, my toothbrush and favorite souvenirs make it out of the suitcase shortly after the front door closes behind me, but dirty clothes hold a lower priority and can stay in there until tomorrow, maybe the next day depending on my schedule, converting my suitcase into a laundry basket.  Cleaning my travel wardrobe erases the fragrances, both aromatic and foul, the spills and the splatters, and the visible memories of the most recent adventure.  And with a wash, a rinse, and a spin, my vacation is completely behind me.

Beaten and Blown by the Wind

Twenty five years ago the desert of southeastern California inspired the album cover of Joshua Tree, and the prospect of driving to that site and letting the desolation of the sandy, scrub-covered landscape absorb me and remove me from the noise and structure of my everyday life enchanted and excited me.  Over a small hill, I abandon my rental car and walk amid the uneven desert floor, mindful that those shallow holes and connecting tunnels could contain rodent wildlife or venomous residents.  In both reasonable proximity and the farther distance, less than a half dozen Joshua trees watch over the landscape and take no action against my entering their domain.

A quarter-mile walk leads me into the open desert and I reach into my pocket and pull out my pre-queued soundtrack for this exact, planned moment.  Beyond a place where the streets have no names, I stand where I want to be: where the streets have no pavement.  I use my small sneakers to leave a mark in the sand – one that will only remain until the wind blows it away – and like an elementary ballet pupil, I spin to the song’s introductory riff kicking up the dirt around my ankles, making a mess and not minding at all.  I don’t even mind the sand in my shoes rubbing against my feet when I hike back over the hill to the solitary SUV.  And now three weeks later, the rest of the laundry is washed, dried, hung, and perhaps even worn again, but the sand coating those shoes remains, not to avoid cleaning them, but to preserve the visible memory, and because I want the desert dust to continue to be at my feet.