Perspectives

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

It was only this morning that I actually went out and rode my bike at sunrise and s the orange disk of the sun come up into a cerulean sky. It is amazing what a few hours and a few hundred miles can do to change one’s view of the world. I am now in the number four travel destination in North America. It doesn’t normally look like this. A view out the window reveals a blank rectangle of featureless lead gray.

I recently read one of Nicholas Spark’s novels set in Rodanthe, North Carolina during a hurricane. He effectively described the gray misery that comes from being hunkered down inside, waiting for the storm to spend its fury. The last time I got near a hurricane was in 1998 when a category 4 storm chased me around the Caribbean for several weeks. This time the circulation of an ocean storm merely has me cooped up in a hotel while the beach sands rearrange themselves under the detergent action of the agitated surf. The weather is just moving in and sustained winds of 40-50 MPH and driving rain increase my respect for those that go to sea for a living. The weather channel is calling it a ‘disturbance’. I can simply stay on terra firma and wait it out, knowing I really do not have control of things in life. Two days from now it is supposed to be 80 degrees and sunny. I know I am absolutely safe and the worst thing that will happen is I see more of a hotel room that I had planned for.

This gray drear reminds me of how fortunate I was to have seventeen days of pristine clear climate in Canada sans rain and wind. I think I will go get some dinner and be thankful for a tasty meal with good friends, and remember that on the top side of these dense clouds it is still sunny.

Images of Our World

Calgary, Alberta

Technology is an interesting phenomenon. It has unwittingly allowed us to have torrents of data thrown at us that overwhelms us and causes us to over-react to the slightest permutation anywhere else in the universe. We have just seen how fear is transmitted instantly through all the financial markets of the world, wiping out serenity and financial safety for millions. Two days ago I saw years of my savings disappear in the time it took me to take a two-hour bike ride. The past several days I have been able to watch the erosion of my financial future with a real time ticker tape on my wi-fi laptop here in the Canadian Rockies. It is bit surreal how tightly connected technology allows us to be to dynamics and circumstances we would have been oblivious to in the past.

On the other hand technology can allow us to experience magnificent things that are simply astounding and overwhelming, beyond the comprehension of nearly all the generations that have gone before us. Of the more than 100 billion people who have lived on earth, only a very tiny percentage of them ever had a chance of see awe-inspiring glaciers and ice-capped peaks from nearly eight miles up. I was re-admitted into that small club today, having used my wireless laptop to book a ticket onto one of those aluminum rockets that carries people over the Canadian Rockies in a matter of minutes at 38,000 feet. In the random computer allocation of seats I was given a window seat in the second row, well ahead of the leading edge of the wing. I could gawk with an unobstructed view as if it were my first time on a plane rather than my 547th.

Western Canada is cloaked in ice-clad granite massifs that tower above the eastern border of British Columbia, providing a stunning backdrop to Calgary in Western Alberta. A clear cobalt sky in late September afforded a breath-taking view of the dazzling white mantles of ancient ice. In great chasms, igneous walls hold emerald pools of glacial melt. These pristine high-altitude worlds know nothing of the financial chaos down below. Looking down on those knife-edge ridges one is reminded that perhaps there really is much more to life than watching financial markets freeze up. There is nothing like watching your own shadow race across the ice fields at 539 miles an hour. It sure beats using a horse. The last time I was on ice, it took half a day on a horse to cover ten miles.

International airports can be intimidating. There are vast numbers of people in them and people are often in a hurry to get to far away places. One does not think of them as playgrounds. 9/11 took away much of the magic that airports once afforded. Here in the Calgary International Airport about ten feet in front of me I am watching magic take place. A man is on the floor romping with his 3-year-old daughter. He has been doing this for perhaps twenty minutes. The playful shrieking and giggling as he plays hide and seek with her reminds me of the whole point of travel – creating memories of life lived well. This man is teaching his young daughter to live very well; one who will know the emotional security that comes from an attentive loving father.

Behind me four people have laughed non-stopped for more than an hour. The laughter has been infectious and the whole demeanor of the terminal was super-charged with a sense of life being lived well and fully. Norman Cousins would have been so pleased to know how these people were using humor to improve their own lives and unwittingly, the lives of all of us on the nearly fringes. Norman Cousins spent his life proving that humor could liberate people from terminal physical illness and the darkest of emotional angst.

Waves of experience pass through airports. It is now another very different crowd. No outbursts of loud laughter from young professionals but there are suddenly many young mothers with children in strollers. These children are all happily gurgling as they explorer the mysteries of airport fast food. There is a calm serene sensibility present. Happily, it is contagious.

Sunset is really impressive when it starts at 38,000 feet and ends at ground level while doing 530 miles an hour. The whole experience is a fast forward one with intense sensory changes. One can almost watch the sunlight’s color change from platinum to yellow to deep gold to a dim red. The clouds take on myriad shades or red, vermilion, lavender, orange, all set against a darkening cobalt sky. The fast approaching indigo edge of night overtakes the landscape below and suddenly the earth becomes a universe of small luminous galaxies as all the towns and cities turn on their electric suns.

Life is good today. I’ve been to the mountaintop in more ways than one. And I was able to pay for my meals today

Dramatic Illusions

Kelowna, British Columbia

One of my favorite activities when traveling is going to community theaters and seeing how they do things. Kelowna has a magnificent collection of theaters. The Rotary Club built a fine facility that contains artist co-ops, studios, classrooms, public eateries, meeting rooms, and a fine auditorium that seats about 250. The whole of this is set in a splendid botanical context. A Japanese garden is not far away, and a nice lawn spreads out on one side of the building. Kelowna has won a Communities in Bloom award a number of years running and it is easy to see why. There is a 1,000-seat theater a couple of blocks away that serves as a venue for musicals and symphonies. The building looks out over the harbor and yacht club. Behind this find facility is a black box theater that seats 125. I found myself in this venue tonight.

One of the things I have always found fascinating about theater and concert experiences in western Canada is the friendliness of the audiences. I had just taken my seat when the several people around me put out hands and introduced themselves. I was reminded of happy such experiences in Vancouver, Victoria, and even in London. It turns out that tonight I had the happy experience of sitting with the family of one of the lead singers.
Theater going is certainly can be a multi-dimensional experience in other countries.

A happy variety show depicting the railroad history of British Columbia was presented in the first act. This show along with my bike journey on the Kettle Valley rail beds reinforce to me how rich the railroad era was in the province seventy five or a hundred years ago. The second act was a collection of title songs from a number of well-known musicals. Several of these brought back vivid experiences of building these shows in our little South Carolina theater.

It was again one of those days when I felt fully in the stream of life. I didn’t think about the fact that tomorrow I would be in the jet stream eight miles up, returning to reality as I know it. I do have the luxury of having a key to our local theater and can go back in the auditorium and experience new illusions.

Encounters of the Highest Order

In a Museum Gift Shop
Kelowna, British Columbia

There have been those times when traveling that I find myself truly in a state of flow, quite caught up in the sounds, smells, tastes, conversations and feel of a place. So it was today for about three hours. Barbara was suddenly interested in visiting several of the art galleries in the downtown cultural district. I was quite happy to go along for this miniature expedition six blocks to the east.

I was to have a nice little odyssey. Before going into these galleries we made a stop in the small Apple Orchard History Museum that is located in the next block from many of the galleries. Besides providing a most pleasing sense of the history of fruit growers in this valley, I was to experience the great joy of travel - meeting someone that scratches a deep itch of the soul, normally far out of reach. The young blonde blue-eyed curator of this museum engaged me in conversation and with her smile had me wondering if I could immigrate here next week, despite being newly bankrupt in the aftermath of the stock market meltdown.

There have been those moments in life overseas when my life will intersect with that of someone else and for a few moments the result is electric, intoxicating, and fertile ground for the most incredible imaginings. I once wrote a poem called “Intersections” that described these chance encounters. I left that diminutive one-room museum uplifted and validated and feeling like I was dead center in the stream of life. When leaving that museum, each time I looked back, she still was smiling at me with that smile I will remember for years. I recall a similar experience on the London Underground. I met a woman on one of the District Line platforms who shared her conversation and radiant smiles with me. I still remember that encounter as if it was ten minutes ago and not ten years.

Barbara and I went on to several galleries and saw magnificent paintings all priced in 4-5 figure ranges and had splendid conversation with the owners and in one case the very engaging daughter of successful international art dealers. A respite in a tea room between gallery hops afforded exotic African tea, mesmerizing Indian music, inspiring reading, and good conversation, this all in a place smaller than my bedroom. This little tea room felt like some kind of ecumenical epicenter of the world. It was a most grand experience – educating me about music, culture, religion, and being present to the moment.

Yet, I believe the little apple orchard museum will be what I remember with the most affection about my time in the Okanagan Valley. I think I will eat apples with a renewed interest and reverence from here on.

Life on the Hilltop

Somewhere on Lakeshore Drive or Thereabouts
Kelowna, British Columbia

The past weeks have certainly been atypical of the usual tourist fare proffered by online travel brokers. Travel operators are not typically offering opportunities to participate in the electoral process in foreign countries. My hosts are very politically minded and participate greatly in the political process at the provincial and federal levels. So it was I found myself in a privileged circumstance this evening.

The Okanagan Valley has become a worldwide destination for wine connoisseurs by virtue of the dozens of fine wineries that have sprung up here in the past few years. A grand facility known as Cedar Creek Estate Wineries has sprouted on the shores of Okanagan Lake and the fruit of its fields has won it ‘best of show’ for several years at the international level. The physical environment of the estate is everything one could possibly imagine for a winery – perfect climate, magnificent botanical plantings, fine fields with lush grapes, interesting architecture, expansive water views from high promontories, finely presented food, delicate wines, and beautiful people.

I am reminded of the passages in one of the epistles of the Apostle Paul where he states he learned how to be content in all circumstances, whether rich or poor. The meltdown of the US financial markets the past several days have left me decidedly poor and today I was with the decidedly rich. Hosting a political fund-raiser for a Federal Parliamentary candidate was the owner of this grand estate winery, a man who had a larger-than-life story to tell. He spent decades in Ottawa as a respected Federal leader in Parliament. He has large-scale family businesses and connections all over the world. Thursday he heads off to Italy to hob-knob with winery owners there. He is more vibrant at age 75 than most people at age 40. I felt definitely poor among this crowd of industry owners and civic leaders. I tried to figure out what someone from a small rural town in South Carolina was doing at a upscale event like this, besides eating fresh salmon, stuffed grape leaves, hummus, and a dozen other culinary wonders. I felt a bit like an imposter who might get found out.

As it was I had plenty to eat, attempted to discretely take pictures without looking like a gawking tourist, and eventually had good conversation with a number of people there. Like our host, all of the people I spoke with have lived huge lives and continue to see the world as their oyster. They certainly seem to have come up with plenty of pearls. I found myself wondering where they hide average people these days. Perhaps they will use me to create the lower bound of a statistical distribution. Maybe that is the real reason they occasionally let me in with the beautiful people, despite my not having much hair anymore.

The food was really good.

Parallel Universes

The Waterfront
Kelowna, British Columbia


I have often been mesmerized by those 3-D graphics that were popular twenty years ago. One looks at an apparently random array of color splotches and sees nothing specific. After staring for a while and holding one’s mouth right, suddenly the image transforms into a three-dimensional world that is compelling in its depth. One wonders how it was possible to have missed the image in the first place.

So it can be when traveling. Tourists see the world through rosy colored glasses. All-inclusive resorts in the tropics have high walls surrounding them to make sure the three dimensional world of poverty remains invisible. Tour guides have an uncanny ability to take travelers from one oasis to the next without getting sand in their shoes.

My experiences here in Kelowna have been exactly the same as looking at the garish graphic art. I basked in a tourist image of a magnificent city, one devoid of the challenges that plague America cities – homelessness, drugs, poverty, litter, and crime. I have spent days photographing yacht clubs and high rise towers of luxury, gazing at expensive paintings under tensor lights, enjoying the beach at a upscale resort. After staring at these uplifting images here for eleven days, suddenly another world has come into clear focus. It is not one that shows up in the travel brochures.

One afternoon after returning from a happy outing, I was summoned to the front of the house to see what a man out in the front yard was doing. Discrete use of a zoom camera revealed him to be shooting up heroin. Something was starting to clarify in my head and it was not artsy. The next day Barbara came to tell me she had just found a bag of used syringes and needles in the back yard. Suddenly, I understood why there is such a religious discipline given to keeping things locked up around here. Two days ago another couple of guys were seen on the street injecting themselves with certain death.

Today I went out to ride my bike to the top of Knox Mountain. My route takes me through several city parks. On Saturday these same parks were filled with tanned blond people living out happy days in the sun. The annual Dragon boat races were on and thousands of spectators were enjoying the cafes and festivities. Today the parks seemed empty until I started looking closer. In the bushes and trees one could see homeless men beginning to thaw out from the stiffening cold of the night air. They slowly unwrapped themselves from tree roots in a bid to capture the first nascent warmth from the rising sun. I found myself sharing the bike path with old people pushing grocery carts filled with their belongings. Suddenly, the images of tanned beauties on their roller blades and Cannondale bikes were supplanted by images of the disenfranchised living on the frayed edges of dreams that never came to pass. A very different world was in clear focus.

I left the necklace of waterfront parks, heading to Knox Mountain, wondering what a compassionate response should be to what I have seen in this very real shadow world. I simply prayed all the way up the mountain, asking for wisdom to do the next right thing. I sure didn’t feel like taking pictures today.

Transcedence

Mission Creek
Okanagan Lake
Knox Mountain

I started out the day, riding ten miles at sunrise. I didn’t see any teddy bears today but I did pay attention, watching for giant black fur balls that might come out of the bush. The only fur I saw was a nice assortment of the canine variety. It was about 40 degrees and I was quite chilled through at the end of this ride. I was so stiff in my hands I could hardly get my riding gloves off. Thirty minutes in the 104-degree hot tub rectified this problem and the problem of hunger was nicely solved with an opulent breakfast of eggs, ham, raisin toast, juice, and fresh fruit, and tea. It is luxurious to be able to eat with impunity, given the amount of exercise I have been getting.

At midday I walked down to the waterfront to photograph the annual dragon boat races. These oversized racing sculls have 16 rowers, two columns of eight. These colorful boats with their large dragon mastheads made for fine images. There are three days of events with evening concerts. Dozens of arts and crafts kiosks and food vendors and a few thousand people gave a festive sensibility to the splendid waterfront parks. People arrived on bike, board, blade, foot, carriage, and a few even arrived by car. It is a grand transportation system that operates here.

Tonight I almost wish I had been in a car. About 6:00 PM it seemed prudent to launch myself up Knox Mountain on my bike. Last weekend we went up this mountain in a car and it did not seem like it would be too arduous on a bike. Wrong!! A 12% grade feels totally different in a car than it does on a mountain bike. Two years of daily abuse on the stair climber did not prepare me for this! I was panting like a hot dog in August when I arrived at the top. The sun was just setting below the horizon when the summit came into view. Kelowna is in a really majestic mountain setting, well worth the uphill work to see it again. The high-speed coast down the serpentine road reminds me of the incredible descent one gets in Hawaii after a long ride up in a van. In this case I did not cheat and did the uphill work before getting the free ride down. The 40-minute ascent yielded a bracing 6-minute plunge back to the lakeshore.

With a bit of smugness, I went back and had dinner with Dwight and Barbara, inhaling two plates of salmon and halibut along with fresh vegetables. As soon as I upload this entry, I pan to work on some ice cream.