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The Adirondacks, Sixteen Years Later
In the early 1990s, I associated the Adirondacks with freedom almost indiscriminately. Upstate New York was my stomping ground, and when I tired of the Fingerlakes, real wilderness awaited just a few hundred miles to the northeast. In the Adirondacks you could truly get away from the raging masses, classwork, and society. You could get yourself off the map. Hell, you could even get hurt. That was its beauty, and I loved it. Amazing, then, that it took me another sixteen years to return. The lesson here is that there is absolutely no telling where life will take you.
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The Bridge at Ndioum
The brightly dressed men on horseback caught my attention first, but then I saw the man leading a camel to the front of the stage.
I was in dusty Ndioum, in northern Senegal, for work-related matters. The sun was high overhead the Sahel, and there was dust in the air. I've spent a lot of time here, and I find it fascinating, because it's so different from anything I've ever experienced, and I wonder how people make their living here. We were getting ready to break ground on a new bridge.
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Rainfall in St. Thomas
We raised Saint Thomas on the Caribbean horizon before dawn, and by the time the sun was rising, the air was full of bird calls and we were docked in the magnificent harbor of Charlotte Amalie. The Caribbean, the deep Caribbean! And one of the splendid Antilles Islands, to boot!
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The Last Drop of Water
One day, the taps simply ran dry. No water. The only way to truly understand what that means is to live through it, to experience it, to suffer through it. Only then do you realize that all the other problems about which you complain are nothing in comparison, that your squatter neighbors live some version of this tragedy every day of their lives. And then you recognize how precarious human existence truly is on this earth.
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The Queleas
The Queleas arrived in mid-summer as the temperature in Dakar ramped up. Uninvited but hugely welcome, they have been an entertaining part of my mornings and evenings until the rains came and chased them away.
Chatty little things, several dozen Queleas began setting up shop in the Casuarina trees in our back yard, twisting and weaving bits of grass and needle into bowl-shaped nests that hung from the branches. They were so intensely chirpy that the neighbors complained, but what was not to like about so much energy and activity outside the windows? And their industry and perspicacity were a welcome respite from life in human West Africa.
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The Jakarta Train
As you travel through life and across the Earth, some things stick with you, and some things are lost. I lived and worked in Boston for two years and can't remember a single street name. I studied at Cornell for four years and can't remember the names of buildings I visited every day. But I remember this instant vividly, and think about it frequently. It has become a part of me.
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Awake Under Whispering Pines
Awake, under whispering pines
Giants shoulder to shoulder, I
Walk at their ankles.
A scattering of Red Cedar, chicks
under Hens' wings. They loiter like houseguests.
Here and there a Holly -- How did YOU get in here? --
Sharp-witted with bright eyes.
I'm looking for the Zen of early winter, a
Blanket of thick needles,
Pillow a bracket of ferns,
my book the alternating,
Vertical
Stripes of Light
and Shadow, between which
All Life happens.
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Tanawha
Circumstances not of my own making brought me from one spectacular, mountainous state to another. Settling into North Carolina's Piedmont, the maps pointed me westward to the Appalachians, unique on Earth. Nowhere have I seen it better described than here, by Sheila Turnage1.
How did the Appalachians come to be here? The Cherokee, who have lived here for thousands of years, say that one day long ago, the Great Buzzard swooped low over the new earth. His wings brushed the impressionable earth, creating the mountain ranges that rise and fall, and then fade into sky. Geologists envision a wilder scenario.
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Calabar
Some of my most memorable trips have been to places I’d never intended to go. Calabar, in eastern Nigeria, was one of them.
For all practical purposes, to the outside world, Nigeria equals the chaotic megacity of Lagos and Lagos is Nigeria. Peer a little closer of course and there’s a lifetime more to discover. Serendipity brought me first to Nigeria (Lagos, of course), and then farther afield until the little aircraft I was in was taxiing into Calabar, 400 miles east of Lagos and not far from the Cameroonian border.
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Threading
Threading my steps along
that stone-strewn way I missed
the breathless luminescence of
cactus flower, hovering among
the spines.
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Leaving (and Missing) Nicaragua
May 2002: Leaving Nicaragua after so many years it has long since felt like home to me. After such a long and lovely stay, and wondering when it is I'll return to this place I love so much, I'm intensely aware of how much I'll miss.
Here's just a taste of it:
- Sense of humanity, connection, personality, 'confianza'
- That pervasive, brute sexuality: a flowered skirt, a blouse tight against the hip, a touch of lace, long hair flowing down over smooth, muscular skin, that strong femininity
- soft, flowery fabrics
- affection, touching, cariño
- People still dress up, the concept of your 'Sunday best' still exists, and for a reason
- A nation, a people, a culture that still makes the best use possible of the little it has: cobblers, tailors, guys who fix electronics, not to mention the intense recycling that goes on in the countryside
- A people that still pays attention to its children, 'padres orgullosos' carrying their little ones around on their shoulders or the handles of their bicycles
- The lack makes things easier to appreciate; scarcity leads to value
- The tropical colors, Latin architecture of open houses set around courtyards, patios full of palms, the ironwork, the openness of everything
And the list goes on and on ...
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