A Visit to Oakland

Last week I visited my son and daughter-in-law in Oakland.  I arrived on Wednesday evening and they picked me up at the airport after their day at work.  It was a glorious warm evening – the sun not yet set and the moon just rising in the sky.  We drove home and ate a delicious meal – pasta with a homemade tomato, basil and garlic sauce and a glass or two of wine.  My son is a vey good cook and he made the meal while my daughter-in-law and I just sat in the kitchen and chatted.   My holiday was a gift from them – just a simple visit – not for a special occasion like Easter or a birthday.  The visit was an opportunity to share a few days together.  This is one of the gifts of retirement – having time to visit the people I care about.

The next day I walked to the bus stop to catch the San Francisco Transbay bus.  It was a pleasant walk through my son’s older residential neighborhood.  The bay area is already in bloom – a good month or more ahead of Seattle.  I arrived at the bus stop in plenty of time.  Once the bus came we crossed San Francisco Bay Bridge in the sunshine.  The bus dropped me at the Transbay Terminal – just across the bay from Oakland and in the middle of the financial district.  My destination was a lunch engagement with a long time girlfriend who lives and works in San Francisco.  Her office is close to the Coit Tower and by my reckoning about a twenty to thirty minute walk. 

Walking in San Francisco is always fun and especially so on a sunny day.  The city brims with energy and purpose.  Virtually every block holds some sort of architectural and historical interest.  I walked north, paralleling the Embarcadero, along Beale Street and Battery.  I had time to kill prior to our meeting and I wandered aimlessly through the shops in Embarcadero Square and zigzagged the various streets, past small curio shops, restaurants and taverns gearing up for the lunchtime business.  I passed many pedestrians – everyone looked energetic and purposeful – busily talking to each other in apparent walking meetings; often grouped in twos and threes; all smartly dressed. 

Here and there I passed a street person – one woman in particular struck me in her contrast to the youthful business crowd.  She was sitting on the windowsill of an old  building, resting her feet and surrounded by an overfilled shopping cart and multiple stuffed bags.  She looked younger than me, with long somewhat unkempt hair and a long skirt and peasant type shirt.  I wondered what bad luck had led to her sitting with all her worldly possessions on the streets of San Francisco.  Professional-looking young men in business suits walked quickly by her – continuously filling the sidewalk with testosterone but apparently not noticing her.  But in truth, she didn’t seem to notice the young men either.

Coit Tower seen from below

I arrived a bit early for my lunch engagement and discovered I was immediately below the Coit Tower.  I could look straight up and see the iconic structure overhead high above the street level.  This stark white art deco structure is a San Francisco landmark and always gives me a little thrill of recognition.  Sort of like spying the Seattle Space Needle out of the corner of my eye in my hometown.  I decided to climb the steps that lead to the tower from the bottom of Sansome to the top of Telegraph Hill.  I started up the staircase full of energy and discovered I was in a garden.  Not just any garden but a garden full of spring blooms – Jasmine, Camellias, Calla lilies, all types and colors of roses, cherry trees and goodness knows what else.  I paused to take pictures and looked back down the way I had come.  There, below me, beyond the buildings was a perfect view of the Bay Bridge.  I climbed more – soon I was hot and glad I didn’t bring a jacket.  The stairs meandered among small streets that hung off the steep hillside – private courtyards opened from the public stairway through decorative wrought iron gates.  Here and there small birdbaths, pretty planters and the occasional wooden bench caught my eye.

The Telegraph Hill Steps

 The higher I got, the more people I encountered.  Clearly most people walk down the steps rather than climbing up.  It was an interesting mixture of people – many tourists like me – several Australians looking very fit in sensible shoes and several families with young children perhaps on spring break.  One family struck my interest.  The father was smoking and the distinct smell of Cannabis wafted up the walkway.  The young son, about six or seven clearly smelled it and asked his mother insistently, what is that smoke?  I smell smoke.  His mother didn’t answer him directly.  Instead she tried to distract his attention by pointing out the flowers.  But he was simply not interested at all.  After failing to get a satisfactory answer from his mother, he caught up with his father and asked the same questions.  It seemed ridiculous to me that the father was hiding the cigarette in his cupped hand.  Clearly the child knew the father was smoking.  The family group stopped and I passed by without hearing the resolution.

Either way when climbing a hill, it is definitely what goes up must come down.  When I finally got to the top I was amused to find that the tower itself was closed for renovations.  No matter.  I didn’t have time to extend my tour and arrive on time for my lunch engagement.  I needed all the time left to walk back down.

Soon my girlfriend and I met and we found a lovely restaurant in an old brick building.  My girlfriend unexpectedly lost her husband a month ago and we had much to talk about.  Losing a spouse, especially when you are both in middle age is about as hard an experience as anyone can have.  We have known each other almost forty years.  There aren’t really any words that can give a friend solace for that kind of dramatic loss.  My intent was and is just to be there to talk, to remember and to discuss what comes next.  That is one of the more curious things about loss.  For those of us left, life goes on with all its trivial and momentous elements.  It is just that it moves on without the person who is lost.  And that can be a very lonely reality.  I think it is important to just be there for your friends.

After lunch, I returned to the other side of the bay, I went grocery shopping and cooked a meal for my kids.  Nothing fancy but all new twists on traditional dishes – one I will describe was quite delicious.  It was sliced yam rounds coated with a little olive oil, topped with a mixture of chopped pistachio nuts, coconut, dates and garlic and roasted in a hot oven.  We took them out of the oven just before we sat down to the meal of buttermilk oven fried chicken and brussel sprout coleslaw.  Yum!

Looking through the Redwoods

The weekend passed peacefully with a series of outings and simple domestic activities – A spinning class at the neighborhood Y; weeding the garden; clothes shopping with my daughter-in-law at a 40 percent off sale; grocery shopping with my son; dinner with one of their friends; sitting and talking; swimming in the neighborhood swimming pool and perhaps one of my favorites – hiking on Saturday morning in Muir Woods north of San Francisco.  We hiked up a steep trail in full sun with views across to the Pacific Ocean and hawks circling overhead.  The dry smell of bay trees permeated the air.  Just when we were thinking we needed to slow our pace we reached the top of the divide and descended into a forest of ancient redwoods.  The last mile of the hike was a welcome flat path – with huge cathedral size trees and a babbling brook.  Perhaps my favorite part of the hike was from the top looking down into the steep tree-filled canyon with sunlight shimmering through the trees.  I can understand why this place is a National Monument.

All in all I had a wonderful weekend in a wonderful place with two wonderful people… and now today, it is the first day of spring.  It is even sunny and warm in the Pacific Northwest!

Lopez Island Blog

The Evening Ferry 

There are some places in my life that bring me happiness.  Lopez Island, one of the San Juan Islands in Washington State, is one such place.  Last week I visited Lopez for five days.  My agenda was simple: walk on the beach each day; eat good, healthy and ideally local food; write; visit with my neighbors and be present while a skilled arborist, who lives on the island, cut and limbed some trees on our property that had overgrown their welcome or were unhealthy.

I was excited to have this opportunity.  While I was waiting in line for the ferry, just the thought of my visit and the beauty of north Puget Sound inspired me to write a poem I would like to share with you.  It is called, given where it was written:

At the Ferry Landing

At times the world escapes my grasp.

It disappears around the bend

And runs away with me

When I least expect it.

I wake to the rain.

I wake to the sun.

The new moon is a sliver

So tiny it catches my eye.

The full moon rises across the valley.

It glows red then silver.

It fills the horizon

Like a huge beach ball.

Sometimes I feel so full

I start to cry

And other times, so empty

There is no solace.

The wind whistles in the trees

And the flags fly high.

Just over the horizon

A new day begins.

Led by an expert arborist, three young men spent two days cutting overgrown and dead trees around our house.  Our property isn’t large but it is heavily wooded.  Over the 35 years our family has owned it, many cedar, fir and other less desirable trees have grown too close together, grown too near the house or have sprouted up in places that would benefit from having less or more diverse forest growth.  Several volunteer deciduous trees, including some undesirable non-fruiting cherries, became much larger than we ever anticipated.  Many lower branches on otherwise healthy trees were dead from lack of light and crowding.  The trees needed more air, more light and more space to breath.  The forest needed help to re-gain its health and the house needed to be free of trees that leaned too close.

Up in the tree!

The work of an arborist or a lumberjack is intrinsically dangerous.  Anyone who has ever wielded a chain saw or even cut thick branches with a hand saw knows that it is all too easy to damage oneself and the tree unless conscious care is taken.  The young men who worked on my trees were uniformly knowledgeable and safety conscious.  They didn’t allow me to be too close to the work since I didn’t have a hard hat and even a small falling branch can be dangerous.  One of the larger trees was so close to the house, it had to be felled by taking it down piece by piece.  The chief arborist Zack coached one of the younger men through the entire complex process.  First, he climbed an adjacent tree using climbing gear so as not to damage the tree.  His harness had multiple redundant fastenings and all his tools, including a full size chain saw were fastened to his body by strong carabiners.  Any mountaineer would have been impressed with his equipment and skill. 

When he was more than fifty feet off the ground, he threw a rope over the upper trunk of the tree that was going to be cut.  He startled a raccoon that was sleeping in an abandoned nest high up in a third tree.  After saying “good morning” to the surprised coon, he used rope-climbing techniques to swing over to the designated tree.  Once there he chose a sturdy branch and began limbing the leafy cedar branches above his head.  Soon, he was ready to cut to treetop.  Zack, his mentor stood below on the ground with the anchor rope attached to a winch on the trunk of the original tree.  After making an initial cut into about a quarter of the tree’s radius, with the anchor rope winched down tightly, the aerial artist cut the trunk.  There was a loud crack and fine wood dust filled the air as the heavy wood broke free and dangled high in the air.  Zack lowered the trunk while the fellow up in the tree continued to limb and cut the next section down.  The entire operation was intrinsically elegant.  The three young men completed all the work efficiently and safely – and my husband, Jeff and I have a healthier forest, more light, better views and enough wood chips and firewood to last quite a long time.  

Jeff joined me for the weekend.  On Saturday morning we visited a local baker to buy some of his artisanal bread and learn about his wood-fired oven.  Twenty years ago, Jeff built a wood-fired brick oven in our garden in Seattle.  We modeled the design roughly on the brick ovens that grace many Brazilian gardens – big enough to roast something quite large and small enough to fit into our urban yard.  In the years since, we have enjoyed many wonderful roasted meals – salmon; pork; leg of lamb; holiday standing rib roasts; roasted vegetables and many other delicious foods.  The oven is built of firebricks and sits below a steep rockery outside our kitchen door. 

Over the years, we have used many kinds of fruitwood and other hard woods to impart delicious smoky flavors to whatever we roast.  Jeff has become an expert at roasting in this outdoor oven.  He understands the quality of the different woods; the nature of the fire and the relative heat and smoke needed for the perfect product depending on the specific item being roasted.  He has also developed a seventh sense about how to use different types of salt, fresh cut herbs, garlic and various marinades to enhance flavors.  Often we use rosemary branches cut from large bushes in our garden to give the barbeque an extra twist.  And we never hesitate to raid the liquor cupboard for a bit of leftover Aquavit or Cointreau or whatever else might add a new flavor to the roast.

Our friends and family love coming over to share food from the brick oven.  When everyone digs into the pork roast or cuts into the crispy salmon skin, there is silence and satisfaction in the dining room, as everyone tastes the smoky flesh.  We are thinking about building a similar but perhaps larger oven here on Lopez.  Farmers on Lopez produce some of the most delicious food I have ever eaten; we can catch salmon and crabs and buy oysters, mussels and clams from the local shellfish farm.  What better reason to have a wood fired oven in the garden?  And what better reason to visit a local baker who is a wood oven expert?

The baker we visited bakes all his bread in an oven he built using very interesting technology.  His commercial-sized oven is much larger than we would need for one family but its basic structure, from the firebrick lining to the thick insulation that stores the heat to the built-in temperature probes, make it a perfect model to guide our thoughts.  Nathan is a very capable and creative person.  He built the oven in its own roomy bake house.  He explained that to develop enough stored heat to bake his bread and the delicious cinnamon rolls we sampled, he must fire the oven up almost 24 hours in advance.  By building and tending the fire over the previous day, he is able to store enough heat to bake commercial quantities of artisanal bread.  He only uses natural leavens and to the extent possible, locally grown wheat.  His bread is quite extraordinary – moist and flavorful with a fine soft interior and a rich crusty exterior.

Jeff has been making bread from a wild more than one hundred year old sour dough starter for thirty years.  It was inspirational to meet this young knowledgeable baker and listen to the two men discuss the attributes of wild yeasts.  Of course, from my perspective, there is nothing quite as delicious as sinking your teeth into a fresh loaf directly from the oven.  We are excited to eat more local Lopez bread and to plan our own wood-fired oven.

We rounded out our weekend with a marathon session of chopping and stacking a monster juniper bush that has taken over the lower edge of one part of our property.  Jeff’s job was to beat the bush into submission.  Mine was to clear the gnarly branches away from the road and driveway – and attempt to stack them for future chipping, as well as spread chips from the previously cut trees on the forest floor.  We were both pleased that our hours in the gym translated into the ability to do hard physical work outside for the better part of Sunday – without having back, shoulder or arm pain.  I was impressed with my ability to move big logs and endless juniper branches and fill and dump many wheelbarrows full of wood chips.  Maybe all those core exercises not to mention lat pulls and curls are beneficial. 

All in all we had a productive and peaceful visit.  I look forward to returning to enjoy the rejuvenated woods and finish our plans for an outdoor oven.

Park City Ski Blog

The View from the Top

Sitting in the Salt Lake City airport. Saturday morning the first of March 2014.  Returning home from four great days in Park City, Utah.  I skied for the first time in seven years with three female friends – all of us over fifty and some of us over sixty.  Here is a good reason to stay in shape and keep up your strength and flexibility as the years pass – you can put on your ski suit; strap skis to your feet; buckle your helmet; get on the chairlift and WOW – you are whisked up and away to a more than 9,000 foot elevation in the middle of winter.  A few minutes later, you glide off the chair.  In front of you is a view you can’t take your eyes off.  The sky is blue.  White fluffy clouds drift by.  The mountains roll away as far as you can see.  A frozen lake fills the valley.   The trees are decorated with snowflakes.  This must be paradise.  You’re on top of the mountain.

I grew up in eastern Canada and learned to ski when I was a young child.  The winters were long and cold and we needed something we could do outside.  Back then we had leather boots with laces and wooden skis with cable bindings.  When I was twelve, before sunblock was invented, one sunny March day I burned my face so badly my dad scolded me.  As a teenager, I remember skiing so hard on a very cold day that my feet got frostbite and had to be thawed very slowly in cold water. But on both those days and many other days, I couldn’t stop skiing.   I loved the speed of flying down the mountain.  I loved the cold wind in my face.  I loved the silent swoosh of my skis carving turns in the soft snow. 

In grade school and high school my family left town every Friday night during the winter, returning tired and happy on Sunday evening.  When we lived in Canada we skied the Gatineau Mountains in western Quebec.  We learned to brave minus 10 and even minus 20 before we knew what the wind chill factor was.  We wore woolen socks and woolen sweaters.  When we moved to Philadelphia in 1964, we skied icy hills in the northern Poconos, and on longer vacations, the steep White Mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire.  My first boyfriend was a skiing buddy.  My first Olympic hero was Jean-Claude Killy.

Over the years as life evolved and passed through its various stages, I had some gaps in my skiing career, sometimes for financial, and sometimes for logistical reasons.  But the gaps never lasted long.  I remember my first experience skiing in western powder in the early seventies after my folks moved to California.  I went skiing one February with my brother at Mammoth Mountain.  WOW again.  The mountain was huge.  The powder was a dream.  We skied so hard I went to bed at 9 pm, got up and did it again. 

On our last day there, I skied across the giant mountain to its western edge, hitting the last run of the farthest chair just as a storm came up.  The chair ride was long and slow.  It would be many years before they invented high-speed quads.  By the time I reached the summit, we were in a full white out.  Five of us held on to each other at the top of the mountain, linked ski pole to ski pole as we moved together slowly across the white expanse, unable to see in front of us.  When we finally reached a lower elevation and had some visibility, I skied down thankful to be safe.  I re-joined my brother, feeling pleased and relieved that the adventure was over, respectful of the high Sierras.  

We lived in Seattle when our kids were growing up.  We skied every winter from the time they were old enough to wear skis.  We took weeklong vacations to Whistler and Mammoth Mountain and to other resorts in Idaho and California.  Somehow we never went to Utah.  In between longer vacations, we skied in the local Cascades, at Mt Baker, Crystal Mountain, occasionally Stevens and nearby Snoqualmie Pass.

During junior high, our kids skied the Pass every Friday night, going from school by bus and returning home at midnight, tired and happy.  Skiing taught our young teenagers how to be friends with the opposite sex, without the pressure of a dance or a date.  They came home with stories of skiing through the back trails and learning how to jump off the moguls.  We gave them money to share hamburgers and fries with their buddies.  As a family we embraced skiing just as my family had forty years before.

As the years passed, our kids grew up and went off to college.   My husband and I fell out of the habit of skiing.  Sometimes we travelled in the winter; sometimes we went biking on fine sunny days in January and February; sometimes we worked too hard and enjoyed winter weekends doing nothing.  Seven years passed and I realized I hadn’t skied at all.  When my friend Karen invited me to Park City I thought to myself either I go skiing in this wonderful place or perhaps I’ll never ski again.  I didn’t like the idea of never skiing again.  I booked a flight, bought a ski helmet at REI and, with some trepidation, arrived at the Salt Lake City airport five days ago.

Aspens line the trail at Deer Valley

I wasn’t expecting to ski the first day.  I was worried I wouldn’t remember how; worried I wouldn’t even remember how to step into my bindings.  But the sky was brilliant and the slopes were beckoning.  We checked into our hotel and went straight to Park City town chair.  The snow was soft; the sun was shining; I clipped into my bindings and we hopped on the chair.  Before I knew it, we were weaving down the slopes; one after the other in a symmetrical line.  How delightful.  My son had told me it would be like riding a bicycle.  He was right.

One of my friends is an expert skier who lives in Park City.  She tutored us the next day on the Deer Valley chairs.  She gave us tips about how to carve perfect turns: keep your arms in front.  Imagine you are holding a beach ball.  Stay loose.  Count your turns like reps in the gym: one two three, turn; one two three, turn.  Keep your rhythm.  Keep your head up.  Look down the mountain.  Don’t look at the tips of your skis.  Your skis will do the right thing.  She showed us how.  She was right.  My skis did the right thing.

It is an incredible privilege to ski in your sixties.  It is amazing to be at the top of the mountain and take in the view across the snowy terrain.  Every hour I’ve spent biking on my trusty Pinarello; walking hills in Seattle and in Piracicaba; in the gym doing leg presses and leg lifts, spinning classes and squats, yoga and Pilates is worth it to have the strength and stamina to ski all day.  By dint of perseverance and regular exercise I think I am stronger now than I was seven years ago.  That is a good feeling.  I want to go back to Utah and ski again.  I don’t need to master the black diamonds any more.  I am happy to cruise the blue runs and marvel as the snow falls from the trees.  I loved the feeling of being outside all day in the winter cold.  And, with a little help from my friends, I remembered how to ski and I loved it again.  Thank you Karen, thank you Martha, thank you Bambi!