Maine, NH, and miscellaneous musings

May 31
We leave Bangor after picking up Princess at the vet’s. She’s shown no symptoms during her overnight stay, which is a good thing, we think . . . but then the next day she’s in obvious distress, so we make an appointment with the neurological vet specialist in Portland, Maine for Wednesday morning. During the exam, the vet tells us Princess is having focal seizures; the problem could be meningitis or a mass on the brain;there’s a certain kind of tumor Boston Terriers are more prone to develop, she says. She recommends an MRI and possibly a spinal tap to diagnose the problem. We leave Princess at the vet where she’ll be anesthetized for the tests, and go to downtown Portland, where we wander around through the Public Market and the art and craft shops in the Old Port, have lunch, wander some more, call the vet at 2 p.m. as instructed, and are told to come by at 4:15 when she’ll be ready to be picked up and the vet will explain what she found.

The news is not good: Princess has a mass – a glioma – on the right side of her brain. The recommended treatment is steroids, bromide and chemotherapy, which may slow the growth and buy some time, but won’t eliminate the tumor. Like most pet owners, we’ll do anything to ease her suffering as long as her quality of life will still be good. The vet assures us it’s what she would do for her own dog, so we leave the animal hospital with a happy Princess, a bag full of medications, several sheets of instructions, and heavy hearts. I take Princess for a walk that evening and she is her normal self – no signs of weakness or deficits. But later that evening she sways unsteadily as she stands, like a drunken dog. In the morning I give her the first of her twice-daily prednisone tablets and 3 chemotherapy capsules, which fortunately she gets only once a month. We’ll have to get blood tests done once a week for the first month to make sure her white blood count hasn’t dropped too low. Today, after her morning walk and her medication, she’s lethargic and disinterested in anything. We let her sleep and take it easy. I guess there’ll be no more tug of war with her blanket – she used to love that game . . .

On Tuesday we go to Freeport, Maine, a little seacoast town with outlet and factory shops for The Gap, Banana Republic, Lenox, L.L. Bean, Anne Klein and assorted other name brands. I manage to resist the urge to scoop up some real bargains at The Gap and Bass. I spend some time at Edgecomb Pottery, where the pottery, jewelry and other crafts are local, unique and exquisite, and leave emptyhanded. But at Steve’s urging, I go back on Thursday morning before we head down the road and buy the bowl I wanted.

Wednesday, June 1
After our day in Portland and the disheartening news at the vet, we return home. I take Princess for a walk and she seems to enjoy it. When it’s time to make dinner, I look around in our pantry and freezer for something simple, and decide on pasta – angel hair with a sauce made of canned organic plum tomatoes, kalamata olives, artichoke hearts, canned water pack albacore tuna and feta cheese, seasoned with onions, garlic, olive oil, red wine and a dash of oregano. With crusty bread (the last of what we bought in Montreal), it’s a flavorful and easy meal – and best of all, we have leftovers.

*****
We are on our way to Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, where we’ll stay one night before driving on to Abington, Mass., a suburb south of Boston where my sister lives. We’ll park the motorhome at her house for four days or so and stay with her while visiting with her and Christopher, our son, who lives in Quincy. Christie’s kids are excited about staying in the motor home – they’ll pretend it’s a rock star tour bus - and we’re looking forward to sleeping in a bed with more than 6 inches of space between it and the wall.

*****
I wish I could say I’ve been incredibly productive and creative during our journey. I wish I could say that I read all of Shakespeare’s plays, learned to speak Spanish like a native, and finished a 16”X20” counted cross stitch picture. I wish I could say I wrote 15 chapters of the Great American Novel. I wish I could say I’ve scrapbooked every place we’ve stayed and every historical site and national park we’ve visited. I wish I could say any or all of these things . . . but I’d be lying. I’ve been a vegetable, a mindless sponge. I have been absorbing the scenery, learning about the history and historical figures in every city or area we visit; I’ve been reading a lot . . . but I have NOT been prolific, industrious, inspired or inspirational. I should feel guilty about this, I guess . . . but why? I’ve been enjoying the trip, the places we’ve seen, the people we’ve met and everything I’ve learned along the way. This is a journey of rejuvenation, a revitalization of ourselves. It is not a guilt trip. I’ve spent enough time during my life guilting myself, flogging myself for what I should have done, should have been, should have said. No more – it’s unproductive, unpleasant and pointless.

Quiet harbor

Lobster Pound - Trenton, Maine

Ocean spray - Acadia National Park

Ellsworth, Maine

We take Princess to the vet again today. She has been showing weakness in her legs for the past week or so, sometimes yelps in sudden pain, and at times seems to have trouble breathing, panting long, loud and hard. We took her to the vet in Oneonta, NY, and he diagnosed a pinched nerve in her neck, giving us a prescription for NSAID which she’s been taking for a week. But this morning is the worst yet – Steve takes her for a walk, and she seems fine, but when she comes back she has trouble walking and standing, and suddenly starts yelping as if someone is poking her with hot irons. Then she falls over and starts trembling and twitching. That’s enough – we can’t stand seeing her in pain like this. The vet at the Emergency Animal Hospital in Bangor seems very concerned but doesn’t have a diagnosis, although she thinks there’s something neurological going on, which I’ve suspected all along. She suggests keeping Princess overnight for observation, which seems like a good idea, so leave her at the hospital.

By the time we get back to the motorhome, it’s 3 p.m. We eat a quick lunch and drive to Schoodic Point, another section of Acadia National Park, most of which is on an island. Schoodic Point is on a peninsula of mainland Maine. It’s about an hour’s drive; we arrive in the park at 4:30 or so and drive to the tip of the peninsula. There, we park the jeep and walk over a field of granite, sliced and carved by eons of glacier, wind and water, to the edge where ocean meets rock. The angular planes of pink- and black-flecked granite are bisected by broad 2 to 3-foot slices of magma, gunmetal grey and sharp-edged. The ocean slams against the massive wall of granite rock and as it is rebuffed, a vertical sheet of water lace-edged with millions of droplets is tossed into the air. I am mesmerized by the energy of the roiling water below, the constancy and power of the giant swells that ride over the underwater rock slabs, then collide with the vertical cliffs. I watch the ocean repeatedly crash against the rock, knowing that it has done so for thousands and thousands of years, and I marvel that the erosive effect of wind, water, salt and time have not rounded the angles and edges of the massive granite blocks.

As we leave Schoodic Point and drive east in the waning daylight, it occurs to me there are sights I see constantly in the East that I’ve seldom or never seen in my 50 years in Arizona. For example:
- broad expanses – acres and acres - of treeless, unlandscaped lawn being mowed
- Clothes hanging on the line to dry
- The color of spring, a shimmering green luminescent with brilliant color
- White clapboard homes, simple and boxy in design and perfectly suited to the landscape
- Houses with shutters, turrets, porticos, cupolas, dormers, weathervanes and porches – none of which look out of place or contrived (unlike these same features that occasionally show up on Arizona homes, where they appear absurd and pointless)
- Unfenced yards
- Rexall Drug Stores – with the same familiar blue and orange script sign

Montreal

We spend Wednesday afternoon at Jean- Drapeau Park in Montreal. This is where the World Expo was held in 1968, with the Biosfair and an expo arena that replicates the ancient Greek coliseum. The Biosfair is an intriguing design, an immense open sphere of metal beams connected to each other as if someone were playing with a giant erector set. It has been successfully converted to a planetarium and insectarium. Unfortunately, the arena appears to have been largely abandoned; it is overgrown with weeds and grass and the concrete seating area is crumbling at the edges. It seems a shame, as the venue seems quite functional, if utilitarian. Maybe it doesn’t meet the size, scope and power requirements of rock stars and athletes, who are the primary users of an auditorium like this. Whatever . . . as we walk through the arena, we pass signs that describe the events, innovations and celebrities that made the Montreal Expo memorable. We read through the list of famous names . . . Marlene Dietrich, Jackie Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Princess Grace of Monaco, Ed Sullivan, Milton Berle. . . and realize that almost all of them are dead. It seems symbolic, somehow, of the impact of Expo . . . . transitory and ephemeral.

We spend 2 days in Montreal. On Tuesday, we drive from the park where we’re staying into town about 30 minutes away, passing rural farmland and “prestige condos” – lots of them – under construction on the outskirts of the city. Montreal, like Manhattan, is an island, accessible by a number of bridges. We spend Monday afternoon walking around in Vieux Montreal – the old city, with its crumbling stone facades and cobblestone streets. The old buildings are slowly eroding and while a restoration effort was begun in the 80s, there’s still much to be done. We see a beautiful old stone church with towering steeple and stained glass windows. It has simply been abandoned, given over to the weeds, pigeons and homeless panhandlers who are everwhere.

There’s a church on every corner in Montreal; it’s not called City of 1000 Steeples for nothing. The most famous is L’eglise de Notre Dame; we don’t tour it, however – there’s a $4 admission fee and we’ve seen plenty of cathedrals in Europe that are hundreds of years older than Montreal’s Notre Dame. Steve is highly incensed that the church would charge an admission fee for a tour; I point out that they’ve got to raise money somehow for upkeep, reminding him about an old church we saw in Charleston that solicited donations for upkeep, as it was a million dollars or more in debt just from the cost of maintaining the structure. “You could go to mass and see the church and it wouldn’t cost you anything,” I tell him. “They’d probably charge you for it,” he responds.

We go to Montreal again on Wednesday. The weather starts out sunny but violently windy, but by the time we reach downtown, the breeze has settled and it turns out to be a pleasant day. We visit the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, which has a phenomenal collection of art ranging from ancient Greek to 16th-19th century European to contemporary work by renowned artists. And the museum is free! We spend an hour or so browsing and marveling at the work displayed. After lunch at a little French sandwich and bread shop, we head to Parc Jean Drapeau.

On Thursday, we pack up and move on. We had talked about driving in the Jeep to Quebec City, which we’ve been told is “very French” and very much worth seeing, but it’s 150 miles away, and I tell Steve I’m not up for driving 300 miles round trip in one day. So Quebec City will have to wait for our next cross-country trip.
That evening, I discover rock lobster in the freezer; I’d bought it fresh at one of the roadside seafood stands in Jacksonville, Florida. I decide we’ll have it for dinner. But I’ve never made rock lobster (which is really a type of shrimp) before, and by the time I’ve cooked it, beheaded and shelled it, I discover that what seemed like a good size package in reality only yields about ½ cup of meat – hardly enough for a meal, even if I stretch it with vegetables. Once again I’m kicking myself – why didn’t I buy more of that incredible fresh shrimp at the Mercado in Ensenada - at $9 a kilo (2.2 pounds). Unlike the shrimp and rock lobster I bought in Florida, the Mexico shrimp had shells but no heads (yuck – want to become a vegetarian – fast? Try cutting the heads off 15 or 20 shrimp.)

So I take out a package of frozen scallops, defrost them, sauté them in butter, garlic and lemon, and mix with the lobster. Then I sauté some frozen red, green and yellow bell pepper (Trader Joe’s, of course) and onion and mix it with the lobster-scallops and a splash of lemon juice, vinaigrette dressing and a dollop of mayonnaise for a warm seafood salad on a bed of lettuce.

The Adirondacks

Well, the Adirondacks were something of a disappointment – not because the landscape is not magnificent; it is. The mountains wear a nubby coverlet of green, but near the highway, huge shards of sheer black rock are exposed, revealing the prehistoric beginnings of the Adirondacks. I’m always delighted when I see boulders erupting from the earth, rocky cliffs and craggy terrain. I’m not sure where this interest comes from, or why I love rocks so much. . . . Maybe it’s that they seem to offer to reveal secrets about the earth’s history – if I only knew how to read them. I should have been a geologist, apparently . . . . As it is, I have a collection of rocks (my artifacts, I call them – along with the leaves, flowers, seeds and other bits of nature I gather along the way) from all around the world, chosen simply because I like the way they look, for their colors, shapes (I have a collection of heart-shaped rocks), composition and size. I’ve been collecting rocks for some 20 years or more; baskets and bins of them are stored in the garage and living room of our home in Bellingham. I’ll have a whole new assortment of stones, pebbles and rocks to add when we’ve finished this journey. Meanwhile, Steve claims that the weight of my rocks in the motorhome increases our fuel consumption by at least 10%. He exaggerates, of course.

Anyway – the Adirondacks are disappointing because it rains lightly but steadily for the 2 days we are here. On Monday, we putter around in the RV waiting for the rain to let up. Finally Steve says he’s tired of being cooped up and is going to drive to Lake Placid, about 30 miles away, just to get out. I volunteer to go with him. Lake Placid, high in the mountains, was the site of the 1964 and 1980 Winter Olympics. It’s a typical ski resort community with the exception that it has huge venues for speed skating, figure skating and other Olympic sports. And like most post-Olympic venues, they look a little sad and seedy – after all, there’s not a lot of demand for arenas that seat thousands of people in a village that typically is populated by only a few thousand people (or fewer). The figure skating venue is still used for world figure skating events, but otherwise, it appears that the Olympic buildings have seen their last hurrah.

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Dutch Country, near Lancaster
I have begun to realize that there are very few uniquely indigenous communities or areas left in the U.S. Slowly, inexorably, they are becoming homogenized, their distinctive elements sanitized and commercialized to attract tourists – who apparently are not satisified with experiencing the culture and livelihood in its natural state. Rather, it must be contained in a can or jar, reduced to a phrase (preferably off-color) on a tee shirt, or depicted in an 8X10 matted full color fine art print of your choice of local heritage sites (frame extra at only $9.95). And all of these are available at the Southwest/Seminole/Cajun/Allegheny/Amish Gifts and Craft Market and Deli, where the products on the shelves are interchangeable from east coast to west coast, South Dakota to Florida, and most of them are made in China, not painstakingly by the hands of local artisans, no matter what the painstakingly-crafted-in-China-for-the look-of-handmade-wooden sign at the cash register may say.
All this is by way of saying that our trip to the Amish country in Pennsylvania was disappointing, to say the least. We drive to Intercourse, PA, where we’re told we’ll see representative Amish life, products and foods. We discover that it’s shop after shop filled with typical ticky-tacky, all of it labeled “Amish” or “Pennsylvania Dutch” to convince us it’s the real thing. We visit the Bird-in-Hand farmer’s market, famed (or so we read) for its fresh produce, meats and cheeses, baked goods and hand-crafted décor, and find the same produce, meats and cheeses we could buy in the grocery store, not organic, hormone and antibiotic free products I foolishly expected the Amish would produce. We leave without contributing any of our money to the local commerce.
There is one exception to our disappointment – the quilts in the Old Country Store and the People’s Place Quilt Museum. They are indeed works of art, with traditional designs like the Wedding Ring and Lone Star as well as modern abstract designs created from all shapes and snippets of fabric in rich, deep hues. I think about the bedspread we custom-ordered when we moved into our house on Milton Drive in Scottsdale in 1989 – for which we paid a fortune. It was simply one piece of expensive machine quilted fabric. To think we could have had one of these beautiful quilts for far less money!

On the road between Intercourse and Lancaster, there is a narrow lane on the right for horse-drawn buggies. The buggies are the Amish version of modern-day vehicles; they are box-like and utilitarian, completely enclosing the driver and passengers who can not be seen from the side view. Each buggy is pulled by one sleek, well-cared for horse who clip-clops along at a pretty good pace. I want to take a picture, but don’t feel right about treating these people like tourist attractions.
The Amish homes and farms we pass in this rural countryside are easily identified; they are white, plain and unadorned – house, barn, and other outbuildings alike. There is no color or unneeded frippery – no fancy filigree trim, no painted shutters, no lathe-turned pedestal porches. There is a spare simplicity to them: looking at these buildings, neat, clean and plain, you know the time and attention of the occupants goes to what’s needed and necessary, not toward landscaping, décor or vehicles to make the neighbors envious.
Steve and I notice women in their long, drab dresses and net caps doing the yard work at many of the houses we pass. We see women blowing leaves, mowing the lawn (with a push lawnmower), and watering the shrubs and plants with a watering can. We even see an elderly woman in her dark blue dress, garden hose in hand, scrubbing the family buggy. Apparently yard work is women’s work in Pennsylvania Dutch country.

May 16-17
The Poconos, Pennsylvania
Living in Arizona for 40+ years, I’ve become accustomed to a certain landscape – treeless for the most part, beige and brown with only an occasional – and welcome – touch of green. It’s a dry and waterless environment; its beauty is subtle and not always immediately apparent – it’s the kind you learn to appreciate. So the eastern countryside has been overwhelming to me – verdant green hills and mountains lush with forests, water at every bend in the road – rivers, ponds, lakes, brooks, streams, waterfalls. I am entranced by the magic and music of the water, whether it is a still small pond in a cow pasture or a roadside creek rushing and tumbling over moss-covered rocks.

You see a lot more cemeteries here than in the West. It dawns on me why – there are more dead people here (duh!), since the East has been settled much longer. Cemeteries and churches compete with each other for land – there’s a church or cemetery (or both) around every corner in this part of the country. The churches all look very traditional – white or stone rectangular buildings with the tall pointed steeple. The surprise – many have red doors. Why? As we’re driving up to Skytop, the lodge in the Poconos where Steve’s grandfather worked years ago, I spy a small church with a beautiful stained glass window, red door and tall steeple. We stop so I can take a picture. As I’m clicking away, I hear a woman in the parking lot: “Would you like to see inside?” We go inside and admire the pressed tin roof and walls and the beautiful stained glass windows with the light streaming through. As we chat with the woman, we learn that her son worked at Mt. Baker, near Bellingham, and she stayed in Bellingham when she visited him this year. The world is tiny indeed.

The next day, we go to see the much vaunted Delaware Water Gap, where the Delaware River cuts through the mountains. Bushkill Falls is in the same area; on the way, we see one billboard after another touting Bushkill Falls, and I comment to Steve, “You know, with all the advertising, I have a feeling Bushkill Falls is going to be just like the Natural Bridge – you pay to see it.” Sure enough, when we get to the Water Gap visitor center, the park ranger confirms that the falls are privately run and there’s a fee to enter. So we’ll be skipping that attraction. And, as it turns out, the Delaware Water Gap is pretty unimpressive – there are several “scenic overlooks” where Steve and I stop, look and wonder what’s to look at. But – while we’re hiking in the area, I notice bear tracks! We haven’t seen any bears in all our travels (although there are plenty of warnings about them) so it’s exciting just to see signs of them.
We’re heading out today to Cooperstown, NY to the Baseball Hall of Fame, then up to Montreal, through Maine and on to Nova Scotia. From there we’ll come back along the coast to Boston to visit our son, Christopher and my sister Christie.

Bear tracks at Delaware Run 

Gettysburg - pastures become a battlefield 

Shenandoah National Park 

A rocky ledge from a summit in Shenandoah National Park 

Spring wildflowers 

Skytop Resort - the Poconos 

Traditional New England church - yes, the doors are red. 

Rainy Day in the Smokies 

Spring in Bloom - Goshen Pass, VA 

Gettysburg

Gettysburg National Military Park.
We spend the day touring the Gettysburg Battlefield, where 40,000 of the Civil War’s 650,000 battle deaths and injuries occurred from July 1-3, 1863. As we view the 1,100 monuments to Union and Confederate leaders, regiments, troops and soldiers dotting the 25 square-mile killing ground, we realize how pivotal Gettysburg was, and how massive and devastating the conflict that took place. Bodies and blood, desolation and death everywhere. Many dead could not be identified and were buried en masse in huge trenches. . . Others were given individual plots, but only a number. The grave markers tell the story – U.S. Regulars, 132 bodies. . . . New York Regiment, 85. . . . We walk through the National Soldier’s Cemetary knowing that beneath our feet are sons and fathers and grandsons and husbands and brothers – Yankee or Rebel- who were fervent and strong in the belief they were fighting for the right reason – and the right side. Like most warriors, when they joined up they did not fully comprehend that deliberately trying to maim or kill someone in order to prevent them from doing so to you is brutal, bloody, horrifying and inhuman. What is most incomprehensible about this battlefield is that it was NOT a battlefield – it was farmland, pastoral and serene . . . cows grazed in green pastures, split rail fences separated one farm from the next and fields of corn were tilled and ready for planting. . . and then the armies with their guns and swords and grenades and cannons came.
A Southern officer wrote at the end of the first day regarding the slaughter, “This morning I saw a sight which was perfectly sickening and heart-rending in the extreme. It would have satiated the most blood-thirsty and cruel man on God’s earth. There were [with]in a few feet of us, by actual count, 79 North Carolinians laying dead in a straight line. I stood on the right and looked down their line . . . Great God! When will this horrid war stop?”

DC - the Smithsonian Museums

May 5-11
We’re near Washington, DC at Lake Fairfax County Park in Reston, VA – the only RV park we can find in the DC area. We want to visit some of the Smithsonian museums and see my brother, Larry, who lives in Alexandria. I call Larry and invite him to dinner; he’ll take the Metro after work and Steve will pick him up at the Metro Station nearest to where we’re staying. It’s on the way back from the new Smithsonian Aviation Museum at Dulles Airport, where Steve will spend the day while I hang out at home at get dinner ready – salmon croquettes from Alaska wild-caught salmon given to us by our Scottsdale neighbors. They gave us several packages; we froze it and this is the last package. But we don’t realize how awful DC traffic is. Larry arrives at the metro station at 5:30; he and Steve don’t get to our RV home until after 7 p.m. We make the trip to the same Metro station the next morning to go to the Smithsonian and it takes us 15 minutes. We eat and have a nice chat with Larry until 10 p.m., then drive him back to Alexandria rather than sending him home on the train.

Steve, of course, wants to visit the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum; I want to see the new Museum of the American Indian; we arrange to meet at 3 p.m. to walk together to the American History Museum. The American Indian Museum is outstanding in architecture and content. Opened just a month ago, the museum presents living culture rather than merely a historical record of how Native Americans once lived. Featuring representative tribes from across the U.S., the exhibits document how they preserve their culture and traditional customs while living in the contemporary world. The design of the museum recalls the Guggenheim in New York, with 4 circular floors overlooking a central atrium; each floor is accessible by elevator or wide stairs that spiral upward.

From D.C., we are traveling to Fredericksburg, MD to visit Steve’s younger brother, Merritt, and his family – Crystal, his wife, and their 4 kids. We spend 2 days with them, then head up to Doylestown, PA so that Steve can see his mother, who is frail and bedridden and not always lucid – but she still shows the occasional spark of wry humor that makes Steve laugh.

Goshen Pass, VA

May 1
Vivid spring green of new foliage against darker evergreens in the hills. . . . Maury River – fast moving water tumbling over boulders, rushing to the next bend in the river. Trees budding, fuschia and white. Fields furiously yellow with wildflowers. Neat white wood homes basking in their wide expanse of lawn. Pastoral landscapes, dotted with black, brown and black-and-white cows. A surplus of beauty.
The forest is luminous with new growth – every shade of green. But here and there the landscape is dappled with white – dogwoods in spring bloom, brilliant with the radiance of the sun. . .

We are going to Natural Bridge, one of the 7 wonders of the world – mainly because I want to see the Toy Museum, with toys from the 1900s through 1960s. We drive 15 miles, thinking we will drive over or through the natural bridge and pay some nominal admission fee for the Toy Museum. We discover there’s a $10 per person admission fee to see the Bridge, $8 for the toy museum – and the capper – there’s a Wax Museum affiliated with the Natural Bridge. Any attraction or place that has a Wax Museum falls into the “Collossal Cave” category – one of those places that resorts to multiple garishly-colored billboards on the highway seeking to catch the attention of the whining kids torturing their weary parents in their minivan 180 miles into their 452 mile road trip. Our motto: if it has a wax museum, drive right on by. After going into the “Natural Bridge Gift Shop, Museum and Ticket Office” and discovering the only way to learn the ticket prices is to stand in line – there are no admission prices posted anywhere! – and doing just that – Steve and I look at each other and agree to leave. We do so without regret.

Tuesday, May 3
Shenandoah National Park
The geologic history of the Appalachian Mountains goes back more than a billion years. The weathered homes of early Appalachian residents on Route 33 are slightly less old. On Skyline Drive in Shenandoah Park, the trees still appear leafless, their bare branches and limbs outlined like a network of veins and capillaries reaching up to blue sky. But up close, green leaves and buds waiting to unfurl when the weather warms up prove that spring is here too. But it is cold today – more like March than May. The woods still look like winter, save the occasional tree in early bloom, startling amid the stark landscape around it.
Walking through woods, listening to the sounds: birds warble, chirp and twitter, waterfall rushing in the background, the tinkling trickle of a stream near the path, rustle of wind through trees, a leaf falling. And the smell – woodsy, loamy rich fragrance of earth, bark, water, decaying leaves and humus.
We spot deer on the road, casually munching on grass. More exciting, deer on the trail deep in the forest as we hike. They stop eating when they hear our footsteps, freeze. We stop, letting them know we mean no harm, then move forward quietly a few steps, stop, move again. The deer are shy and suspicious; they let us advance, but not too close.
We hike up a long mountain trail and reach the rocky summit. It is quiet and peaceful; we look out over the landscape below, enjoying the stillness and splendor of nature. But the serenity is disturbed by a group of four hikers who arrive a few moments later, loudly discussing the “Fourteeners” (summits of 14,000 feet or more) they have climbed, vying with one another for attention like a group of 5 year olds. Their raucous chatter ruins the tranquility; after a few moments, we leave.