Belated Map of Kauai

Should have gotten a map up here earlier...if I had access to a scanner, I would scan one up so you could all see where I'm living right now. Clicking through is second best, but will give you some idea of where I am on the island, and of the towns I talk about in this blog. If you look south, at highway 50, I'm in a town called Lawai, pretty much dead center. I'm in Koloa right now, which is a slightly larger town south of there. Koloa is an old sugar plantation town, and it has become my favorite town here. The beaches I go to are the Poipu beaches, which you can see south of there. (Hopefully pix of all of this very soon!) Yesterday I was at Shipwreck's Beach, a beach Delpha, the woman who built the shack, told me about. I'm still reading Isabella Bird, now Six Months in the Sandwich Islands, and finally got to the Kauai section of her trip. Was thrilled as I was reading it to realize she would have docked somewhere near where I was sitting...she landed at Koloa.

Shameless Self-Promotion

Just want to let everyone know that I have been officially hired as the About.com fiction guide (partially paid on page hits, so feel free to click through, share with friends, relatives, complete and absolute strangers...). This is the project that has been eating up my time with internet stations at the public library--and keeping me from blogging more. (FYI, the forum isn't up yet, but should be in the next few days.) This is the company that Toby and Lydia work for, just bought out by the New York Times, and I've been impressed with how things are run so far, at least from a guide's point of view. Toby is also the new guide to poker, and (to promote her as well) has a great new book out on the subject,The Badass Girl's Guide to Poker.

Anyway, my love to all of you, and now that this is pretty much up and running, I will try to get pictures up soon!

Waimea Canyon

Just a quick post to let everyone know I'm still alive and well in the shack. This week I have vowed to take some pictures and get them up here, so that you can all see where I'm living. I did a hike this weekend into Waimea Canyon, the "Grand Canyon of Hawaii," and forgot my camera (and more disasterously, my Cliff bars). But it was beautiful, and smelled so good, like eucalyptus. My trusty Geo overheated on the way up the mountain, but Earl, the guy who's renting to me, delivered a Buick within an hour. I'm pretty sure that this is the same Buick we had growing up (seriously, the same year and everything), but it has a pretty good engine. (For $400/month, including insurance, I can't complain too much.) It's pretty much the ugliest, oldest car in any parking lot wherever I am, which is saying a lot as Kauai has its share of clunkers. But it got me up the mountain and back down again. And the engine is more powerful (and gas-guzzling) than the Geo. I thought I'd just chilled out so much that I no longer felt like speeding here, but now I'm realizing that it was just that the Geo didn't have much get up and go.

Feral Pigs of Australia

I realize that I haven't added to my blog recently. Adjusting to life in the shack has absorbed me completely. Gay and Dean came over on Saturday and graciously spent the afternoon on various projects to make life easier here, such as a rat-proof fruit-ripening box, now full of passion fruit and mango. I'm also going to have a hammock in my workspace upstairs--a longtime dream after hearing that the Texas nature writer, J. Frank Dobie, whose house we studied in at the Michener Center, kept a hammock behind his desk. (They say he died in it, and I couldn't really think of a better way to go, not that I'm planning to follow suit just yet.) And then yesteday I meant to have a day of rest, but the Hawaiian gods sent mop water (previously known to me as "rain") all day, so I cleaned and cleaned rather than let it go to waste. And today I set up my writing space and even wrote for a while before going downstairs to "think something over," and promptly falling asleep. After a deeply productive nap, it seemed imperative to go to the beach. So you see, the days are just packed here on the island of Kauai.

Otherwise, I've just finished a very funny travel memoir called The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific, by a Dutch-Canadian American named J. Maarten Troost. He accompanies his wife when she takes a position in an NGO on the island of Kiribati in the Pacific. He describes it as the end of the world, and truly, their experiences exceed anything any of my ex-Peace Corps friends have described, but the book has prepared me for Radio Australia, the one radio station I've found on my short wave radio with decent news at sunset, when my radio functions best (conveniently the time I'm most inclined to listen). For instance, in learning that Kiribati is voting with the Japanese on the issue of reversing the moratorium on commercial whaling in the Pacific--the hot topic right now--I now only know where Kiribati is located, but I also know why they might be voting that way. (Courtesy of Radio Australia I also now know that there are more feral pigs than people in Australia. "So you might say that we are losing the battle against feral pigs," the reporter asked the feral pig expert. "It's not looking so good," he answered.)

OK, my quesadillas are ready (with fresh papaya! Also, have I mentioned that Gay's cookware kicks butt?), the radio needs to be re-cranked, and my beer is getting warm, so back to important shack business. Hope everyone is well out there. More later...

Aloha Hawaii

I've safely landed in Kauai, and have spent my first night in Gay's little house. Thought I'd be afraid the first night, but it felt very safe. The upstairs room has tons of windows, so I woke up surrounded by trees. Rachel was right, there are a lot of roosters here, and though the sun woke me, theirs were the first sounds I heard. Gay says their call isn't really "cockle-doodle-doo" here on Kauai, and she's right. It's more like cockle-doo-duh. She told me that her husband, Dean, a plumber, says that they're really saying, "Where's the restroom?" It did sound, this morning, like a bunch of roosters urgently crying out for the restroom!

She gave me a tour of the property yesterday, all the trees she's planted, and the trees that already grow there. She picked some lychee, and some other fruit I can't even pronounce much less spell. I have a coconut tree growing right out front, along with a lemon and orange tree. Mango and guava also grow here, though it will be another week or so until they're ready to be picked. Today I've been buying some supplies at the K-mart and the thrift store. I need to clean also. My only real worry is the water supply. I have to refill the tank each time I flush (there is a real toilet, though) and it uses a lot of water. So I'll be praying for rain as never before. More later. I'm at the library, and my time is just about up!

Also, wanted to tell the reason for all the roosters and chickens. Apparently cock fights were very popular among some kauai residents, and during the last hurricane they were all set free by the winds. You do see them all over the place, but it makes me happy to think they've been spared the cockfight circuit.

Parting Shot

I'm off this evening to a hotel near the airport. Leave for Hawaii at 6 am. Will try to blog, but may be the w/e before I get to the internet again. Good-bye lovely Colorado.

Be well everyone! I'll write soon.

Susan and the Hail Storm

My friend Susan testing the waters...there was a huge hail storm while we were walking around Old Town. Unfortunately the hail doesn't show up in this picture, but the street was covered with it.

Maki and Mae

Here's the promised photo of the pets...

Brooklyn Gum?!

Wendy returned from Italy on Friday, and she picked this up there. Said she had to get it for me. Not sure what Xylitol is, but sounds scary. Leaving tomorrow for Hawaii, but hope to add a few last Colorado pix today.

Rocky Mountain Jim

My apologies in advance for the long posting today...I've become a little obsessed with Isabella Bird and her friendship with Rocky Mountain Jim Nugent. Yesterday I saw my old friend, Susan, a former Michener fellow who lives here now. We had lunch and then she showed me her favorite stores in Old Town (pictures tk). Anyway, we went into a used bookstore because I wanted to get a copy of A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains before I left town. Turns out the bookstore owner was an even bigger fan of the book than I am. I asked her what she thought of Mountain Jim's death--he was shot 8 months after Bird left the U.S. I had read that he was shot while walking by the door of this man, think his name was Allen, but that the reasons for it were debated. Allen said it was an accident, but I read somewhere else that it was actually believed that he shot him for political reasons. Apparently there were some debates going on about how the land in Estes Park was to be governed, and Mountain Jim was involved, on the side of preserving the land. The bookstore woman said, "Sitting behind this desk, I've heard all kinds of theories about Mountain Jim's death and none of them sit right with me." (I loved that she talked about his death as though it had just happened.) In any case, Bird lavishes more words on her description of Mountain Jim than she does on any other person in the book, as she generally saving her descriptive powers for the landscape. It's an interesting portrait of a man, but also of a mountaineer--in her words, a desperado--of the period:

Roused by the growling of the dog, his owner came out, a broad, thickset man, about the middle height, with an old cap on his head, and wearing a grey hunting suit much the worse for wear (almost falling to pieces, in fact), a digger's scarf knotted around his waist, a knife in his belt, and "a bosom friend," a revolver, sticking out of the breast pocket of his coat; his feet, which were very small, were bare, except for some dilapidated moccasins made of horse hide. The marvel was how his clothes hung together, and on him. The scarf around his waist must have had something to do with it...He has grey-blue eyes, deeply set, with well-marked eyebrows, a handsome aquiline nose, and a very handsome mouth. His face was smooth shaven except for a dense mustache and imperial. Tawny hair, in thin uncared-for curls, fell from under the hunter's cap and over his collar. One eye was entirely gone, and the loss made one side of his face repulsive, while the other might have been modeled in marble...We entered into conversation, and as he spoke I forgot both his reputation and appearance, for his manner was that of a chivalrous gentleman, his accent refined, and his language easy and elegant.

As the book goes on, she spends a lot of time with Mountain Jim, who loves poetry, and writes it (lost the eye to a fight with a bear). He's extremely well-read and well-educated, apparently, but had killed so many men that mothers would use him to scare their children, as in, "If you're not good, Mountain Jim is going to get you." Everywhere she went with him, people were always in awe of Jim, and amazed that she could travel safely in his company. But he actually goes well out of his way throughout the book to keep her from harm. According to her bio (and this was on one of the links in the last posting about her), he proposed to her before she left, and she turned him down, knowing that he really wasn't the kind of man a woman could make a life with. (Or maybe she just wasn't quite ready to settle down...)

Comments!

Rachel pointed out that to post comments you had to register...didn't realize it was set that way (the former Luddite shows her true colors). I've changed it now, so post away! Thanks, Rachel!

The Wide Streets of Ft. Collins

I'm sick today (think it's just a bad cold), so I've been mostly reading. Last night I had a conversation with my friend, Vive, whose friend Brittany lives in Old Town Ft. Collins. I haven't walked around there this trip, but Vive mentioned how wide the streets in Old Town are. I'd forgotten that about it from my last visit, and in my reading today--a book called Visions Along the Poudre River--I happened to find out why they are so wide. So this posting is in a way for Vive, who laughed when I told her I was keeping a blog.

Apparently, the surveyor who laid out Ft. Collins in 1872, Franklin Avery, made the streets so wide so that you could turn a team of horses hitched to a wagon around in the street without having to back up. Avery said later that he'd figured that he had all this room to spare, and there was no reason not to use it. As a result, all of the streets in Ft. Collins are at least 100 feet wide. Unfortunately the wide streets were actually kind of a pain for the townspeople because they weren't paved for another 30 years, and were often muddy. It was impossible to cross the road without getting really dirty. On the other hand, for a modern-day town, wide streets are essential (as we saw in Austin, where the streets were purposely made on the narrow side in order to discourage growth), so Avery's decision was rather visionary. Anyway, I may see Brittany while I'm here, and will go with the purpose of noting the wide streets.

On the map below, old town is the little chunk that's at an angle with the rest of the grid.

Mowing the Lawn

Today's adventure was closer to home. Had to mow the lawn, which I hadn't done for probably 15 years. While pushing the mower around my brother's very thick lawn, I remembered being upset as a kid about the gender roles in our home, that I had to learn to cook and clean and my brother "got" to do yard work and use cool-looking machinery. I was about to pitch a fit about it one day when my mother took me aside, and said, essentially, "Look, sexism is working in your favor here. I know it looks fun, but trust me, you really don't want to have to mow the lawn. Let your brother get stuck with it." My work this morning only confirmed the wisdom of my mother's words. Mowing the lawn is damn hard work! (Though there's nothing too fun about scrubbing a toilet either.)

Frozen Dead Guy Days

I'd heard a little bit about this festival before heading up to Nederland, though obviously I was a few months late. Some guy from Norway had his grandfather cryogenically frozen and was keeping him on dry ice in his yard. When he had problems with immigration and was about to be deported, he told town officials that he was worried about his grandfather, and so the situation came to light. They told him he couldn't just keep a frozen dead guy in his yard. It became a subject for local news, and a Boulder business donated a little shed for him to keep his grandfather in. Apparently grandad is still there, though I didn't pay him a visit. Every year they have a festival to celebrate him, however, complete with a "Grandpa's Blue Ball."

Nederland, Colorado

I drove up into the mountains behind Boulder yesterday to visit Nederland, this little hippie town. It was very pretty, but a little strange, I thought, as maybe all semi-isolated little towns are. I walked around the town, then down to the resevoir. The banks were lined with people fly-fishing. They even have a mini pond where kids under 12 could fish. When I was there, some little girl had decided to float dandelions on it instead.

Travels with Gumbi

My brother and I won this Gumbi doll at a carnival in Ada, Oklahoma (I'm guessing, though it could have been Texarkana. I just liked Ada better, so I want it to have been there), when we were kids and he had it out for me when I came, saying he thought I should have custody for a few years. I told him I'd keep him updated on Gumbi's adventures. Here, an intrepid Gumbi poses at the top of Horsetooth Rock.

Maki and Mae

Here's one of the ladies who's keeping me company these days. In this shot she's all dolled up for the wedding, but usually she's not so formal. (I have no pictures of Mae, but will get some shortly.) Maki, in case you're curious, is a Basenji. She's sleeping with me every night these days (the walks are helping; she sleeps way later than I do now). Mae, the cat, however, comes in at 6:30 begging for food. She's on a diet and it's all she thinks about. She's tried many different methods to get more food out of me; I'm embarrassed by how successful she's been. Sorry, Wendy and Bryan. I'll squeeze in some kitty aerobics before you come home.

Rubber Ducky, You're the One

I spent Memorial Day in Boulder with Wendy's friend, Pam. We started by watching the 10K, the Bolder Boulder, then walked around Boulder, ending up at the most important event--in our opinion anyway--the rubber duck race. Unfortunately, the pictures for this didn't turn out so well, in large part because it was raining and we were trying not to fall down the muddy bank into the river...but you can see a few little fellows bobbing downstream behind me.

A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains

Have been skimming a book by Isabella Bird, the first woman fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (she started traveling at age 18 on her doctor's advice, after a spinal surgery). Anyway, she spent time in this area in 1879 and wrote letters back home to her sister. This is one of her sketches, of Estes Park, which is a couple hours from here. (Last visit Bryan, Wendy, and I hiked there and I hope to go back next sunny day.) By coincidence, she had come from Hawaii to the western U.S., and she rides around in some kind of Hawaiian riding dress, comparing what she's seeing to what she saw in the Sandwich Islands. Interesting to see this place through her eyes and also imagine, through her descriptions, what I'll soon be seeing.

Anyway, Bird loved Estes Park, but Ft. Collins did not fare as well:

It gave me a strange sensation to embark upon the Plains. Plains, plains everywhere, plains generally level, but elsewhere falling in long undulations, like the waves of a sea which had fallen asleep. They are covered thinly with buff grass, the withered stalks of flowers, Spanish bayonet, and a small beehive-shaped cactus. One could gallop all over them...By the time we reached Ft. Collins I was sick and dizzy with the heat of the sun, and not disposed to be pleased with a most unpleasing place. It was a military post, but at present consists of a few frame houses put down recently on the bare and burning plain. The settlers have "great expectations," but of what?...These new settlements are altogether revolting, entirely utilitarian, given up to talk of dollars as well as to making them, with coarse speech, coarse food, coarse everything, nothing wherewith to satisfy the higher cravings if they exist...The lower floor of this inn swarms with locusts in addition to thousands of black flies. The latter cover the ground and rise buzzing from it as you walk.

Well, fortunately for me, Ft. Collins has improved in the past 100+ years.

Ft. Collins

It's been raining all day, so no hike today. Have to write about Ft. Collins instead of exploring it. People keep asking me where it is, and confuse it with conservative Colorado Springs, so I suppose a little background is in order. Ft. Collins is about an hour north of Denver, in an area called the Front Range. Plains aren't what you think of when you think of Colorado, but you can see clearly on this map, where the plains start on the eastern side of the state. In the case of Ft. Collins, the foothills of the Rocky Mountains are only a half hour or so away. Though Hewlitt Packard and other tech companies are now the big employers, the town is surrounded by farmland and ranches (I often hear horses on my walks). I took this picture on a little hike up near Horsetooth Resevoir, which is the closest park in the foothills. In the picture, you can see the prairie in the distance. The smell of the pine trees reminds me of being a kid in East Texas, and the big sky of the plains reminds me of the rest of the state...it is nice to be out West again.