Southeastern Summers

My parents' pond at sunset

Johnson Farm at the Peaks of Otter on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Otter River

I grew up in the Southeast.  As a teenager, I was involved in a summer tennis league.  Our practices were from nine to eleven in the morning.  I would bike home from practice and turn on the garden hose and soak myself in the freezing water to cool down prior to going in for a shower.  It was that hot and muggy.

When we traveled back east to visit family last week, the weather was unbelievably well-behaved.  It had rained all summer, so everything was verdant.  The temperatures barely reached into the 90s at their worst, and in the mountains, the temperature one morning never exceeded 70.  Perfect.  While I can't say I have any regrets about moving to the Northwest and having dry summers with cool evenings, I will say I do occasionally miss the lazy, warm summer evenings.  And it goes without saying I miss the trees and the flowers and the abundance of water.  I also had forgotten a lot of things about southeastern summers.  For instance, I had forgotten that if you take a hike in the morning, your sneakers will be soaked with the morning dew.  Your feet and ankles will be covered with fresh cut grass snips or leaf bits.  The same dew also makes the really outrageously ginormous spider webs visible.  Except when it doesn't, and you walk right into them and spend the next 30 minutes trying to pick off bits of sticky, hoping against hope that the spider wasn't home at the time you crashed into its domicile.  And gnats.  I had completely forgotten that gnats existed, until they made their presence known via kamikaze runs into my eyes.  But I loved the streams bubbling in late summer, and the squishy ground, and the moss covered trees.  I loved the butterflies and the hummingbirds, and the fact my mom's rosemary looked like a sequoia compared to mine.  Yes, the northwest is home now, but what a lovely southern visit!!  

A Better Way to Travel

Earlier this week, I took an Amtrak passenger train for the first time in my life.  It's true.  Even though I'm from a train-crazy family, I had never been on a passenger train (outside of subways) in the United States.  

It was a mistake.

I have traveled extensively for work the past few years and I have my airline routine down--what I put in my carry on, what I wear, and maximizing outfits out of a minimum of clothes and shoes.   I am used to the drama of delayed flights and middle seats and short layovers.  No problem.  But I hadn't really realized how far airline travel had deteriorated with respect to comfort until this week.  Until the train.

Admitedly, my sample size is small and I traveled a relatively short distance on a non-holiday.  But the absolute ease of the boarding process, followed by the roominess of the seats almost instantly won me over.  And I could go on and on from there!  No worrying that the DVD player will run out of batteries before your child runs out of movie, no "seat belt light" preventing you from taking a trip to the (much larger) bathroom, snacks and drinks any time you want...well, you get the idea.  Three hours on a train with a small child is much shorter than three hours on a plane with or without the child.  As one of my friends put it, it is a more human pace of travel.  Our collective love affair with automobiles and airlines have relegated the trains to the poor stepchild of travel, but we have been deceived!  Those of us in my generation, who have so little experience with trains, did not know what we were missing!  No more!  I am already planning my next trip!!

Rain in Culpeper, VA

The Crescent Line:  New York to New Orleans!

Union Station in Washington DC

The Potomac River in DC, at sunset

      

These Are the Days

Just some shots from around the house and garden this week.  The weather cooled down to be just about perfect this weekend.  We spent the afternoon hiking at Phillip's Farm Park, followed by ice cream and a ride in a horse drawn carriage at the McConnell Mansion Ice Cream Social downtown.  An old-fashioned Moscow Sunday afternoon.  

I said a while back that May and June are the most beautiful months on the Palouse.  July isn't bad either! 

Made in New England

I recently returned from a work-related trip to the New Hampshire.  While I was there, I was able to make a pilgrimage, of sorts, to Independent Fabrication (IF), the bike makers who made my husband's mid-life crisis bike.  IF is located in Newmarket, NH, which was only about five miles from Durham, where I had my meetings.  I popped into the retail store unannounced, and received well more than the nickle tour!  The gentleman who greeted me showed me the bikes crafted for the North American Handmade Bike Show,  including this sweet cruiser with real gold for the detailing.  I picked up a couple t-shirts for me and hubby, and spent a while chatting about bikes and cross and other things that I don't know all that much about but hope to learn more.

The very cool part, on top of the generosity of the bike shop employee who took so much time out of his day to chat and show me cool stuff, was the fact that the shop and factory are in the old Newmarket mill building.  I love it when old buildings are renovated and re-purposed!  The mill building, granite of course, is located on Main Street along the river, and is now home to high-end shops and apartments.  Newmarket was a pretty little town, with lots of good places to eat and explore.  While I've never been particularly inclined to live in New England, I admit I love the small towns and the architectural charm.  And of course it's nice to drive around in a place where the ocean is in the East and the mountains are in the West.  Fourteen years in the PNW and the dang Rocky Mountains screw me up repeatedly, as in my brain I always think that if you are heading in their direction, you must be going West.  I have ended up going the wrong way on the I-90 multiple times here, but never in the East!

Looking back in the direction of the IF factory, from the rear.

Main Street, Newmarket, NH

    

Two Flat Day

I am a statistician.  While I am sometimes annoyed or pleasantly surprised by the rare event, I am also somewhat intrigued by the outliers of life.  I'm not sure if yesterday's events actually classify as outliers, though, as there is probably a strong correlation between flat tires and traveling in a full vehicle on bald tires over rocky roads.  At any rate my colleagues and I experienced the rare two-flat day while on a reconnisance trip for a grant collaboration at the Zumwalt Prairie Reserve in Wallowa County, OR.

Flat #1

Flat #2

Despite the two flat day, moods remained high.  Perhaps it was because we were at one of the most beautiful places in the West.  It was early spring, the mountains were full of snow, and the first wildflowers were blooming in the prairie.

Prairie Smoke

Larkspur

Bounded on the north by the Grand Ronde River canyon, the east by Hell's Canyon of the Snake River, the west by the Blue Mountains, and the south by the Wallowas, the Zumwalt Prairie is a distinct and geographically isolated remnant of the northern Rocky Mountain bunchgrass prairie system.  While some of the land was plowed at one point, the land has been primarily used for grazing and few true remnants of native prairie remain.  The Nature Conservancy purchased the Zumwalt Prairie in two parcels, and has made some progress restoring the landscape.

This is a depopulated landscape.  The Nez Perce--Nimi-ipuu--were the first inhabitants of the land.  This is the land of Chief Joseph.  After the 1877 war, the land was divided into 160 acre homestead parcels.  By the 1920s, over 30 rural schools served the area.  Then came the Depression, and Wallowa County never recovered.  To this day, unemployment and poverty remain high, and the rural schools have now been turned to bunkhouses for the Nature Conservancy volunteers.

If you can believe it, this farm had telephone access in the 30s, but today can be reached only by satellite phone.  Our cell phones were of little use when the first flat occurred, but that didn't matter.   It wasn't such a bad day at work after all, and it ended in the best possible way ever--at Terminal Gravity brew pub!     

Former school house

Barn at Summer Camp

 

Ground squirrel

Formerly a two-seater outhouse!

The "suicide" elk--found with his head in a pond!

Barn swallows

Elk herd on the horizon

Monuments placed by the Nez Perce and thought to be trail makers.

Oh, Palouse!

How I love thee, especially in the early summer (which this year was July).  Even though I know Palouse Prairie is one of the most endangered ecosystems on the planet, I still love the way the wheat looks when it is tall and green.  I love the way the wheat smells and the way it moves when the wind is blowing.   I also really respect all of the farmers (and there are some) who are practicing sustainable practices to preserve the land for their children and grandchildren to farm.  I will have some pictures of native Palouse Prairie in a future post, because there is beauty in that, as well.

 

Echoes of generations past at the old Cordelia church near Moscow.

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Can you hear the echo of schoolchildren, long grown, in this old school?