Chestry Oak

Hungary is an interesting and rather complicated country.  After the dissolution of the Roman Empire, it was settled eventually by the Magyars, giving today's Hungarians a non-Indo-European language spoken by no other nation, but related distantly to Finnish and Estonian. 

It became the junior partner in the Habsburgs' Austro-Hungarian Empire, suffered the dissolution of that empire after World War I, became a perhaps reluctant ally of Hitler in World War II, a satellite of the USSR after the war, and eventually -- today -- a small Middle European state with a tendency toward authoritarianism.  It presents something of a problem to its fellow EU members.

In sixth grade -- a year when our teacher still read to us each day for a half hour after lunch -- I listened raptly day by day to readings from a book called Chestry Oak.  I remember my fascination much better than I do the actual plot, but I've always remembered that it was about a boy from a noble family who lived an idyllic life on a Hungarian country estate, a boy who loved horses.  His timing for living his childhood was unfortunate, as the Nazis were establishing control over the country, and nightly he heard the roar of war planes flying overhead.

The boy's family was forced to flee and never return to their estate.  I didn't recall what happened after that, but I now know that he and his family ended up on a farm in the Hudson River valley of New York.

Like other out-of-print books from my childhood -- like so much else from my childhood -- I was never sure how much of this I remembered accurately.  And just as I have no way of reproducing conversations remembered dimly from the past, I thought I'd never be able to recall any more about the book than I've indicated above.  I wasn't sure that "Chestry Oak was really the name of the book, or just a description of the estate on which he lived.  I didn't know the author's name.

But I discovered recently that the book has been re-issued in paperback form by "Purple House Press" of Kentucky as part of their "Classic Books for Kids" series.  It was originally published in 1948, after the Soviets had taken over Hungary, and would have been in print for about three or four years when our teacher read it to us. 

I've just started reading it.  The boy was Prince Michael, and his father was both respected and loved by the peasants under his jurisdiction.  The Hungary the book describes is not the Hungary of cosmopolitan Budapest, but a rural, feudal Hungary that feels little changed from centuries past.  Michael's family takes their hereditary rule for granted, and his father feels a strong sense of responsibility for the welfare of their peasants.

Although the book is anti-Nazi, it might also be a reaction to the subsequent workers paradise imposed by the Russians.  It certainly romanticizes the nobility, but in doing so it helps us understand how rural Hungarian life was lived before World War II.  When published, the book seems to have been perceived more as a children's "horse story" than as a political thriller or a story about refugees.

I've only read the first few chapters of the book.  The story is told from young Michael's point of view.  It is very descriptive, and moves slowly, surprisingly more slowly than I would have expected.  I conclude that kids used to have longer attention spans than I suspect most children would today. 

 I'm grateful to the Purple House Press for preserving this very interesting piece of children's literature  -- and am looking forward to the rest of the book.  Very high ratings on Amazon, primarily from readers who, like me, remembered it from long ago.

Lawnmower despotism

Clover from my childhood 

"A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule."
--Michael Pollan

I last mowed my lawn a few days before I left for Scotland.  I left for Scotland one month ago today.  Do the math.  It needs mowing.

But not as much as you might think.  In Seattle, lawns grow like, well, like weeds from March through May.  They grow slowly into July.  Then, if not watered, they dry up and await the inevitable rains of autumn.

So my lawn looks shaggy, with odd things growing out of it.  But it doesn't look like a hay field, as it would have in April if I'd skipped mowing it for a month.

Letting your lawn do its own thing -- freeing it from Pollan's "totalitarian rule" -- has its own pleasures.   First, there is the daily execution of the dandelions.  In spring, the dandelions grew close to the ground.  Between mowings, I'd go out and pluck the flowers before they went to seed, wondering if this would somehow cause dandelions to give up and go elsewhere (it doesn't). 

But in June -- and I'm no botanist, so don't ask for explanations -- the dandelions grow high before blooming.  Perhaps 18 inches to two feet high.  Overnight.  Literally. And they put out buds several days before the buds flower.  This gives me the opportunity to, as it were, nip them in the bud.  The occasional stalk with bud does occasionally escape my notice, and puts forth a defiant flower.  In a sense, this plant has beat me at my game, but it pays a high price.  Instant decapitation.

But life in the back yard isn't all life and death.  I also observe plants that I never see when I cut the yard regularly.  The hardy blackberry vine, whose struggles to survive I've discussed in past posts, slyly begins poking up in places.  The lawn becomes a carpet of small white clover flowers.  Various plants resembling wheat or other grains thrust up delicate stalks.  Buttercups abound, mistaken from a distance as offensive dandelions.  Prehistoric-looking horsetail ferns spread upward and outward, reminding me of playtime in open fields as a child. 

But most interesting of all -- and most reminiscent of childhood -- are the large purple flowers of a certain type of clover.  Flowers that offer a Mecca to delighted bumble bees -- bumble bees who I otherwise rarely see in this neighborhood, but who appear out of nowhere in appreciation of my rare purple clover.

But alas!  This blog posting has been written as only one more form of procrastination.  Today, the lawn gets leveled, the flowers fall, the bees disappear.  Ecology takes another hit. 

Totalitarian rule is once more imposed.

Walking in the Arboretum

I live essentially across the street from the Seattle Arboretum.  As shown in the map, the Arboretum is a long, skinny park, some 230 acres in size, and co-managed by the University of Washington and the City of Seattle.  It is squeezed between the Montlake neighborhood to the west, where I live, and the Broadmoor gated community and golf course to the east.

Within the park, close to the western border, flows Lake Washington Boulevard, a somewhat heavily trafficked arterial disguised as a scenic drive.  No part of the Arboretum is really out of earshot of Lake Washington Boulevard traffic, but the foliage is so dense and the paths so winding that, unless you're listening for it, you hear the traffic sounds simply as white noise, like a rushing stream or wind in the treetops.

Until this year, despite living next to the Arboretum, I rarely entered it.  Not because it wasn't beautiful, but because, except for an access road that ran next to the Broadmoor border, there was no simple way that I could run or walk while daydreaming within the park.  When I did venture in, I loved it.  The trails wound up and down hills, and were mazelike, totally disorienting.  A bit like a much larger version of the Rambles in New York's Central Park, without some of the sociological problems associated with that area.  You thought you were headed one direction, and ended up somewhere else entirely, which -- when in the right mood -- is a delightful way to discover a park, a city, or a country.

The Arboretum is both a laboratory and a park, and the functions don't always co-exist easily. It has only been within the last few years that the scientific aspects of the park have been emphasized.  Different areas of the park have been devoted exclusively to distinct ecological patterns or different species of plants, even at the expense of some beautiful old trees that were unfortunately removed.  Signage has been greatly improved, and the museum like quality of the park thus emphasized.

One change has been to construct a paved loop from one end of the park to the other, incorporating the old access road on the Broadmoor border for one side of the loop, and building a new pathway paralleling Lake Washington Boulevard for the other.  The loop is suitable for both bicycles and walkers.  I was appalled at this idea, because of my romantic attachment to the wilderness aspects of the park, the sense that large areas were discoverable only by exploration -- by trying out those winding paths and seeing where they led. 

But the loop works.  Its course is indicated by the faint white line that circles within the yellow portion of the map.  It makes an excellent walk, and has lured me into the park far more this year than ever before.  And most of the old network of winding paths still exists, still confuses wonderfully, and can be accessed from various points along the loop.

I was afraid that the Arboretum would be inundated by users, but so far that hasn't happened.  I just finished a walk at 7 p.m., and encountered only occasional walkers and bikers.

So, I remind myself once more: change isn't always bad.  Even if you could "stop progress," it might be a good idea to give progress a chance and see what happens.  Sometimes.  And certainly in the case of the Seattle Arboretum.

Equality and excellence

Stuyvesant High School

The tension between the pursuit of excellence and the search for equality is one theme in Mary Renault's novel, The Last of the Wine, set in fifth century B.C. Athens.  She has one of her characters ask whether fervent proponents of the latter will demand that every beautiful child have her face slightly disfigured, preventing her from beginning life with an undeserved advantage over her less favored peers.

This struggle between objectives is one that confronts any society that calls itself "democratic."  It is playing out at present in New York City. 

New York has eight public high schools with rigorous curricula that admit applicants on a competitive basis, one criterion being high scores on the "Specialized High Schools Admissions Test."  Another school, the LaGuardia  High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts, offers admission based on auditions.  These schools offer an excellent education, often the equivalent of that provided by expensive private schools.  The opportunity for talented and academically oriented students to attend such schools induces many better-off parents to keep their children within the public school system. 

They also have student bodies that are heavily white or Asian, and upper middle class.  Aye, there's the rub.

The city's mayor has suggested that twenty percent of the admissions to each special school should be awarded to students who are low-income, and who fall just below the minimum acceptable test score for that school.  The objective would be to integrate the schools to some degree by social class and, not so incidentally, by race.

I find it impossible to think about this issue without feeling completely ambivalent.  First of all, I question the effectiveness of the mayor's proposal.  I look at magnet schools in Seattle, notably Garfield, which include both lower income students from the neighborhood and talented students in various disciplines drawn from across the city, and see schools where the students quickly re-segregate themselves from within.  Not out of racial or class hostility, I gather, but simply out of the desire to hang out with friends who have similar interests and aspirations.

On the other hand, if we are not to be a polarized society, we have to begin somewhere.  I suspect that rubbing shoulders with people unlike ourselves -- whether at school, at work, or in other activities -- increases understanding and acceptance of each other, even where that contact tends to be superficial.

The issue is often discussed in terms of fairness to the low-income students who need to escape low-expectation schools versus fairness to the well-off kids who want a superior education.  And that's an important balance to make.  But I also am concerned about the national welfare -- don't we want to produce the brightest, best educated young people we can?  Kids who can create the scientific and technological advances we''ll need in the future, as well as the writers and students of the humanities that the nation will need to govern itself?  Every country that wants to be a leader in the future is finding ways to give its brightest kids the most intense education possible.  Certainly China is.

On the other hand -- again -- the national welfare will not be served by allowing creation of a vast underclass of poor and poorly educated citizens.  America enjoyed its best years economically after World War II, when universal education gave all students as much education as then seemed required -- a high school diploma -- which in turn created a population with a smaller gap between the highest and lowest paid than known at any time before or since.

One problem with the creation of schools limited to gifted students is that those become the schools that the best teachers naturally vie to teach in.  But -- to a certain degree -- the smartest and best motivated kids have the ability to teach themselves.  It is the poor learners, the kids from homes that have not motivated their kids to study and learn, who need the best teachers.  Regardless of whether we segregate or integrate our good students from our more problematic students, maybe we should be focusing on higher incentives for good teachers to teach the more difficult children.

This has been a rambling post, as I knew it would be.  It rambles, because I have no solutions to suggest.  If I did, I'd write a book.  I merely see the problems.  I hope the political and educational leaders in New York City have the background and experience that I don't have -- as well as the wisdom and concern for all elements of the community -- that will enable them to make the wisest decisions for their schools, and for their diverse student bodies.

New York's problems aren't limited to New York.  School districts all over the country will be watching.

Great Glen Way completed

Loch Ness

"Your country consists of two things, stone and water. There is, indeed, a little earth above the stone in some places, but a very little; and the stone is always appearing. It is like a man in rags; the naked skin is still peeping out."

--Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (quoting Samuel Johnson's taunts about Scotland)

Remember, to begin with, that the Great Glen Way runs in roughly the same latitudes as a route from Sitka, Alaska, to Juneau.  June nights do get dark, but not totally for much more than a couple of hours.  Remember, also, that the Great Glen Way runs from the Irish Sea to the North Sea, both seas being the source of a heck of a lot of moisture, even in summer. 

We enjoyed the long hours of daylight, and escaped almost entirely the expected precipitation.  Locals spoke in wonder of the local "drought" -- eleven days without rain.

The Great Glen itself is a geologic fault between what was at one time the continent of Europe to the south and the continent of North America to the north.  Like other faults, such as the San Andreas fault south of San Francisco, it reveals itself as a depression in the earth which has been filled with a series of long, narrow lakes.  Because of slippage along the fault line, the geology and flora is different on opposite sides of each lake ("loch").

Samuel Johnson, in his inimitable fashion, was describing the highland portions of Scotland, areas whose top soil had been stripped off by the last glaciers.  The area of the lochs along the Great Glen, however, supports beautiful forests and other lush vegetation.

And so we prepared for our six days of hiking.

After four of us had climbed Ben Nevis (prior post), our other four hikers arrived from Edinburgh -- Jim's brother John and sister Anne, and their respective spouses Ann and Tony.  We spent a pre-hike day together, hiring a ride to the Isle of Skye in the Inner Hebrides, and exploring it by vehicle.  We drove from the mainland at Kyle of Lochalsh by a fairly recent bridge, viewed Eilean Donan castle, drove north as far as Portree (Skye's largest town), returned south, and re-crossed to the mainland at Mallaig by ferry.  Skye's scenery was striking, almost Alaskan in its mountains and open plains.

By then, my toe (injured descending from Ben Nevis) was much better, and we were all eager to begin walking.

The Great Glen Way feels like two distinct hikes, joined at Fort Augustus, where we stayed an extra day.  The first three days follow the flat banks of the Caledonia Canal, which extends from Fort William all the way to Inverness.  The canal joins a series of lochs of slightly varying elevations, with locks permitting passage of boats, mainly pleasure vessels, between the lochs.  ("The locks between the lochs," as I joked perhaps once too often.)  The first day took us to the shore of Loch Lochy; the second day, we hiked the length of Lochy; and the third day we walked the length of Loch Oich and on to Fort Augustus on the southern end of Loch Ness.

Our day of leisure in Fort Augustus had as a highlight an 8 p.m. cruise of the near end of Lake Ness.  The boat's guide was well educated and articulate in his lecture.  The boat also provided a means by which we were able to photograph "Nessie" -- the Lake Ness monster.  Far be it from me to pass up the opportunity, which I believe everyone else in our group was happy to do.

The second three days provided very different hiking experience.  Rather than hike the tow paths along the canal or the lakeshore along the lochs, each day we climbed high above Loch Ness, through dense forest into expansive high country moorland.  And the hikes were longer.  The second to the last day, from Invermoriston to Drumnadrochit was 14 miles, and the final leg into Inverness (from which three of our group opted out, taking a local bus instead) was 18 miles.  The hikes were tiring, but the scenery -- of Loch Ness below and of the mountains and moorlands above -- was striking.

We had a final dinner together in Inverness, with everyone but Jim, Dorothy, and me leaving early the next morning.  We three took an afternoon train, spending the morning on a visit to the Battlefield of Culloden, some five miles from Inverness.  Culloden was the battle, in 1746, where the English finally defeated the Jacobite forces of Bonnie Prince Charlie.  The battle effectively ended -- until recently -- Scotland's efforts to obtain independence.  The English forces of the Duke of Cumberland refused quarter, killing all Scottish soldiers who were injured or captured.  For years following the battle, the English launched punitive expeditions into Scottish villages suspected of Jacobite sympathies,  slaughtering all inhabitants.

Following that rather grim look at history, we took the train back to Glasgow, a final dinner, and flights home.  An enjoyable hike with excellent company.

Climbing Ben Nevis

Waving my hands in triumph
at the summit

Climbing the highest point in the British Isles wasn't our primary motive for traveling to Scotland.  It wasn't even an original motive -- more an afterthought.  We came to do the Great Glen Way walk.

But summiting Ben Nevis certainly became a major highlight of the trip, for those of us who did it.

After a night's recuperation in Glasgow from my Icelandic Airlines flight, I joined Jim and Dorothy on the four hour train ride north to Fort William.  Jim has been a close friend since we met as students at the University of Washington, and Dorothy is his Scottish-born-and-reared (but now American) wife.  Jim first introduced me to the art of wilderness backpacking in the Olympics and Cascades, back when we were at an age when carrying a heavy pack for several days was still a matter of pride rather than an intolerable burden!

We had allotted four days to explore the region of Fort William, before beginning the Great Glen Way.  I wasn't all that enthused about attempting the Ben Nevis climb our first full day in Fort William, but the weather was excellent, and there were forecasts of less favorable weather in the days ahead.

Jim and Dorothy

And so June 1st was, in fact, selected for the date of the climb.

The eve of the climb, we ambitiously walked the three miles from our Fort William bed and breakfast to the visitor center at the start of the route up the mountain, making sure we wouldn't get lost while still wandering about on paved roads.  The walk was very pleasant, but long enough to persuade us to take a taxi to the visitor center the following morning.

Ben Nevis is only some 4400 feet in elevation.  The climb, vertically, is about the same as Mount Si near Seattle, which I climb every year in less than two hours.  And yet, British guidebooks warn that the average climber takes 3½ to 5 hours to make the climb, and another couple of hours to come back down.  "Those Scots," I thought to myself.  "All that haggis and "black pudding" has softened their muscles, if not their minds."

The trail certainly began easily enough, and for the first half of the way up we climbed on rough stone steps.  "What next?  Escalators?" I snarked to myself.  Not quite half way up the mountain, the steps lead to a beautiful (and welcome) plateau, on which is snuggled scenic Loch Meall ("Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe"). 

A short time after passing the loch -- which is visible below the ascending trail for a considerable distance -- the steps disappear and we found ourselves hiking on a rough path.  Guidebooks said we would be hiking on scree, which suggests something different to those of us used to the volcanic mountains of the Northwest Corner, where scree means two steps up, and one step slipping back down.  Here, we were still on hard, well-defined trails, but the trails were covered with a sort of loose gravel (well, scree) that often prevented us from getting a firm footing -- particularly on the descent.  Also, the underlying trail increasingly consisted of rocks and boulders of varying sizes rather than firm soil.  In other words, the footing was often difficult.

Eventually we reached what the guidebook called the "zigzags," or switchbacks.  I didn't realize we had reached that point when we did, because I was looking for tighter, more obvious switchbacks.  These were long switchbacks, where the trail continued in one direction for considerable distances. 

The trail, especially after leaving the Loch Meall plateau, was steep, and I was breathing hard.  Tough guy that I am, however, I never faltered or stopped for breaks -- primarily because I was keeping my eyes on Jim's back as he sauntered along ahead of me.  (He complained later about the difficulty of the trail, but this is the sort of "complaint" that one makes to express humility before your fellow climbers.)

Kid at true summit

Finally, the  relentless climb became easier, as we approached the summit.  The summit itself is quite large and flat.  The absolute highest point is marked by a "trig point," or surveyors mark, which in this case took the form of an elevated pillar atop a small rocky mound on which you could stand, gloating, for your photograph.  (One boy wasn't satisfied with this rocky pedestal, and ascended the pillar itself -- a true summiteer.) Aside from this trig point, there were a number of abandoned stone buildings in ruins, including a one-time weather observatory.  The summit was also covered by a large number of fellow climbers, reminding me that my accomplishment didn't make me Sir Edmund Hillary.       

It was Jim and I who were planning to make the climb.  Dorothy came along to the base, she said, just to see us off.  Somehow, however, she forgot to stop walking, and shared our glory at the summit.  Score one for gender equality.

The scariest part of the climb is said to be finding the trail down from the summit in foggy (not unusual) weather.  We were equipped with compasses and instructions on bearings and distances.  Missing the trail can take you over a precipice that I found truly impressive (and scary for us acrophobes) to gaze upon.  But in bright sunlight -- and wearing t-shirts -- the way down was obvious.

Descending a snow field, the
only snow we encountered

I won't describe the descent, which can be inferred from what I've said about the climb.  Except that it was a nightmare.  My boots, which I'd worn for years, somehow crowded my toes on the descent, costing me a toenail and a great deal of pain.  Our climb was a respectable 4½ hours, but our descent took another unexpectedly long four hours. 

Ben Nevis ain't no Mount Si!

We arrived at the bottom, and staggered a few hundred feet from the bottom of the trail to the "Ben Nevis Inn and Bunkhouse ("A wee Inn at the foot of the Ben" as it calls itself).  We had burgers and beer.  I nearly fell asleep in my beer.

The next day, Jim's neighbor Fred arrived in Fort William, determined to make his own climb alone.  He was the youngest guy in our group, a happy extrovert, and he charged the mountain with a certain amount of good-natured swagger.  I wished him well, but was secretly pleased to see him return with sore feet and a haunted look on his face. 

I'm glad we did the climb when we did.  The second day after we climbed Ben Nevis, the area was drenched with rain.  And I needed the three days before the Great Glen Way walk began to regain full use of my legs and feet.

I bought a t-shirt, of course.  "I climbed Ben Nevis, Scotland's highest mountain," the shirt reads.  The claim fits.  The shirt really doesn't.
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I'll describe the Great Glen Way walk in a subsequent post.