Dead teacher's advice to a 12-year-old

Sometimes you read something simple and true, but so simple and so true that you wouldn't know how to begin saying it as well yourself.

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"I have seen many boys come and go," she said.  "I've seen some grow up and set roots, and some grow up and move away.  The years of a boy's life pass so fast, Cory."  She smiled faintly.  "Boys want to hurry up and be men, and then comes a day they wish they could be boys again.  But I'll tell you a secret, Cory.  Want to hear it?"

I nodded.

"No one," Mrs. Neville whispered, "ever grows up."

I frowned.  What kind of secret was that?  ...

"They may look grown-up," she continued, "but it's a disguise.  It's just the clay of time.  Men and women are still children deep in their hearts.  They still would like to jump and play, but that heavy clay won't let them.  They'd like to shake off every chain the world's put on them, take off their watches and neckties and Sunday shoes and return naked to the swimming hole, if just for one day.  They'd like to feel free, and know that there's a momma and daddy at home who'll take care of things and love them no matter what.  Even behind the face of the meanest man in the world is a scared little boy trying to wedge himself into a corner where he can't be hurt."  She put aside the papers and folded her hands on the desk.  "I have seen plenty of boys grow into men, Cory, and I want to say one word to you.  Remember."

"Remember?  Remember what?"

"Everything," she said.  "And anything.  Don't you go through a day without remembering something of it, and tucking that memory away like a treasure.  Because it is.  And memories are sweet doors, Cory.  They're teachers and friends and disciplinarians.  When you look at something, don't just look.  See it.  See it so when you write it down, somebody else can see it, too.  It's easy to walk through life deaf, dumb, and blind, Cory.  Most everybody you know or ever meet will.  They'll walk through a parade of wonders, and they'll never hear a peep of it.  But you can live a thousand lifetimes if you want to.  You can talk to people you'll never set eyes on, in lands you'll never visit."  She nodded, watching my face.  "And if you're good and you're lucky and you have something worth saying, then you might have the chance to live on long after --"  She paused, measuring her words.  "Long after," she finished.

--Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life (1983)

Riding the rails



I'm gonna grab me a freight train and ride all night long
Yes, I'm gonna catch me a freight train and ride all night long
And tomorrow mornin' I'll be a long ways from home.
--Jimmy Witherspoon

An article in the business section of today's New York Times, discussing the advantages accruing over time to those who take a "gap year" before or during university study, cites as one example the experiences of Ted Connor.

Connor, the author of the popular and well-received Rolling Nowhere (1984), took time off from Amherst to hop freights and travel about the country as a hobo.

You get to define the terms of the risk.  Could I hop a train?  Handle police?  Defend myself?  Deal with a blizzard in October or a rainstorm while out in the open?  All kinds of things had never been asked of me, and I thought that the time was right to ask myself, to test myself.

Parents, who feel somewhat queasy at the thought of their child helping to build homes in Honduras, or traveling around the world on the cheap, or simply working at a McDonald's, probably would have a heart attack if their child -- once safely ensconced in a genteel liberal arts college -- then decided to quit school for a year and give being a hobo a go.

The NYT article discusses studies that support the value of the gap year.  Connor's experience lies at an extreme, perhaps, on the risk scale.  But I can see the appeal.

In the years immediately before law school, I had a friend Dave who took advantage of every opportunity to hop freights.  He had traveled over pretty much the entire United States, viewing the scenery from the partly opened doors of box cars.  He was no hippie, although this was during the hippie era.  He was a young-looking, nicely groomed, well-spoken, and polite young man.  The proverbial kid next door.  But he was the kind of guy who, once he discovers a pleasurable past time, reacts as do many skiers or surfers -- for a time at least, his passion defines his life.

He begged me on several occasions to join him on a trip.  He finally persuaded me that I should at least dip my toe in the water.  On a pleasant summer day, we wandered down to the Interbay freight yards in Seattle.  I forget how he figured out which freight was going where, but we climbed aboard a train headed north to Bellingham, just this side of the Canadian border.  Not that long a trip.  Nothing that was apt to result in my being attacked by either fellow hobos or train dicks.  So at least I hoped.

The trip was fun -- certainly more fun than driving -- and scenic.  Rather than a box car, we sat on the more open and exposed -- and exhilarating -- top of a flat car.  I don't recall meeting any "fellow hobos."  Or a railway detective, the sort portrayed in old narratives who were not satisfied to just toss you off a moving train -- they needed to work you over a few times first.

We were, however, spotted by a railway employee at a stop along the way.   He kind of rolled his eyes at us, and told us that, for the love of Mike, to at least sit at the forward end of the car, facing backward.  Then, in case the train stopped suddenly, we wouldn't be launched into space.  Pretty decent guy.

We ended up in Bellingham and kind of milled around the freight yard.  The law detained us briefly, the law in this case being the Immigration and Naturalization Service.  The agent wasn't interested in how we were traveling, he just wanted to make sure we weren't illegal refugees from the totalitarian Canadian government.

The trip was fun.  It was novel.  I've never regretted doing it.  I never did it again. 

Dave kept on hopping freights for several years.  He kept notes of his experiences, and was always planning to write a book about them.  He never did. A decade later I guess he was scooped by an Amherst kid named Ted Connor.

How did we get back to Seattle from Bellingham?  Oh.  Not by freight.  By Greyhound bus, of course.

Everything went black

Last night, at about 7:15 p.m. -- as I sat in the living room, a cat on my lap, peaceably reading a book -- everything went black.  And silent.  As though death had caught me unaware, leaving my spirit to ponder the meaning of the situation.

I quickly realized, of course, that the power had gone off.  Not unexpectedly.  The news media had been full of stories about an impending storm that had been gradually working its way across the Pacific from the neighborhood of the Philippines, and had the potential of hitting Seattle with force seen only once in a decade. Winds up to 150 mph had been projected for the Pacific coast.

But within the past few hours, the weather reports had become gradually more sanguine.  There were suspicions that the brunt of the storm was heading more toward Canada.  Outside my house, it had been raining all day, but the winds hadn't been exceptional.

So the blackout caught me by surprise.

I prepare for emergencies by having a number of prayers at hand, suitable for all purposes.  And a flashlight.  I groped my way into the kitchen and got the flashlight.  I returned to my chair, and resumed sitting there in the dark, hopefully, while my cats -- I suspect -- studied my face quizzically.  I waited for a fast return to power.  I posted my neighborhood's plight on Facebook.  No one else on-line seemed affected.  They were babbling on about the political campaign, the Huskies, and the Seahawks. 

It's hard to confront an environmental crisis in the middle of a bustling city, while everyone else goes about their normal business.

By about 8 o'clock I was getting bored.  I wouldn't have done well, spending nights in the Underground during the London Blitz.  I did have my iPhone, but I worried about using up all my juice before first responders could arrive to rescue me from my blackness.  Finally, I gave up.  To my cats' consternation -- they have a fine sense of time, and the appropriate time for different activities -- I went to bed.

I woke up to the dawn, sunlight flooding the room.  Oh -- that isn't sunlight.  I had thought to turn the light switch "on" in the adjoining room, before turning in.  I was thus awakened by light at about 11 p.m. 

I got up, had a late dinner (at an appropriate hour for Barcelona, perhaps), read for an hour or two, and went to bed for the second time that night.

This morning, the Seattle paper congratulated Seattle on having escaped a disaster of epic proportions.  Seattle City Light reported that only 708 customers, citywide, had lost power because of the storm.  Wow!  I feel so special.  As though I'd won the lottery.

Life is back to normal.  The entire affair was de minimis, as we say in law.  Hardly bloggable.  Sorry about that.  Maybe next time I can report on a major earthquake.

Hiking in Crete

Summit of Mt. Gingilos

The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally.¹ 

--Saki

Chania, where my plane from Athens landed, is a town on the north coast of Crete.  It lies in the far western portion of the island, far from Knossos and the Minoan sites about it, far from the island's capital at Iraklion (or Heraklion), far from most of the major events of the British resistance during the war, and far from the more frenzied portions of the tourist traffic.

But Chania is Crete's second largest city, and a sprawling town, whose sprawl is not immediately obvious to the newly-arrived visitor -- he finds his fascination focused on the compact and labyrinthine  "Old Town," clustered about the harbor in front of it, a harbor that sports an unbroken line of cafés and watering holes.  After three days in Athens, Chania gave me a pleasurable taste of the Greek isles, although Crete is by far the largest of those isles.

I had but a night's sleep and a few hours for exploration before meeting up with my hiking group back at the Chania airport -- there were 14 of us, all but me from England.  Our guide, a French native who spoke accent-free English, gathered us together.  We were herded into vans and driven a couple of hours due south into the mountains, to the rural "village" -- just several small hotels -- of Omalos. 

I had told friends repeatedly that I was going on a "Samaria Gorge" hiking vacation in Crete.  But the hiking organization labeled the trip as "The White Mountains of Crete," which was much more accurate.  The gorge walk -- one of those activities like climbing Kilimanjaro that end up on some people's "bucket lists" -- occupied only one day.  The trek as a whole introduced us to the entire White Mountains area of Crete, of which Samaria was but one dramatic feature.

The morning after arriving in Omalos, we began the climb of Mt. Gingilos, a good introduction to the White Mountains -- which are indeed constructed of white limestone -- and the most difficult day of the trek.  All the trails on Crete consist of loose stone.  My hiking boots lost so much tread by the end of the trip that they are now unusable.  We walked up steep, rocky paths -- greeted as we climbed by domestic goats which range free all over the countryside, obediently returning to their homes at the proper time -- and scrambled over carved limestone formations.  By the time we had returned to the trailhead, we knew we had signed up for a trek designed for serious hikers.

The next day, we departed from Omalos for good and began the descent into Samaria Gorge.  The descent was steep, but we were shielded from the sun by lovely evergreen forests.  We stopped for lunch at Samaria village -- a ghost town whose inhabitants had been evicted when the park was created -- where we discovered one of the hazards of hiking Crete in autumn:  hungry hornets.  The hornets were far more interested in our lunches than in us, but we moved on to windier areas where we could eat in greater peace.

After the village, we entered the gorge itself -- certainly beautiful and dramatic, but maybe not that much more dramatic than the similar but shorter and less deep "Narrows" gorge in Zion National Park.  At this time of year, the hike was entirely on dry land, but the creek clearly expands to fill the gorge in wetter seasons.  After ten miles of hiking, we reached the south coast at the small town of Agia Roumeli.  Agia Roumeli has no real history -- it exists to serve tourists.  Its streets and cafés gradually fill to bursting with hikers emerging from the Gorge, until about 5 p.m. when two ferries arrive to haul everyone off to either of two road heads for their return to Chania.  The town's entire character changes once the "day people" have disappeared.  Great views of the sea to the south and the White Mountains to the north.

After a rest day in Agia Roumeli, we headed eastward on a coastal path to the Finix peninsula, where we stayed at a tiny beach hotel just west of, and around the peninsula from, the thriving fishing town, cum hotels and many restaurants, of Loutro.  We stayed three nights at the Finix hotel (named, appropriately, "The Old Phoenix"), from which we climbed Pachnes, the second highest mountain on Crete.  En route, we visited a small chapel, marking the location on the south coast where some believe that St. Paul's ship was blown ashore during a storm while he was being taken to Rome pursuant to his "appeal to Caesar.".

Despite Pachnes's height, it was a far easier climb than Gingilos.  We were loaded into seated pick-up trucks -- similar to "tuk-tuks" in Southeast Asia -- and driven two hours up into the mountains.  We began the drive in heat and humidity, but long before we arrived we had added layers of clothes and even gloves.  From the road head, we hiked about two hours to the summit -- on a far more regular and gentle path than that ascending Gingilos.  Everything within view of the summit was brown, arid, and desolate.  The view has been accurately described as a "moonscape," and certainly had a haunting, other-worldly appearance.

At the summit, about half the group accepted the guide's invitation to wander about and find a more interesting way down.  We more sensible hikers were happy to return the way we had ascended, a decision justified by the grumbling and rolling of eyes by the others as they arrived back at the trucks an hour or so after us.

Finally, we were picked up by a motor launch from our very pleasant harbor hotel and carried about a half hour to a major highway back to Chania.  We there boarded a luxurious bus that seemed like an intruder from an alternative universe.  The rest of the group was taken directly to Chania airport for flights back to the UK, but I had a late flight back to Athens, and time for wandering and lunching at the Old Town's harbor. 

The trek was a fascinating introduction to Crete, and certainly whetted my appetite for more.  Knossos and all things Minoan still await my exploration!
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¹This Saki quote has no relevance whatsoever to anything presented in my post, other than its dealing with Crete.  I just liked it. 

For those interested, here is a link that will let you view my Facebook photos of the trip.  https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10154652851494602.1073741905.761679601&type=1&l=b1187af3c3