TAI SHAN

 

“All true paths lead through the mountains.” Gary Snyder

Tai Shan—the most sacred mountain in China—has been ascended by emperors and sages, monks and the common man for thousands of years, and by millions of Chinese, young, old, and in between in the modern era. You can get to the top by cable car, and a bus even goes half way up if you want. But however you get there, it is still a large, imposing, and impressive mountain, maintaining a sense of grandeur even while man leaves his mark on the stone. Mountains have a way of putting people in perspective—we are a small part of the world, even though Confucius is supposed to have said, after seeing the 100 plus mile view from Tai Shan, “The world is small.”

Each step is small up the mountain, but there are still seven thousand of them. I did every one of them and a few more as I ambled about the summit for good measure and viewing pleasure. There was no cable car for me. I ascended the 4500 vertical foot rise on my own power, and in good form if I don’t say so.

1001, 1002, 1003 ...

I ended up walking up with some young Chinese men who were staying at the hostel I was at. One was a 19-year old computer science student at Peking University. He was quite interested in my views on America and China. So we talked politics and philosophy for many thousands of steps, which can be a fine way to pass the time and take your mind off of any pains on a long climb. Another young Chinese in my group was from Shanghai. He smoked and I easily out walked him. He drove us to the start of the walk, just a mile or so and a few hundred feet up from our hostel. With traffic, I think I could have walked up there faster, but when you’re doing a walk such as this, any extra help is nice.

The traditional start is at the Temple in town, close to the foot of the mountain, close to my hostel and the warm Chinese flat bread and soup that we had for breakfast.

The day was crisp and relatively clear. We were walking up (after paying our $20 climbing fee) by 9:00 AM and we were on top before 1:00. It’s one foot in front of the other up the stone-paved, often steep path. We walked past and through temples, under arched gates, past Chinese character inscriptions carved in stone and highlighted in red, under pines and scholar trees, by small tea shops and stone toilet buildings.

I passed on the ever-present walking sticks. But by about 10:30 I grabbed something else to ease me along—a Red Bull off a pyramid stack of cans sold along the side of the steps. Energized, we resumed. There are always snacks in China: the sweet tasty tangerines and salty nuts, packages of crackers, packages of sausages, and packages of sweets.

Oh mountain climbers you know, the views kept getting grander the higher you go. The history dripped off the stone and the reverence seeped from a million trodden feet. Maybe not quite the way the religious swirl of feeling emanates from Bodh Gaya in India, the temple in rural India where the Buddha became enlightened. And still different from the domed, weighty feeling of heaven in the great Christian cathedrals like St. Peter’s in Rome. The Chinese, perhaps, have a thin but well-woven robe of religion, trim and serene, like cut flowers placed in a 500-year old vase. 

Gates, gates-always gates. From one side to another.

The boys were going back down the 7000 steps, but I had other plans that would save me some steps this day and keep me up high for another fine day.

On this mountain top there’s a wide summit area with a sort of Great Wall-like road. A few restaurants and shops supply the walkers. As well, there are a couple of hotels, built of stone, with additional modern accoutrements like full-throttle wall heaters. The hotels post exorbitant rates, but apparently quickly lower their rates when demand’s not so great. And it seemed like this was a lower demand time—early February. I set in my head a rate that I felt comfortable paying and prepared for some bargaining. If I could get a good rate, I would stay the night. “Duo Shou?” [how much] and like that I was satisfied and set for the night. I told my friend to make his way down. I’d send him my thoughts on the Dali Lama later; tonight I would be looking at the full moon and getting up the next morning before dawn to see the fabled sunrise that colors the east red.

A temple at the top

My room was small, but it had a window, a decent bed and thick blankets, a thermos for hot water, even a TV and a phone, and most important on this cold night, a cranking heater. A smiling older female employee came in and turned that baby on so that it was pumping out 85-degree air. I kept it on most of the night. The bathroom was down the wall. A potable hot water tank was upstairs and the restaurant stayed open all night.

After warming up, where would a full-moon aficionado go but to the Moon-Viewing Pagoda. The path, which was paved in stone, naturally, followed a wind-swept ridge through sparse, angled pines. The shadowy outlines of the mountains of this part of the Shandong Peninsula receded into the bright night, while the city lights twinkled far below.

Back at the hotel, I ate hot noodles, went to bed and slept until a bit before dawn. I took the pre-dawn walk to the eastern edge of Tai Shan. I made my way on the wide stone paths to the edge of the mountain on a rocky promontory where a few other people had gathered. The more popular “peak for viewing the rising sun” was a few hundred yards away, wrapped around the rock face. Below me a few hundred feet was a very small pavilion. Before the orange orb crested the cloud deck horizon far, far away over the valley, I made my way on a path through a cleft in the mountain rock and to the pavilion. There I savored the beautiful daylight effusion. The east turned red over the Yellow River valley 4000 feet below.

As per normal in China, a restaurant was ready to feed people a hearty breakfast for cheap. A couple of bucks got me a bowl of steaming hot grain breakfast soup, spiced matchstick vegetables, a sort of thin, crispy crepe, and a big stack of tube-shaped fry bread (yoe tiao), which has become my Chinese breakfast go-to, the doughnut of China.

The day was fine, if cool again. I set off down the backside of the mountain. I’d scouted the trail the day before after I checked in. Stone steps led down into a steep valley with pines whose branches spread horizontally to frame the rock and sky almost like they were artfully manicured. Indeed a few of them had wire trusses to support their thick branches. It was a pleasant, natural contrast to the more popular and populated front ascent. The staircase steps wound steeply down the mountain. I found solitude and peace in the understory of the forest where views to the big granite faces were plentiful.

Going down ...

There were few structures on this side of the mountain. One was a small, inviting temple complex built on a small terrace of level ground. It is called, in English, “The place of the cultivating of the Jade Girl.” I sat in the sun, against a tall tree and ate some of my provisions from Ti’an, there being no teahouses on this side of the mountain.

Morning Sun

Thousands of steps I continued on down, passing a couple of small groups—a small respite from the mass humanity of China.

A UN official, on his visit to this national park during his UNESCO world heritage site designation inspection was supposed to have declared this gorge comparable in beauty to the Grand Canyon. While not quite as awe-inspiringly grand, this was a beautiful place, similar to the Sierras or western Colorado Rockies with their mix of solid rock outcroppings and deep canyons. Here there were no above timberline spires, though the larch trees atop the mountain would seem to have indicated a closeness to timberline, much as the smaller alpine larch indicate that zone in the northern Rockies. The wind-swept, sculptural pines that framed the steep canyon walls accentuated the beauty of this place.

Along with the stone paths on Chinese trails come stone gates. My descent began by going through the ancient North Gate. Much lower was the solid Hurrahing Gate, so called because the Qing Dynasty troops were said to have “hurrahed” once they reached this natural pinch point. “Hurrahing” apparently being the same in English and Chinese—hip, hip hurrah!

Traveling Through the Trees

A particularly steep section of the trail with an angle approaching 40 degree and going for about 500 vertical feet was called the “hero’s section” for the heroic effort needed to ascend.

The village at the bottom was a mix of old and new. The new alpine style condos lining the stream seemed to be wholly unoccupied. Old people carried water jugs to fill from the springs.

I eventually got on the only bus out of there, waiting too long since the bus number had changed and my small Chinese language skills misinterpreted price and bus numbers. The bus took the high road wrapping around the mountain past manicured pines and eventually into town and the train station, where I bought my ticket out for the next morning, with the help of a women.

With the help of another women who spoke decent enough English, I ordered a fine pork and green bean stir-fry dish in a small restaurant in an alley close to my hostel. Tai’an being one of the places where it’s not quite cold enough to have good indoor heating, but much too cold to expect to eat in a restaurant without your jacket. This women was a waitress at the restaurant and like the other waitresses, was dressed in a kind of full-body padded print apron to keep warm—sort of like a sumo waitress.

After a quick walk the next morning through the main temple complex, I departed as millions had before me, fed and enriched with the mountain spirit.

The Back Side

Hostpitable Arriving

 

This past December was the second time I had flown into China. Like the first, a young Chinese woman with long black hair, a smooth, pale complexion, and high round cheeks waited for me, dimples showing as she smiled, bearing a sign in her hands for “Gorski,” and speaking good English. It is good to be welcomed.

I arrived in to the shiny, functional, attractive even,  airport in Beijing. The school’s driver drove us away. The new airport roads eventually spilled out into the streets, with their mix of new and old, ancient and futuristic. Large Chinese lettering proclaimed this a foreign land and demarcated businesses, many of them restaurants of one form or another from little hole in the walls with a couple low tables and plastic stools to large formal dining rooms with carved wooden chairs and many, many mid-range places where the Chinese eat often, not to mention the portable carts and stalls of street food. Of course you have to have money to eat. In all the bustle of a quick departure and arrival I’d neglected to exchange dollars for yuan. Hui, my greeter, lent me fifty bucks and I was set. Though you can’t always get what you want (to eat) in a foreign land, sometimes you get what you need (and it is often good).

It was different some 20 years ago when I first flew into Asia, landing in Hong Kong before its return to China, before the new airport. Then you landed, it seemed, between buildings like through a tunnel, the glowing neon Chinese characters jutting out from the buildings, hanging out over the streets of the densest concentration of humans on the planet. I only transited then between planes. I had my own young, pretty, fair complexioned Chinese women who also spoke good English. We traveled then on the cheap, searching out a way into a foreign land with plenty of time and vague destinations. Except when the destination was a home that wasn’t her home anymore. But still we were welcomed—with warm greetings, with food.

On my first day in Beijing, after a couple easy hours of visa acquisition work, I was taken to a long, lovely lunch. I walked on the sunny streets with the American principal of the school, the director, a diminutive but influential man, Mr. Xiang, as well as Hui, and Vanessa the visa go-between person, to a restaurant a couple of blocks away. And this was a restaurant of the finer variety. We had Peking duck, among other dishes that spun around the lazy susan on the round table. The duck was crispy and succulent. You place small pieces of the duck in a thin round wrapper with some hoisin sauce and thin strips of green onions. The combination is divine and one of the signature dishes of Beijing.

The hospitality continued in Yantai, my new home, a city on the ocean with big long beaches and a wide seaside road and promenade. That hospitality included food. After a half-day introduction to my school, it was off to another restaurant with my fellow teacher and Chinese co-worker who picked me up from the airport in Yantai (and fed me the night before). A splendid array of meat, seafood, and vegetables (known and unknown) was displayed in a room next to the kitchen and you picked what you wanted. At my school, alcohol is allowed on the company paycheck and I ordered my first Tsing Tao of my stay in China. The meal was served in a lovely sort of indoor garden.

Having determined the restaurant was a good one, the next week we went back. This time the evening included the Chinese staff and Mr. Xiang who was in town with his lovely assistant, bringing old textbooks from Beijing. This evening we had a private room with it’s own bar, dedicated wait staff, and bathroom. The round table sat 15 of us. Seating is arranged. The principal and her husband were the hosts. I sat to the left of the principal, the honored guest. It was my duty to pick the drink of the night from the beer, wine, and brandy stacked up on the bar. From what I choose, we would make toasts. I chose the French wine. A bottle was placed on the table for me and for one of the young Chinese teachers to consume together, and other drinking partners received their bottles. Food began to arrive in stunning varieties of flavor and appearance.

Seafood and meat, vegetables and broths made their appearances. A delicious pork dish with a sweet brown sauce was delicious; their were scallops with egg and scallions in a fragrant, clear broth, and a surprisingly subtle stringed celery salad made from celery that was said to be watered with milk, topped by airy, dried tiny shrimp. And the toasts continued and the drinking continued. I offered one to the success of the school. Mr. Xiang’s aide, who sat by my side and translated, was finally connived into drinking some wine. It was not a good thing. She began speaking to me in Chinese and shortly exited the room.

A week after that it was Christmas and New Year’s, happily celebrated by the Chinese. We went to another restaurant. When I started taking notes, I was offered a tour of the kitchen, which I passed on then, but might still take up, since the restaurant owner is a high school friend of the principal.

I have gotten to see a few Chinese kitchens. At the restaurant in Qufu, hometown of Confucius, where the waitress just took us back to the small kitchen of woks and steamers and butcher blocks to pick out some food. At the home apartment home of a Chinese women/traveler/ex-restaurant owner who had a three-layer electric steamer, a couple of big ol’ woks with a grill hood that pumped straight out the window, and a big round butcher block cutting board with a cleaver and a big jug of peanut oil nearby. Then there are the multiple little hole-in-the wall places where you just peer back and get a view of the woks and bowls of spices; and the food carts with a couple of items ready to serve at 5 in the morning before the train leaves. On the train, the helpful young Chinese with their bit of English, always ready to make sure you know where to go and have something to eat in case the meals that are wheeled down the narrow aisle don’t do it.

The Chinese kitchens got me thinking about my time in the big, wok-filled kitchen at Jimmy Lee’s in the mid-90s when the place was rocking. I always liked making the gigantic pre-dinner portions of fried rice. We got out this huge wok, a couple feet across and I just got to go crazy with the biggest metal spatulas we had, tossing yesterday’s rice and the other ingredients around by the shovel full. There weren’t that many ingredients, so Jimmy let me make it on my own, though I suppose he tasted it every once in awhile. After it was done, seasoned right and the right shade of brown, it went into big stainless steel hotel pans for dinner service.

Hospitality—the Chinese teachers at my school say, “It is our duty.” The Chinese seem ready and willing for the new world. Or is me? Open to the world and lucky to be born where I was. New schools, teaching English, are popping up all over. The students want to learn. New buildings upon buildings soar up with accompanying cranes (I can see eight of them from my apartment) that spread across the skyline, sometimes leaving unoccupied, partially completed apartment towers rising from wide empty streets. Trees are planted, flat screen TVs are mounted, the ocean waves roll in, English is taught, and food is served.

Chao Yang Jie-Bar Street Yantai, Shandong, China

Chao Yang Jie

 

Sometimes you just have to hop on the bus and see what you can find. The double decker number 17 bus runs along the road in front of my complex of 18-storey apartment towers and past a couple of universities before it joins with the coast road. It’s designated a tourist bus, though it’s the same price as other buses, 1 Yuan—about 15 cents. It travels beside the wide, long promenade along the beach, past an old fort built into a rocky headland, the new aquarium, a reconstructed fisherman’s wharf area with a sort of neo-British tower architecture, and the 125 year old Winery, now The Wine Culture Museum, as it makes its way to downtown. The other terminus is close to my school, in a new high tech corridor of wide boulevards and buildings rising from converted farm fields.

I got off somewhere near the train station and port. I kept my bearings and wandered around past tall office towers and shopping complexes, small and large shops, a new performance theater and museum, an old guild hall for sailors and merchants with a fabulous phoenix and dragon incised gate, and lots of small restaurants.

Yantai has been inhabited for a long time, and in China that can mean a thousand years or more. This fast growing city sits at the tip of the Shandong Peninsula. The harbor is a good, natural one, and it has been used for trading for centuries. There are a couple of long beaches broken by low headlands and islands poke out of the horizon on clear days. There is a large ferry terminal at the port in downtown, big cargo ships go in and out and massive oil platforms are built and shipped around the world from there. Ferries depart into Bohai Bay in the Yellow Sea and cross to Dalian in northern China, Incheon in South Korea, and even the southern islands of Japan.

As it grew dark it seemed time to head back down the coast towards home. But still I strolled until the buildings began to grow quaint, old, and oddly angled. A pedestrian alley opened up heading towards the sea. A cool wind blew down the alley. A bike shop and a bar flanked the entrance to the narrow street. It seemed a good omen. I walked into Choa Yang Jie.

On the narrow street, a few trees arched over the smooth stone, soft colored lights twirled slowly, and red, yellow and green signs in Chinese script flashed unobtrusively in the evening light. Choa Yang Jie, (jie=street), also called Bar Street, is about a quarter mile long. At one end it is bordered by a narrow seaside street where surely many a sailor has walked. There’s a Sailors Hotel, and just down a bit is a Chinese Navy Pier. Yantai’s main tourist draw, Yantai Hill, juts into the sea there. It was a small foreign concession area, where a few foreign traders were allowed to live and work beginning in the late 1800’s. The dwellings wind and wrap around the hill, old and European. A lighthouse sends it signal out, from the spot where fires used to be built to warn of Japanese pirates. On Choa Yang Je and a couple of the surrounding streets are still a few courtyard-houses whose dim interiors are just glimpsed through creaky wooden French doors on heavy wooden frames embedded into the stone. The buildings are grey and tan two and three story solid stone structures with red clay roofs and small architectural details around the windows and entrances—a stone dragon sculpture, curved and slab stone entrance steps, ornamental iron, shutters, rounded windows and inlaid columns of stone.

Probably many of the old buildings were torn down, but Choa Yang Jie and a couple other streets are still there—atmospheric narrow streets with a string of small bars built into the old stone and brick buildings. Many of them have small, intimate stages with English names like Druid’s Pub, The Jazz Bar, and Annika’s. At the other end of the street, just beyond where I entered, the 50-story, well-lit, curvaceous skyscrapers of downtown rise up from the half-mile wide, flat inland strip of land, which then slopes up to thousand foot hills topped by a couple of curved-roof Chinese temples. In between the tall buildings and wide boulevards of downtown are plane tree-lined, narrower streets of pre-boom China with five to ten story apartment complexes and shops and restaurants at street level.

That first night I decided to leave the street without venturing into an establishment. The buses would stop running and I had had a long day. I felt happy with my discovery of this enchanting place.

Druid’s Irish Pub was my destination the next weekend when I made it down to Choa Yang Jie. It is small but comfortable spot with a few wooden booths and a wooden floor. The smiling, young, longhaired Chinese waitress sat me down in a corner booth with a view to the street. It was 8, and bit late for dinner. No one else was there, but I had the attention of the waitress and her hostess in training. I ordered a burger and fries with a Tsing Tao lager for ten bucks. The meal was decent—the hamburger tasted of good grain-fed beef and the French fries where full of the fried root vegetable goodness. It was my first western dinner since I’d arrived here a month ago. When there is a plethora of good Chinese food for 3 dollars a bowl and you have eclectic tastes as I do, the western food isn’t much of a draw. I had to stop my self from getting a couple of grilled skewers of food from the street vendor as I walked towards Druid’s; the smoky scent of charcoal and the display of vegetable, seafood and meat was enticing, but the cold and my mission to try out an expat establishment led me on into the comfy confines of the pub.  I topped my meal off with a well-made piece of cheesecake swathed in a berry glaze and a tap of Guinness, which brought my tab up. The waitress brought the beer down from upstairs, which clued me in to the fact that there might be a bit more to Druids then this small restaurant. I did eventually make it upstairs. But by then my Guinness was gone. The bar seemed comfortable. A Caucasian couple sat in a corner and a couple of smiling young Chinese women were at the bar in high stools and they warmly bid me to stay. A small stage was in the corner, but there was no music that night, so I decided to wander off down the street to see if other places might be happening.

I heard music—an acoustic guitar and a pleasing female singing in Chinese in the mode of modern singer songwriters like Mason Jennings, Ryan Adams, or Brandi Carlyle. I followed the sound by going off the street, under a section of old building that lead to an inner three-story courtyard. Odd pieces of furniture and some miscellaneous tools where lying about in the courtyard, looking like an abandoned workshop. A handwritten sign in Chinese with an arrow pointed up the wide staircase. A tremendously thick wooden railing ran up along the stairs and continued to wrap around the mezzanine. Another hand-written Chinese sign pointed to the double wooden doors with large, ancient metal rings for handles that signaled the end of the balcony. To enter would require opening them, stepping in over the lower wooden section of the door, directly into the middle of the bar. I peeked in through the slit and saw a Chinese couple sitting at a table, but that was about all I saw, and still the sweet voice continued and I hesitated. But after a couple of minutes, an older, non-descript women in what seemed like a cleaners uniform came up the stairs, she motioned to go in and so I followed her through the doors.

Immediately, a short, thin, middle-aged woman with a narrow, laughing face smiled at me and ushered me to the small bar, which was at one end of the rectangular room. A seat was made for me and I bought a beer from the young Chinese female bartender with long black hair who was dressed in jeans and a black leather jacket. The bar, like the railing, was of extraordinarily thick wood. It curved up at one end and seemed to be a section of an old junk’s prow. The room was dimly lit with a red glow. Red Chinese parasols where attached to the walls along with some old paintings and maritime nic-nacs. A small upper loft made of thick wood, with a table or two overlooked the stage.  The palette of soft red colors and heavy, old wood seemed to situate this place as only possible on the coast of the Yellow Sea.

Smartly dressed Chinese couples, the women in black knit dresses with black tights, the men in dark, well-tailored dress slacks and black pea coats occupied the few wooden tables on the floor leading up to the stage. Tall green beer bottles stood empty on the tables and one group was eating a collection of street food on sticks. Cigarette smoke swirled around. At the end of the narrow room, on the small stage, the male guitar player with a baseball cap sat on a stool strumming, head down to his strings. His partner, a 21-year old, sylphlike, women with a round, soft face accentuated by her bob haircut, doe eyes, and white cashmere sweater, sang from the other stool.

The man next to me bought me a serving of peanuts served in a heavy, stylized boat shaped bowl. They tasted of sea salt, slightly sweet and hot with a scattering of dry red pepper slivers. They were redolent of the earth of Shandong Province, tan and richly roasted. Shandong is renowned for their peanuts, among other food crops such as apples, pears, and grapes. Nowhere else have I had such rich tasting peanuts. Only perhaps the steamed peanuts from the volcanic soil of Sumatra compared, but they were a rawer, natural taste; whereas these peanuts partook of a refined preparation typical of the Chinese aesthetic seen in their food and landscaping, a sort of human-altered appreciation of nature.

After a while, in stepped, over the threshold an older, debonair Caucasian man. The hostess, who he apparently knew from their warm, French double cheek kiss greeting, seated him next to me. We soon struck up a conversation. He went by the name of Jack. He was a charming Frenchman from Paris (whose last name was in fact Charmeteau) who had been living in Yantai for 3 years, married to a Chinese woman. He had friends on this street and offered to take me on a tour of the establishments. And so we did, until quite late at night.

It was a good. At the last place, I met the proprietress of La Casa. She was a middle aged Chinese woman dressed all in black, a v-neck sweater and black leather pants, with long dangling beaded earrings in the shape of a triangle with a necklace to match. She had a warm smile affixed to her flat, round face and her cheeks were rouge and appeared to glow as she laughed with a small hint of middle age lines around her eyes on her otherwise smooth complexion. She had lived in Switzerland for 8 years and is married to an American. On my next visit we talked of Shakespeare. She favors the history plays. She has kids, one of whom lives in Switzerland with one of her friends. He snowboards.

It was a late night after many beers. The bars there apparently stay open until the last customer leaves. I’m not sure if Jack and I were those customers that night, probably not, but it was after 2 AM. At the end of the street, on the city side, taxis waited for us. I showed my taxi driver a picture of the shopping mall next to where I lived and he was happy to take me there, even happier when I could understand and speak a few words of Chinese (“you,”-“ni” and my most practiced phrase, “I am an American”-“wo shi Meiguo ren”) The bus ride down the coast was 15 cents and this taxi ride back was 5 dollars, a fine deal for a guy who doesn’t have to pay for a car, insurance, or gas now and who gets a chauffeured ride into work everyday on a wide road along the sea.

Half a Haute-y High in the Alps

                                                                    

  Haute Beginnings

Jerry stood at the col, his silhouette framed against the clouded and darkening late afternoon sky. It would take a while longer for me and the other three skiers in our group to take in the sights that Jerry was pondering from his spot in that gap in the rock of the Alps, the pass that led to the hut we would be staying in for the night on our abbreviated two-night, three-day Italian version of the Haute Route, a sort of half a haute.

We’d come a long way via vehicles from Italy that day, but the road ended at the “little” Swiss ski area of Allora. A big coach bus brought as far as it could go to the base of the cirque. A small wooden ticket booth, a very small parking lot, and a couple of green plastic port-a-potties comprised the base area. It only had a couple of thousand feet of vertical rise and three Poma lifts.  For $10 one of those lifts got us a lot closer to the col; but only so close.

Above Allora, towards the col

We stepped into our skis, slipped on packs, slid through the entrance gate and put the round, flat disc and bar attached to the cable of the Poma lift between our legs and began ascending into the white Alps under warm, blue skies. 

We skied past the last lift and off the piste (ski run).  The massive wall of a deep blue glacier towered a thousand feet above the beginning of our tour.  We put on our climbing skins and harnesses and switched on our avalanche transceivers.  The skins, with their short, one-way hairs and ski base-adhering glue allowed us to climb up the slope in smooth, gliding steps with heels free to lift up for the next step up.  Jerry was soon on his way, excited to be climbing into new mountain heights. The ever-jovial Doug and I chugged along together.  After about a half hour on this one-hour uphill ski, Doug uttered the refrain I’m sure he had said in mock surprise on other tours with Jerry, “Is that Jerry at the col already?” No he wasn’t quite there, but he was close, and when we arrived we saw what he was looking at.

Dix Hut in the center of picture on the rocky outcrop

From the col we could see the dark Cabane de Dix where we would be staying for the night about a mile distance, looking small upon a white hill nestled inside the massive cliff-rimmed white expanse of an upper valley in the Swiss Alps.

But more immediately we saw below us not a run down the other side as is so often the case at a col. No, here the slope tapered down gently for a couple of meters, and then there was a near-vertical two-hundred foot cliff with a couple of metal bars poking up. Despite Doug’s humorous incredulousness of Jerry’s matter-of-fact statement that we would be descending ladders, there they were as we peaked over the cliff—metal ladders bolted to the rock going straight down. We strapped our skis and poles onto our packs and took out some carabineers with which to click onto the ladder rungs for safety.  Unfortunately, only one carabineer amongst all the ones the five of us carried had a large enough circumference to fit around the rungs of the ladder.  The lone female in our group, Stephanie, got the use of it. And so we descended one by one with white-knuckle grip upon the ladder’s rungs. As if a straight down climb in ski boots and packs wasn’t enough, half way down we had to step across a two foot-wide gap of empty space as the alignment of ladders shifted on the face of the cliff.

In the soft snow below the cliff, recomposed, we put on our skis for the traverse and climb across the blank, treeless valley to Dix.  I lagged, as I often do when the end is in sight and I know there is a bit of time to shuffle through and be content in the peaceful presence of nature.

 Sometimes I think all outdoor recreation is just an excuse for modern man to be amidst nature.  Some outdoor sports suit people more or less, some evince the passions in different ways; all seem to imbue people with a peace that we instinctively desire. 

Perhaps I took it slow because I was nervous about never being in a mountaineers hut as all my cohorts had, perhaps I was tired, perhaps I was nursing my sore shin with its gel-padded bruise, and perhaps I just didn’t believe Marco that there would be beer in a hut in the middle of winter where there were no roads.  But this my friends, is Switzerland.  There was beer.  And I found a place for my things and drank.

Mountains and Plains

The alpine scenery became more pronounced as we approached Dubois, Wyoming. The small, quaint mountain town was an eastern gateway into the wild forests and tall peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Coming down from Togwotee Pass, large masses of flowers covered the slopes and scattered patches of snow hid in the shadows, even at the beginning of August. Poking around the bends, the glorious mass of the Tetons pierced the blue sky. As the land leveled in the upper reaches of the valley of the Snake River, we pulled into a small National Forest campground and put our $10 in an envelope. Profuse blooms of tall, dark pink fireweed surrounded camp. It was still early evening—our earliest camp yet. I had time to walk a bit up the dirt road past aspen meadows and collect a large bouquet of wild flowers and an armful of firewood. Later, at sunset the dark clouds that scudded about the mountains finally dropped their rain. And that was the only rain of the two and a half week trip.

Our bouquet lasted a couple of days. But there were more wild flowers to bask in. Our horses took us up through verdant aspen meadows above Yellowstone where extravagant spikes of pastel mountain hollyhocks shot up six feet in the air beside the stalks of fireweed and the Indian paintbursh was a particularly rich shade of red. The horses moved through the mountain world and we sat there at ease, nearly gliding through the calm, perfect temperature and fleeting beauty of a verdant alpine summer.

The next day we traveled on our own power through the mountains. After traveling through the crowded, multi-lane West Yellowstone entrance into the park, we parked at the Biscuit Basin Boardwalk for a two and a half mile loop walk up to Mystic Falls and down past an overlook to Old Faithful, a couple of miles away. I was working Bella up gradually to bigger walks as she got older. The sloping, seventy-foot falls were lovely. We ate lunch below them, close to a hot spring. And then we walked up and up to complete our loop. Bella was a questioning a little that uphill hike through the sparse lodegepole forest and slowed a bit. Though as we would our way down through the cliffs and expansive views (times I usually like to dawdle, considering that icing on the cake) she sped up and urged me on. At the overlook that gave us views across the Geyser Basin, we saw Old Faithful begin to erupt. It was a cool perspective to see the big geyser shoot up from our bird’s eye view. After finishing up our walk across the boardwalk, past the beautiful aquamarine depths of the hot pools and gurgling mud pots, we soaked our feet in the Firehole river while the hot springs steamed all around.

Sound, long sleeps seemed to be the norm on this trip. I think the outdoors and the carefree nature of our travels induced our wonderful rests. I read Christopher Paul Curtis’ Bud, Not Buddy to Bella most nights. I usually managed a chapter in my novel, Willa Cather’s splendid evocation of nature and culture in 1800’s New Mexico, Death Comes for the Archbishop or a quick jot in my journal before I too nodded off on my new, thick inflating camping mat. Bella wanted to trade, but I kept it under my older body; she got it when I was out of the tent and she was in it getting her extra sleep as children need. Sleeping fairly comfortably heightens the pleasure of camping.

Over the thousands of miles of road that followed older roads, we listened to narrated books on CDs too. Bella urged us continue the story when I paused it to discuss a point in my teacherly way. I told stories too—a version of Sarah Orne Jewett’s “The White Heron” with a young protagonist who must choose between beauty and money in the woods of Maine. And then many hours passed with my daughter’s happy little girl voice singing softly songs of her own composition. Sometimes I would ask her if she wanted to hear something, but she said, “No daddy, I just want to daydream.”  She was content in her ordered, roomy space in the back seat of my Honda  CrV with souvenirs of our trip—a picture of Old Faithful, a book of flowers, a special rock.

The route’s names lend historical thickness to the places we travel: Lewis & Clark, with Clark’s dated 1806 signature on a rock outcropping (Pompey’s Pillar) on the Yellowstone River; The Oregon trail and the vast valley surrounded by imposing, high, blue mountains; The Nez Perce Trail and the peaceful valley where Chief Joseph’s small band was finally stopped in their long wandering for freedom and beauty.

Following Roads

I know these highways follow older ways

We sign them now with numbers, give them names

Of travelers gone and heroes past

Kokepelli, Coranado, The Lincoln Highway,

Highline, Great River Road, Route 66

Ways the wagons went, wooden, spoked wheel

Wagon trails followed Indian paths that followed

The paths of glacier carved Earth

The way water went and still goes, flowing down

Following the sun and seasons, vast herds, killed

The slow mammoth gorged on, final extermination

Down through deserts, mountains, plains

Panama’s isthmus to jungles and the end

Of the world, Tierra del Fuego, the last, cold sea.

And I too roll, self-contained, playboy with toys, library, kitchen, orchestra

Going to fast, I stop, unsecure bike, switch to manual

Rolling propulsion in order to see more clearly, to feel

The unfurling of the land layer by ancient layer.  That

Particular rust-red of Indian Paintbrush, an individual rock

Curled with a million years of sea and delta deposition

A scene slowed to stoppage, identification, immersion, oneness

This “beyond mundane” transfiguration the road brings

When the road ends, you are in mountains and you will walk

On earth, solid paths, scattered stones.  I have tried them, my friend

They are sound but shifting, alluring trails curving ‘round earth’s surface.

I know you Road, like my guide, like my lover, my path

My passenger – a stack of maps in a bag

Saying: trace another line upon my contours

Alone in the distant, blank space of no village, or

In the fully swarming city where roads converge like

The concentric connection of a spider web, many-stranded

Fast woven, always buzzing, well-trodden, party-talk café dance hall sway.

Follow the road to where the earth of spring leaks green, to where

The rains have stopped and carpets of yellow dandelion scream growth

You are free then, mobile, self-contained.  Outside for days, wondering

Briefly, is it Monday or Thursday?  Your skin tans to match the buff sandstone.

What of the variety of wood that grows upon the land?  Staring into a camp fire

A primal compulsion to gaze.  Comparing the scent of Norway pine to Utah juniper

The coals of cottonwood to those of mesquite.  Perhaps it’s the scent of pinyon

Lures me back, the red crevice canyon of mother earth, the dry silence of dawn?

Others have gone these paths to where the Vulcan veins of Earth spill her

Blood into pools of soothing heat-lithium, sulfur and sage, salt cedar crawls

Up the canyon.  Black and White pictures show bathers.  The Indians sold the

Site for some consideration.  Buildings built for the tourists that never arrive

The soothing waters continue to flow for years-O how deep run your veins

Mother?  How long will you heal?  Will the American road really go on forever?

I don’t know how long I’ll be free, but the road reveals a beauty fuller than I can tell

I follow its length, mile after big American mile down the spine of the world

Green and grey, filled with places of public domain, wildness where

Still, abandoned campfire rings await the mesmerizing, dancing flame in the starry night.

Having gone as far west as we could, we needed to return. Interstates say “speed on me.” Other routes wind through the land. Oregon’s US 20 begins by winding through the bucolic groves of the coastal range where the overhanging green of leafy trees create tunnels of verdure. Then up, up through the bare peaks of the Cascades where ancient groves of douglas fir grow thick and cathedral-like. Then out onto the spare, starkly beautiful high desert and the occasional oasis, like that rest stop outside Burns in the lands the Paiute called home, where a fountain shot sweet, cool water into the sky and the sun might set in a streaky orange glow that infuses you with peaceful beauty.

Eventually the Rocky Mountains begin again in the heart of what is now Idaho, hot springs sprout from the stone and cascade into rock pools. I sat in a rock pool below steaming cascades at the Bonneville Hot Springs, a short walk from our camp, as the sun rose and the full moon set and it was good. Later in the morning we went down and found another pool with a delicious mix of hot and cold river water while the sun shone on us.

The valley of the Salmon River is a long and winding one, full of mountains and few people. It was a long, beautiful drive to Bozeman. The Big Hole Valley is classic western Montana: Immense, sparsely treed and peopled valley with a big, trout-filled river running through it (but not an Interstate). Where the slopes go up, the pines fill in the mountainsides until tree line, when the peaks and the cirques and snow and wildness pile up and your presence is put in prospective of smallness yet connected in that big space, a human in the wild.

It was late, we had friends in Bozeman, so we went to sleep there. Friends in nice places, visit them and there will be more happiness.

Another sunny day and we were under way. For me there is a feeling of deflation coming out of the mountains onto the plains. The cool gives way to the heat, the heights give way to the plains, but the big woods of oak savannah appear, green and watery. William Clark, of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, signed his name and dated it 1805 on an upthrust of rock named Pompey’s Pillar, after Sacajawa’s son and the Roman emperor. The Yellowstone River rolls by and a beautiful National Monument building welcomes you to this historic river front area just off of Interstate 90. Yes, we finally succumbed to the speedy, gas-sucking, cruise control Interstate to ease our way back. But even the Interstate holds treasures. We ate lunch at the monument and were lunched on in turn by mosquitoes. One of illustrated stories and excerpts from Clark’s Journal tells of being so inundated and attacked by mosquitoes that he couldn’t even hold a gun up straight to hunt. The populations of animals on the land east of the Rockies onto the Great Plains before white Europeans invaded and killed them in the mid-1800s were said to resemble and even surpass the great herds of the Serengeti in Africa. Grizzly and elk roamed east to the Dakotas and buffalo herds numbered in the millions.

Kids reaching the end of a trip think about getting back. I think of reasons to hesitate. But sometimes there is nothing to do but give in, chill to some electronic beats and cover some ground late into the night. When the moon is full and the night sky is clear on the empty prairie, the miles roll by easily on the little-used Interstate. The nighttime views are immense, otherworldly, and peaceful.

Bella and I took a long dinner break at a McDonalds in Dickenson, North Dakota. There was WiFi and video games at the newly remodeled restaurant with bistro seating. Mickey Ds has some strange pull on kids. I’d been on this return trip from the west five months ago as I returned from a ski vacation in Big Sky with my brother and nieces. The nieces too felt this desire to get back and make a dinner stop at McDonalds. I’d driven past the last one in Montana and the next town didn’t have one. I felt the wrath as we settled for a Subway (a local hamburger joint was out of the question). To make up for it, I clamped down and drove through the winter full moon night so the girls could sleep in their own beds and avoid their snoring Uncle.

After a couple of couple hour snooze stops at some fine tax-supported rest stops, we were driving into the dawn of green oaks. We missed Minneapolis rush hour and pulled in twelve hours before my daughter turned nine.  The freedom of the road was done and the list of things to do in the real world started scrolling by; but not before a nice nap as my daughter watched the Disney channel and got her TV fix that she didn’t seem to miss in the natural world of the wild west.

The Great Plains yield to Hills, July, 2011

The heat continued on the plains. But there was always air conditioning, cool breezes, cold drinks and cool nights.

Pa's cottonwoods in the background

Desmet, South Dakota is a mecca for Laura Ingalls Wilder fans, and they come from all over the world (and Minnesota too). My 8-year old daughter Bella is reading The Long Winter. At the Wilder Farmstead, in the exact spot the Wilders homesteaded, next to the big slough, where cottonwoods Pa planted still grow and an exact replica of their house sits where it was, you can while away a few hours or camp on the prairie as we did. In our tent we read one of the later chapters of The Long Winter. Almanzo and Cap make it make through the blizzard to deliver the wheat just as many of the families are running out. But the next day the merchant, whose store still stands in town, tries to make too much of a profit on the people. We paid $10 to camp, about as cheap as any place. Another $10 will get you access to the homestead, including wagon rides, plenty of hands-on activities like rope making and kitten petting and lots of buildings to explore. Before we went to bed, Bella asked what the white, cloudy color was in the starry sky. It was the Milky Way, the center of our galaxy, clear and large over the prairie sky. I swear I’ve pointed it out to her before, but maybe now she’s older and knows what it is and perhaps it was just so noticeable with few trees or lights around.

The Black Hills were our next destination on the western side of South Dakota. We had a campsite reserved for a couple nights that sat along Grizzly Creek, a few miles from Mount Rushmore. Grove, park-like stands of tall, spaced out Ponderosa pines with their bare lower trunks fill the quartz and granite mountains. Lavender swaths of wild bergamont colored the understory of the forest.

We mountain biked on trails, walked through the long passages of Wind Cave, and watched the lights come on the President’s heads in the evening and looked at the massive sculptures from different angles in the day.

And when it got to 100 degrees, we needed water. Hot springs bubble up throughout the west, and one with and enticing 87-degree temperature wasn’t far away. I didn’t need a lot of convincing to initiate Bella into the cult of hot spring appreciation. She knew about them from our last trip out west and happily assented to this trip. Evan’s Plunge in the town of Hot Springs did the trick for us. A giant indoor pool with a rock bottom, slides, and even a lap area for me cooled us completely.

We were very close to the Rockies and would be there by day’s end, high in an alpine meadow full of wild flowers with snow still on the peaks.