Not Even Not Traveling 58: Alaska, Entry 5

Tuesday, the Docking Procedure

We walked up to the crow's nest just after dawn. I wanted to watch the Koningsdam sail into the dock. At first, our passage through the fjord leading into Skagway looked like any other part of our trip. As we closed in on our destination, though, the waters narrowed. Suddenly, our ship needed to navigate a narrow channel between several other large ships and two dozen smaller ones. Space between the vessels started to seem awfully close.

As we neared our docking point, I looked to the east where a Princess cruise vessel and one from the Celebrity fleet had settled. The Princess, oddly, was launching an escape boat. The passengers were fleeing or at least they were shuttling from their ship to some other.

At the same time, a ship behind us to the south from the Royal Caribbean line was closing in. We in the Koningsdam were getting near to colliding with a vessel directly to our north, a second ship from the Princess line. The near-collision was eerie. No one seemed worried. The captain sounded no alarms. All the same, the momentum of our multi-story vessels looked unstoppable. I was watching it happen.

The Princess turned sharply, as if backing into its parking space. I hadn’t known it could maneuver quite so deftly. It wouldn’t help the Koningsdam, though. I could tell. The bow of the Koningsdam was going to hit the Princess broadsides. Yet as close as we were, we also were turning. Our ship spun in place, or so it seemed. It moved like one of those trick cars that can turn all their wheels at once. 

Later, my brother-in-law Norm clued me in about the azipods. They are combined units providing both a propeller and a steering mechanism. Each azipod allows for 360-degree rotation. Does the captain need to turn on a dime? No need for a rudder, just turn on the azipods! The big cruisers still have main engines and rudders; that's what they use when they want to plow straight ahead with a lot of power. When they need to pull a stunt, though, like making an impossible turn in a tight spot, it's azipods all the way. 

Underneath the waterline, around the sides of the ship, the azipods wait, ready to be multi-directional engines like on a spaceship.  

A side note: the Princess ship with escaping passengers? That really was pretty much how it seemed. The passengers were off-boarding via lifeboats. The reasons: earthquakes and avalanches.

The Princess cruise ship had to dock in its berth. There aren't many docks and they are reserved years in advance, so there was no choice. However, a recent avalanche had cut through the boardwalk area for the Princess line and buried it under tons of rubble. There was no path left for the Princess passengers to disembark in Skagway, not via their dock ramps. They had to use the emergency lifeboats to go into town. 

Skagway

One of my earliest sights in town was the airport. It was populated by a dozen helicopters, most of them employed by the tourist industry, of course, during the summer. I would guess they do other jobs over the winter. From the ship's observation deck, we also got a good view of speedboats in the harbor, the tourist mecca of the closest streets, and buildings in the non-tourist parts of town, which were often hidden among the tree-filled hills.

It turned out that one of the speedboats was our morning destination.

The Ocean Raft Adventure 

The description of this excursion was misleading. 

1) The bottom of the boat is a thick aluminum alloy. It's not something I've seen on wooden rafts or rubber rafts.

2) The engine is a high powered racing model. Again, that doesn't say "rafting" to me.

3) The sides of the boat are inflatable like a river raft. Yay. They are exactly what you'd want on a bumper car, because they are ready for some contact with other boats, the shore, etc.

4) The passengers would not survive high-speed contact. The boat would be fine. However, the seats are saddles with no stirrups or seatbelts. So a big "bump" would launch everyone into the water (best case) at 70 mph. 

That's never happened at Skagway, ever. Nothing like it, even. Still, that's what the rules of momentum dictate.

When I saw "raft adventure" in the excursion title, I thought I would be doing some steering and paddling. Instead, the captain gets licensed every year by the Coast Guard. She made the engine go breeeeeeeeee!  Until she throttled it up a notch, which made it do breeeeeRAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRR and the little aluminum wedge skipped along the tops of waves like a Jet Ski or Waverunner. Thump, thump, thump. Twenty two passengers bobbed their heads up and down like we'd agreed to this. 

My general advice is: read the excursion descriptions carefully. 

As a speedboat crew, we were dressed like the Oompa Loompa Space Force in bright orange jumpers. There's a good reason for it; it gives the locals a laugh. Also, it was warm. The wind in the fjord was frigid and fast. I would happily take home one of those super-expensive jumpsuits right now even if it stayed in my closet for most of the year. As we picked up even more speed and did donuts to test our hand strength (the saddles had grips and they were essential), I thought: gosh, I'm warm. 

I also thought: this is going to be the fastest wildlife spotting, ever. Can I identify a bald eagle as we pass a roost at 50 mph? 

As it turned out, the captain knew what she was doing. We skipped across the waves from site to site, sure, but we slowed down to gawk at the wildlife, too. Since the captain (Alyssa, with her assistant Hannah) *did* spot eagles in trees at high speeds, our overall performance was excellent. At first, she pointed to an eagle, then another. She found a bumper crop of seals sunning on rocks along the shore. She located another colony on a different, less rocky shore. Soon, though, we were finding more and more eagles everywhere the boat turned. 

"Wow, this is a really good day for the eagles," she commented.

It was a pretty great day for waterfalls around the fjord, too, but I gather most days are. We skipped from place to place, slowed, and gawked at the various features of the landscape, flora, or fauna. Since the tide was about 10 feet low (it gets up to 20 feet low sometimes), we got to see black mussels lining the rocky shores. It's a natural version of wearing Goth necklaces, bracelets, and bangles. 

On the water, we spotted a rare species of sea duck, although by "rare" our captain meant they're out of season, not endangered. They don't get hunted. They're not even worried by our speedboats. 

On the sides of cliffs, we pointed out waterfalls to one another. This included the unfortunately named Twin Waterfalls, which suffered damage in an earthquake tremor last year is now pretty much a single fall. I had the feeling the boat had to stop there because it had stopped there for years before. The site was still in the script. A note of uncertainty in the voices of Alyssa and Hannah indicated they weren't sure if the tradition made sense. Maybe they used to say, "The twins are the best! Taa daa!" and they haven't figured out how to replace that.

I would rate the excursion highly. The score, roughly, is

Seals: 25
Ocean ducks: 44
Eagles: 17
Adult passengers: 21
Twelve-year-old passengers: 1

By the end, our young lad begged to sit on the outermost saddle seat while the captain made the speedboat do donuts. The captain gave in to his request after some careful testing to make sure he wouldn't fall out. Then she spun a final set of donuts in the fjord. My inner twelve years thought it was fun, too.

Ocean Raft (Speedboat) Adventure: 10

Not Even Not Traveling 57: Alaska, Entry 4

On Monday, Juneau

When we sailed into the dock at Juneau, Alaska, I had been staring at fir-lined shores for hours. We had seen the mainland from the observation deck for most of our trip. The coast had been green the whole time.  

So Alaska is as lush as the rest of the northwest. Well, it's overgrown in the summer and there are still snow-capped hills in the distance. Maybe during the winter it's a sheet of ice with polar bears walking around in white parkas but I wouldn't know. Even the Pacific waters are a summery green, here. They are a little translucent, too. The effect is haunting. 

Juneau has about 38,000 people, or so said our tour guides. That means the state capital is about half the size of my hometown, Frederick. Downtown Juneau looked busy when we docked, although I know it may simply have been due to our arrival. Tourist boats create a rising tide, it seems, which lifts the local shops financially. This is a place where "remote wilderness destination" and "summer tourist trap" occupy the same geographical coordinates.

Diane and I headed down the departure ramps soon after we were allowed. Together, we hiked the town. I was amused to find a Ben Franklin store on the main drag. I hadn't seen a Ben Franklin anywhere else for fifteen years. I even bought knickknacks and candy from it. Mostly, though, we bided our time until we could tour the countryside.

Off-Roading on Segways

Our scheduled excursion began with a bus trip into the hills beyond Juneau. Along the way, our guides introduced themselves. RJ was from Utah. Ally was from Tennessee. Both of them claimed their jobs were really great. They were happy to be working in Alaska and happy to have been recommended to their positions by their friends.

From the sound of it, they do have nice summer gigs. Although Alaska rents are high and the Segway tours are essentially a company store (with the apartments provided by the business), the pay is good enough and the rent cheap enough that everyone makes solid money. Many of the summer jobs in Alaska are run on the company-store model and not all of the rents allow for a good-enough profit by the student workers. This outfit was doing well by its staff.

Along with us for the trip were two other segway guests, both women from the Princess cruise line. They said they were mother and daughter, aged 60 and 30, but they looked 45 and 15. It was kind of shocking but I have been made aware previously of a West Coast aging difference. They were from Seattle. The daughter, not actually a teenager, seemed sort of in charge on their side.

"I invited my mom for her sixtieth birthday," she said. 

Neither of the women had been on anything like a segway before. For their first time, they opted to go off-road on the big-wheelers, which seemed like a doubtful choice to me. After the older woman sat through the safety video, which points out all the ways you can disfigure yourself or die, she got so frightened of her prospects on the machine I started to worry for her, too.

Our instincts turned out to be correct inasmuch as her sense of caution made her stiff. As a consequence, she found it hard to steer. (You steer by changing your balance.) She made jerky, panicked movements that turned simple forward motions into gyroscope-assisted seizures. Meanwhile, her daughter glided around like she was born on wheels, serving as an enthusiastic cheerleader with comments like "You're doing great, Mom!" which is what people say to you when you're clearly not doing great but they're trying to prevent you from having a nervous breakdown.

We drove along the woodland trails beside a scattering of small ponds. At one point, the tour guide stopped us. We hopped off our vehicles and, since I was freed of the need to worry about our companions, I immediately started walking towards one of the ponds. Before RJ or Ally could say anything, I sank into quicksand.

Fortunately, my reaction was pretty good. I scrambled back out with barely any harm to my shoes. 

"Yeah, you can't really walk there," RJ drawled. 

"Seems like." I exhaled, hands on hips, and stared at my mostly-clean shoes. I had been ankle deep a moment earlier, so the sight was weird. The surface hadn't left much impression on me. When I glanced back, I saw I hadn't left much impression on the surface, either. It had seeped back in around my footprints.

“Well, how deep would you say that pond is?” he asked, pointing to one of the many circles of stagnant water with a yellow water lily in the center. I could see the bottom of it, which was only about two feet down. 

My wife guessed, "About three feet."

“That one goes at least twenty feet. What looks like the bottoms of these ponds are just silt. The silt rests on a bunch of floating plant roots, so it makes a surface that looks like a solid floor but it's not."

"Are the edges of the ponds similar?" I had to ask. 

"Where you sank into the moss? Yeah, under the green layer is the same kind of stuff that's in the ponds, just not as thick. Some of the ponds go at least ninety feet down, they say. Geologists come around to measure them."

RJ, with helpful comments from Ally, went on to explain how all the ponds were formed by glacier recession. That's why they are only ten feet across while being twenty, seventy, or ninety feet in depth. When the glaciers started melting at the end of the last ice age, they ripped channels in the landscape. Into those rocky fissures, the glaciers then deposited loose rocks and dirt. None of the resulting land is very stable. The ponds are sinkholes, really, where the smallest and most fragile materials have washed away and sunk into the porous landscape all around them. The resulting holes filled up with water and, eventually, they also filled with plants and loose silt. 

Really, they are disguised cliff edges. There's almost always a water lily at the top.  

"They do look pretty," Ally said. We all agreed.

Now, I had hopped immediately into quicksand, which is pretty dumb. In my defense, I hadn’t encountered quicksand since second grade, and that was actually in a Batman television show. In real life, I had maybe never seen it until this trip. That's despite my past slogs through swamps elsewhere. 

What happened next was, our mother and daughter combination proceeded to forget about the quicksand, too. Even though they had seen me go in, even though they had listened to a lecture about the dangers of the pond edges, even though we had shared a joke about them, they forgot. I think they reacted to everyone talking about how pretty the water lilies were. 

The mom said, "Let's get a selfie." 

She grabbed her daughter's hand. They marched toward the edge of a disaster-pond. After two fast steps, they started to sink. The daughter screamed and leaped back. The mother was not quite as nimble. She lost her balance. Fortunately, her daughter's hand kept her upright and her daughter pulled her back. We all took a deep breath. We had a good laugh. Well, most of us did. 
 

Hiking Around Juneau

After a few miles, our trail narrowed. We had to park and hike across a footbridge. 

We were learning about the forest. The guides seemed to understand The Hidden Life of Trees (even if they probably hadn't read the book, someone among them might have, once). They knew a forest is different than a grove, that soil needs certain bacteria to provide plant health, the roots of trees are the brainstems, the boughs preserve moisture and bring it inland, parasites only succeed when trees are too weak to defend themselves, and more. 

They described specifics about the Alaska coast forests, where three types of trees predominate: Paper Birch (fast growing pioneers), Sitka Spruce (not as fast but they overgrow and push out the pioneers), and Hemlock (which can grow in a shadowy environment and eventually push out most other species). Foresters can often tell the age of an Alaskan forest by looking at which trees predominate. By the time Hemlock comes along, the forest is starting to mature.

For a while, we hiked along a creek bed. It was also a canal bed, in places. The canal was only a few feet wide. Most people could jump over it. 

The reason there were flooded sections of canal, empty canal troughs, and broken timbers from a canal was: greed. Well, gold. A few miles farther on, miners had begun excavations in a mine shaft. They were part of the Alaska gold rush and their mine, although not a large one, started out promisingly enough. They were trying to follow the seam. They needed water for their animals, men, and tools. This being gold rush times, they helped themselves to the local creek. 

They dug a canal to the mine. They broke the earth barrier between the natural course of the water and their canal. With that, they diverted the whole stream. They had what they needed. They were in business. 

Within the year, the Alaskan snowcaps gathered ice. The ice melted. The little stream flooded. So did the canal. So did the mine. In fact, the jump-across canal wiped out the mine. The miners re-diverted the water back into its natural course but it was too late to do them much good. The water remained and worse, the sides of their tunnels fell in after the flood. 

Good Evening 

Back aboard the Koningsdam, we lost another game of easy trivia. It was too simple. Most teams scored better than nine out of fifteen. Once again, we fell a couple points away from the win. At least I learned, 'some boys kiss me, some boys hug me' is the start of Material Girl by Madonna. 
  

Not Even Not Traveling 56: Alaska, Entry 3

 First Full Day at Sea, Sunday

We Learn to Vote with Our Feet

In the morning, we walked up the stairs to the Crows Nest, essentially the indoor observation deck. We got coffee cups, a half-hour of peace, and made plans to take binocular lessons after my morning workout. Well, I didn't make the plans. But I didn't plan on taking a cruise, either, and it was turning out fine. 

The Koningsdam fitness rooms were better than I felt I deserved. The rowing machines weren't very adjustable but I adjusted. The ellipticals were smooth. The treadmills were, well, completely full. Twenty of them, and every tread had feet on it. Ugh. So I had to go back to more ellipticals and then to stationary bikes. 

Afterward, I joined the binocular lessons, which were mostly about types of wildlife and how to identify them. This was detailed enough to be useful. I'd recommended it.

Next, Diane wanted to attend a seminar on whales in the main auditorium. We got great seats. But then it began. The script was so bad, it made me squirm. I focused on tolerating it for Diane's sake but she was so irritated by me squirming and looking for ways to cope with the embarrassing script that I knew I wasn't at my best.

The presentation had some good material, too. I hadn’t heard before about humpback whales coordinating their feeding. That was new to me and new to Alaska, in fact. The coordination had been recently introduced to the area by whales migrating in from elsewhere. The NPR footage of interviews with scientists about it was great. When we returned to the ship presentation portion, though, the awfulness returned. It was so bad I had to contemplate *why* it was. 

What makes a presentation bad enough that I need to close my eyes and meditate? In time, I realized the script violated a basic writing guideline. The rule is:

    Don't tell the audience how to feel

It's the base-level advice for getting readers or listeners on your side. Don't berate them. They will be inclined against you in response. But the ship's presentation script repeatedly hammered on how we, the audience, should feel. Fortunately, Diane grabbed my hand and stormed out with me. 

"Sorry," I murmured.

"Don't be." She shook her head. "I'm sorry. The description was so much better than this!" 

As it turned out, my wife expected the presentation to be as useful as the one on binoculars. Well, it was a lesson learned for us but not about whales. What we found out is we're old enough now to not be shy about leaving a lecture hall. We can vote with our feet.

In the afternoon, we played trivia games. They were a bit like pub trivia but simplified, only fifteen questions. It's hard to score less than ten points, even for me. We would have won the evening trivia game, in fact, if our team had trusted me for the bonus question, which was “When did Dunkin’ Donuts become Dunkin?” I guessed 2018, which the host said was right. But that's not how teams work and we didn't get the three-point bonus while missing the outright win by only a point. 

A good tip for trivia players is not to stand up, gesture at everyone, and shout, "I told you so!" That applies to a lot of teamwork during the rest of life, too. 

Recap: 

Our first full day at sea? Pretty nice.
The cruise ship furnishings? As good as the highest end of the most expensive cities in the world.
Were we getting good value? We will never be able to eat or drink enough to justify our meal plans. And that's fine. 
Fifteen drinks per day? No thanks, I'd rather live.

Not Even Not Traveling 55: Alaska, Entry 2

Boarding the Cruise

Saturday

The moment we boarded our ship, the Koningsdam, I experienced "acute class awareness syndrome," which is when you suddenly realize you're in a floating petri dish of economic stratification. Nobody on this ship was yacht rich - because if you're yacht rich, you don't cruise on someone else's boat, you cruise on your own while complaining the helicopter pad is too small. 

Instead, we walked into an ecosystem of wealth levels: young families with the aura of inherited money, high achievers (doctors, lawyers, etc.), folks with at least a toehold in the owning class ("I just bought another truck for my quarry"), older folks who brought their multi-generational family with them, older folks splurging everything on their "final voyage" cruise, and older folks who are definitely not on their final anything, not the final cruise, not their final Bloody Mary, not the final time at the blackjack table, and not the last on the slot machine either ("Go get me another stack of chips, honey"). The final contingent brings the numbers, for sure. Probably a third of the guests were retired, heavy drinkers although, to be clear, they were not retired *from* heavy drinking.  

My wife and I did what newbie cruise passengers do, I suppose: we scurried around like caffeinated hamsters checking out amenities. Pool? Check. Sauna, hot tub, spa heated benches that make you feel like a pampered lizard, and a steam room that gives you a voluntary tropical fever? Check, check, check, and oh, hell no but check. We discovered trivia games (where you learn that everyone else knows more about 1970s sitcoms than you) and a surprisingly nice ship library, well-stocked with hardcovers, trade paperbacks, and magazines. 

Among the varied ship's contingent, I found myself noticing a particularly striking couple - a handsome African-Canadian man with his Laotian wife and family - the kind of pairing that's unusual enough to catch your eye, but I had no excuse to talk with them. So I was basically a creepy cruise ship anthropologist taking mental notes. 

We did manage to have an extended conversation with a personable Hawaiian fellow who was taking his 72-year-old mother on the cruise. He admitted he was wrestling with the dilemma of adventure-seeking adult children: he wanted to go open-ocean kayaking but his perfectly reasonable mother considered staying alive to be a higher priority for her.

In the evening, we re-learned that my wife's sister kills at music trivia. We came within two points of the win. Most of our score was from her.  

First Day Cruise Summary:

Nice ship? Very.
Nice in-laws? Yes, but they know the difference between Laura Branigan and Olivia Newton-John. (It's the haircut, I think.) 
Nice passengers? Yes.
Nice crew? Too early to tell. We were just getting to know them. 
 

Not Even Not Traveling 54: Alaska, Entry 1

Thursday July 10

We traveled from Baltimore to San Diego, then from San Diego to Vancouver.

Advice: don't do this.

Friday July 11

To be clear: we got up early on Friday morning. We got out of bed. But we did not get to the park when we'd planned. That's because we were chatting and grabbing breakfast. Instead of taking the bus to Lynn Canyon Park like responsible, budget-conscious tourists, we grabbed a cab, which is the international travel equivalent of scoring an own-goal at the beginning of the match.

We did actually get there, though, and in a strange city sometimes any start is a good one. Also, the park was obviously lush, bordering on postcard-perfect. We gave ourselves points for our good tourist judgement.

I had originally planned to hike the entire trail loop at Lynn Canyon. In retrospect, it was about as realistic as learning Portuguese by watching soccer matches. The park, it turns out, is huge. The trails are beautiful in a way that makes you simultaneously grateful to be alive and acutely aware of the quality of your shoes. If you go to Lynn Canyon, be prepared to hop from rock to rock on the stream beds and from log to log on the trails.

The park makes a big deal out of its suspension bridge. It hangs over a waterfall. It's a nice place to get the 'I'm so alive' sensation of wobbling over a great height with a plunge to a certain death while, at the same time, being completely protected by the rails and suspension wires.

After the bridge crossing, we noticed how Canadian law is different from ours. We saw plenty of signs saying that dogs had to be kept on leashes. The dogs and owners informed us by their example that the signs were not enforceable, in their opinion. The canines involved were many and slobbery - by which I mean friendly - so it was no big deal. We hiked down side-trails that led to the creek, where we discovered that rocks are indeed slippery and Canadians are indeed willing to go swimming in a creek created by snow melt. So are their dogs.
 
We then trudged up the main trail to the tops of several hills, one exhausting climb after another, because they call it Lynn Canyon and not Lynn Gentle Rolling Meadows. We spent a lot of time looking down at where we had been and wondering if we had to backtrack. (The answer was: oh yes.) The hike was the natural world's version of the dreams where you suddenly realize you're flying, except your legs hurt, you're sweating through moisture-wicking fabric, and every dog wants to taste your flavor combination of insect spray and body salt.

After several geological ages of hiking, we reached that magical moment that occurs on every outdoor adventure when someone says, "We've earned a drink." This is similar to the older,  traditional recreational code of "I can't feel my feet" but it seems to conclude the hiking session with more cocktails and fewer complaints.

Lynn Park summary:

Worth it? Nine on a scale of ten, yes.
Would we go again? Eight out of ten, yes.
Dogs on leashes? One out of twenty-seven. She was very friendly.

Not Zen 204: Endless Affection

Endless Affection

They arrived early. Olivia knew her boyfriend Mateo liked to be prompt but she hadn’t come with him to meet his family before. They were forty-five minutes ahead of their schedule.

“It’s a big holiday,” he explained at the door to his parents house. “I want to make sure I can help.”

"Do I need to do something, too?" she asked. "I thought your parents wanted to feed me food and ask questions.”

“That's definitely part of their plan.”

As they stood outside, she worried about the size of the house. It wasn’t located in what she thought of as a good neighborhood but it was clearly the biggest residential building in the area. Maybe his parents ruled this section of town and would expect to control her, too.

As soon as they ushered her inside, her fears eased. His parents were thin, short, and dressed informally. They had filled the main room of the house with four tables. She couldn’t tell how many chairs they'd used. Except for the overwhelming presence of so many other early guests - the room seemed half full already - there was nothing to intimidate her. The walls and shelves were filled with cheap art and sentimental knickknacks. The chairs appeared to have been scrounged from a dozen different sets of furniture.

“Welcome, welcome!” said his father.

His mother took their jackets and handed them to a younger woman, who ran off somewhere to hang them up.  The younger woman barked a quick hello as she left, friendly even in her rush.

The mother of the house took care of the introductions but there were so many, so fast, at least twenty people in a minute, that as a guest Olivia assumed she wouldn’t be expected to remember most of them. When the greetings finished, she felt lost, nearly abandoned. However, the cycle began again each time more guests arrived. Olivia found herself enlisted as one of the coat check girls. She didn't mind. It gave her something to do and she got to see more of the home.

Rather than enduring the inquisition of suspicious parents, which she had half expected, she fielded questions from the younger generation. Some of them were Mateo's sisters. She couldn’t tell for sure who were related to him and who not, but she thought she identified four siblings.

When it came time to sit for the meal, the sisters shooed Olivia away from joining them in the kitchen. They told her to find a chair next to her boyfriend. It was a rare moment of relief. Mateo immediately started introducing her to more family guests. She tried to concentrate on the names she'd heard from him before. Those were probably the most important.

She realized that despite the throng developing around her, the family had not assigned seats to anyone. Everyone sat in a rough circle around the tables with one or two unlucky guests crammed in at the corners, as sometimes happens when there are too many invitations sent out.

“I’m going to get the last of the wooden stools,” Mateo announced. “You had better occupy both our chairs for a minute to make sure we can sit together when I get back.”

Olivia expected the other guests to be irritated with her but in fact they laughed and seemed to sympathize. She found herself feeling jealous of the affection his family had for one another and for Mateo. She had forgotten more than half of them already but she knew at least one of the older men nearby, at the main table, was a neighbor. She strongly suspected that some of the others in the room weren't family either but had become traditional guests because they had nowhere better to go.

When Mateo returned, he arrived in the company of two pretty, young women. One of them, definitely not a sister, grabbed him by the elbow and whispered in his ear while he was putting the wooden stools in place. They both laughed. Then, before Mateo could make his way back to Olivia, a young man came roaring over to him and gave him a bear hug. The two fellows exchanged slaps and laughter. Olivia folded her arms, feeling excluded, and wished her boyfriend's friends would leave him alone for a few minutes.

Even after Mateo sat next to her and introduced her to more of his schoolmates and neighbors, she felt uncomfortable. She could see how close and how relaxed his old companions had become with their places in his life. His mother dropped by, too, to give Mateo a few minutes of her open admiration and love. She hugged him twice.

Another woman stopped by. She looked younger than most of the relatives but she gave Mateo a sisterly kiss on the cheek.

"Who was that?" Oliva asked after the woman had left, bound for a seat at a different table.

"That's an old girlfriend." He nodded thoughtfully. "You've heard about her."

"You have old girlfriends here?"

He glanced around. He nodded at another young, pretty woman. "I guess so."

"Why isn't the other one with her family?"

"Ah. She got pregnant a couple of years ago." Mateo looked sad about it. "I've no idea who the man was but she had the child. Her family don't visit with her so much anymore. She comes here instead. You can see her with the other young mothers. There are four of them are in the corner with their kids. Why, what's wrong?"

"I don't know. Is there any room for me?"

"You're sitting right next to me. My mom saved you the prime spot." He looked sheepish. "Or at least, she sure seems to think so."

"I mean, in your life? How much of you is there to go around?"

"Your family is pretty small." Mateo sighed. "And I thought they were quiet."

"I didn't think so before this."

"Watch the kids." He gestured to a group of similarly-aged youths, all larger than toddlers but smaller than teens, and all dressed for a holiday meal. They traveled as a pack. They jostled one another at the elbows as if they were vying among recognition within their group.

"What am I supposed to notice?" The children seemed ordinary. They differed in age quite a bit, which had to be awkward for them, but they didn't seem put out by it much.

"They're going around the tables."

In a minute, a group of the children arrived in front of her. All of them, girls and boys, took turns hugging Mateo.

"Who is this?" one of them asked, pointing to Olivia.

"My girlfriend," he replied. He introduced her several times to his cousins, nieces and nephews, always as his girlfriend.

"Hi." One of the youngest boys stepped forward and hugged his uncle.

"Do you want to give her a hug, too?" He nodded to Olivia. She gestured with open hands to show it would be all right. However, the boy gave them both a frightened look.

"It's okay," she reassured him.

The boy stared her in the eye for a few seconds. Then he hopped forward and hugged her waist.

"Are you going to be my aunt?" he asked.

"Um, I don't know yet."

"Hey, here's a question," Mateo said to his nephew. "Have you used up all of your love?"

Surprised, the child laughed.

"Isn't that how it works?" Mateo insisted, pressing for an answer.

"You're being funny." The boy wasn't fooled for an instant.

"If you love your mom, how can you love me? Or your cousin?" Mateo put his right fist on his hip in a gesture that seemed to mock adult lectures to children. 

"That's silly!" The boy put both his hands on his hips, as if sassing back. "I love everyone and it's never used up."

"Not ever?"

"Never and never. There's just more and more."

"That's what I think, too." Mateo looked over the head of his nephew to catch Olivia's gaze. She took a deep breath and nodded, although her gaze drifted across the packed room.

 

Not Zen 203: The Resilient Crow

Wikimedia, Jakub Hałun

The Resilient Crow

In the deeps of a forest, a heavy chestnut tree fell. It crushed smaller trees beneath it. It broke the boughs of neighbors. In the years that followed, light flooded through the rift the tree had caused in the forest canopy. Grasses, bushes, and brambles grew inside.

During the first spring of the rift, a crow flew over and saw blackberry vines in the clearing below.

"Wonderful," he said as he landed on the half-broken branch of a juniper. The crow hopped down the branch, found a vine, located the ripest blackberry, and ate it.

"Out!" screamed another bird. "Get out!"

The crow glanced overhead and saw the shadow of a raven. Beyond the raven, he saw an eagle, which was eyeing them both. The war over the blackberry grove had begun.

At the edges of the clearing, edible thistles grew around the thicket. Then came grassy burrs. In the center of the blackberries grew a few raspberry vines. At the top of the raspberries, two juniper trees, damaged by the fall of the mighty chestnut, seized their moment in the sunlight. They burst into bloom. They offered up bitter fruits to last for a year. Taken together, the collection of edible vegetation made the clearing a prize for every animal in the vicinity. Despite the thorns of the vines, despite the burrs in the grasses, despite the prickers and needles of the junipers and other bushes, every creature who could venture into the thicket did so in the spring.

The crow had to flee from the larger birds. It had to dodge the foxes. Coyotes and large cats came to prowl after the rabbits and mice. The crow evaded them, too.  

Soon, the vines and grasses grew taller and thicker. The eagles didn’t want the berries, not at the price of so many thorns. The coyotes couldn't stand the prickers and burrs. The cats removed the rabbits from the area and, when they were done, removed themselves. Ravens flocked in as they migrated. They picked the bushes clean of ripe fruit, threw the unripe pieces to the ground, and moved on. In the process, they drove away the bluejays, squirrels, and the crows, all of them except for one.

The stubborn crow remained, hiding, but eating when it could. It dodged the foxes who returned to dine on mice.

"Why are you still here?" asked one fox, a vixen covered in burrs she had picked up during her approach. She had eaten a fat mouse but only one. She had found no more.

"The others of my flock moved to places with more food," said the crow. "But I am satisfied here."

"There's not much left." The fox laughed, her tongue out. She tried to avoid the burrs in the grass as she picked her way out of the thicket.

The crow lasted through the fall. Now, even the foxes had given up. The seasonal berries rotted. Some of them soaked the ground in seeds. Vines withered and turned into stiff canes, upon which the next generation of vines started to crawl. One day, the crow realized he had been the only hunter in the brambles for months. The place had become his home. He could reach juniper berries no one else could see. He ate rotted stuff no one else bothered about. He consumed beetles from the shattered bark of the fallen trees.

Two years later, the crow lived in a grand home next to the berry grove, a sheltered spot that could host an entire flock. And it did. The crow's children and grandchildren ventured in migrations across the forest. But he stayed. Often, his descendants flocked to his home. Beneath him, the mice returned. An occasional fox dropped by to eat the mice. He found them all easy to dodge.

One spring, a bird not much past its fledgling height crawled onto his branch and accosted him.

"Oh, wise one," she said. Her feathers were dark, healthy, and glossy. 

"Hah!" the crow cried. "Shows what you know."

"Grandmother says you are wise." She cocked her head to one side as she shifted her gaze. "Our flock met another flock, crows like us. She said to ask you about them."

"Ugh, crows," he said.

"In the other flock," she persisted, "they were hungry. They seemed lost and angry. They wanted to fight but when we rose to meet them, they flew away."

"Sounds like the usual." He puffed his feathers. They were not as glossy as in his youth but they still served. 

"Oh, wise one," she began.

"Ugh."

"How did you have so much success, grandfather?"

"I haven't thought much about it." He shuffled on the branch. After a while, he rose and grabbed the bark deep with his talons. He strutted back and forth. "Did I have success? I suppose. But I was the weakest of my flock."

"You?" She was young still but he looked reasonably-sized, to her.

"Thanks to your mother, you and your siblings are all stronger than me. Even as I made my home in the grove, I knew I was the most ignorant of the animals there. The ravens were smarter than me. The foxes were wiser. You are probably smarter and wiser, too."

"Then how did you win? Why does everyone call you 'Grandfather of the Berries' and 'Resilient Crow?'"

"Hah!" he cawed.

"Well, that's what they call you."

"Little one, I did not survive by trying harder. I tried and failed, tried and failed. I gave up many times. But I came back. I had to. I returned because I failed elsewhere. I gave up in those places. But not here, not quite. And I did not get berries every day. The ravens and foxes drove me off. I came back. I didn't outsmart anyone. But every time I fled from a larger animal, I came back."

"So you were smart, after all."

"No."

"You were wise."

"No." He ruffled his feathers. "All the other large animals gave up. That's it. One day, I woke and realized I was the only one who had persisted."

"You outlasted everyone else."

"Maybe." The older crow shrugged his wings. He leaned his head to one side as he looked at one of his youngest descendants. With a deep breath, he said, "So far."
 

 

 

 -- copyright 2025 by Eric Gallagher, Secret Hippie 

Not Even Not Zen 407: Towards a Collection

The Poetic Structure of Collected Stories, Followed By Mundane Reality 

Even before I finished a collection, readers pointed out the order of the parables in it is built around an illusion. Stories must appear in some sort of order, of course, when they are in a book. This is the structure I chose for them, a modified version of 'the four stages of enlightenment' from the Theravada school. Not everyone agrees with this view. I acknowledge the implied problems of adopting it as the overriding metaphor.

Poetic Structure

The stages of progress outlined in the Tea for Full Teacups collection are a view that seems likely to be incomplete, at best. These stages of achievement may have happened in this order for someone, sometime. They could have followed this order more than once, even. The structure isn't entirely misleading; that's why I chose it. However, we have no good evidence our progress must follow this pattern. We have no proof that progress follows stages at all, really, or whether these apparent stages are a retrofit imposed on us by our struggle to understand any progress we might have made.

When I reflect on my own experiences, I would say my journey may not have followed the traditional sequence. 

The strongest benefit I received from studying Buddhist, Stoic, and Daoist thinking came a few years in, when I was young, when I let go of my strongest desires. It was a mundane process. I spent years practicing. Almost ritually, I let go of desires each day, often in the morning or late at night. For me, the process involved a lot of envisioning. It's a modest and small-minded method. Nevertheless, it worked well for me personally. As a teen, I used visualization to help lose my fear of heights. I used it for basketball, martial arts, and swimming. For the formalized Buddhist practice of nirodha, I envisioned letting go of possessions. Of course, I actually let go of possessions, too, but I don't want to underestimate the helpfulness of the visualization. It works, although the quality of the practice makes as much difference as the quantity.

Mundane Reality

I don't want to underestimate the value of actually letting go of possessions, either. There are many other things to stop clinging to besides material ones but tangible stuff has the advantage of being readily evident. It's like the difference between building something in your mind and building it in reality. Reality is messy and inconvenient. Actions and their consequences play a role of giving you sanity checks, even about the consequences of releasing attachments. You don't think the playbill about you appearing in concert is important? Throw it out. 

Do you miss it? Too bad. It's gone. That's a consequence. 

Even as you envision not wanting things, you need to practice genuinely not having them. Sometimes there will be hardly any difference. Sometimes the difference will be dramatic. 

When I was nineteen, I was absolutist about letting go of desires. I took my Buddhist reading literally (even though all of it was in translation and most of it was summarized from longer Tibetan, Chinese or Japanese texts). To me, letting go of desires meant giving up everything. Some of the things were,

giving up possessions
giving up the desires for possessions
giving up wanting people
giving up wanting animals
giving up plants
giving up wanting to achieve things
giving up signs of past glories like paper awards, ribbons, medals, and trophies
giving up all desires as generally as possible
giving up food and hunger
giving up thirst

You might see that, at times, this was getting extreme. Giving up hunger and thirst is a good mental and emotional exercise - and a good physical one, too - but there are limits to fasting. Nevertheless, that is how I felt and it is what I strove for.