Travels with Claudia

 I have the best mother-in-law in the world. We recently spent a week driving cross-country together.  We both have fantasies of a simple RV.  “I’d like to be able to stop in a scenic spot, get out my lawn chair and read a while with my cup of coffee and then move on,” she once told me.  Both our husbands preferred planned routes, comfortable beds and reservations made well ahead of time.  Her husband passed away in 2004.  Mine had meetings in California after my writer’s retreat in Monterey.  

Mom met me at her daughter’s in Seattle, and we drove east.  She is a great traveling companion.  She talks, but not too much.  She checks the AAA books to find the best bargain hotels and interesting attractions.  We picnicked or split restaurant meals.  She likes her steak rare like I do and was even game to try elk.  She is as eager as I am to find out what is around the next corner.  Why didn’t someone tell me she can’t read a map?

In Yellowstone National Park we saw elk and bison, a wolf and two coyotes.  We wound up side canyons and oo-ed and ah-ed at other-worldly geothermal phenomena.  We had planned to make a loop, but the road we thought we needed was closed for the winter.  The GPS wasn’t any help because it was quite insistent that we should take another closed road going the opposite direction that would get us back to our motel by midnight.  Not exactly what we were after.  We retraced our steps only to learn when we found a ranger that the road wasn’t closed; we must have been looking at a side road.  There was nothing to do but retrace our steps again, kicking ourselves for not realizing that the road to the gate would be well-marked. 

The next day’s adventure was wholly my fault.  I bought gas in West Yellowstone before entering the park.  I hiked, and we picnicked at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone before continuing on to Cody, Wyoming, for the night.  Cell phone reception in the park is sporadic at best.  It was only the next morning that I read the message that my wallet had been picked up a hundred yards from the west park entrance and turned in.  I must have left it on the back of the car when I pumped gas.

We had been awed by the rock formations in the Shoshone National Forest outside the east gate.  “I want to drive this from east to west next time,” I told Mom.  I hadn’t meant to do it the next day. Or return west to east the same afternoon.  It took six hours to get back to our starting point in Cody, but the scenery was beautiful. 

We slept at the top of the Big Horn Mountains that night, a serendipitous adventure our husbands would not have had with their yearning for plans and reservations.  The next night (after another map-reading adventure) we slept in the Black Hills.  The following day we picnicked at Mount Rushmore and drove through the Badlands of South Dakota in the afternoon.  (By this time I had figured out that I needed to study the map for myself.)

The last day we were tired.  Despite her 85 years, Mom had consistently refused to nap.  (“I might miss something!”)  We headed east on Interstate 90 across endless prairie, grateful we could travel faster than a covered wagon.  We made one significant stop—Marshall, Minnesota, where my father-in-law grew up.  We walked around his childhood home, trading memories of our first visits when we were engaged to the men with whom we have spent our lives. Then we tracked down the building that once housed G.J. Hardy and Sons, the bakery and grocery where Hardy’s Peanut Brittle was created. My father-in-law made peanut brittle as a child.  My husband made it as a child. My daughter still makes Hardy’s Peanut Brittle to sell between Thanksgiving and Christmas. (Keep Hardy’s handy.  It’s dandy candy!) so it is an important part of the family culture.

Now my mother-in-law, Claudia, and I are both home with memories of laughter and shared experiences and photos that only hint at the glories we saw.  The RV dream is stronger than ever, but if you don't mind, Mom, I'll read the map.

Hiking in Wales with Liz

 My English friend Liz used to live in a little trailer in the hills of Swaziland and teach at the local African school. She knew all the local birds (or so it seemed to me.)  She had an impish grin and was always game to see what was around the next corner or over the next hill.  That was twenty-five years ago when we lived in Maputo, Mozambique, and had to go to Swaziland every two or three months just to buy groceries.  Walks in the hills with Liz and others saved my sanity in those difficult days.

Over the years we stayed in touch.  When Steve had meetings this summer in Oxford, England, followed by a retreat in southwest Wales to which spouses were invited, I said, “Why don’t I spend the first week hiking in Wales with Liz?”

Liz’s company forced me to hear what would have simply passed for background noise (albeit very pleasant) if I were alone.  Her ears sort the calls of chiffchaff, chafinch, song thrush and wren.  On valley walks she stopped frequently to pull out her binoculars and search the branches for the source of the call.  

“Is that a crow or a rook?  I didn’t get a close enough look at his face to know.”  Warblers, waders and wagtails.  “I’d be ecstatic if I just saw a kingfisher now.”  A black-headed gull swooped back and forth in front of us while we lunched on the riverbank at Brecon.  His gray wings edged with black looked almost blue as he flapped toward us.

Liz is a gardener and knows her wildflowers as well.  Ragged robin, stonecrop, milkwort and buttercups, common daisies and ox eye daisies are all blooming right now.  (The only one I could have identified was a daisy, and I won’t tell you which one.)  

In short, my friend Liz was a fascinating companion for a few days in the Brecon Beacons National Park.  We climbed Pen y Fan and Corn Du, the highest peaks in south Wales.  We looped around the top of the Caerfanell Valley in brilliant sunshine and a frigid wind, then dropped into the valley to dabble our feet in the brook and take pictures of dripping ferns and waterfalls.  We wandered along country lanes and riverbanks, and across fields on the network of public footpaths, where ownership of land does not give the right to deny passage where people have traditionally walked.  

 I was pleased to find that Liz and I had a similar sense of pacing—when to stop for tea or lunch and when to ignore the time and enjoy the walk. The trouble with climbing mountains is that they are all up hill.  Our old-lady legs decided to skip Cribyn, the awe-inspiring crag just beyond Pen y Fan, even though we may never be back.  It certainly would have been easier to summit when we were already on Pen y Fan than to start from the bottom.  But one has to draw a line somewhere, and the twisting trails and beguiling views could lure us on from one peak to the next in this land that reminded us both of a greener version of Swaziland.  

We did a town walk in Brecon at the end of the week with an art gallery, a medieval cathedral, raspberry Pavlova ice cream, and wonderful views of the peaks where we had hiked.  Liz paints watercolors—small ones to make greeting cards usually.  Our last evening in Llangors she painted me a view of Pen y Fan and Corn Du just right to hang over the fireplace in my dolls house—a memory of a lovely holiday and monument to a long-time friend.