post-sprain "test-hike;" Black Friday in Bear Canyon

For the past few years, 'Black Friday' has been a hiking day, far from the madding crowds of the malls...Last week, when I sprained my ankle, I was afraid I might not be able to go for a hike this year, but fortunately, it seems to be healing quickly. So, yesterday, a couple of friends and I met for breakfast and then headed to Bear Canyon.

Parallel to Sabino Canyon, the trail to Seven Falls is mostly flat, although it zigzags across a boulder-strewn creek for a couple of miles before switchbacking a few hundred feet up the south wall of the canyon. (We figured if my ankle acted up, I could just forego the last part...but, bandaged, I made it all the way, no problem.)

(took my iPhone with me...such a handy camera!) Two weekends ago, I went for a trail-run in here, and there wasn't much water--we've had a pretty rainy November, though, so the creek's been 're-charged'...just enough for some reflective pools among the fall color...

[above photo just published in the Tucson newspaper...]

...and after 3 1/2 miles, voilà: 

 

I pieced together eight phone-photos for this panorama--gives an idea of the terrain:

...from the left of the photo--looking down and out Bear Canyon toward the southwest, to Tucson...to the right of the photo--looking straight west into the Santa Catalina mountains, at Seven Falls, cascading down a steep smooth-stone gorge...

We shared the trail with lots of other post-turkey hikers--nice to see groups of multigenerational trekkers--grandparents, their kids and grandkids--all together, outdoors as family instead of being indoors somewhere amidst the consumer-frenzy...

from the whiteboard: today's linguistic epiphany

Earlier today, a student of mine, unbidden, wrote this on the board in my classroom:

Teenagers + dry-erase-markers = "insight"

Spelling? Grammar?

Geography?

I have my work cut out for me, no?

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At the end of last week, on my afternoon run, I sprained my ankle.

I've learned the sports-medicine acronym RICE: rest, ice, compression, elevation...

(Fortunately, it wasn't severe; I don't think I'll miss more than a week of running...the half-marathon in Phoenix--my third!--is only about eight weeks away!)

And so, with bandaged appendage, I've had a bit of time indoors--time to play with photos and words, from near and far:

Desert Doorways: Tucson's Barrio Viejo

On the western edge of the city is "Old Tucson," the tv/movie set theme park of ersatz wild west streets. But the REAL Old Tucson is here: just south of the downtown core, full of preserved and restored adobe houses.

The Hohokam and Tohono O'odham peoples lived in this area long before Europeans arrived. The year before The Declaration of Independence was signed on the other end of the continent, the Spanish set up a presidio here. By 1821, this outpost became a Mexican settlement; it wasn't until 1854, with the Gadsden Purchase, that Tucson became a U.S. territorial town.

As with most western U.S. cities, strip-malls that could be from anywhere can sometimes detract from the mountainous setting...but seek history and you shall find; colors and stories in the desert abound.

When I first walked around the Barrio Viejo, I almost felt as if I were in a Mediterranean village...later, I came across this description, written by a Dr. J.H. Robinson of Columbia University, who visited Tucson for the first time in the 1930’s:

"But this cannot be the United States of America, Tucson, Arizona! This is northern Africa - Tunis! Algiers! - or even Greece, where I have seen as here, houses built flush with the sidewalks with pink, blue, green and yellow walls, flowers climbing out of hidden patios and overall, an unbelievable blue sky. And the sweet-acrid smell in the air? Burning mesquite. Lovely! And the people - charming. But all this is the Old World, not America."

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Communing with ducks on the Sorgue

Ahh, to lie in a hammock on a summer afternoon in the South of France...

My wife and I had gone to visit friends who lived in LeThor, a town of a few thousand on the banks of the Sorgue River in Provence. (Between the very visited cities of Avignon and L'Île-sur-la-Sorgue, Le Thor is a quiet gem.) Their house was built into the medieval wall, just around a bend in the river from a 12th-century Romanesque church. We rowed a bit in the shade of plane trees, ducks for company...

In between the wall and the river, just enough room for a hammock, a table and four chairs--des olives, du pastis, and la sieste: perfect...

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Sedona: into the elements...

Color, shape, naked geology--Northern Arizona appeals to senses in the most elemental ways. Agnostic hikers, secular scientists, souls searching for spiritual energy--all end up in Sedona, seeking and finding.

Mid-week in this red-rock country, we found a few days of calm--early morning trails around town, afternoons in galleries seeking shelter from summer thunderstorms. Weekends bring crowds from Phoenix, just two hours to the south, but away from pavement, you can still get away, going into the elements.

caffeination, music, mountain color...'burnt library'...

On a recent rainy autumn evening, (rare in Tucson), I got around to playing with some photos--I'd been thinking about grouping them for a project...both fun and pensive.

First, the fun, from this past summer's trip to Korea:

Coffee-crazy in Korea's capital

Seoul has to be Asia's most caffeinated mega-city. There is plenty of tea to be had, but coffee rules in Korea's capital.

Along with an abundance of multi-storied Starbucks, every street seems to have sprouted a home-grown café: from the Italian-inspired (Pascucci, Caffe Bene) to the French (Paris Baguette, Tous les Jours), the sacreligious (God in a cup) and the pseudo-religious (Angel-in-us), royal (Coffee Prince) and musical (Johannes Brahms), prepositions ("at-to-on"?), from the purely Asian (Gurunaru), to delightfully fractured English (Yoger presso, A twosome place, Me Too, cafe sand&food). Coffee and kimchee--it's what Koreans run on!

As erstwhile Seattlites, my wife and I had our fun sampling the different interpretations of the bean while in Seoul. Some were good, some were bad, many were puzzling (red bean latte? black bean latte? GREEN bean latte?), and most all were pricey...

Musicians: a palace restored

 Late spring and early summer in Seoul: musicians in medieval clothing infuse the grounds of Gyeongbok Palace with a sense of its storied past.

Built in the 1390's when a new dynasty established Seoul as its capital, Gyeongbok-gung ("The Palace of Shining Happiness") was a city unto itself. In the 1590's, in the chaos of the Japanese invasions, the palace was burned and lay largely in ruins until the 19th century. The reconstruction almost bankrupt the kingdom, and then the grounds were the scene of the assassination of Korea's last empress. During the Japanese colonization (1910-1945), eighty-five percent of the palace compound was either destroyed or dismantled...

The last two decades have seen a remarkable period of revival and rebuilding. Today about forty percent of the palace has been restored. With colorful concerts, tea-ceremonies, and the changing of the guard, this palace is shining once again.

Years ago, during a summer staying with relatives, I had visited Gyeongbok-gung. Two decades later, it was such a treat to revisit the Palace, renewed, and with a 'live soundtrack.'

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...and, from the fun to the pensive...

Pensive, because the photos below are from the trip I took to Korea when I was eighteen years old. The same weekend I went hiking in these mountains, after we returned to Seoul, my grandmother died...The uncle I tagged along with (mentioned below), died about a year ago...and just over a week ago, my one remaining uncle in Korea--the one my wife and I accompanied my mother to visit this past summer--he just passed away. We are so glad that we went when we did; it ended up being my mother's last visit with the brother to whom she was closest...

vibrant morning palette

...scenes from a morning in the midst of autumn's palette in Odae-san National Park: steam ascending from temple breakfast fires at sunrise, climbing up through maples and pungent gingkoes, happening upon a folk-painting of a tiger on a trail-side shrine...

I'd tagged along with my uncle as he drove from Seoul to the mountains along the east coast of Korea. We were going to pick up my aunt, who'd just spent a week-long retreat at Sang-won-sa, a "Seon" ('Zen' in Korean) temple established in the year 643. While they spent the morning around the grounds, I went for a hike.

This national park, near the site of the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics, is dotted with Buddhist sites established in the 6th and 7th centuries. (Odae-san is one of Korea's 'holy mountains.') During the fall, the temple's vibrant architecture blends in perfectly with the forested slopes; the colors of the folk-paintings seem to spring from the mountains themselves.

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Earlier this year, when I realized that we would be going to Korea, an African proverb began running through my thoughts: "quand un vieil homme meurt, c'est toute une bibliothèque qui brûle." (Roughly translated: when an old man dies, it's like a library burns down.) I'd had the feeling that this trip might end up being the last time I would see my uncle, the last time that my mother would be able to share her childhood with her next-in-age sibling, the last chance to access this avuncular 'library'... I'd had that feeling, but I hoped I'd be wrong...

Now there are only the embers, echoed through my mother, through the filter of translation. We'd so hoped to make at least one more trip... Not long before my mother's surgery last month, her brother had been calling her, saying how much he enjoyed the past summer, but how much he looked forward to 'next time, just one more time...' She could only reply that after back surgery she would have to wait and see...

I returned from Seoul with a stack of grammar and language reference books--they sit on the corner of my desk as I type this...My plan was to dive, again, into the intricacies of Korean vocabulary and syntax--to finally 'master' the language, to finally be able to speak, deeply and openly and freely, with my uncle 'next time,' conversant in the language of his library. Man...

So. Any future visits to Korea will be sibling-less for my mother, sans oncle pour moi...no longer will there be 'visits to see family'...but with familial resonance, chasing echoes I'll hope to understand...