Category: Travel

Art Safari in the Big City

3/12/2020

For those hoping for an overview of the 2020 Everglades Challenge...that story is still coming. The team is safe, which is the main thing, and engaged in their next adventure. I hope to post a report early next week.

Meanwhile, something completely different from that...

My sister Sarah, an actual working artist, invented a thing we do called "Art Safari." I've written about it before.

We grab our cameras and drive or walk around some downtown or another.

It's all rather silly. We look at stuff through the viewfinder and laugh a lot.

Still, the physical act of focusing encourages a metaphoric focusing on what's right in front of us.

It's an exercise in seeing rather than just looking. A useful practice for a writer as well as an artist.

There's stuff to see if you just keep your eyes open.

We spent a long weekend in Manhattan recently –– summary: a bunch of us were were going to Italy to celebrate Sarah's birthday. Along comes Covid19, and poof! Manhattan it is!

The gang took taxis and subways, saw shows and shoes, walked Times Square and wandered museums. It kind of felt like every activity was going to be retold with the preface, "Back before the Pandemic, you could..."

Anyhow, wandering at will through the chic-chiciest of boroughs, especially wandering with artistic types like my companions, made me look twice or three times.

A few highlights of what caught my eye...

Frankenbarricade?

Elmo say "Please don't collide with delivery bike!"

No, please don't wake!

I looked.

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Everglades Challenge: On Line

3/3/2020

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Not unexpectedly, Twobeers has his hands full with plumbing and physics: the core elements of any last-minute boating design challenge.

One asks oneself: How many pounds of foot pressure is required to move a gallon of water up a pipe of diameter x?

What is the likelihood of the West Marine store producing a promised y-valve?

How long does it take to drive from Davis Islands to St. Petersburg and back during the tourist-enhanced afternoon rush?

These are not particularly difficult questions, but add the element of time tick-tock-tick-tocking to the starting line only four days hence...

Times like this, nobody knows how tempted I am to rush up to my favorite skipper and exclaim, "No man, the BLUE wire! The BLUE wire!"

Of course, he's the hero. A single drop of perspiration may slide down his face as he hesitates with the wire-snips, but he manfully clips the red one and saves the world regardless.

But be that as it may.

Here's a link to the Watertribe Challenger Tracking site (or just click on the picture!).

The event starts Saturday morning at dawn. Charlie "Gaajii" Clifton will be official shoreside support, chasing the team by land as they sprint down the state.

We keep our fingers crossed...

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Volcano, Iguana, Finch

2/17/2020

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According to Henry Nicholls in The Galápagos: A Natural History, part of Charles Darwin's inspiration for his Theory of Evolution came out of bad accounting.

Back in the 1800's, standard operating procedure for a naturalist was to capture and kill any number of small creatures. Pack 'em in salt, pickle 'em, pile 'em into boxes to ship home. All in the interest of scientific study.

So young Darwin, circling the globe as the resident naturalist aboard The Beagle, harvested hundreds of animal specimens and squirreled away crate after crate of fossils and plants.

But there were so many. As it happened, he neglected to properly label some carcasses from the Galapagos.

No doubt he'd never expected there to be much difference between, say, a dark little finch from Floreana and that other one from nearby Isabela.

Poor guy: back home in chilly England, unpacking box after box of corpses and he discovered the awful truth: his sparrows weren't labeled very well.

Or maybe not.

The story varies.

In any case, Galápagos mockingbirds are also distinctively different from mockingbirds on the mainland. And they are different from one Galápagos island to another.

Which leads, step by painful step, to Darwin's theory of evolution and the eventual publication in 1859 of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Phew.

Sidebar drama: Interestingly enough, as a Christian, Darwin was troubled by the implications of what he discovered. However, when a naturalist pal of his, Alfred Wallace, came up with a parallel theory, Darwin's misgivings subsided enough for Darwin to polish up his own manuscript and send it to a publisher. It became an overnight sensation.

While we were doing our own exploration in the Galápagos (zero collection of specimens, thousands of photos, great guides, and a tidy ship thanks to AdventureLife), we stumbled across a little mockingbird family drama on Floreana.

I've got a theory or two (as usual) about this scene. It might be a long-held rivalry between the matriarchs who were born sisters but grew to their own greatest rivals. It might be a fresh incursion between an upstart gang and the Boomer family they rejected.

Or maybe it's a daily show staged to entrance the tourists –– 14:00-15:20 beached walrus pups, 15:20-15:40 mockingbird display, 15:40-whenever tortoise crossing.

References
lwww.aboutdarwin.com/voyage/voyage03.html
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0014-3820.2006.tb01113.x/full

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Where We Live...

11/5/2019

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I moved to Florida after a quarter century of blizzards and farm animals and bumblebees. Ah, never will I forget my first enormous cockroach –– when it flew at my head. The size of a Medjool date with wings and a heft like a badminton shuttlecock.

And fireants and that steep steep learning curve about the volume of living creatures armed to the tropical teeth with venom! Never even mind the gators, crocs, and invasive serpents. Black ice? No, black widow. Rabid skunk? No, rabid drivers, smouldering muck fires, New Year's Eve gunplay.

Anyhow, the charms outweigh the hazards most of the time. For instance, the lowly gecko –– also a transplanted resident –– with her suction cup fingers and translucent belly, who appears on my bathroom sink to remind me of the old proverb:

A cat may look at a king.

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The Way-Back Machine: A Natural Bridge

10/21/2019

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I recently re-discovered this tale I wrote in the early 2000's. This adventure pre-dates the Would-Be Farm (though I was dreaming about it back then!) and some of the principals are no longer with us, but here it is, a retread road-trip...

I'd been helping my sister Sarah fix up her first place up North –– after a long break away from the North Country –– when we decided to spend a day away from the project.

I was in the market for some land, imagining (perhaps foolishly) that I could purchase a chunk of attractive brush with some water feature that would keep Mr. Linton and me happily occupied for the next few decades of summertime vacation.

Turns out, of course, that there are many chunks of brush, some attractive, a few with water features, but almost none in my small price-range offered by anyone actually willing to close a deal.

Anyway, it gave me a nifty excuse for pottering around the back roads of rural Northern New York State.

A classmate from high school was a real-estate agent, and although she was out of town on vacation that week, she had provided me with a stack of property listings to look at. On our day off, my sister and I set a goal of checking out a couple of those places (disappointing: peaceful retreats are rarely located within ear-shot of Fort Drum’s gunnery range).

After the unproductive real estate perambulations, our thoughts turned to something more rewarding. For years, we had heard about the reputed natural bridge over Perch River outside of the village of Dexter.

Even though we’d lived in the area for years, and I had ridden my horse all over that particular corner of creation as a young dandelion, this geographical wonder was unknown to us.

Sarah and I had talked about taking the kayaks up the Perch River, but she'd wracked her arm in a nasty boating accident involving a cleat, a big wake, and her elbow (yarg) earlier in the summer.

We looked at the big gazetteer map of New York, and lo and behold “natural bridge” was right THERE in small print, where the thin thread of Perch River took a stitch underground.

So that's where we headed.

I was driving down Middle Road. My sister was navigating and she said, "Hey, turn here."

A mailbox marked the turn, and I said, "Sis, come on, this is someone’s driveway."

Implacable, she repeated, "Turn in."

The driveway was long and twisty and really private. A few yards farther along, a deer stand loomed over a field. I said, "Sis, they hunt."

She said, "Keep going."

With no place to turn around –– and I didn’t like to back up around the curved driveway –– I kept going.

A few yards later, a big carved black bear held a “Welcome Friends” sign.

My sister pointed and said, "But look, they are friendly!"

"Yeah, but it’s someone’s driveway, sis...This could go very badly."

She said, "Look, there’s a spot. Park the car. Don’t be a candy-ass."

I did as she directed, since she is the older sister.

And we got out of the car with our water bottles and our hiking boots and all we heard was birdsong, wind in the treetops, and the whine of a distant chainsaw.

We consulted the map and oriented ourselves toward the river. We were preparing to trespass.

She’s like, "Okay, here’s our story: We are here looking for a friend from high school, and have gotten turned around somehow."

The sound of the chainsaw drew suddenly much closer. I though, gosh, maybe I should have availed myself of the facilities when we stopped at the library in Dexter.

Then a voice: "Helloooo!"

We stopped in our guilty tracks.

A kindly looking woman with a suspicious expression on her face came down the driveway.

"Hi," we all said.

"How can I help you?" she said.

Without even exchanging a look, my sister and I dropped the lie.

We explained that we grew up around here, and we heard that there is a natural bridge over the Perch River somewhere nearby, and we were really hoping to find it.

The woman said, "Why yes, there is. Do you have a half an hour or so?"

Next thing you know, the woman has collected her husband, who pilots a zippy ATV down the driveway to pick us up and they are taking us on a tour all over the 400 acres their son and his wife purchased a few years back.

There’s Perch river. There’s the bridge -- a smidge underwhelming, but aha! ––there’s the river emerging again from the other side of the natural bridge. There’s an old stone fence. Maybe the fence butts up to the Hall’s farm ––The Hall’s farm that was probably our Riggs family farm a hundred years ago. Maybe one of our great-great uncles stacked those very stones.

I mention the Pflugheber’s place, where my mom and I and the horse and the dog lived for a time.

Why, the husband knows Ed Pflugheber! The husband retired from the Watertown Daily Times.

Why then he must know my cousin Scott Smith, who works at the Times.

Indeed he does. He knows Toots Carbone, too, my buddy Care's Dad, our next-door neighbor on the Point.

We talk about the St. Lawrence River, and my sister points to her tee-shirt, which features a snap from our family history: Herbie Ward and Daddo with a string of fish on the dock at Fisher’s Landing.

Well, wouldn't you know the husband knows Herbie Ward.

Small world!

As it happens, the husband is connected to parents of classmates of ours.

And their daughter-in-law? Turns out she is my vacationing real-estate agent/high-school classmate. We trespassed on her land.

Hours later, our unexpected hosts raid my real-estate agent’s fridge for beer and my sister gets them to take pictures of the two of us in the ATV, playing with my real-estate agent's dog, and lounging on the porch with our purloined beers.

Those photos of us having our disreputable way with other people's porches, off-road recreational vehicle, and beer might possibly have been taken on an early cell phone that was unable to resist water when it went swimming.

But maybe one of those images will resurface, possibly on the tee-shirt of one of the great-grand nephews or nieces, who will point to it while trespassing and say, "Perhaps you know these two characters? Our aunts?"

And here's hoping it will parlay into a free pass, a tour, an anecdote.

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Transpac –– Oh! Ho! Ho! It's Magic.

7/29/2019

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Oh, Oh...Never believe it's not so. This is truly not one of the better tunes to have playing on repeat in the gooey jukebox between a person's ears, but alas.

Plus, since Pilot included two former Bay City Rollers, this song is extra Velcro®ish.

Wait, seriously, how can I resist posting a YouTube of those classic Bay City Rollers tunes?

I can't...but later in the post. It will be a special treat and possible ear-worm infestation.

But back to this particular song.

Pilot's soaring and incessant declaration ("Oh! Ho! Ho! It's magic!") played in counterpoint to the couple of weeks of prep and racing of the 2019 Transpacific ocean Race –– the Transpac. Because of course, my favorite skipper sailed this 2250-mile-long offshore race aboard the famous Bill-Lee-designed Merlin*.

*Quick word about Merlin: this is the Merlin that set the course record in 1977.

It's the Merlin after which the Merlin Trophy is named.

The current owner is named Chip Merlin –– you can recognize him by his enormous white grin in every picture of him on the boat.

He acquired the boat about a year and a half ago...I think if there's a famous boat with your name on it, you might just have to get it.

The boat could hardly have been better prepared for the trip from Long Beach, California to Honolulu, Hawaii: the crew included two fire-fighters among her experienced and talented team; new sails; higher degrees in engineering, MacGyvering, and meterology; a redesigned physical plant and dozens of Pacific passages under her keel; extra duct tape and A & D ointment; and the latest in safety gear and information technology

And yet.

It's not a safe world and we all need some good luck to get us along. Sailors especially.

So while playing brave little toaster on shore, I wasn't about to ignore the encouraging messages of a magical world.

Just because it's magical thinking doesn't mean it's not true, right? Like the song says. Oh! Ho! Ho!

In a mere 8 days, Merlin's race was run.

Several Transpac boats retired because of technical difficulties. One of the catamarans ran into a mysterious nighttime something and tore a hole in her bow. Another boat actually sank (the sailors were rescued by their competitors, naturally, because, well –– sailors). Nobody, thank goodness, was lost at sea.

Merlin finished a quite respectable third; their stories range from the sublime (rainbows around the moon) to the ridiculous (anything to do with using the head, also, two people beaned by flying fish). They shredded some sail and lost their electronics for a bit, but it worked out safely in the end.

Here's the link to the Transpac YC's amazing images of Merlin.

And a brace of BCR for your listening enjoyment:

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Transpac––Modern Technology

7/14/2019

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When Spawn takes to the water and swims to Key Largo, I –– and some others we know –– feverishly tap the "refresh" button again and again to track the boat's progress.

After a couple of days of this kind of behavior, shore-crew feels as worn-out and raspy as the boys look at the end of the Everglades Challenge.

But that's only a couple of hundred miles ("only"! Listen to me, cool as a cucumber! Ha ha ha.) while the Transpac race runs for a couple of thousand miles. So with the 68-foot Merlin setting sail this afternoon...

Interested parties need to pace themselves. Seven days, ten days? Jeesh. That's a lot of click-click-clicking. That's potentially a lot of sleep-deprived calendar days –– even days set near Hollywood or Waikiki.

But I am happy to say there's a super-cool tracking site that shows all the boats in the several fleets.
Okay, super-cool –– but with a 4-hour delay, and the updates seem to come only every hour or so. So perhaps medium-cool.

Anyway. It allows those of us watching the race to follow the track and to guess at the weather. Plus, the class leaders get a little crown over their name. Which is nice.

Here's the link.

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Ever. Challenge. Glades. 2019. Finished.

3/6/2019

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It's an unconscious thing, a tick. A habit. Take a phrase, parse it, divide it, recombine it, look for entertaining results.

As I beetle around trying to restore order to the large pile of salty gear, slightly used batteries, marine electronics, and ziplock bags of snacks, I find myself turning over the wordy options: The Everchallenge Glide. The Everyglades chalice. The Challenger Everglading.

I think it's the word "glide" that keeps snagging my attention.

Because for the first few days of the 2019 Everglades Challenge, the weather was very still.

It was hot and windless.

The sun was bright and the water flat.

There were an extraordinary number of selfies coming in off the water from the nearly 100 teams of WaterTribesfolk.

The fastest paddlers were handily beating nearly all of the sailboats.

Andyman and NateDog under the hot hot sun.

The boys on Spawn –– my favorite skipper and his pal Jahn –– are never-say-diers. They keep swinging for the fences. Always aiming higher.

All sporty metaphors apply.

The additions and refinements they make to the boat are all designed to eke a bit more speed, a touch more performance, a sliver more of whatever it will take for them to get to the finish line faster.

They've said more than once that they'd like to get to Key Largo before the second sunset. Tie up the boat and sleep Sunday night in a real bed. Stay awake for only the one night.

This was not that year.

The super-fast paddlers had a near-record run, but the wind-powered frontrunners? Let's say 300 miles has rarely seemed farther.

Of course this is an adventure race, and the boats are not limited in the way of typical races. For instance, rowing will get you ejected from most of the races we attend.

But in the Everglades Challenge, it's all part of the adventure.

Mr. Linton installed a system of long sweeps, racing oarlocks, and a nifty sculling seat on the original boat, and has continued to refine it as time passes.

The oars are a boon when the boat is bucking the current and needs a little extra oomph. It's also handy when navigable waters get too narrow for actual sailing.

Experimentation has shown that a steady rowing pace produces a reliable 3 knots or so of speed for the Spawn.

Sidebar: Why knots vs miles per hour? I know, confusing –– maybe even rocket science, but it's the way watery folk measure speed.
3 knots = about 3.3 miles per hour = about medium walking speed.

So when Spawn slows to the equivalent of a stroll, out come the sweeps. Cue the Volga oarsmen song.

With possible rose-tinted shades of memory, the Spawnsters estimate that they rowed perhaps a tenth of the distance between Fort DeSoto to Key Largo. Say 30 miles.

But when recounting each leg, the hours add up.

At the start, the rowing seat was in place, but Spawn ghosted across the mouth of Tampa Bay. They stayed in breeze down the white sand beaches past Sarasota and Venice.

They rowed into Cape Haze marina (Checkpoint 1) around sunset on Saturday. They rowed from Checkpoint 1 to Gasparilla Pass at night, under brilliant stars. Moresailesed (Jahn Tihansky) said that he saw the Southern Cross low low on the dark horizon.

In the dark, they rowed into a snoozing pod of manatees –– the special collective noun for the mammals is a "aggregation of manatee" –– and startled them into an enormous roiling mass of white-water.

Everyone had a moment of holding flipper to heart and gasping for breath.

Rowing kept Spawn out of the fog that socked in some racers farther north.

From Sanibel to Cape Romano, they'd row a mile to reach a puff, sail for a bit, and then row through another lull. Chasing zephyrs, balancing patience with strategy in connecting one patch of wind with another.

They had to row and sail through Blind Pass (the one by Caxambas) to get into Chokoloskee on Sunday afternoon..

They rowed into and then out of Checkpoint 3 –– Flamingo –– early on Monday morning, but then had a decent breeze across Florida Bay to finish at 8:54 a.m. on Monday.

Just under 50 hours.

They arrived raspy and salty. Three days later, we are still catching up on sleep.

Spawn arrives in Key Largo!

With help from the awesome Jim Signor, the boys packed Spawn onto the trailer, stowed things for highway travel, and we made our ways North. Moresailesed had a pressing engagement with the US Naval Academy, where he coaches sailing.

The Linton-mobile cantered home across Aligator Alley, meeting up with the nasty line of weather that Spawn had managed to outrun, but which lambasted the majority of the fleet.

We dodged the inexplicable traffic that plagues I75 between Fort Meyers and Sarasota and as always were grateful to arrive alive at our house. We parked and hustled bag after bag up the stairs and then stood looking at one another. Jeff spoke the immortal words, "Is it over already?"

Well, for now it is.

Until next time, Key Largo.

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From the Middle of the Challenge

3/3/2019

20 Comments

The middle of the state. The middle of the night. The middle of a large pile of gear.

From the middle, ground-control for my Everglades Challenge team seems like a way of life.

It's probably sleep deprivation (I write this at midnight, over a bowl of dairy-free frozen dessert, in between reloading various tracking pages and checking the social media), but here I go again, blearily worrying, along with a clan of like-minded folks as we follow the progress of the 100 or so boats as they paddle, sail, and row down the left side of the Florida peninsula.

For those who haven't been following, here's the overview: The Everglades Challenge is a 300-mile unsupported expedition race put on by a gang called the WaterTribe. Competitors get a WaterTribe name. My favorite skipper –– AKA TwoBeers –– is racing with his childhood pal, the offshore sailing coach for the Naval Academy, Jahn Tihansky (tribe name Moresailesed). They set sail on the first Saturday in March at dawn from Fort Desoto in St. Pete, aboard a boat called Spawn designed by OH Rodgers (Ninjee).

As expected, the WaterTribe tracking site is experiencing some kind of technological version of the vapors.

Raceowl.com is doing better, but it means translating four-digit numbers back into familiar names. Spawn of Frankenscot is 3092, Safety Dance is 2969, Spongebob is 3072, the German guy, Schappi, is 3068, Jarhead is 3154, Puma is 3134, SeadogRocket and BermudaBoy are 3104, Ccock 3043. Et cetera.

Yesterday started for the Spawn team at o'dark thirty, when Jeff and Jahn and I piled into Charlie Clifton's van with yet more piles of gear, and made our way to the beach at Fort Desoto. Where we were met with a whole tribe of people wearing head-lamps and lycra-enhanced fitness clothing toting bales of stuff out to their various watercraft.

The Challenge begins, fiendishly enough, with the competitors needing to push their boats from the high-tide line into the water at the signal at 7 am. Some folks have wallowed in the sand for seemingly hours. Not my fellas!

The launching of the fleet was relatively slow this year –– not much breeze. Still, the moment passes in a twinkling of the eye.

At seven, the beach is packed, by a quarter after, only a lonesome boat or two and spectators are left on the beach.

I don't know what other ground-control people do, but given that Moresailesed was shedding virus and coughing like a consumptive, I cleaned up with a vengeance. Seven loads of laundry, autoclaving the dishes, a possibly unhealthy number of Clorox wipes, followed by a quick nip around to the non-dairy frozen dessert section of my local grocery and a nice cat-nap.

My phone is buzzing more than usual: Spawn has a following, and even with the light wind there's an element of nail-biting suspense. Moresailesed send along a photo from onboard –– roughly, I am thinking, from the spot where they spent some time last year recovering from a bit of excitement.

Evidently the mosquitoes are making an appearance on board Spawn –– last year, the poor devils couldn't make headway agains the wind. Each Challenge is different, I suppose, and a new test of the competitors' varying skills.

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The Evil Stair

1/9/2019

12 Comments

When planning a trip, I suggest avoid saying things like: "Greece is the most dangerous place in Europe to drive a rental. We certainly won't do that."

or "We'll take a slow ferry from Crete so we can see all the beautiful little islands between there and Athens."

Because inevitably you'll get stranded on Crete (where btw –– the oldest Bronze Age city? The one you have been wanting to see since you were eleven or twelve years old? It will be closed for repairs. For like 18 months.)

Between the ferries, the Mistral winds, and the Ministry of Culture, you will weep bitter, bitter tears of frustration.

And then you'll find yourself standing in line at the car rental counter at the Athens airport behind a pair of French dudes celebrating Bastille Day by joining the rest of their countrymen on vacation in Greece.

The fellows will say –– clear enough for even your rusty college French to follow –– that the rental company has run out of automobiles. (Les voitures sont completement fini.)

Nothing ventured, you'll figure, even if these guys snub you for your really execrable accent, you give it a try, "Excusez-moi, avez-vois dit que Les Hertz n'avez-pas rien du voitures?

"Oh non, <something something> de voitures, mais mini-vans, oui." Oh, mini-vans, you'll think, yet another word that has no translation.

Perhaps because the waiting line was quite long and they had only started their vacation, the French men say, "Do you have a reservation for a car? No?"

Then switching easily to English, they ask, "Have you just arrived?"

You'll explain about the visit to Crete.

They will be terribly French in their amusement at your mishaps.

Of course, the wind.

Big world-weary shrugs and their lower lips will project out for a moment –– of course, Knossos. Ha ha ha!

But of course one couldn't find the Heraklion Museum because it was closed for renovations. For like 18 months.

You'll share gentle, ironic laughter. Ha ha ha! Zee world is funny, no? Trés amusant!

Where, they ask, will you go now?

Tell them you were planning to visit beautiful Mount Olympus, an easy drive. Hiking, perhaps even camping.

Oh, they will say, Have you not heard? Forest fires have closed Mount Olympus.

"Mais bien sûr!" you can say. But of course. Of course Mount Olympus is closed.

And then you'll be navigating the Greek countryside by fraternity letters while your husband boldly pilots a tiny white rental car.

You'll say, "Alpha-theta-epsilon? and maybe Nu. Wait, is µ ––you'll sketch the letter on the air –– Nu or Psi?"

Despite this level of distraction, he addresses the odd round-about and the mysterious symbols for merging or yielding without hesitation.

It may be a dangerous country for renting a car, but he's Ricky-Bobbying the living merde out of it.

On our trip, we did not stop at the crossroads in Theta-epsilon-beta-alpha.

It seemed a quiet, agricultural spot –– silos and onion fields –– a long way removed from mistaken identities and Freud's own dream of patricide and royal incest.

We went instead to Delphi, a spot I'd hoped to explore on a Classically nerdy trip another time.

The Delphic oracle, the Temple of Apollo, the Delphic games. That magical light!

Be still o Mary Renault-inspired heart!
Stand down, o Mary Stewart-influenced enthusiasm!

I'd honestly hoped not to bore Mr. Linton to death with all that.

I underestimate my husband's ability to find joy in his moment. After mooching around the ruins, he suggested a walk, and we headed up the beautifully marked E4 European long-distance trail. Up up up the Kaki Scala.

At a switchback, I pause to catch my breath, and see the tiny white rental car, no bigger than a loaf of bread far below our feet.

Later, it's the size of a matchbox car.

Then only a speck.

Then the car is entirely indistinguishable in the distance nearly straight down.

The trail continues up and up, the pitch a mathematical puzzle: a 50:12 pitch? 100:12?

Pebbles roll out from under our feet and hurtle off the side of the mountain, pinging and clicking into the sonic distance.

Eventually, there's signage that explains why the trail –– roughly cobbled and zig-zagging with such determination –– is called the Kaki Skala.

Skala, as one might imagine (scales, escalators, scales of pitch), means stair or ladder, while Kaki is not kaka (that would be Russian poo, thank you very much), Kaki is bad or evil.

Ill-omened stair, maybe, or bad ladder, or evil stair.

Made bad by who used it: condemned criminals were made to walk up the Kaki Skala and then leap (or be pushed) from an overlook.

Twenty-five hundred years later on a hot, HOT day, there's still a bit of chill in the air.

A few hours later, as we followed signs and listened to the musical clanking of goat-bells sounding from the hills around us, we arrived at the Korykion Cave, where Pan was worshipped.

The actual Pan. Not an easy god, he.

We climbed into Pan's cave. Scene of who knows what-all sacred mysteries, the cave also sheltered Greeks from foreign invasion (the Persians in the 5th C BC, the Turks during the Greek War of Independence, and the Germans in 1943).

A good cave is a joy forever, evidently.

We picnicked, respectfully, and then wound our way back to the tiny white rental car, unscathed by Pan or the loud farm-dogs.

A couple of days is not enough for Delphi.

I am almost afraid to plan a trip back to the Temple of Apollo to see the Charioteer again and walk those fragrant dry hills –– in case my travel mojo destroys the entire town.

But still.

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<<Previous

Art Safari in the Big City

Everglades Challenge: On Line

Volcano, Iguana, Finch

Where We Live...

The Way-Back Machine: A Natural Bridge

Transpac –– Oh! Ho! Ho! It's Magic.

Transpac––Modern Technology

Ever. Challenge. Glades. 2019. Finished.

From the Middle of the Challenge

The Evil Stair

ABout the Blog

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