Alexandersmap

    Category: Culture

    • From Sonoma Wine Cellars to Bouncing 185 Feet Above a Raging Bay

      Autumn in Sonoma is a lovely mix of fall color and a mellower vibe as the hard work and hustle of making the wine gives way to letting time work its magic on it. After a long drought California braced for heavy rains as we wrapped up our time in the region, and talk with locals ranged from gratitude for the coming rains to trepidation at the prospect of mudslides and debris flows where the fire scars were. Northern Californians are stoic about this place they live in, a place that is so generous most of the time yet brutally cruel at other times. Vacationing in a place you’ve wanted to explore as a massive wall of water converges on it mandated stoicism for us too. We must work with whatever fate brings us.

      Fall foliage in the vineyards

      If the Scots utilize previously-used American oak for their liquid gold Scotch, Californians use French oak for their liquid gold, wine. The smell of these barrels of wine biding their time is uniquely wonderful. Scheduling a tour in a vineyard that brings you access to the cellars is a must to better understand the process, and to bring all the senses into your Sonoma experience. Add generous pours of wine to sample and stories of the history of the family who started the vineyard and you’ve securely locked your senses in the amber of the moment. You’ll remember these moments most of all.

      24 hours later, it was time to move on to our next destination, and, it turns out, make another memory. In stormy weather you make calculations about the timing of the worst of it. Do you cut your trip short or hunker down and ride it out where you are a bit longer? Timing makes all the difference, doesn’t it? Leaving Sonoma on our normal schedule but before the worst of the wind and rain we left the region behind.

      As we reached the Richmond Bridge to cross the bay we anticipated extreme wind gusts on the exposed drive across, but didn’t expect a camper trailer to blow over on its side ahead of us, closing a lane and stopping all traffic for 15 minutes as the tow trucks and emergency vehicles positioned themselves for a wrestling match in a wind tunnel 185 feet above the angry waves below. Stopped there for awhile to contemplate the violent wind, we were lifted up and shifted side-to-side with the bridge. It was thrilling or terrifying, depending on your perspective on bridge construction.

      Just a couple of memories on opposite ends of the heart rate spectrum during an all-too-brief visit to Sonoma. Sure, perfectly glorious weather would have left its mark on us too, but there’s something to the unexpected drama of a massive storm that forever imprints itself on your memory. Travel offers up these amber moments. Remember that time we…. moments. And changes us in the process. Isn’t that why we go in the first place?

      Seghesio wine cellars

    • Finding Relative Quiet at Muir Woods

      Taking a long, slow walk amongst the Redwoods in Muir Woods, I deliberately slowed down, lingered, and sometimes stood still to feel the forest. Looking straight up I watched water drops formed in the tree tops from the light mist fall a few hundred feet. There are trees here that have stood here for more than a thousand years, my visit was just one blip in their lifespan. And here I found what I’d been looking for, what I’d hoped I’d find on this twisting drive through the hills. Here were the ancient forests of my imagination.

      Seeking quiet, reverent space amongst the giants is tricky business if you only stay on the main path. No matter how much signage they put up, tourists chat like they’re at the mall, oblivious to the glorious silence. You must go there expecting this careless chatter, but you don’t have to participate in it. The best option for silence is to take the paths less taken, and Muir Woods offers these opportunities. Take any trail that scares the masses – be it mud or the promise of exertion or even a dead end sign and you quickly find yourself in relative quiet.

      There are other old growth redwood forests, not enough of them we might agree, but they’re out there as state and national parks throughout the region. These offer more opportunities for isolation. Muir Woods is both the most famous and the most crowded. The trees won’t ever disappoint you, but your fellow man might.

      If we lost all the money we have and saved these trees, it would be worthwhile, wouldn’t it?” – William Kent

      William Kent purchased this land and fended off those who planned to log the redwoods to rebuild San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and then flood the valley as a reservoir. He might have named it after himself but chose to honor John Muir. Modest? No doubt, but there’s an element of brand recognition at work here too. Since 1908, the Muir Woods National Monument has stood as protected land, surely thrilling Kent and those who worked so hard to save the trees, and capturing the imagination of reverent pilgrims ever since.

      If you visit, make a parking reservation well in advance. Go as early as possible to avoid the worst of the crowds. Wear appropriate footwear for hiking the side trails. And save the casual conversation for later. For you’ll have plenty to talk about.

    • Look at That Sky, Life’s Begun

      Don’t let me hear you say life’s taking you nowhere
      Angel
      Come get up, my baby
      Look at that sky, life’s begun
      Nights are warm and the days are young
      Come get up, my baby
      — David Bowie, Golden Years

      Attitude is everything in life, and at some point you’ve got to shake yourself loose from whatever holds you back and get going already. Even during the pandemic, a dark time for modern humanity, we hear of plenty of people who got out in the world and did something amazing. So why not now?

      If you believe the stories, David Bowie wrote Golden Years for Elvis to sing. Admittedly, that would have been a fascinating take on the song. There’s an element of sadness in the lyrics, and I can see Bowie having someone like Elvis in mind when he wrote it. I think about the Elvis of 1975, only a couple of years before he died. He felt like old news and a bit used up in the world, but he was only 42 when he died. He was dragged down by drugs and distraction, not by age.

      There’s a lesson there. Don’t get bogged down in the muck life throws at you. Focus intensely on the things you want to do in your life. For all the celebration of those who rise up, this world would rather have you consume than produce. Consumption will be the death of us all. Instead, get up and produce something of consequence.

      Lean into your dreams. Look up at that sky. Life’s just begun, Angel.

    • Sympathy With Intelligence

      “A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful—while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with—he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all? My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walking

      We arrive at a deeper understanding and empathy with the world by getting out into it. If there’s been a curse to the pandemic, it’s the distinct lack of getting out there to encounter a different perspective on things than you might have sheltered in place with your favorite sound bites and tweets.

      If the last 6-7 years were defined by anything, it’s this growing assurance that your side is right and any other is wrong. The world seemingly spiraled down into an antagonistic cesspool of us versus them. What’s missing is empathy: the putting ourselves in their shoes part. Seek first to understand and then to be understood, as Stephen Covey would have put it. He’d be shaking his head at the world we find ourselves in today.

      Getting out to meet the world is the solution to this problem. Seeing things the way they look from the other side offers perspective unavailable to those who don’t venture past the mailbox. The idea of getting out to see the world seems to be the most logical thing in the world to many of us, but fills others with dread. Would you live your life forever in a shell or break out of your limited view of the universe and see what’s really out there?

      This week I’m getting back out in the world, not for work, but for pleasure. To see things from a different vantage point, to seek the truth about how things are in a place other than here. To bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet and return with a new perspective on this world. And then, boldly, to do it again.

    • Have Your Day

      Time drops in decay,
      Like a candle burnt out,
      And the mountains and woods
      Have their day, have their day;
      What one in the rout
      Of the fire-born moods
      Has fallen away?
      – WB Yeats, The Moods

      The Moods, as I understand it, are the messengers from God (God, in turn, is fire). Whatever your beliefs, there’s truth in the core message: time slips away drop by drop, and we all must pass. Whether a poet or philosopher or the woods or even the mountains themselves, all must “have their day”.

      Let us turn to old friend Henry and consider the phrase differently:

      “The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it. Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry—determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream?” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      We get so caught up in life’s minor distractions that we lose track of the days slipping by. Shouldn’t we channel that inner fire and spend our lives in conceiving while we have this time? But wait! If even the mountains themselves eventually erode to sand, how can we be so bold as to expect a measure of immortality?

      This is why the concept of God and eternity hold so much meaning in our brief lives, we seek to understand the meaning of it all. Poets and philosophers and amateur bloggers each confront the brutal fact that we all must pass, and we don’t really have an answer for what lies beyond.

      So be it. But knowing that the track is indeed laid before us, shouldn’t we reach for our own measure of immortality, as fragile as it might be, and make a day of it? That, friends, seems to be the point all along. Have your day.

    • I Will Show Another Me

      When illusion spin her net
      I’m never where I want to be
      And liberty she pirouette
      When I think that I am free
      Watched by empty silhouettes
      Who close their eyes but still can see
      No one taught them etiquette
      I will show another me
      Today I don’t need a replacement
      I’ll tell them what the smile on my face meant
      My heart going boom boom boom
      “Hey” I said “You can keep my things,
      They’ve come to take me home.”
      – Peter Gabriel, Solisbury Hill

      Where were you when you really heard this song for the first time? Not tapping your fingers on the steering wheel while you drive hearing it, but listening to the lyrics and absorbing the weight of what Peter Gabriel was saying to the world? We all confront tough choices, and the toughest choice of all is when everything is going well and we follow the call to change anyway.

      This decision, I will show another me, is the root of change. It’s what Henry David Thoreau was saying in Walden:

      Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate… The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

      I think a person ought to read Walden every year, to gauge the changes happening within themselves. You might say the same about Solisbury Hill; you hear it differently depending on where you are in your life. Closing in on two years since the beginning of the pandemic, I hear it differently than I did a few years ago. Maybe you do too.

      The theme mirrors Bob Seger’s Roll Me Away, right down to the bird of prey weighing in on the decision the protagonist is about to make. But Solisbury Hill sneaks up on you differently. Maybe it’s the English versus the American take on life-changing moments. Roll Me Away was always a driving song, pulling you relentlessly to the freedom of the road. Solisbury Hill is about a very distinct moment in Peter Gabriel’s career, when he decided to leave Genesis and begin a solo career. And in writing it he blazed a trail for everyone following him in making their own choices in life.

      Should you listen to that voice, trust imagination, and take the leap.

    • The Changes You Take Yourself Through

      Everybody needs a change
      A chance to check out the new
      But you’re the only one to see
      The changes you take yourself through
      – Stevie Wonder, Don’t You Worry About A Thing

      In New England, October is the time of tangible, visible change. The world transforms around you in such strikingly obvious ways that even the most inward-facing among us look up and see it. The days get shorter and darker, the air crisp and demanding of attention, and of course the leaves paint the landscape in an explosion of color. No wonder this is the time of year most people who live here point to as their favorite.

      It seems a good time to celebrate change. The incremental changes we see around us are also happening within us. We grow incrementally better or worse, depending on our focus and applied effort. And because we’re humans you might make tangible progress in one area while you slide a bit sideways in another. Such is life.

      When you write and publish every single day you force yourself to become a keen observer. And you become more efficient in putting thought to paper (or onto the screen and whatever database in the Cloud they take up residence in). Sometimes you’re the only one to see the changes you take yourself through, and sometimes a percentage of the world takes notice. The only part that’s important is that you take yourself through it to see where you go next.

      Change. We get so caught up in getting there that we forget to celebrate here. Dance in the moment that you recognize that life is this short wonderful eruption of thought and emotion and transformation. Maybe turn the volume up a bit more today. For there’s urgency in the air. Celebrate where you are. You’ve come so far already.

    • To Squander the Day

      We are reconciled, I think,
      to too much.
      Better to be a bird, like this one-
      An ornament of the eternal.
      As he came down once, to the nest of the grass,
      “Squander the day, but save the soul,”
      I heard him say.
      – Mary Oliver, The Lark

      We become especially adept at committing ourselves to activities with the least return on our time invested. What is an unproductive meeting but an agreement between two parties to squander time? As if we had the time to spend.

      This challenge by Mary Oliver, declaring that we reconcile to too much in our days, pokes deeply at that inner doubt we might have about how we’re spending our time. That (now) she’s challenging us from the grave amplifies the message. Jealously guard your time for that which is most important. Squander the day, if you must, but save your soul!

      We take stock of our calendars and see a growing trend back to the office, back to travel and meetings and getting things done. Some excites us, and some is a reconciliation to the mission at hand. This is the life of a professional, we do what we must to get where we want to be in our careers.

      But what if we saved our soul instead?

    • There All Along

      For the last few weeks Orion has greeted me in the dark beginnings of the day, reminding me that he’s been waiting all along for me to see him again. Like an old friend, mostly, who has entered the scene after some time away. Or maybe we are the ones re-entering the scene.

      So much of our lives is there waiting in the wings for the moment when we turn our attention back to it. Old books sitting on a shelf, old friends you haven’t spoken with in years, old neighborhoods that framed so much of the way you look at the world, old lines from movies or lyrics from songs that remind you of a moment long ago when things seemed simple. Sometimes these things come back into our lives, but often they’ve been there all along.

      Orion reminded me to look for what I often miss. I see Orion and look for Taurus, and then smile at memories of long walks with a curious dog who saw things in the night that I could only guess at. That dog is no longer here, but his memory is still with me, waiting to draw a smile or a grimace… or sometimes both. You can miss someone that’s long gone, and you can miss them when they’re right in front of you.

      My father suffers from dementia, and I wonder if my memories will fade the way his have. Will I still remember the names of my children, or will they be lost the way my name is to him? It’s hard to imagine an existence where I don’t, yet see it happen over and over with the generations before ours. Will I remember to look up at the sky and know Orion? The future is never guaranteed, and our memories are fragile things. And so, it seems, are we.

      Sometimes we can’t control anything at all, but we can reach out and let them know we’ve been here all along. I suppose that’s about all we can do in the end. Look up and say “hello, it’s nice to see you again”. And make the most of that time together while we have it.

    • Born Before Apollo

      I surf the wave of time with a group of Gen X people born before Apollo landed on the moon. That might make me old, or still young, depending on the reader. But age labels are nothing but stories people tell themselves. In my mind I’m still a kid in pajamas and no helmet on, riding my bike barefoot as fast as possible down the steepest hills available to me. I celebrate the recklessness of my youth and smile at the scars as they remind me of the highlights. Another tetanus booster shot? No problem.

      The Beatles and The Rolling Stones might have been Baby Boomers, but we had a steady diet of each, swept into the diverse wave of music that crashed over us from birth until college. Rock to singer-songwriter to disco to reggae to punk. We swam in it all. No, they weren’t our generation, but they were our soundtrack and we made them our own. Until Nirvana and Pearl Jam kicked them aside and declared that it was our time to break through.

      Consumerism, good god the consumerism! Plastic and white bread and designed obsolescence, all positioned to feed the worst junk to the masses in a recurring revenue scheme to keep the shareholders happy. All this junk loaded onto shelves at Kmart and Toys R Us and a hundred other stores that lived and died with their consumers. And who pays for it but the environment and our bodies? The C-suite that grew ultra-rich in this trickle down economics scam will casually gesture to the crew to move their yachts to a better view.

      We saw, and we still see, that it’s all bullshit. All the positioning and titles and tail wagging the dog political maneuvering? BS. It’s all stories and power-brokering and wealth accumulation, and you either play their game or you move aside on their climb to the gates of hell. Hell must be somewhere at the top because that’s where some of the worst in humanity are ascending to. And boy do they spoil the view.

      Apollo was the space mission that fueled our dreams. To launch into space and land humans on the moon! It seemed anything was possible, and that we’d all be space rangers. And then Atari and Star Wars came out, grabbed all that pent-up space fascination and channeled it towards fantasy. Bigger movies, more immersive video games, faster and stronger computers. Yeah, more consumerism. See what they did there?

      The thing is, I’m not jaded, none of us born in Gen X can be. We’ve seen all the stories and positioning all our lives. We were born skeptical of the generations around us. And why wouldn’t we be? Collectively we’re all messing things up, aren’t we? And we all see it, even if some choose to immerse themselves in the distraction of Squid Game or the latest superhero franchise movie. Fantasy soothes the sharpest doubts and fears.

      Of course, we already knew that. Cue Captain Kirk for a real space flight, brought to you by a billionaire working to hold your attention from the toxic workplace accusations his employees are screaming about. Yeah, that’ll hold their attention for a few minutes. But doesn’t it feel like we’ve seen this one before?