Alexandersmap

    Category: Travel

    • A Commitment to Transformation

      “A person susceptible to “wanderlust” is not so much addicted to movement as committed to transformation.” ― Pico Iyer

      As I write this a cardinal is singing in the window, driving the cat a bit insane, and distracting me with questions: “What are you doing in your nest? Shouldn’t you be flying?”

      “I’m busy leaving breadcrumbs”, I silently answer the cardinal. And indeed I am. For every post is a mark for where I’ve been at any given moment. A public journal of sorts, documenting what I’m reading, where I’m visiting, who I’m learning from, what I’ve stumbled upon that made my jaw drop.

      You can’t document what you haven’t experienced. Imagination is a lovely thing, and brings so much to the world of humans (Refer to da Vinci’s Saper Vedere), but we’re also students on a quest to learn as much as we can about this life we’re doomed to leave too soon. Experiencing requires getting out in the world and finding it, not just living through someone else’s YouTube or InstaGram feed.

      Those different perspectives we encounter are building blocks that in turn carry us somewhere even richer, snowballing experiences into transformation. Who has gone anywhere in this world and returned the same person? And what is the purpose of living but growth?

      The thing about breadcrumbs is they don’t stick around forever. My trail of transformation is a click away from disappearing forever, sort of like us but with bigger data centers. That’s the way of the world, we’re all just fleeting memories in some future person’s mind. But who says we can’t fly in our time? Who says we can’t offer a small ripple felt imperceptibly on a far shore?

    • Consider Life an Adventure

      “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” ― G.K. Chesterton

      Admittedly, I’m tired writing this. Two weeks of travel and burning the candle at both ends and I’m worn out. But that’s why we dance with coffee, isn’t it? To press ahead just a bit further.

      The thing is, we’ve had a couple of years to reset. We all did the best we could under the circumstances. Getting back to whatever this normal is gives us a chance to stretch our imagination more. To find new adventures just around the corner, and to have the gumption to venture much farther. Not to fill our InstaGram feed or gain subscribers, but to shake loose of the cobwebs of the commonplace and experience the world.

      “Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.” — Henry David Thoreau

      Who ever looks back with pride on a moment when you decided to sleep in instead of dancing with adventure? We ought to consider life an adventure and do more with that notion. We ought to rise and seek more from our days, for we only have so many to work with. We’ve spent time with people on their deathbed who literally can’t go outside to see the stars, who are we to complain about stepping out into the world? Dance with the gift of freedom. Be part of something livelier.

      “Who can guess the luna’s sadness who lives so briefly? Who can guess the impatience of stone longing to be ground down, to be part again of something livelier? Who can imagine in what heaviness the rivers remember their original clarity?
      Strange questions, yet I have spent worthwhile time with them. And I suggest them to you also, that your spirit grow in curiosity, that your life be richer than it is, that you bow to the earth as you feel how it actually is, that we—so clever, and ambitious, and selfish, and unrestrained— are only one design of the moving, the vivacious many.”       — Mary Oliver, The Moth, The Mountains, The Rivers

      We all have our shackles of responsibility and routine. We can bend our days to find adventure while still honoring our core responsibilities. And we should question our routines when they hold our rambunctious spirit in place. Consider, for a moment, that convenience is a shackle disguised as a mindset.

    • A Sunrise Walk on Historic Calf Pasture Beach

      There’s a lot of history lurking in plain sight. Take Calf Pasture Beach in Norwalk, Connecticut. on the surface it’s a pretty municipal beach on Long Island Sound. I suppose that might be enough. But there’s a significant link to the Revolutionary War on this beach. As an eager participant in maximizing the potential of any trip, I’d read about the beach while looking for a good place to watch a sunrise. As a history geek I leapt out of my chair when I learned more about the beach. A sunrise visit became a no-brainer.

      So why the strange name? Calf Pasture Beach was exactly what the name infers. When the first European settlers arrived in 1651, their cattle grazed on the grass just off the beach. Names have a way of sticking, don’t they? But there’s even more history whispering on this beach. On July 10, 1779, British Lieutenant General William Tryon led 2,600 troops on the Revolutionary War raid of Norwalk. They camped right on the peninsula where the beach is located, and the next morning burned most of the town to the ground.

      There’s no sign of British encampments or cows now, just a municipal beach with a fishing pier and bathhouse, a few baseball fields and a large parking lot. The property might have developed into any number of things, from industrial facilities to a housing development. Thankfully it was donated to the city exactly 100 years ago by the Marvin-Taylor family, who had owned the land for generations. That’s a gift that keeps on giving, and I hope Norwalk has something planned for 2022 to commemorate the family.

      All this history lured me to that particular beach for a wonderful sunrise over Long Island Sound. Arriving during magic hour, the sky was lit up in pink, and Sprite Island offered a beautiful contrast with its bare trees. A short walk down the beach brings you to a fishing pier, which offers a different perspective on the sunrise, and a different perspective on the beach itself. This small peninsula feels like it would be a million miles away from the congested I-95 corridor, yet here it is just a few minutes away. It’s funny what you find when you pause to look around a bit. Not every early morning micro-adventure pays off, but this one surely did.

      Sprite Island during the magic hour before sunrise
      Calf Pasture Beach, Norwalk, CT
      Sunrise over Long Island Sound from the Captain William Clark Fishing Pier

    • Ambient Noise

      After a few nights in New York and New Jersey, I returned to New Hampshire to reflect on the differences. I’d hiked in pristine woodland next to gorgeous streams, the kind of stuff you see regularly in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I’d stayed in a beautiful resort surrounded by hills. I’d eaten at a vineyard next to a lovely river. I’d visited New York City itself, deep in the heart of it. And capped my visit to the city with a trip to Liberty Park in New Jersey with its striking Upper Bay view of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.

      It was all beautiful. The days and nights were lovely. The people were generous and friendly. You learn to love the spirit and energy and vibrancy of the place and miss it when you’re away from it. And yet I’ve never gotten used to the ambient noise.

      The Metropolitan New York region has a relentless buzz that stays around you all the time. If you live there you likely don’t even know it exists, but when you’re a country mouse coming to the big city regularly you pick right up on it. The automobile traffic, the air brakes on trucks, the train whistles, the sharp roar of planes and helicopters flying overhead, the steady rumble of ships on the Hudson River and the constant beeps and thumps and shouts of close proximity that collectively create a soundtrack of urban living. This soundtrack bleeds for miles up the Hudson River, far out into the Atlantic on Long Island and deep into the hills of New Jersey and Connecticut. It begins with the roar of the city and fades to the sound of sprawl.

      Hiking the amazing Harriman State Park next to a pristine river, you’d think the white noise would drown it all away. But reach a bit of elevation and you hear the traffic informing you that you must go even deeper into the green splashes that surround the map of New York City. Even Harriman, as big a green space as it is, has roads full of commuters cutting through it, like Central Park in the hills of the Hudson River Valley. Those roads surely serve, but they also detract if you let them. Don’t let them.

      For it’s all so very beautiful. Even the ambient noise, that guarantees no escape from the world, fades just enough when you focus on what they’ve protected from the sprawl. This is a place that offers the advantages and disadvantages of one of the greatest cities in the world, the constant beat of progress and growth and rising to the occasion that New York is famous for. But within an hour are these places like Harriman where you might immerse yourself in nature, so long as you accept the soundtrack playing way in the background and focus on the wind in the trees and the water finding its way through ancient boulder fields.

      The farther away you get from the ambient noise of New York the more faint it is. Somewhere along that spectrum of noise we reach a place where we feel the ambiance most vividly. Life isn’t about escaping from the world, but finding our place in it.

    • Gridlock Perspective

      If you had any doubt that we’ve mentally come out the other side of the pandemic, drive around a few of the metropolitan areas. Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Miami, or any other major city or the connecting smaller cities that they’re connected to. The roadways are all back to gridlock traffic. How some react to that reality is distinctly different. Welcome back–who are we now?

      When traffic is moving, some people dial up the crazy. I see more mad dash drivers than ever trying to squeeze into every pocket, using the breakdown lane for passing, multi-tasking with texting… whatever. It can all seem mad, because it is maddening. So how do we counter the madness outside the windshield?

      When I get tired of the same old characters around me, I’ll pull into a rest area or take an exit to stop for five minutes, whether I need to or not. It’s like moving out of a neighborhood with too much drama—instant refresh! Get out of the car, walk around a bit, refuel the body and mind. And when you get back on the road, the new “neighborhood” seems interesting enough to carry you through.

      I know a lot of people crank up the music on commutes, and sometimes I’ll do that too. But frequently I’ll use the time to reconnect with people using [gasp!] phone calls. Conversations are like time machines, transporting you for miles seemingly in an instant. Likewise, podcast interviews do the same thing for me. The time isn’t wasted, for the mind is moving faster than the car you’re in.

      Nobody welcomes traffic, but when we can’t time our trip better we ought to accept it as a part of living in this particular time. A bit of perspective after what we’ve all been through, and a desire to be in a better place despite it all. After all, aren’t we all trying to get somewhere a bit better than where we just were?

    • A Different Perspective on Liberty

      When you see the Statue of Liberty from the New Jersey side, it feels a bit surreal. We’re all used to that image in our head of the face of Lady Liberty, but how often do we ever think of the back? Yet that’s what New Jersey sees. I recall a joke about Lady Liberty forever turning her back on New Jersey, but let’s flip that script around for what’s really been happening since 1886: New Jersey’s always had her back.

      Liberty Park offers a striking view of Manhattan and Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s bold vision of American liberty. He called his work “Liberty Enlightening the World”. Liberty represents the hopes and dreams of millions, standing exposed to the elements for 13+ decades. 1886 was within the lifetimes of Civil War veterans, think about what that statue meant to them. What it still means, when we look at the world with new perspective.

      Liberty connects generations, and she stoically stands, not just American’s, but for the world. The work was literally a gift from the Old World to the New. We ought to remember the message in the gift. Forget the people trying to co-opt her message for political gain, Liberty represents all of us. When you look at America’s Liberty from New Jersey, you aren’t just looking at it, you’re a part of it. And from that perspective, shouldn’t we all have her back?

    • A Quick Hike Up the Nose

      Let’s get the elephant in the room addressed right off the bat: Anthony’s Nose has an odd name. Here’s one story I came across in Kiddle that describes how it got it:

      “Pierre Van Cortlandt, who owned this mountain, said it was named for a pre-Revolutionary War sea captain, Anthony Hogan. This captain was reputed to have a Cyrano de Bergerac type nose. One of his mates, looking at this mount, as they sailed by it, compared it to that of the captain’s nose. He said that they looked similar in size. This good-natured joke soon spread, and the name Anthony’s Nose stuck to this peak. Washington Irving’s History of New York, a satire, attributes the name to one Antony Van Corlear, who was the trumpeter on Henry Hudson’s ship.”

      Whatever the source, it requires that each hiker now forever able to say they went up Anthony’s Nose. How you feel about that is entirely up to you. For me, the motivation was to see a bridge I hadn’t seen in almost 30 years, get a quick hike in to break up a long drive and get a feel for a stretch of the Hudson River from a hill top.

      There are a few routes up Anthony’s Nose (sorry). The most direct route is a steep granite “staircase” that brings you to your destination relatively quickly. This requires street parking on a busy stretch of road. Alternatively, there are a couple of longer routes to the lookout spot, the one I favored followed the white blazes of the Appalachian Trail. The AT crosses the Bear Mountain Bridge over the Hudson River and meanders up through a final stretch of New York before reaching Connecticut. You might expect a stretch of the AT to be lovely hiking. You’d be correct for this stretch.

      There seems to be a lot of confusion about where the trailhead is for Anthony’s Nose. If you’re going to hike straight up the staircase, you begin at a small deck on the side of the road not far from the bridge. If you’re more interested in a 90 minute round trip hike, take the AT route. The trailhead begins on South Mountain Pass Road, which is a rutted stone dust road for a long stretch. If you’ve got a small sedan you might consider driving in from the Blue Mountain Beacon Highway side, which offers a bit more pavement to work with. Driving a truck, I enjoyed the off-road feel of reaching the trailhead after a few hours of highway driving to get there.

      The key for the trail is to follow the white blazes, which leave an old roadbed a few hundred yards up and begin descending towards a small stream before climbing back along the ridge line. The trail head would benefit from a bit of signage and a map, as one hiker after another asked each other if they were in the right spot. Perhaps a Boy Scout Troop could take it on as a project.

      The hike took 90 minutes round trip. Parts of the trail felt like you were in the middle of the White Mountains, but with glimpses of the Hudson River along the way. There was a bit of traffic buzz in the background, but overall it was a perfect hike to break up a drive from New Hampshire to New Jersey for me, or a short destination hike away from New York City. I’d recommend bringing lunch and soaking up the view.

      Bear Mountain Bridge with it’s namesake rising up behind it

    • Avoiding the Bankruptcy of Life

      “To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea… “cruising” it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.
      “I’ve always wanted to sail to the south seas, but I can’t afford it.” What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of “security.” And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine – and before we know it our lives are gone.
      What does a man need – really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in – and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all – in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention for the sheer idiocy of the charade.
      The years thunder by, The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.
      Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life? ”
      ― Sterling Hayden, Wanderer

      Hayden chose the opposite of a comfortable routine, breaking from a lucrative Hollywood career and a failed marriage, he took his four kids and sailed to the South Pacific. Some might demonize this act of defiance as irresponsible. For why would someone give up “everything” and let it all ride on one spin of the roulette wheel? The question, really, is about what you’re risking. Status and reputation? Or a steady paycheck to cover the mortgage?

      I know this debate. I have it often with others. Life is full of compromise and the occasional break from the routine. Isn’t it? But should it be all or nothing? Is there a place for measured discipline to live side-by-side with an adventurous spirit? Is there a place for the routine traverse sprinkled with small delights, or must we choose?

      I wander about in graveyards now and then. This isn’t a morbid fascination with death, but a visit with those who once lived. Two of my favorite graveyards are both named Sleepy Hollow. The one in Concord, Massachusetts has some of the great transcendentalist writers in history interred there—Thoreau and Emerson. The one in Sleepy Holly, New York has Washington Irving and a bunch of formerly rich people interred there. Most of the rich people build huge monuments for themselves, most of the creative types have modest headstones. It’s like a shout from the grave: “See? I once mattered!” The thing is, they’re all part of the infinity now. How they lived is gone, but for their legacy. And so it will be for you and me.

      Somewhere between the routine traverse of life and the bold adventure of throwing it all away in favor of a life of challenges lies a happy medium. To be present but to be bold. To make choices that stretch your limits of comfort and bend your routine. To feel the urgency of now, and live while there’s still time, but to do it in a way that keeps you present for those who need you the most. And that’s the trick—isn’t it?

    • Learning a Language With Apps, Habits and a Deadline

      With a bit of travel coming up and a keen desire to be able to hold up my end of the bargain in a conversation, I’ve doubled down on my use of language learning apps recently. My primary method of learning to this point was Duolingo, which aims to make learning a language fun with a game-like structure, characters who you either learn to love or do your best to ignore, and a methodology that “align[s] with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), which describes what learners can do with the language at different proficiency levels.” Nice.

      Duolingo advertises themselves as a free app, and you can definitely use the app free so long as you don’t mind putting up with the advertising. It didn’t take long for me to find the ads frustrating and just pay for the add-free version (mission accomplished). If you’re going to spend any amount of time on the app it’s worth the $60 USD per year for the Duolingo Plus Individual Plan. If you use it every day it works out to $.16 cents per day. Manageable.

      I’ve managed a streak of 767 days sprinkled with the help of a few “streak freeze”protections along the way when I’ve been traveling or simply didn’t get to it. I’m a big believer in maintaining streaks for habit formation, and have tried to check the language learning box every day for a couple of years now. What I’ve found is that as learning has become more habitualized in my routine using the app just takes care of itself.

      I feel that Duolingo does well in teaching reading comprehension, but I’ve found myself lost in rapid-fire conversations with native French, German and Portuguese speakers (the three languages I’ve focused on with this app). I felt like something was missing with Duolingo, and began looking around at other apps to supplement my daily learning. And that’s when I came across Pimsleur. If Duolingo falls short in one area, it’s in keeping up in conversation with native speakers. Pimsleur uses a couple of tricks to help with this. First, they structure learning modules around a specific conversation, using four tricks to help you understand a conversation that might have overwhelmed you when you first heard it:

      “Graduated Interval Recall — a scientifically-sequenced and proven schedule which moves the items you learn from short-term to long-term memory.
      Anticipation — by “anticipating” the answer to each question, your brain is actively learning and developing new neural connections.
      Core Vocabulary — The Pimsleur Method teaches the most common words and grammatical structures so you can start speaking immediately … in a meaningful way.
      Organic Learning — you learn grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation in context using conversational exchanges — just as you learned your first language, but with the added benefit of a method scientifically-proven to accelerate learning in the adult brain.”

      I’m still using the unpaid version of Pimsleur, focusing specifically on German with it, and I find it beneficial. The graduated interval recall and anticipation jump out at me as being really helpful. I found myself inserting the right word or phrase more often than not, and the way they break down the phrase for you makes it easier to leap forward conversationally. But it is a conversation, so you can’t just quietly sit in a room with others while using the app if you want to learn to speak, you’ve got to talk. This is powerful, but it also requires that you carve out a time and place for it (I don’t anticipate using Pimsleur on my next flight, but I’ll surely use it while driving).

      When combining Pimsleur with Duolingo, you can effectively “immerse” yourself in a language if you put enough time into it. Sure, nothing beats true immersion for learning anything, but let’s face it: most of us have day jobs. Combining the two competing apps seems to be the right formula for me.

      The essential ingredient in any learning tool is focus and commitment—actually using the tools to learn. That’s where habit streaks and deadlines help you become focused. I’m happy just to keep the streak going every day, but I really feel more urgency to learn German knowing I have a trip to Austria and Germany locked in. And French doesn’t get a pass now—I’m sticking with the routine of learning both French and German (sorry Portuguese), and plan to book some time in either France or Quebec soon to dial up the urgency with French too.

      The Holy Trinity of habits, the right tools and the urgency of a deadline bring focus to the task. For nothing focuses the mind like the possibility of being hopelessly lost in conversation. We ought to hold up our end of it instead of expecting the world to just switch to English. Êtes-vous d’accord? (Ja, ich stimme zu)

    • What Do We Make Of This Texture?

      “What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek… The texture of space is a condition of time. Time is the warp and matter the weft of the woven texture of beauty in space, and death is the hurtling shuttle.”
      — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

      “Every religion that does not affirm that God is hidden,” said Pascal flatly, “is not true.” What is man, that thou art mindful of him? This is where the great modern religions are so unthinkably radical: the love of God! For we can see that we are as many as the leaves of trees. But it could be that our faithlessness is a cowering cowardice born of our very smallness, a massive failure of imagination. Certainly nature seems to exult in abounding radicality, extremism, anarchy. If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn’t believe the world existed. In nature, improbabilites are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe. If creation had been left up to me, I’m sure I wouldn’t have had the imagination or courage to do more than shape a single, reasonably sized atom, smooth as a snowball, and let it go at that. No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe. The question from agnosticism is, Who turned on the lights? The question from faith is, Whatever for?” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

      At some point a month or two ago I gently put aside Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. It was right around when things got very busy, when bad news began to stack up around me like junk mail, when processing the deeper concepts behind Annie Dillard’s words became a bit more than I wanted to tackle at the moment. Everything has its time.

      Yet the questions remained.

      What do we make of all this texture? Every ridge line traversed, every waterfall’s mist tickling our skin, every deep conversation with another, every swim in a salty bay, and every sunrise glimpsed are but texture to our lives. But then again, so is every mosquito bite. It’s all so damned far-fetched, and yet here we are.

      I have a sister who is firmly in the God camp. I’m more skeptical of the Hallmark version of a loving God moving the world around like so many chess pieces. We both know life isn’t fair and throws you a curveball now and then to keep you on your toes. We just happen to disagree about “who” is winding up to throw it. And yet we peacefully coexist in both the universe and family dinners—we just don’t question each other’s beliefs.

      It’s easy to be outraged by the other side of the coin. They’re tossing around beliefs that just don’t jibe with our world views. Yet we’re the same coin. It’s fair to ask both “Who turned on the lights?” and “Whatever for?” We’re all asking our version of What’s It All About Alfie? Who said that we are ever meant to know the answers?

      Thankfully, we aren’t alone in pondering the imponderables; as with Dillard and Bacharach framing the questions in this post, we may draw on the wisdom of the ages at any time. Philosophy doesn’t answer the questions for you, but it does help you structure those questions better. We only have our short time to dance with the mysteries of the universe, and will never have all the answers.

      And yet… we get so caught up in the “who, what and why” questions that we forget to ask: How do we make the most of our present condition? For the universe only asks us to live in our time. You come to appreciate the tapestry of life a lot more when you learn to weave yourself into it and let the questions fall away.