Letters from Temagami

To Ellen:

I write to you from Toronto. Didn't sleep at all last night - had a script to finish, and was too tense. Had to do so much packing, four heavy suitcases and four carry-ons, because Peter's going to be in Canada for 7 weeks and needs a ton of books (one suitcase) and pills (another), and his sleep apnea machine takes most of another suitcase! Yet we had to cram in winter clothes and boots too.

The flight was smooth, 4 1/2 hours to Toronto, and we ate Godmother Italian sandwiches I'd brought along from our local Italian deli for lunch on the plane. I couldn't read or write or do anything useful; just dozed. We got in about 8 PM and by the time we cleared Customs and got our luggage and our rental car (a little Toyota), and followed the complicated directions in a new car on dicey speedy strange highways, we didn't get to my cousins' house until 9:30 PM. But what a warm, delightful welcome it was. My first cousin Tim and his wife Mary, now in their 80s, came to see us at their son Frank's house where we're staying. Frank, a negotiator with the city, and his wife, Jane, who works at the University of Toronto, have a wonderful Victorian house with eight bedrooms, three storeys, full of her lovely paintings of their own cabin in the Muskoka woods. Frank has found a treasure in Jane, who is warm and bright and wonderful. They spread out lovely Toronto bagels and bread, cold cuts and plumcake brought by Mary, and we talked until midnight. Now Peter and I are in our own "suite" on the first floor, two bedrooms and bath and broadband! I daresay we won't be in such luxury in Temagami! But first thing next morning, we set out and hit the high road for adventure, driving 300 miles north. The leaves are said to be at their flaming peak, and we should see Lake Temagami and "our" cabin by late afternoon!



Jane, Frank, and me

We're loving our visit so far but Peter and I have observed that we don't feel "grown up" compared to other people. Frank and Jane really know how to do things; in Peter's words we are butterfly or grasshopper people. We're just not serious somehow, except about reading or writing; I suppose we're like the dotty old bohemian auntie and uncle of times past. Our cousins don't, however, seem to think us a bit odd at all for having this Temagami adventure. It seems bizarrely off the wall to people at home, but here, so many people have "cottage country" cabins. Yet I can't deny that it *is* strange to go for nearly two months to a cabin, unseen, belonging to somebody only vaguely known from the internet!

To the Dove Grey Books online list:

It's beautiful here at Lake Temagami, Northern Ontario. A golden autumnal day, the thermometer out the kitchen window says 68, the lake is shining blue, and the fat Maine coon cat is sleeping on the sun porch. Richard, our host, has gone back to Toronto to his work (he's a lovely Englishman exactly Peter's age, a theater designer), after telling us all we need to know about the house. And now we have the lovely place all to ourselves.









You'll wonder how we wound up here. I know Richard's wife Claire from the Girls Own online list; she lives up here year round. Richard lives mostly at their house in Toronto, where he's based while doing his theater design work. Claire is on the town council up here and she and Richard have the contract to remodel and operate the train station, which has been restored to look as it might have done originally, in 1906: http://www.mytemagami.ca/station.asp

Claire, in her 50s, was accepted at the University of Edinburgh to do her Ph.D. (I'll get this wrong, but it's in something like "Canadian Wilderness in Victorian Children's Literature). She and I had noticed each other's posts on the list and found we had wilderness interests in common, so when she was heading for Edinburgh, she wrote and asked if I'd like to come stay in her cabin during the semester, as I have the kind of job that can be done anywhere? I couldn't, but Peter, who is politically obsessed to the point where this year's madness was sending him off into frightful depression, was talking about leaving the country. He wanted to go to Singapore or Thailand for a couple of months to get away from the election, but I didn't think his health is really up to that, not to mention finances, and so it struck me: why not put him in this beautiful cabin in Northern Ontario? A bold move, but it might be just the thing. And now, we've only been here overnight, but he is so happy reading in the enclosed porch with the lovely lake view, he already says he thinks this was an inspired idea and is so glad I've arranged it!






This morning I made bacon-and-eggs, Lord Peter style (for some reason it sounds even more delicious with the hyphens). Then I drove to The Bookshop on the Highway, about thirty miles north, a wonderful old labyrinthine secondhand bookshop in a barnlike building, rather resembling the late Acres of Books in Los Angeles. It's weird to see such a really huge old bookstore out in the middle of nowhere. The very elderly owners have run it for over 50 years, and they sit there all day till 10 PM seven days a week with their black cat. The books are mostly Canadiana, but there's lots of stuff from all eras; the prices aren't that low, so I only bought Christian's Mistake by Miss Mulock. Claire advised me to introduce myself to the owners, and when I did, the old man insisted on showing me something, and hobbled way to the back of the store. There was a connecting passage to a warehouse, and I was absolutely staggered to find myself in a mammoth barn that was three times the size of the already enormous store! Like a "young cathedral," as Lord Peter (again) put it. Bizarrely, the warehouse books are totally unsorted - they've only been scanned in for internet sale, and each has a number, that's it. They're not even minimally sorted by subject or alphabet. Too big a job, a nightmare! It sort of took my breath away.



Bookshop on the Highway

Then I drove back to the glorious cabin, windows looking out on the gleaming lake. Last night Richard made a fire in the stone circle right outside by the lake, and we ate dinner by the fire, looking at the dark lake and the stars. Peter is mellowing out, forgetting about the horrible election, and bonding gingerly with the bereaved cat, Touquet or Tookie (Richard had to take its very sick fellow, Bear, to the vet to be put to sleep today).

Peter's poem on Twocat:

In all her grandeur, Twocat, cat of cats,
Surveys her realm -- this from a feline eyrie;
Then, like an empress, stately, makes her way
From matchless view to her prosaic dish.



To Paul:

News Bulletin: There is no outhouse! That was a most elaborate leg pull. When just before we left, Claire wrote, "Did I mention there is an outhouse?" I thought she meant ONLY an outhouse, and the Girls Own list took up the joke, informing me that I'd have to use leaves, etc. In truth, there IS an old outhouse on the property, but also two shining new modern bathrooms!



The Outhouse


Before leaving Toronto, we had a nice leisurely breakfast with my cousins Frank and Jane in their lovely Victorian house (excellent Toronto bagels), and set out at 11 AM, driving the 300 miles north. The first half of the day it rained steadily, but it's a major highway all the way up, with brilliant red trees on both sides. We stopped at Huntsville for lunch - this is a pretty, twee sort of town in the middle of "cottage country" where many Torontonians have old family cabins on the many lakes, in the Muskoka region. Once past there, the area thins out and becomes more and more like Alaska - rough and wild. The rain stopped, sun came out and lit up the red trees. We drove through North Bay, a city of 50,000 on the bay, the biggest town in the region, about 50 miles from Temagami. Then it was a narrower laned road to Temagami and we reached the cabin at about 5 PM. It is ten times more beautiful than we expected, or than the pictures showed. Built in the 1920s, remodeled about 10 years ago, it's all spruce wood paneling inside, a real showcase. It's right on its own private lake (well, there's one other house a few hundred yards away, down another road, where Mary, a nurse, and Bud her husband live, but that's it), and is the most magically serene place. We were instantly enchanted. Richard welcomed us; it was his birthday and his lovely sister Jane came over, she's helping run the train station while Claire is in Edinburgh. We had dinner in the Chinese restaurant (not bad, but overpriced; we won't do that again), and then shopped for food at the excellent supermarket. There are dozens of decent frozen dinners Peter can stock up on.



The town of Temagami, pop. 700





Peter won't be able to walk to town, or get food on his own. It's too far, must be nearly 2 miles, and it's along the highway with the giant trucks - not good. But Richard will be here next weekend and from time to time, and there are several neighbors (Mary, and Shelley, the librarian) who've said they'd be willing to give Peter lifts to the store now and then. It's not a social place, there's no coffeeshop or social center, so Peter's not likely to spend any time in town. From what Richard says, there are some eccentric residents (so we won't be out of place) and they keep to their own privacy. However, being a small town, they do help each other out, doing pharmacy runs to North Bay and so on. Fortunately, the house is far more comfortable and luxurious than we expected, and very self-sufficient, so Peter will be happy to spend nearly all his time here. He's going to love it!




We're looking forward to exploring the area tomorrow, starting with a mining town called Cobalt, and I'm going to show Peter "the bookstore on the highway." The weather is WARM, low 70s during the day, I'm wearing a T-shirt and am sorry I brought so many sweaters! The beautiful lake is utterly fresh and clear with colors and reflections; the golden trees and green pines all around, are stunning and smell so nice.









To Ellen:

"Some are born to cabins, some achieve cabins and some have cabins thrust upon 'em." I was amused by your saying that I "have friends equipped with cabins." Maybe it's that I tend to make friends because they have cabins? Perhaps that's not very nice, but it is just as easy to like somebody with a cabin as somebody without one. Last time I pursued somebody with a cabin, I was attracted by the address of a Jane Austen Society member who lived in Lone Pine near Mt. Whitney. I wrote to her (this was before email), we corresponded, and Trudy became a most beloved friend. Her husband Alex Saxton was a history professor emeritus from UCLA and they'd retired to the mountains. They loved hiking and Peter and I visited them often - they had a glorious house in the foothills. Trudy died at 80, several years ago, and I haven't heard from Alex in a long time, so he may be gone now too. It was a lovely friendship, they were my role model for getting old, and I only sought her out in the first place because I thought she lived in a nice place to visit! But it turned into much more than that.

Oddly, in this instance, it really wasn't "my" networking; I didn't pursue Claire's cabin, she was actually the seeker. We weren't close friends and have never met - we've exchanged maybe 20 emails. But it's a fact that she wanted somebody to occupy the cabin and we wanted to occupy it! Claire tells me that she thought, reading about my writing and Peter's poetry and our hiking pictures, that we were "harmless"!






To the Piffle online list:

Here Peter and I sit on a beautiful golden autumn day at Lake Temagami, Northern Ontario. The thermometer out the kitchen window says 68, the lake is blue, and the cat is sleeping on the sun porch. Richard, our host, has gone back to Toronto to his work - he works hard, driving the 300 miles between Toronto and Temagami often, between his theater jobs and managing the railroad station up here. This morning he had to drive his sick cat to the vet, and called later to sadly say that Bear had had to be put down, though they'd been expecting it. Only Tookie, the Maine Coon cat is left, but he is old and fat and is coping comfortably, seeming to have little affection for anybody or any other cat.

This afternoon we'll go to the library, to meet the lady who may be going to give Peter lifts into town after I leave. The library is only open three hours in the afternoon! (Temagami's population is only 700.) And we'll have another drive to The Bookshop on the Highway. (Later) We drove through Cobalt, the picturesque little mining town, and went as far as New Liskeard, the larger town (pop. 15,000) forty miles north of Temagami, where, in a little cafe called Euphoria, Peter was pleased to find the best iced latte smoothie he's ever tasted.






To Ellen:

It's raining today and the house is cozier than ever. We're still "at" the lake even though indoors; the sun porch at the front of the cabin is *all* windows, and our two desks face on the lake. You look up from your laptop and book, and there is the shining sheet of water, changing every minute. It's just us and the cat. Peter considers her bereaved, and makes efforts to console her.

Peter does not want to hear one single thing about what is going on in the world, lest it set off his obsession and depression again. So I have not told him how the bailout was voted down, or about the huge crash. I'm not used to knowing things I can't talk to him about. It's one thing "not to talk" about politics or world events when nothing much is going on, but it's really weird to have HUGE events going on and not mention them!

I'm working on writing a guest blog for the Jane Austen "Austenprose" website; I'm going to "review" the two versions of Northanger Abbey in the voice of Isabella Thorpe. I'm watching the 2007 version on YouTube in the wilderness (isn't technology amazing?), to refresh my memory of it, and I watched the 1986 before leaving home. So I can dream up something to say as Isabella - so far I have no opinion on the darn things whatsoever. I so dislike the films, the pretty images mean nothing to me. I'm re-reading the book, which is much more likely to spark ideas and help me imitate her style. I think I'll treat both the movies as "horrid novels," that's what. Gothically garbagey.








To Claire:

Just wanted to tell you that we are settling in nicely and are very comfortable. Peter loves it here, it's heavenly, and your house is really his dream house! Yesterday was golden autumn sunshine, today it mostly rained, but then it was cozy in the house. We're reading and internetting and watching the cat. We're very sorry about Bear - it's very sad for you and Richard to lose such an old friend. We'd only just met, but she was a most gentle cat. The other one is doing fine. The first day we thought she looked a little lost, but today she has advanced to boldly come right out and sit in the middle of the living room floor, and when we were cooking dinner she sat in the kitchen purring loudly. Purring is good. Peter perceives her as bereaved and lonely, and is making extra efforts at cooing to her and patting her head. She's eating and drinking well, and as Richard truly said, she likes mushrooms.

I've been to the library and met Shelley, who's lovely and will be helpful in giving Peter lifts home; the walk is definitely too far for him especially as it gets cold, so we'll call Romeo the taxi driver tomorrow to see what the deal is with him. [He wanted $20 for a four minute, one-way drive: never mind.] Peter will only need to go to the supermarket once a week or so. Otherwise, he's very contented here with his books. It's all a long way from your cosmopolitan life in Edinburgh! Now I know what you mean about being used to having a whole house, lake, and the bush to yourself. It's getting chilly and I don't think we'll be doing any boating, but I can see that the great glory of Temagami must be canoeing...


To Piffle:

It's a cool grey day at Lake Temagami - I'm sitting with my laptop on the enclosed sun porch, which runs across the whole front of the cabin, a long narrow wood-paneled room with nine windows looking out at the lake, which is about twenty feet away. Temp. is 48 by the thermometer outside the window, I've just got up and think I'll make myself some bacon-and-eggs. Maybe drive into town and climb the fire tower today, and perhaps another little journey to the Bookshop on the Highway this evening...I do love these lazy days and wish I could stay here the whole six remaining weeks of Peter's stay!

(Later) We drove out to the Temagami Fire Tower, the grand Eiffel Tower of this burg. It was our hosts who renovated it (along with the railroad station), and we've been urged to climb the thing. I probably will, but it's a loooong way up. I think Piffle is in serious need of a Virtual Tour of the Lake Temagami Fire Tower, which is on this website. There are also more pictures of the Temagami Tower than you might imagine. The leaves of course are much yellower now than in these pictures: http://www.temagamivacation.com/firetwr.htm

There really are not a lot of sightseeing attractions in this area. We went for a drive on some tiny little winding dirt roads through the White Bear forest (or whatever it's called), signs indicate they're ski trails, but they were driveable, and it was like hiking through the woods, though in a very little car.


To the Armchair Travelling online list:

I'm surprised to see so many flowers still in your gardens, Britt-Arnhild [in Norway] and Roz [in England]. I wonder if I'm farther north even than Britt-Arnhild is. Here in Northern Ontario where I'm sojourning, there's only a clump of yellow flowers sort of like black-eyed Susans in the garden, and a few dying marigolds and snapdragons, and one last pansy clinging to life. There was a little sleet last night, the temperature got down to 38. This afternoon it's been raining a bit and is still barely 40 degrees.









I wonder if you can imagine the delighted feeling I have in sharing my "garden conditions" with you! Normally, you know, I live in a city apartment, by the beach it's true, but with no garden, and virtually no weather change. (Though they've been having a heat wave in Santa Monica, it's been 90 degrees there, I hear.) I really think the greatest pleasure of my whole trip here is watching the weather change, from rain to gleams of sunshine over the lake, the temperature dropping, and noticing which flowers are still hanging on. I can't have it year round, but it makes the loveliest of vacations, quite different from staying at a hotel.

Journal:

Got up around 11 - stepped outside on the cool grass. Today it was sometimes raining, sometimes silvery shafts of sunshine, much cooler than before: never got much over 40. Had scrambled eggs and toasted bagel, delicious Canadian eggs and butter. Did email, read, relaxed...Peter didn't want to go anywhere so I went out, went to the supermarket to get pasta and a sausage sauce for dinner; stopped at the gift shop and got a magenta Temagami T-shirt; and visited Richard's sister Jane who was manning the railroad station. There's an excursion train called Dream Catcher Express that does trips for four fall weekends where people from Toronto and North Bay come up to see the leaves, and this makes a lot of work for Richard and his staff; there can be 150 visitors at a time. Jane is lovely, and has had an interesting career - worked for the BBC in England and was a house mistress at Harrow, but she married a Canadian and emigrated. Richard evidently followed her and fell in love with the canoeing! Though he actually met Claire in London where they were doing theatre work. Been married almost as long as me and Peter.




Temagami Railroad Station

When I got home I called Betty the station accountant, and she explained that, when mail comes for Peter, the postmistress will bring it to the railroad station, and the librarian will let him know it's there! Later Peter and I went to the supermarket and bought staples for while I'm away. When we got back the cat acted up. Pooped on the floor, then when we were cleaning it up, she snarled and leaped at Peter, like a monster out of The Exorcist! Guess she's not so calm and bonded after all, but she soon quieted down. I called next door neighbor Mary, who seems very kind and will look out for Peter. As I was cooking the pasta, Richard arrived for the weekend and his marathon train station work.

The weather has turned just in the week I've been here; from golden Indian summer, it's now chilly. Before, the lake twenty feet from the door summoned me out irresistibly; now it's just too cold to want to sit by it. So this morning I put the kettle on and made a monstrous breakfast - lovely Canadian scrambled eggs with buttered toast and a kipper! And lots and lots of tea. Then I settled down to read Miss Read's Village School. Somehow I've never managed to get into her before, thought it too nothing-happening, but this one is a delight. Perhaps it's simply that my life has slowed down enough here, at Lake Temagami, rather than racing around Los Angeles like a furious ferret in a cage, that I can appreciate a quiet sort of book.


To Laurel Ann of Austenprose:

Here is my Northanger Abbey piece, Laurel Ann, only it is too LONG, I know, more like 2000 words. If you want me to cut it, let me know.

http://austenprose.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/go-gothic-with-northanger-abbey-guest-blogger-isabella-thorpe-chats-about-horrid-movies/

I never want to leave Temagami. This is the way to live, in a beautiful luxurious cabin with windows looking out onto the lake, and nothing to do. Pure heaven! But I do leave Sunday, and will spend a couple of days in Toronto with friends and family. Peter gets 6 weeks more here. He doesn't drive, but we've met the neighbors and the librarian, lovely folks. Honestly? I now see how I'd like to live when/if I ever retire. A cabin on a lake, nothing to do but read.

This morning I got up late, fed the cat, made myself bacon and scrambled eggs and wheat toast with Canadian butter, and tea. Then I drove to the Temagami Fire Tower. Of course rain started again, and I'd been trying to find a moment when it *wasn't* raining, to climb it, but never mind: it's my last full day here, so now was the hour. A few tourists from the Dreamcatchers Express were there too, so it was safer than being alone. Tower is 100 feet high, though on a 400-foot hill called Caribou Mountain, that's the highest point on Highway 11, so you do get a great view all around. Climbing the winding narrow metal stairs while the tower swayed was definitely quite frightening and vertiginous. The last bit was a stepladder: pulling myself up that while swaying high above the ground was the worst! But I did it, and stood on the viewing platform taking pictures and chatting to a man from some small town near Waterloo where he's an auto mechanic; his young wife was too scared to make the climb. We talked about trees and he actually said "Eh?" a lot, which I hadn't heard before. Then back home to wake up Peter and make him iced coffee, scrambled eggs and toast, as he won't have the luxury of someone to make anything for him for another five weeks!




Temagami Fire Tower

I realized how far I've become Temagamized. When I first saw the website pictures of the fire tower, I thought, "oh right, that town is so nothing, they make a big deal about a *fire tower*? Yes, well." But now, after only a week, climbing the fire tower has become major important drama and truly a high point of the journey! So I've quieted down into a proper Temagamic state of mind. I forgot that Richard designed it, though, when I told him it was scary to climb because it swayed ("It's supposed to sway!" he exclaimed), and how hard it was to get up the stepladder at the top. "But I *had* to make it that way, you can't have winding metal stairs that narrow at the top!" he protested, very truly. But I am as much a Temagamist and fire tower denizen as any one of them, now.



Lake Temagami from top of Fire Tower





Yes, I'm really sad to leave Temagami. I've been to more beautiful places - it's not as smashingly spectacular as the Canadian Rockies for instance - but it has a quiet beauty, and I've never felt more at home anywhere in the world than in this wonderful cabin. Perhaps it's partly because when we travel to glorious places, we usually stay at lodges or inns or hotels. I always thought I preferred that because you don't have to cook or fuss, but the amount of "work" involved in making scrambled eggs for breakfast and grilling a steak at dinnertime is nothing. And we have this unbelievably comfortable peaceful feeling of *living* here that I've hardly ever felt before. I'll hope to come back.




To Cathy:

I'm still at Lake Temagami, and I've never been sorrier to leave a place. It feels more like home than home! So peaceful and just the way to live. To quietly sit and play on the internet (broadband makes all the difference in living in a remote place) or read a leisurely kind of book, while glancing at the lake every few minutes...and fix myself a leisurely breakfast...and to step out to breathe the sweet smelling cool air and new mown grass, and stand by the lake some more...and maybe take a little drive to explore...oh it's so peaceful! Such a lovely way of life, just beautiful, I seem to need it on some primal level. I hate the idea of being back in LA again with the traffic and crowds and ugliness. But leave I must, driving down to Toronto tomorrow to stay with my cousins for two nights. It's also awfully sad to leave Peter, though I know he'll be very comfortable here, and it's the best thing for him. We've stocked the house with food, he knows how to work everything, he's had microwave instruction and knows how to put the garbage in plastic bags. He's been introduced to the neighbors and a librarian, he knows where the clinic is, and Richard will be back in two weeks. Peter likes to be alone, and will concentrate on his work and can completely ignore the ghastly election rigamarole here. All he has to do is sit at his desk reading and writing and looking out over the water. He won't watch TV; the local papers, even if he sees the outside of one, are about nothing but local events. The people don't talk about the American elections at all, we might be on another planet. I even changed his AOL "Welcome" screen to SPANISH so he won't see any disturbing headlines! How's that!

I'll be home late Tuesday night.













To Piffle:

Had a lovely solo drive down from Temagami, stopped at a maple sugar shack and bought maple sugar, then had a nice lunch in Huntsville, and got to my cousins' place around 4. Then Figments picked me up and drove me to her wonderful house, which I have always loved so, for its bookish academic Victorian world-traveler atmosphere. Her lovely husband Marty and sweet son Moses were there. Shayna arrived bearing lovely food: a delicious tuna fish, raddicchio, little-corn first course, and salmon latkes; Jane arrived breathing kindness and humor, fresh off the plane from Japan. We ate at Figments' beautiful table, finishing with fresh organic strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, and cookies, and we discussed the American Presidential Election in all its gruesomeness; Peter's escape from it to Temagami; Jane's trip to Japan and upcoming trip to Bouchercon; her funny daughters who played a CD of cats singing for a bemused Shayna; Shayna's and Figments' Torah studies; comparison of provisions for the homeless in Toronto (bad) and Santa Monica (worse); and assorted travel anecdotes.

Dear Vicar of Piffle comments: "Enjoy the Duke [of York pub]! It was my 'local' when I was at Trinity (just behind the ROM) and the site of my 50th birthday bash.

We had a wonderful time at the Duke of York, one of the most delightful pifflefests I've ever enjoyed. The Duke happens to be literally around the corner from the condo where my cousins live, so convenient, and the pifflefest was total bubbly fun! Lynne and I screeched and burbled with excitement on meeting each other in person after having been piffle friends for quite a few years now. Each exclaimed that the other was exactly as she expected (we have seen many pictures of each other) and we knew each other instantly; it did NOT feel like meeting a new person, as meeting online friends sometimes does. Only the accents were new; Lynne sounded a touch English, and she thought I was identifiable as New York but softened by years of California and English influences. A lovely Tasmanian friend, Fran, that Lynne knows from another list, the Moldies, was there, and Colin, Lynne's delightful husband, came too, and her two daughters, Eryl and Bryn, whose puckish and witty sense of humor reminded me of no one on earth so much as Just Jane's unforgettably delightful daughters. Oh dear, we did laugh and scream and drank cider and ate pub food - the pifflefest was, as Jane Austen says, "perfect, in being only too short." We took some funny pictures of us all, Lynne and Eryl clowning around with some Venetian beadolini, but who could catch the stream of pifflechatter enough to put it in a letter?


Journal:

Sun. Oct. 5

Didn't sleep much - anxious - up by 8:30 and went out to look at misty lake with Richard who asked if Peter knew about calling 911 for emergency, which was not reassuring in his opinion of how Peter looks! He showed me a beaver streak in the water and you could just see the little brown head. Had scrambled eggs and toasted bagel, said goodbye to the lake...and left, hitting Highway 11 at 10:15 AM. Nice day, some sunshine, some rain as usual. 5 degrees in Temagami, 15 by the time I got to Toronto. (That's a variation from 41F to 59F.) Nice easy driving except for some insane Canadian tailgaters. I say insane because they tailgate when there is absolutely nothing you can *do* to go faster, you're right behind some other car, and their being on your bumper can't possibly make you speed up any! This is the only negative characteristic of Canadian drivers I've seen. Otherwise, they're very speed-and-law abiding, and the radar system means hardly anyone goes over 120 (80), unlike on US freeways; but this tailgating habit is harrowing, stupid and dangerous.

Stopped at the Maple Sugar Shack on the highway and bought some really superior maple sugar, looked around at the pioneer buildings and lovely red leaves, for a break. I reached Huntsville by 1 PM, which is pretty much the halfway point, parked, gassed up, and had lunch at the same place Peter and I did on the way in, little Italian restaurant on the twee main street called The Little Place (twee: the bathrooms are called The Little Place for Men and The Little Place for Women). Had a nice tuna melt on focaccia and a cappuccino the size of a soup bowl which gave me energy for the rest of the trip. I was in the outskirts of Toronto before I even expected to be there, and Cousin Mary's meticulous instructions for getting into town and finding their house were excellent. I reached their condo on Prince Arthur Avenue at 4:15, and that's with taking an hour out for Maple Sugar and lunch, five hours' drive for 310 miles. Since Richard typically takes 4 and a half hours and he goes back and forth constantly, I knew that was pretty good.

I relaxed and visited with my dear cousins in their lovely condo, and then had the Pifflefest with Figments, Shayna and Jane. I truly love all three of these piffle-ladies, and the fest couldn't have been warmer and lovelier, but there was some anti-American and political talk that rather got me down. Everyone in Canada is for Obama, as far as I can tell, if he was running here he'd get 100% of the vote. But it was depressing hearing about arrogant American Pifflers, how America's economy is finished, how it's too bad Canada can't detach from America and join the EU, how Obama's people are doing wonderful work in Florida convincing the people that he loves the Jews...well, I kept quiet. But it made me suspect that I might not really be altogether happy living in Toronto...



Jane, me and Figments

At 8:30 Jane kindly drove me and Shayna home; Tim and Mary were waiting for me, and their daughter my dear cousin Elizabeth came over to see me. I was feeling shattered and exhausted but had a warm and wonderful conversation with Elizabeth, whom I love and haven't seen in some years, since we worked together on our Winnie books.

Mon. Oct. 6. Got some good sleep, but still tired. Tim and Mary suggested I return the rental car today, and it could be dropped off at the Eaton Centre. So Mary and I did that, and then went by subway to the Textile Museum. This was surprisingly rather disappointing; I'd anticipated seeing interesting textiles, but this was a political harangue in disguise as a museum. There was an exhibit of somebody's drawings of people dying in Afghanistan, an exhibit of war medals, and another exhibit of Afghani hangings which incorporated helicopters, bombs and other modern weapons. I got the message, but didn't really *want* to be hit over the head with a message, so I let off steam by writing pointed critical comments in the comments box! Mary and I took the subway back to Prince Arthur, and my next engagement was a mini-Piffle-fest just around the corner at the Duke of York pub, with a long time piffle friend, Lynne, whom I'd never seen in person before.



Eryl, me, and Lynne at the Duke of York




Lynne and Bryn

After a very jolly time with lots of laughs, cider, and pub eats, I rejoined Tim and Mary at 6:30 and they took me to a really lovely Japanese restaurant where we met their daughter Katie, her husband Ian, and son Casey, 17. I'd not spent much time with them before, but was able to talk with Katie and enjoyed the Japanese food very much, a sushi appetizer and a scallop and fried rice dish that they grilled spectacularly at the table.




Japanese Restaurant: Mary, Katie, me, Tim, Casey, Ian

Back at the condo, Mary showed me her wonderful old photos of Peace River, where she was born in 1923; her mother was the first woman sheriff in Canada and these are wonderfully historic photos of another place and time. She also has a beautiful painting of the region. Just before I turned in, I checked email and got a letter from Peter's former neurologist asking if I really thought it was safe to leave him, in his depressed condition and with the financial markets tanking, alone in a remote Canadian cabin? Implication being that I was thoughtlessly abandoning him to possible death. As I was already 300 miles from him and flying back to California next morning, the timing could not have been worse. I don't suppose she meant it the way it sounded, but really...



Peace River

I could barely sleep after that, but got up at 9, and then Mary and I drove (well, Mary drove, and wonderfully well too, considering she is actually 85, hard though that is to believe) to a meeting of her University of Toronto arts group, visiting the home of a woman who's a masterly weaver. The weaver lived in a pretty house in Mississauga, a Toronto suburb, which was full of her lovely hangings and table runners and place mats and blankets and looms. Only four other group members were there, and all were over 80, but very lively, lovely, cheerful, interesting women, a real inspiration and model for one's old age: that's the way to be! A good part of their lives have centered around cottages in lake country north of Toronto - Mary has belonged to a group of fellow women painters who've been meeting for half a century, with many visits to one another's woodsy cottages, to celebrate their lives and painting. It's deeply lovely to page through her beautiful albums of their meetings and their paintings, though rather sad, as only four of them are still left. The cottages are mostly in Muskoka, near Huntsville where I stopped for lunch, not far from Algonquin Park, but quite different from Temagami. The Muskoka region is much more populated, and extremely scenic, with vivid fall colors, astounding red maple trees. It's more accessible, being only around 2 hours north of Toronto. Temagami really isn't "cottage country" anymore, it's northern Ontario, and much more bleak and sparsely populated. I feel temperamentally rather more affiliated with that.



Jim and me

We had lovely little tea sandwiches and coffee and Mary's famous chocolate chip cookies (she got the recipe in 1944) with the ladies, and then Mary and I drove back to the condo. Their youngest son Jim, who's now 46 and charming (he calls himself the black sheep of the family, so we relate!), came by to visit me and to cook dinner for his parents. I was so delighted to spend time with him. Then Mary took me by taxi all the way to the airport, so very kind of her! (Though the taxi driver, a Jamaican Torontonian, did ask me, as a Californian, how I could stand living in a place where they're so stupid as to vote for Schwartzeneggar and Bush? I had to bite my tongue not to retort that I'd rather live in Santa Monica just the same.) Reached the airport, parted sadly from dear Mary, and then...flew home. Paul and Jennifer met me at the airport though it was 11 PM, apologizing for not bringing flowers! Too sweet. Good to be home, but Peter is so far away...I'm going right back to Temagami just as soon as possible. Find out for sure if I really do prefer small town life!

Debriefing the Duchess

I don't know why I get so nervous before doing these things. I've given dozens of talks, but then I have my paper to grip hold of, and it's easy to just read. But this, extemporaneously leading a conversation in front of an audience, is enough to throw stark terror into me. So I did the only thing that helps, thorough preparation, and made up a really interesting list of questions. I knew that this was just a publicity screening of The Duchess given by Paramount for our Jane Austen group, and that in the Q & A period afterward for Amanda Foreman and the producer, Gaby Tana, nothing would really be expected but to coo and act like a cheerleader and gurgle things like "How did it FEEL to be working with Keira Knightley!" and "Isn't Ralph Fiennes WONDERFUL!" and "Those sets and costumes - ooooh, scrumptious!"

But if they wanted somebody to do that, then they shouldn't have asked me. (Well, they didn't really; I more or less jumped at the suggestion.) I had read Foreman's book, and also prepared by reading all the articles and interviews about her. Her book's excellent, one of the best explications of 18th century society I've ever read; she explains the politics, introduces the extensive dramatis personae in a way that makes them ever memorable, and puts everything in its place in a truly coherent way. Although I'm so steeped in Austen and Byron, the book helped me sort out and understand their period much better than I ever did before. You'd think such knowledge would take half a century for her to acquire, but she wrote this book when only in her late 20s. She had a deservedly huge success with it, but there was also something of a backlash, as exemplified by that article by Kathryn Hughes which criticized modern biography for having been "Foremanized," meaning that publishers assign attractive young women to write biographies of frivolous ladies of fashion, with poor results. This accusation really isn't fair, for if there is such a trend, it's not her fault. On the other hand, many of the interviews and articles about her make her sound terribly privileged, connected, and consequently rather annoying (probably hence the backlash). She's the daughter of Carl Foreman, the famous film director, a Communist who was blacklisted, and she grew up in Hollywood and London with a brilliant older brother whom the father pushed intellectually, while apparently thinking Amanda a lightweight. Then the father died when she was 16, so she never had a chance to prove she was brilliant. Clearly driven to prove that very thing, she did it by going to Oxford and turning her thesis into a runaway bestseller. Then she married a banker and had five children in four years, nearly killing herself in the process. She's 40 now, and hasn't written another book, though she's apparently researching one about the Civil War. She has a townhouse in Manhattan (wait! It's only rented, she insists) and a flat in London and in all interviews twists herself in two to sound poor and ordinary, which is totally unconvincing and why bother. "Nobody's really poor if they went to university," she says in one interview. (Really?) And some of her poor student friends used to earn "anything up to L50,000." (To quote Elinor in Sense and Sensibility, "Your competence and my wealth are very much alike!")



Portrait of Dr. Amanda Foreman
by Susannah Fiennes

Considering she's described as wearing a fancy designer gown and a quarter million dollars worth of diamonds (carefully noting that they are "borrowed") for the London premiere of the movie, I wondered what to wear when interviewing this phenomenon. Well, never mind, dig out a cheerful turquoise jacket. Then I went to the screening, and saw the movie a second time. It actually struck me differently this time round. Absolutely beautifully produced and designed - not like a glossy BBC costume drama, but better, with the great houses made to look real and lived-in, and the fabulous costumes looking as if they were really hand-made in the 18th century. Not only a handsome production, but very well acted. Keira Knightley, who was Miss Trivial, Annoying, and Anorexic in Pride and Prejudice, really turns in a fine, full-scale, feeling performance. And Ralph Fiennes is absolutely brilliant as the mean Duke, sort of Voldemort crossed with Prince Charles. The first time I saw the film I thought it was very dumbed down, particularly the dialogue. The producers decided not to do a literal adaptation of the biography, but to focus only on the arranged and disastrous marriage, which is a valid dramatic approach, but they jettisoned far too much. All the politics, and Georgiana's bad habits like gambling, and her good habits like writing - all out. Instead, you get dialogue of this type: "Has the French Revolution started yet?" "Oh, no. But soon." I felt that dumbing down to the supposed comprehension of the mass audience is a really poor idea in this sort of film; people seeing an 18th century drama expect to be served at least a dollop of the wit of the period. So I put my initial disappointment with the film down to that.

On second viewing, I realized that another reason I didn't enjoy it that much is that this is simply not a feel good picture. It's very dark (although the visual palette is light). It's the story of a truly oppressed and imprisoned woman, and there is not one iota of hope for her. That's the nature of the story, and it was actually praiseworthy of the filmmakers not to make it all treacley, but it's depressing and stark when all her political and intellectual interests are eliminated from the picture. What's left? So it's not a great film, even though so beautifully produced and acted - it really suffers from the dumbing down thing and from truncating the entire political background in such a silly, condescending way.




But here I had an opportunity to interview the woman behind the original book, and also her lifelong friend who was the producer behind the movie. I was curious about them - I don't meet such people in my every day life, and of course I'd like to know what made them tick creatively and as women and with each other. Well, I might have found out if I'd been able to do an in-depth interview, but what they were expecting here was publicity fluff. They were on this huge whistlestop tour, where they were to sit and be asked the same questions at a dozen different screenings, and although perfectly gracious, I could tell they really didn't want to be there. That made sense; Foreman does have five children under the age of six back home in New York, why would she want to be sitting in a screening room in L.A. being asked "How did you come to write the book?" for the thousandth time since it was published in 1998. I wouldn't like it myself. She doesn't need money, so I suppose she's doing it to make the movie she is associated with a big hit, in which effort I fear she will not be entirely successful, despite her father's shade.

So the lights came up after the screening and I made my way down to the front, where open-faced, blonde Foreman and thin, dark, friendly Gaby Tana shook my hand and the publicist ushered us to three high "director's chair" type seats, each with a hand microphone and a bottle of water. I thought of the scene in Laura Ingalls Wilder, when she had to teach school for the first time at the age of 15: "That is the teacher's chair," she thought. "Oh my - I am the teacher."

So I started by telling a joke, as one does: I'd written a review of the film last week, and the editor called me up today to query my review before printing it. I'd said something like, "Chatsworth looked magnificent," and he asked, "But who is this Chatsworth? I don't see his name in the cast list."

Then I rather awkwardly started reading from my list of questions. I'll put some of them down, with what I remember of the answers, but the answers I got were mostly canned - that is, they came word for word from other interviews, and she just reeled off the same things. I kept hoping I'd break through and make her say at least something new. Once or twice when I asked a question she'd never been asked before, she got a visibly pained look on her face, but she never really broke the canned-answer mold. Here goes:

First I asked where she and Gaby met, but they were completely and strangely obstructive about this, only saying "we've known each other for a long time." I pressed and asked, "In California or England?" "Well, both." I was so frustrated that afterwards I buttonholed Gaby and asked "But how did you know each other?" "Oh our parents were friends," was all I got. Well, yes, then who were her parents who were friends with Carl Foreman? Never mind. Not telling.

Me: Amanda, one thing about your life that interests me is the way you've gone back and forth between England and America - sort of like Frances Hodgson Burnett or Frances Trollope. I'm sure this affected your outlook in all sorts of ways, but how did you develop this incredibly deep and wide knowledge of the English 18th century so young? They didn't teach it in California, and it should take a lifetime of study to be able to write a biography like yours.

Her: (canned facile answer word for word from one of the newspaper interviews, about how she was unpopular in school and while everybody else went to parties she just read.)

Me: Your transatlanticism must have brought you to your next project, about the Civil War, isn't it? Will you tell us about that?

Her: Canned answer, word for word from...etc., about how it's a study of some of the English people who volunteered in the American Civil War, to be called Our American Cousins, and how "it's a biography only about many people instead of just one."

[Re the black studies, later I ask if she knew Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, author of Black London: Life Before Emancipation, and Black Victorians, and first woman English department head at Dartmouth, whom I know from my Burnett list, but she'd not heard of her.]

Me: You've had 5 children in 4 years, I've read articles where you say this has made you look at Georgiana differently, and that you might have written about her differently. Yet the movie is very much informed with this sensibility - motherhood is of key importance to Georgiana and Bess. Did your imput have to do with this?

Her: No, it was there in the screenplay, that's one thing that attracted me to it. (Goes on a bit about other earlier versions of the screenplay which emphasized Georgiana's gambling and opium use and made her seem like a bimbo.)

Me: Yet the filmmakers chose to eliminate any mention whatsoever that Georgiana was a writer. And she was a good one, too - I've read The Sylph, it's terribly good and pre-Austenian. I can see how this couldn't really be shown well in a film, but wasn't the gambling a huge part of her life, one of the most important things about her? She's shown gambling in the film but it's made to look like all good fun - there's no indication of the overwhelming addiction.

Gaby answers this one, talks a bit about choices they made, and how they felt they had to eliminate much of the political background too, in order to focus just on the theme of the marriage. That there was so much that was unused and cut out, there was enough for a sequel, and they hoped there might be one, if the movie was a big enough success.

Me: One more question about your background...You're the daughter of the famous director Carl Foreman, who was at one time a Communist and was blacklisted. Yet you've written about the most frivolous, hard gambling, conspicuous consumer of her century. How did you get from there to here? Is there any connection with your upbringing, or was it a reaction against it?

Amanda: Looks pained and alarmed, as this was one question clearly never on the syllabus. First she clearly states the famous films her father made, as I'd naturally forgotten (High Noon, etc.), and then says rather primly that she was always taught to care about the Oppressed, which included Women's Rights, and that led to this study of the repressions within marriage in the 18th century.

Me: In a concession to the conventions, I gush a little about the houses and costumes in the movie. Both Gaby and Amanda tell the same stories I've read in previous interviews...how Keira Knightley had fifty gowns, what a lot of trouble it was to take lightbulbs out of chandeliers and put in candles and how careful they had to be, how wonderful it was for the actors to actually inhabit those environments. (Yawn. This interview is getting duller by the minute, circling the drain.)

Me: Amanda, I've heard you were an extra in the film and I was looking for you but didn't see you. What scene were you in?

Her: (genuine tone of amused distress) I'm on the cutting room floor!

Me: I've got to ask this inevitable question [she looks alarmed again] Georgiana had it all and she had nothing, poor little rich girl, but I do think the parallels with Princess Diana in the PR campaign were overdone. [I thought that would please them, but they both look very displeased] Yet, I definitely saw echoes of Diana in Keira's wonderful performance. Was she directed this way deliberately, to subtly channel Diana, or was it her own idea?



Gaby takes this question, very firmly as if she is delivering rote policy: I want to emphasize that Keira was eleven years old when Princess Diana died, she never met her, and remembers very little about her. She never intended anything in the way of imitation, and we were all extremely surprised when many people said she reminded them of Diana. It is simply that she is an English rose...

Right.

Me: A minor question that bothered me...would they really have talked so indiscreetly in front of the servants? I can see it happening accidentally sometimes, but practically every major marital revelation and indiscretion is shouted out with four footmen standing there looking impassible. Would that have happened in real life?

(They laugh in relief, a "safe" question.)

Amanda: Absolutely! (explains how there was no getting away from servants, ever, so they just ignored them)

Me: You mention somewhere that it was reading a letter of Georgiana's that set you on her in the first place. Do you remember which it was?

Amanda: Explains how she was doing a Ph.D. in attitudes about people of color in the English 18th century, focusing on Charles Fox who called for the abolition of the slave trade, and found a passionate letter of Georgiana's to her best friend, about him. (She was at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and "got down on her knees" to beg the committee to let her change her thesis to Georgiana, which they did.)

Me: The best friend wasn't Bess?

Amanda: No, someone else...(she calls Bess some very hard names, insincere, user, schemer, etc.)

Me: Not nice, hm? So who did Bess like better, him or her?

Amanda: Her, definitely.



Lady Elizabeth Foster by Angelica Kauffman


Me: Have you ever heard anyone speak in the Devonshire House Drawl? It's not used in the movie, but perhaps you've heard some decayed aristocrat use it?

Amanda: Says the last person to use it in England was said to be Bertrand Russell and that tapes of his voice still exist.

[Later I go home and listen. I don't hear the specific distortions of Devonshire House, but he does have a most quaint old-fashioned way of speech that has certainly died off this earth!]

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/russell-soundclips.html

Me: Lady Caroline Lamb talked baby talk, which she is said to have got from Georgiana, her aunt, but her cousin Harry-O, Georgiana's daughter, criticized her for it. So, did they all use this drawl?

Amanda: Lady Caroline's was probably exaggerated.

Me: But her husband, Lord Melbourne, was still using it in 1837 when he was Queen Victoria's Prime Minister, he's said to have used "goold" for gold" and so on. But he certainly was not affected.

Amanda: All the Whigs of their circle talked in that way, it wasn't only for society ladies.

Running out of steam, and the end of my question list, I asked the audience to ask some, and they asked a variety of questions about what the film cost, who did the music, more about the costumes, etc. I tried to keep it going but Amanda, looking tired, said, "that's plenty, it's been a half hour." She and Gaby thanked me for asking "such good questions" and split, not staying for the cookies and wine.

Exhausted myself.

I always do wonder...when people are rich and famous, why do they have to keep going around doing exhausting self-promotion? For that matter, why do I eagerly say "yes" to doing an interview like this, which is pointless, pays nothing, and doesn't really reveal anything interesting about the person I was interviewing? I read a quote in Leigh Hunt's memoir about Lord Byron the other day, which expressed the situation: "Lord Byron was always saying yes to things, that afterward he would bite off his fingers to avoid having to do."

But the best summing-up quote is from Emma: "I was pleased with my own perseverance in asking questions, and amused to think how little information I obtained." (Emma)

(Ellen Moody has written a linked post to this, a critical analysis of Georgiana's biography and work as a "foremother of the novel." See http://server4.moody.cx/index.php?id=952)

"Her tour to the Lakes was now the object of her happiest thoughts..."

"And when we do return, it shall not be like other travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of anything. We will know where we have gone -- we will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations..." - Pride and Prejudice

August 22-29, 2008

Computing in Cabin

It's always fraught trying to get away, because I never know quite what work will send me for the weekend. Since things are slow in August, and I already did one big book this week, I thought it was possible they wouldn't send me anything for the weekend...or something small. But no, it was a 550-page manuscript on Friday evening, and we were to leave for Mammoth on Saturday! I figured I'd read it Friday night, and do the write-up from the hotel where we were staying at Convict Lake on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, since they said they had broadband. Fortunately, though, the book turned out to be a very fast page-turner, young adult fantasy/science fiction (a genre in which some of the best writing in the US and UK is being done now), and I read the manuscript through, enthralled - and was done reading by midnight. So it occurred to me, why not write it up, and then be able to leave on Saturday with my work all finished and behind me. So that's what I did, and was done and in bed by, well, er, 6 AM. Slept till 2 PM, then Paul (who had a pulpy SF book for work, but with no pressing deadline) and I went to Amelia's for Italian sausage soup and cappuccino. No need to pack, since I'd done that earlier in the week; Peter, Paul and I hit the road by 4 PM and had a very pleasant drive, arriving at Convict Lake, 300 miles from L.A. and a little south of Mammoth, by 9 PM. Of course it was too dark to see the lake, but I've seen in many times - a dark blue deep crater lake, with a beautiful forest of trembling aspens around it (next month, it will turn all golden). There was some historic desperado gun battle in the canyon back in the 1880s, which is how it got its name.



Convict Lake, by artist John Budicin

I've always wanted to try staying at one of the tempting-looking cabins there, where there's a fine restaurant. It turned out, though, that the cabin was just OK, not great: you do feel deep in the back country, the stars were amazing, and there was a nice porch, but the accommodation itself was a bit bare bones. We didn't sleep very well, but next morning, after a cappuccino in Mammoth, got on the road to head for May Lake in Yosemite by noon. Stopped for breakfast at Tioga Pass Resort where they make great berry pies. May Lake is a bit past the Yosemite entrance, and we reached the trailhead and put on hiking boots and got ready for the mile and a half climb to the lake. Disappointingly, after only a little way on the trail, Peter felt dizzy from altitude and decided he didn't want to push himself or take the chance. This was sad, but he was certainly wise; May Lake is at 9,300 feet, we hadn't had much time to get acclimatized, and with his problematical health he has to be sensible. This was sudden, though, so we had to do a quick rethink. We decided to take him to the nearest lodge or motel where they had room, and he could stay there while Paul and I went back to May Lake. Peter would be safe and comfortable, and he likes nothing better than a couple of days alone in a pretty place with his books anyway. (On this trip he was reading the Argonautika by Apollonios Rhodios, and E.A. Abbott's A Shakespearian Grammar. And I was reading the perfect book for a lake holiday, the charming and fascinating Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in Their Time by A.S. Byatt. Also started The Wit in the Dungeon, a biography of Leigh Hunt.)

Peter with his books


We backtracked to Tioga Resort, but they only had one expensive room, for one night. So we drove back to the pretty little town of Lee Vining, at the junction of Tioga Pass Road and Mono Lake, about a 30 mile drive from May Lake. I remembered a motel where I once stayed with our friends Mike and Leelee - the Gateway, comfortable and a bit old-fashioned, with windows and porches looking over the desert and the big blue salt lake, a very evocative view. And what luck, they had a room for two nights, at a very reasonable motel price! Peter was simply delighted, he could be comfortable and very happy there, and we were all very much relieved. We settled him in quickly, and incidentally Paul and I were able to lighten much of our gear, since we were carrying his stuff too. We turned back toward May Lake around 4:30, reached the parking lot by 5:30 - and without Peter, we literally ran up the uphill trail very quickly, Paul got to the top in half an hour, I did it in 40 minutes - and we were at the lovely lake in time for the 6:30 dinner! We were so glad the reservation wouldn't be wasted, and we'd all have a good and safe time, in our various ways.

May Lake

Dinner was pleasant, turkey and sweet potatoes and blueberry cake, but we had the feeling, as before, that these Yosemite High Sierra camps simply are not as nice as our beloved Bearpaw in Sequoia, which is much smaller, more remote, yet more luxurious. May Lake is a lovely location, but too many people walk these Yosemite trails, and the camp holds 36 guests, which is simply too many. Our tent cabin slept six, three cot beds against each wall, with candles for lighting, and a wood stove. That meant we had to sleep with three strangers. The other family was very sweet - a computer software guy around 60 from Wisconsin, his park ranger wife, and sweet 16 year old daughter, who ran cross country and was interested in biology. Lovely family, but it's a pain to have to make small talk and try desperately to make NO noise during the night! Paul and I were thinking that Peter really would not have been comfortable or liked it at all. Last year when we went to May Lake, we had a 4-person tent all to our three selves, and that was a very different thing. As a matter of fact neither Paul nor I could sleep. Every time you tossed and turned the cots creaked and you knew you were waking everybody else because their cots creaked too! Awful.

Paul at May Lake camp

Finally around 2 AM Paul got up with his flashlight and tiptoed out to go to the bathroom and I followed him, since two leaving didn't make any more noise than one. We sat by the lake for half an hour, and this was gorgeous: there was no moon, but a blazing Milky Way thick with stars, and we were both astonished to see something we had never seen before - the stars were reflected on the glassy black water! I never even knew stars could *do* that, I thought only the moon! Gorgeous. I googled to see if there was a word for the phenomenon, but couldn't find any, though Peter did mention that he has used "acker" in a poem that's in his book: the word means a ripple, a furrow, or disturbance of the surface of water; a cat's paw. (OED)

BELOW THE SNOW, ABOVE THE WATER
CAMPING IN FUGITIVE MOONLIGHT

Pale green's last gasp before slate grey: treeline:
An azure cirque set in a strand of aspen
Deepens and deepens till half nine
A sickle moon highlights the ackers on the blue-black lake:
Glimmering light on moving water;
Shimmering water and a dancing silver snake.

(This poem has complex indentations, but I'm sorry Blogspot does not permit me to replicate them! To see it properly, you'll need to buy the book, Nature, Nonsense, and Foreign Parts, which can be obtained by sending $12 to Parchellan Press, P.O. Box 184, Santa Monica, CA 90403)

We went back to the tent and slept eventually but were pretty groggy at breakfast. I couldn't even eat much because I had an altitude headache, but I took aspirin and after our tent mates left (they were hiking to Glen Aulin, another of these Yosemite loop camps), both Paul and I went back and hit the sack till 11 AM.

Paul in the meadow below Mt. Hoffman

Feeling much better, we then did the hike I'd been looking forward to, and climbed up to a beautiful meadow below Mt. Hoffman. It's dry and sere this time of year, grasses all russet, but sprinkled with asters and the striped gentians I'd been particularly longing to see again, remembering them from last September. Little white trumpetlike flowers with black stripes, they weren't fully out yet and took some searching for.

A Striped Gentian


The meadow was so beautiful and peaceful with songbirds and the freshest sweetest breeze. Perfect. Then we walked down, and sat by the lake for awhile; had a piece of blueberry cake and tea, and I left the camp around 2:30. I really didn't want to endure another night like that, and missed Peter. Paul, however, stayed at May Lake. He figured he'd enjoy being at the beautiful lake alone, he was going to read his work book, make chitchat with nobody, enjoy the chicken dinner, sleep as best he could, and then we'd meet him at the May Lake parking lot at noon the next day.

Denny in Meadow

So I hiked down to the lot in half an hour, then did the gorgeous drive through Yosemite over Tioga Pass to Lee Vining, with vertiginous stunning spectacular mountain views all the way. It's about 30 miles, and the drive took a little under an hour. I drove up to the motel about 4 PM, knocked and went in - and there was the dear Peter, his surprise and happiness at seeing me writ all over his face! It was worth driving down just for that. He was quite happy, having had a good sleep and done some nice reading. I'd come down because I was anxious about him, but I wasn't expecting the lovely afternoon and evening we did have - really like a romantic date! I drove Peter back to Tioga Pass for mixed berry pie, since he'd eaten almost nothing the whole time I was gone, and then we went for a small stroll by the lovely navy blue stream at the bottom of Saddlebag canyon. The altitude was still bothering him, so just sitting by the stream was enough outing for him really. Then we did the lovely drive back to the motel. I hadn't felt like using the wretched primitive freezing communal May Lake camp shower at all (they give you one wash cloth that's supposed to serve for a towel), so you can imagine how I enjoyed a major soak in the motel tub; and then after being reunited with broadband, we went out to a superb dinner at one of the most character-filled places in the Eastern Sierra. That, improbably enough, is the famous Mobil station at Lee Vining, where they have a spacious and wonderful casual restaurant overlooking the lake. I had the special, rack of lamb with a kind of mustard pistachio crust, garlic mashed potatoes, and spaghetti squash - absolutely the best lamb I've ever eaten, bar none - and Peter had a sensational seafood jambalaya. Such a good dinner, while watching the fading pink sunset over Mono Lake. Then we drove back to the motel for more reading and comfort and a good sleep after so much driving.



Saddlebag Lake resort, Mt. Dana in background

Paul on Saddlebag Lake boat



Waking up on Tuesday morning, we decided that Peter would wait at the small resort at Saddlebag Lake while I fetched Paul from May Lake. So we drove out before 11, it's a dozen miles to Saddlebag, and it was lovely at the lake, though dizzying, being over 10,000 feet. Peter settled on the porch with boysenberry pie and sun brewed iced tea, and I drove the additional 20 miles through Yosemite back to the May Lake parking lot, arriving only five minutes late. There was Paul, and he told me all about the remainder of his time at the lake. He mostly read his work book by the lake, and had a little climb to the ridge; he shared the tent with a soldier and another family, all of whom were nice, but we've decided we don't want to go to May Lake (or any of the other Yosemite loop camps) again; it's just too awful sleeping in a tent with perfect strangers, and there are just too many people tramping through those camps. Paul did go out again in the middle of the night and saw the starshine on the lake, even better than before. Then at breakfast, a couple had caught a few trout, pan cooked them and offered them to the guests. Not many people wanted any, which Paul thought surprising since the super fresh trout were incredibly delicious. But the girl who caught the fish with her boyfriend said she could never eat anything she'd seen wiggling a few minutes before! Paul wanted to retort, why don't you catch tofu fish then, but didn't, and contented himself eating them instead. Paul and I drove back to Saddlebag to meet Peter, and had pie and sun brewed iced tea. Then we all drove on to Mammoth and checked in at Tamarack Lodge.

Peter at our Cabin


Pretty quilted bed

Looking out of the cabin



Oh, it is so beautiful at Tamarack, the lovely little luxury cabins by the pristine blue lake, and ours is the prettiest little woodsy dollhouse ever! It's a dear little wood-paneled cabin, with an extra big king size bed with a pretty patchwork quilt, windows looking out at lake and mountains, a wood burning stove, a nice kitchen with three windows looking out into woods. Wonderful bath and shower too - and a porch where you can sit out and breathe in the beautiful air. It's simply paradise. Peter and I are staying at the cabin, while Paul has a nice room in the main lodge building. So we spent a few hours just enjoying the place, and then around 7 drove back to Lee Vining to the funny Mobil restaurant, to show it to Paul. He said it was even better than he thought it would be. I had elk chops, just fantastic: all the elk I've ever eaten has been like hockey pucks, but these were thick succulent chops, perfectly cooked pink inside, braised in a delicious pepper and berry sauce, simply to die for, with the garlic mashed potatoes and spaghetti squash. Peter and Paul had the superb spareribs. We enjoyed every bite, and then stopped in the bookshop at Lee Vining and bought some cards of local scenes by Chiura Obata, a Japanese artist and professor who was interned in WW2. Then we drove back to town under the stars, and stopped at the market for bottled water, iced tea and things to put in our cabin's kitchen. Now Peter and Paul are internetting in the lounge, catching up on the convention, and I'm in the darling cozy little cabin.


The Mobil restaurant


Peter at the Mobil


Wednesday. Slept in, didn't get up till noon, then went to the bagel shop and brought back lovely onion bagels and whitefish salad and cream cheese/lox shmear; we ate it in our pretty cabin kitchen, and then we all went to the local coffee house for capuccino and more internet. When we'd had enough of sitting indoors, we drove through beautiful wild Lundy Canyon, where a dirt road winds through thick canyon forest. Peter sat in the woods while Paul and I did a quick walk to the lake, saw a beaver dam, and turned back. Then we drove back to Tamarack Lodge and relaxed and read until a glorious celebratory dinner in the Tamarack restaurant: Peter and Paul had escargot and I had onion soup; then I had Tasmanian trout and Peter had filet mignon and Paul had a beef dish - followed by Grand Marnier sherbet with chocolate sauce!

Paul on the Conness Lakes trail


Last night, as Jane Austen said, "I slept to a miracle and am beautiful today." Our bed is so enormous and comfortable, and the woodsy cabin so silent, that I slept for nearly 9 hours deliciously. I had another bagel and whitefish, but Paul had a hamburger on the hotel's porch looking at the lake, while Peter kept sleeping. He wanted a real rest day, no running around, and Paul and I wanted a real hiking day, so we went our separate ways. Paul and I picked up some cappuccino and left around 2:30 to drive the 35 miles to Tioga Pass - such a spectacularly beautiful mountain drive, I can never do it too often. At Saddlebag Lake we caught the 3:30 boat taxi and were on the far side of the lake ten minutes later. We wanted to walk to the Conness Lakes, but it's an off-trail hike, not well marked at all, and you don't find the lakes as often as you do find them! We didn't find them today, but it was still a most truly glorious hike! Because of the good sleep (and maybe the bagel) I felt exceptionally perky, and we walked alongside lovely Greenstone Lake most of the way, where I enjoyed the asters and paintbrush, and the few little purple gentians that were just starting to come out. An autumn flower; one of my dearest favorites.

Purple gentians

We followed the lake to the end, kept following the stream, and then saw we'd have to climb over a ridge about 500 feet high and over a waterfall to get to the first Conness Lake. It was quite a scramble, the top being a real rock climb, but it was so beautiful and such fun. The entire time we felt so deliciously exhilarated and invigorated and refreshed and exalted - as if walking by mountain streams at 10,000 feet and climbing ridges was what a human was born to do. It was, in fact, the joyful epitome of everything I love most about hiking, and a good reminder of why I *do* love it.


Denny on the Conness Lakes trail



I was also particularly thrilled to find that my skill and delight in rock climbing has not abated an iota - even with a somewhat problematic knee that had arthroscopic surgery for a torn meniscus a couple of years ago. The knee does bother me when walking downhill, whenever there are large stone stair-like things to jump down, that particular movement of twist and jump is unpleasant for me, but oddly the knee doesn't mind rock climbing at all! At a time of life when one is examining one's physical diminutions, it was nice to feel I was as much of a monkey as ever.


The Ridge we Climbed


We clambered around so much looking for the hidden lake, that we missed our scheduled return boat taxi. We had a choice, to take the last boat of the day, at 6:45, or walk around the lake back to the car, about an extra mile and a half. We did that and a brisk refreshing walk it was - I suppose we did around 5 vigorous miles today altogether - though it was slightly annoying that the boat pulled into the dock just as we did. Then we piled into the car and sped back to Tamarack with the late afternoon alpenglow sunshine painting colors of gold and pink on the mountains. We got back at 8 PM, and Peter was a bit worried as we were so late, but we got right back in the car and drove back again to Lee Vining for dinner at the fabulous kitchy Mobil station restaurant! They both had spareribs and I had prime rib, all with garlic potatoes and spaghetti squash. Great dinner, and we drove back to the hotel in happy spirits. Paul has a play to read and write up tonight, and my work *could* have sent me something, but mirabile dictu, they didn't, and I can enjoy our last evening in the mountains reading about Leigh Hunt...

Long drive home Friday through the Mojave desert - even with air conditioning it's glaring - but it's nice, as always, to be home.

Golden Afternoon: Lunch with Mouseketeer Doreen

Fifty years ago - don't you love stories that start that way? The Mickey Mouse Club was the biggest children's TV show in the country, maybe the world. It was also one of the first, for in 1955 when it began (it ran for three years), most people were just starting to get black and white televisions for the first time. We got our first TV that year, and the Mickey Mouse Club was the first show I watched regularly. When something is new, and you are young, the impression can be indelible, and for me and my friends, the world stopped every afternoon for an hour as we ritualistically settled in front of the TV to see the Mouseketeers. The show featured cartoons and nature shows and serials, but it was the Mouseketeers, the troupe of talented dancing and singing children, who were the whole point. We admired them, picked out the ones we liked best, obsessed over them, and for three years of our lives we watched them grow up. They were like friends, but they belonged to the most enviable club in the world. Any child watching longed to be a Mouseketeer. To be picked out from all the children in the country for your talent, and go to work at the Disney Studios, and belong to a group like that - it seemed unimaginably wonderful.




Mouseketeers


Annette Funicello quickly became the most popular and famous Mouseketeer. She stood out on black and white TV with her curly black hair, her sweet expression, and her undeniable ethnicity - there'd never been a child star before with a "foreign" name and look. Everyone loved Annette, but she wasn't the most talented: that was Darlene Gillespie. Darlene could sing like a bird, and was the star of many of the musical numbers. Then there was Doreen Tracey. She wasn't as exquisitely pretty as Annette, or as talented as Darlene, but she had a special sparkle, a joie de vivre, an enthusiasm and bounce that made her irresistable to watch. She was the personality kid who epitomized the whole group. For years I dreamed of being a Mouseketeer, and dancing up there with Annette and Darlene and Doreen and the others. They appeared in serial stories too, "Spin and Marty" which took place on the Triple R Ranch, and "Annette," with Annette playing a country girl. It was all pure magic, one of the best (and only) sheerly uncomplicated pleasures of my childhood, and I never forgot one bit of it.

Over the years, I'd tape the shows in reruns - I knew this was a strange eccentricity in a supposedly sane and sophisticated adult, but I never lost pleasure in watching an old Mickey Mouse Club tape. Reassuringly, the Mouseketeers were frozen in time; they never changed. There were no troubles in that world, and it was always amusing to watch the 1950s teenage life, with dance numbers taking place in soda shops. Last year, I was thrilled to get a writing assignment to watch filming of The Jane Austen Book Club, because it took place at the Disney Ranch where "Spin and Marty" was filmed. The ranch is otherwise off limits for visitors, and I loved seeing the rolling hills that hadn't changed a bit since Tim Considine and David Stollery rode over them on horseback. I ended up calling the story "A Golden Afternoon," referring back to the Disney song from Alice in Wonderland (which itself refers back to a phrase in the actual book.) And then, even better, a few months ago, I finally met my first real life Mouseketeer: Doreen.



Doreen as Mouseketeer

It was while I was preparing for the Harry Potter Lexicon trial. I had just met with the nine foot tall lawyer in the pink suit at the Warner Bros legal office, and as I was leaving, I noticed a name plate - Doreen Tracey. Suddenly I remembered reading that Doreen worked at Warners. I'd never sought her out, because there must be 10,000 employees, I'm seldom on the lot, and besides, it would be admittedly a kind of wacko thing to do. But I looked over, and there, sure enough, sat Doreen. She works in Intellectual Property, and when I exclaimed at seeing her, she spoke to me very graciously, obviously used to this happening. When she heard how well I remembered her, and that I worked in the Story Department, she asked me to email her and we'd plan to have lunch. Doreen is now in her sixties, but still recognizably very much herself, perky, vivacious, warm and friendly. We exchanged a few emails, but when I wasn't used in the Harry Potter trial, our lunch got put off.

Until yesterday, when I spent another Golden Afternoon, having lunch with Mousketeer Doreen! And she's wonderful: warm and down to earth and smart and still very recognizable as herself - a gregarious, outgoing, energetic, bright, creative, savvy lady. She drove out from the Valley to come see me, and ran up against the summertime Santa Monica parking snarl, but I rescued her at a gas station and took her to Amelia's, the little Italian family-owned sandwich shop where I have lunch every day. We had cannelloni bean and ham soup, and shared a meatball sandwich and almond torte, with cappuccino. And we talked a blue streak for nearly three hours, just like any two lunching ladies of a certain age with a lot of history and interests in common! She told me some inside stories about the Mouseketeers (wild horses would not persuade me to reveal them publicly, except to say that the Mice are all really good friends to this very day), she signed all my memorabilia, and we talked about our lives, and how she plans to write a book called Confessions of a Mouseketeer. I invited her back to my house to see our books and she was kind enough to buy Peter's new poetry book. I was left with a wonderful feeling of connection with the dreams of my childhood, and that I really do have a friend at last who's a Mouseketeer.

Mouseketeer Denny

Slightly Fraught Vacation - with Wildflowers

Red Penstemon



Whorled Penstemon



Purple and Red Wildflowers







To start with, I ate a bad chicken. Consequently I got so sick (it was of course late on a Friday night) I persuaded friend Andy to drive me to the Emergency Room, where they put me on an IV. I went home in a few hours, feeling better, but our plans to drive to Mammoth Saturday were necessarily scratched.

It was a seemingly inoffensive Trader Joe organic chicken, but the gravy associated with it was far too rich and I ate far too much of it. With apologies for beginning a travel tale in this manner, I will merely say that I shall never eat this dish again. No more Grease, Ever! Somebody truly said it's the disease where you're scared you're going to die and afraid you won't.

So we drove to Mammoth on Monday (July 14). Even then we couldn't leave until Paul finished his overnight rush script, so we departed at midnight. It was a beautiful drive, 300 miles north on empty highway, nothing but us and the desert and the setting half-moon. We only stopped at a truck stop for a hamburger, and as we drove through the mountains, dawn broke. I tried singing Morning Has Broken, but they made me stop (no respect for Eleanor Farjeon). It was glorious, seeing the mountains assume shape and then more and more color; there were magnificent clouds lighting up and a sprinkle of rain and then we reached our condo at 6 AM and crashed to bed. Slept till 3 PM, and then moseyed out for bagels and salmon spread. Went for a short drive to some nearby lakes, slate-grey and everything smelling intensely of pine; some thundershivers in the afternoon. But we couldn't stay: Paul's work called him and said they were sending him an overnight rush novel. We searched around for the library in town, hoping to print out the manuscript, but they were just closing. (We really should have bought a Sony Digital Reader, for exactly this purpose.) So we had dinner with our old friends from Palo Alto, Mike and Leelee, at an Irish pub with excellent food (potato and leek soup and Irish stew buxtie). Tomorrow I'll go with them to a wildflower meadow at last - that's what I'm here for!



Heather

Wednesday. Paul had to read his novel on his laptop screen, which produced no joy. He didn't finish till 4 AM, and none of us slept very well. So today we slept in, while our friends went on a day hike by themselves. Finally we hauled ourselves up late in the afternoon and Paul and I drove to the Rock Creek Lakes trail, about 20 miles south of Mammoth. Gorgeous drive, first the highway with sagebrush and mountains, then we turned into winding little Rock Creek road, a narrow country road that was thickly fringed with the wildflowers I'd been longing to see. Nine miles in, we got to the trailhead, along a crystalline stream, ablaze with more wildflowers - many more kinds than I could name. The afternoon thunderstorm period was looming, with dramatic clouds over the mountains and distant booms, but it never actually rained, only a drop or two. We hiked about a mile and a half uphill to the first lake; doesn't sound like much, but the elevation at this trail starts at over 10,000 feet and you have to stop and gasp and collect your breath often! Spectacularly beautiful, walking along the stream, and the lake is a dream. The sparkling stream runs into it, the grasses are soft and green like in Scotland, and the meadows are spangled with flowers purple and gold and impossible fireman red, like an explosion.



Me at Rock Creek Lake



Thunder on Rock Creek trail

We drove back to the condo, and found that Peter, Mike and Leelee agreed this was the night for a beautiful dinner. So we went to our favorite Tamarack Lodge which is on its own beautiful lake, and had a fine, luxurious, and mellow-inducing dinner. Really my late Incident with the Chicken ought to have produced some dampening of my interest in the Table, but it does not seem so at all. I had wonderful homemade French onion soup full of wine for appetizer (Paul had wild mushrooms, Peter escargot), then I had a beautiful fresh piece of sea trout, crisp-skinned but inside meltingly soft, very like a more delicate salmon. With it, sweet potato puree, beets, polenta and more veggies. Paul and Peter had a wild game platter. Leelee had the trout, Mike an interesting dish of grilled scallops and pork filet. For dessert I had a very light chocolate mousse, and the others had Grand Marnier sherbet with rich deep chocolate sauce. We came out to the lake under a near-full moon, the air smelling so wild and mountainous and sweet, and are now back at the condo, to dream of mountains...



Paul at Greenstone Lake

Thursday. Slept in again, and Peter didn't want to go out but to stay with his books, so Paul and I drove to Saddlebag Lake, took the water taxi across the lake, and had a really beautiful hike to the end of Greenstone Lake, about a mile there and a mile back. Short but brisk walk, and supernally beautiful beside the sparkling lake, though there were not many flowers. Back at the boat dock we had the best homemade blueberry pie and sun-brewed iced tea. Then we drove back to the condo, and we all gathered at the Irish pub again. Mike and Leelee had climbed Mt. Dana.



Peter and Mike on Saddlebag Lake

Friday we finally all went out together as a group, and returned to Saddlebag. The object was to take Peter up to the Conness Lakes, but as it happened, no one got there at all. Peter seemed quite overcome by altitude, and had to lie down on the trail, but then he mentioned that he'd run out of his short-acting insulin and taken long-acting to compensate. This made him sick and faint, so we borrowed a trail bar from a passing boy hiker, and Peter was restored quite quickly. However, we thought it best to turn back with him. Mike and Leelee went on, but were ultimately stymied by a wide stream, too rapid to cross, as it is still early summer. All was well that ended well, however, and Peter was so restored by apple pie and sun-brewed iced tea he wanted to drive on to Lundy Canyon where the flowers were said to be good. They were: it's a wild place, very rough road through the woods, but it was almost like hiking, so Peter particularly enjoyed it, and we saw two deer jumping. We joined up with Mike and Leelee for dinner at a place highly recommended by several sources, called Petra, supposedly a tapas place. I didn't see any tapas, but had a very good crab chowder soup, and a nice halibut. Much too expensive though.



Paul at Tamarack Lodge



Leelee, Mike, Peter and Paul at Tamarack Lodge

Before going out to dinner, we saw the largest raccoon I've ever seen in my life, in the condo's parking lot. He was standing up and looked the size of a smallish man. After dinner we returned to our unit to find the garbage torn apart, and Something had eaten all the snacks on the counter - peanuts, etc. The screen doors were closed, but we found one small window open in the upstairs loft, and raccoon footprints everywhere. After cleaning up we didn't much care to stay - we'd planned to drive home Saturday, but Paul and I were anxious to get to our work books and it seemed a good idea to drive home earlier. So we did the nighttime drive thing again - left at 11:30, drove under a full moon with no traffic, stopping only in Mojave for eggs, and reached home at 5 AM. Not the least fraught trip, what with one thing and another, but we had a particularly happy family time together, as well as dearly enjoying seeing Mike and Leelee - and yes, the wildflowers!



Roadside Mystery Flowers - anybody know what these are?