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We can’t  begin to understand the concept of a billion—a billion miles, a billion years, or a billion dollars. The mind simply shuts down.  I have been told we can’t see more than five of any object before we have to start grouping to arrive at how many there are. So much for the crowning achievement of evolution—the human brain!

One of my favorite writers, Loren Eiseley, in “The Flow of the River” ( a strong candidate for the best essay I have every read,  in The Immense Journey, one of my all-time favorite books) speaks about the vastness of the universe, in which a billion is a small number,  and how that affects religious thought.  If we can’t comprehend the universe, how could we begin to comprehend a God capable of creating it?

The answer is, we can’t. I am not arguing that there is or isn’t such a God, just that our brains couldn’t grasp it anyway.  The Quiche Maya creation story has it that their deities created humans with perfect insight, but then took it away, so we would see and understand less.  Why?  So they would remain superior to us.

All of this adds up to one big question for believers, regardless of what they believe: How can deity make itself known to beings incapable of knowing it?  Some cultures believe it does this through natural phenomena like thunder or fire, and others see its hand in rewards or punishments.  No matter, really because either way (or another way altogether), these are all ways in which religious apologists would, in Eiseley’s words,  “bring God into the compass of a shopkeeper’s understanding.”

Painfully elitist in phrasing as it is (the book was published in 1946), Eiseley’s point is powerful. To think of God, should we choose to, we have to use the brains we have, and these are inherently too feeble not just for the shopkeepers but the Einsteins among us.  So what do we do?  We bring God down to a size we can relate to.  We can see divinity in a spring blossom, or a bronze statue glowing where thousands of hands have touched it, or in a baby’s first cry. We think for a moment, “Ahah! I’ve glimpsed it!” and that may be enough to make believers of some.

I used to teach World Religions and when we got to Christianity, I would bring Eiseley’s idea into the way I framed it. What if there really is a God like the biblical one, omnipresent and omnipotent beyond our comprehension?  How would that God speak to us?  We see an evolving answer in the Hebrew Bible. God speaks intimately to Abraham in a garden, directly to Moses but in a scary, distant way on Mount Sinai, then often in fiery anger through the prophets, then not at all, at least in words, anymore.

Get the picture?  God tried to convey what human responsibility is, by a few basic laws of behavior told verbally to Noah, then by carving a few more in stone, then by giving voice to the prophets, then—and here is where Judaism parts ways with both Christianity and Islam—God retreats into silence, as if to say, “I’ve had it with trying to get through to these knuckleheads,” leaving humans to sort through messages in the scriptures they already have.

And what follows is the means  by which both Christianity and Islam have derived their power in the human story. In these faiths, God indeed does bring it down to a shopkeeper’s understanding by sending an exemplar to walk among us.  “Here,” God seems to be saying, giving up on stone tablets and brimstone.  “I want you to act more like him.”

The light dawns.  Be loving, be just.  Every day.  That’s enough. That’s really what all the biblical words are about anyway. Even if you don’t believe either of them were sent by God, Jesus and Mohammad (may peace be upon them) remain model lives for millions.  The saints continue this tradition of human exemplars, their power deriving from the fact they they were people just like us, who put the will of God first.

So now here we are in 2020.  Is the next chapter in the story of God going to be that he gives up on the adequacy of even his best messengers?  The idea of loving one’s neighbor doesn’t seem to have critical mass today, and there seems to be little Jesus-like behavior among the loudest of the self-proclaimed faithful. There has always been a tension in America between the desire for personal liberty and the needs of the community, and while many—maybe even most Americans—are choosing community, right now advocates of personal liberty are on a rampage.

Is God going for a reboot? Is that what 2020 is all about? One last chance for us to pay attention?  If the perfect humans didn’t teach us anything, maybe a return to  fire and brimstone will—an Armageddon of disease, with climate disaster and rampant worldwide social injustice thrown in as well. Will this dawning horror teach us anything?  I wish I still thought so.

The will of the Biblical God is that love and justice prevail. Those of us who believe in that, whether or not we believe in that God, will have to stick it out until we win.  If we don’t, and if an omnipotent God does rule the universe, perhaps we will end not with a bang or a whimper, as T.S. Eliot suggests, but with a colossal shrug, and a new bit of clay in another Garden of Eden. 

 

Day Seven!  Halfway through my quarantine!

In some ways it hasn’t been been that different from the restrictive life I was already living in San Diego.  After all, on a typical day I did not go out, and I passed the time in much the same manner I do here.  Still, it does feel different in some significant ways.

In San Diego I was inside as a means of staying well. Here the presumption seems to be that I am  one step ahead of my first symptoms.  The staff here at the hotel has been really nice about checking in on me, but the way we interact is based on the premise that I absolutely must not come out of my room for any reason whatsoever because I might be poisonous. 

When I was home and while en route to Canada I used to remind myself that there is no danger at all in interacting with anyone who is not infected. Since most people aren’t carrying the virus, exercising reasonable caution has kept me safe to this point.  Still, I think we all tend to see everyone as walking clouds of virus, like the Peanuts character Pig Pen, who shed dirt in little squiggles and dots everywhere  he went.

 

I feel a bit like the stereotypical spy. When I open the door in the hotel to put out my garbage (housekeeping will not come in, so I call the desk to send someone to get it) I stare up and down the hall to see if it is safe. I debated going down late at night to check on my car but haven’t done it yet.  Maybe a load of stealth laundry late at night?  Probably not.

This is very different from life in San Diego, where the decisions around going out were always mine to make. I could go out, but I almost always chose not to.  Here I had better not cross the threshold  because the Canadian government has made very clear how much potential ruin they are prepared to inflict upon my plans for my life if I do.  And I promised Canada I wouldn’t.  I want to get off to the best possible start here, and this is how to do it.

It is is a weird juxtaposition between this healthy person in room 404 and the apparent perception that there is a grave risk posed by my being here.   I exist only as a potential miasma swirling out from under the door. And here I am inside, listening to music, reading, researching things to do on Vancouver Island, fixing meals, doing sit-ups and stretches, having a glass of  wine or a cup of tea, writing this blog.  Not so much as a sniffle and yet a threat still does lurk..

I left home on August 1, and since it is now August 14, I think we can safely assume I did not bring Covid with me.  Every day I stay symptom free I can tick off another place on the road where I did not get infected.  By the time I get to the end,  only that cute border crossing guard who might have breathed on me through his mask could have given it to me, and he would have gotten it from another Canadian.

But no matter.  Canada is right to exact this price on anyone who wants to walk freely here.  I’m fine.  Eager to get out, but way more than okay. I’m doin’ it, and that’s all I have to say.

 

As I pass the 25% mark in my two-week quarantine in Vancouver, I thought it might be good to count a few blessings:

1. I haven’t lost my room key or had to ask the desk for my room number once.  This is historic.
2. I haven’t had to check the weather forecast when getting dressed
3. I don’t need to use the hair dryer, and my hair appreciates that
4. When I look up and see I have frittered away a few hours, my response is “Great!” rather than “Oh, geez, I’d better get something done!”
5. I haven’t brought  home any impulse purchases
6. I’ve stuck faithfully to a healthy diet because I bought nothing but veggies and protein and can’t go out to buy any junk food.  A good thing, since I would have torn through all of it by now
7. I have gotten some tedious tasks done, like clearing out old emails and clipping my toenails
8. I don’t have to wash my hands a million times a day, or wear a mask
9. And best of all— drum roll, please— I know I haven’t contracted Covid in the last few days

I am in quarantine in Vancouver.  It is 8AM on my second day.  The sky is entirely blue, and world-class Stanley Park is steps away from the front door of my hotel.   I can’t go outside.

I ordered groceries delivered yesterday and forgot creamer for my coffee.  I can’t run out to get it, and won’t have another delivery for a week, so I will have to do without.

I bought a set of resistance bands so I could work out in the room, but I can’t find them.

There.  I am done complaining.

I drove over two thousand miles in the last week without any mishaps.  I saw four friends, two of whom I seldom see, and two of whom I hadn’t seen at all for fifty-plus years (thank you, Facebook).

I got across the border without a hitch and even got a break of more than half off on the import tax on my car as a “returning” Canadian (I told them I wasn’t but they wanted to be nice)

I saw three national parks (Shasta from a distance, Crater Lake, and Mt. Rainier) and one National Historical Park  (Fort Clatsop).

My car GPS works in Canada, so I found the hotel easily, and I will be able to find my way when I am out discovering my new world.

My room is really a small apartment with nice everything (see photo of living area below).  I could use a balcony, but at least the windows open part way.

I am safe, whole, and grateful.

So now what do I do for the next two weeks?  Hmm, let’s  see….

I have an iPad, a laptop, a mobile phone, and a television with fairly decent cable.  I have a zillion audiobooks, podcasts, online courses, and music on iTunes. I have the play I have been too distracted to continue working on in the last few weeks. I have all the sketching materials I bought the last time I thought about learning to draw.  I have a row of books lined up on the desk that I haven’t had time to read. I have about two hours left of a really good audiobook, and lots more in the queue.  I have friends and family to email, message, and phone, and a blog to maintain. I have exercises I can do without the resistance bands.  I have the raw ingredients for some pretty good meals.  I have a comfy bed for naps.

At my age, I try never to say I wish time would pass more quickly.  That will be put to the test here, for I already cannot wait to feel the sun and fresh air,  to be on that ferry going to Vancouver Island, and wander around there in a state of constant discovery.  But for now, I will try to see this as a good transition time, a chance to practice my resolve not to be in a hurry about everything.  For now, it’s breakfast time, day two, and who knows after that?

 

 

 

Time to shift gears.  It’s an apt metaphor, even with an automatic transmission, for a journey from the Mexican to Canadian border in six long days of  driving.  As I write this I am ensconced in a hotel outside Seattle. I’ve done it.  The long hours on the road are behind me, and the sights are now wonderful memories.

What remains  are visits with friends in the area, and about 100 miles of northbound road. All the things that could have gone wrong haven’t, and I am right on schedule to cross tomorrow morning.

The day before yesterday at Mt. Rainier I chose to wait until the next morning to visit the famous wildflower fields that are the number one summer attraction at the park. I was tired and I wanted to be fresh for it. As luck would  (or wouldn’t) have it, the morning was gray and drizzly, but I set out back up the mountain anyway, hoping the fields would be above the clouds. Unfortunately they were right in the middle, and visibility was less than ten feet. No mountain, no flowers.

I can picture my friends in the Northwest saying, “ Get used to it,” as my never-consider-the-weather Southern California self makes the adjustment to nature laughing at my plans.
Of course I was disappointed, but it was pretty easy to find my way back to gratitude. I have seen so much, including Mt. Rainier closer up than the flower fields, and there have been a lot of wildflowers to see, even if not dense acres of them in one spot. I saw the Oregon Coast, I saw Mt. Shasta, I saw Crater Lake, I saw the Columbia River, I saw Fort Clatsop ( see last post).  The weather was perfect for all of them.

This is the third time in memory that fog has dashed my hopes. The first was when I scattered my son’s ashes at Nordkapp, so they could merge into the dust that lights up the Aurora Borealis. The second was in Bhutan, when the summit from which we might have seen the Himalayas was so socked in we could barely see the trees on the other side of the road. Likewise, Mt. Rainier was towering over me in the mist just as surely as on a clear day.

I scattered my son’s ashes in the middle of the lowest period in my life, when I struggled every day for a modicum of happiness.  I couldn’t see ahead then, and the fog seemed so apt.  The last two experiences have come at far better times for me, but the message is still the same.  Just  because I can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there. Like whatever lies in the future,  we just have to wait for our minds and hearts to be ready, and then be astonished, when the fog lifts, by what has been there all along.

 

A few years back, when i was preparing for a cruise from Vancouver to Los Angeles, I decided that for the journey up the Columbia River to Portland I would prepare a talk on the Lewis and Clark expedition, which left from Missouri in 1804 to explore the continent all the way to the west coast.  Their final stretch for the 33 members of the expedition was down the Columbia River, where almost a year and a half after setting out, they  finally saw the Pacific Ocean.

I vaguely remembered studying this expedition, formally titled the Corps of Discovery, mostly because it starred one of the very few women who showed up in schoolbooks, a Shoshone woman named Sacajawea (shown in a sculpture here) who served as a guide and interpreter, carrying on her back her infant son throughout the journey.  Of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark I remembered nothing except their names.

I learned in my research that at the mouth of the Columbia River there is a replica of Fort Clatsop, the structure the Corps built to survive the winter before heading back the following spring. I put it on the list of places I hoped I could visit some day, and when I planned my route to British Columbia, I chose  a route through coastal Oregon that would allow me to visit.

President Thomas Jefferson, who sponsored the Corps of Discovery, required that every man on the mission (mostly army volunteers) keep a journal if he was literate.  As a result, we have a rich trove of documentation of everything about the expedition. We have not only the two leaders’ copious notes, drawings and descriptions, but details of camp life from the others.   We know from Lewis’ journals that he suffered from dark periods that strongly suggest bipolar disorder, borne out by his suicide years later (although conspiracy theories abound).  I have no way to even imagine  what that would have been like for him—and Clark and the others— to deal with out in the vast, unfathomable unknown they were traveling. The journals all suggest very little.  He was, after all, the appointed leader of the expedition, and who would speak ill of him?

I also learned that William Clark had once been Meriwether Lewis’ superior officer. When Lewis was appointed to lead the Corps,  he requested that Clark be co-appointed.  Jefferson refused that request, so though technically Lewis was his superior, he insisted that Clark be called Captain as well, and it isn’t clear the others in the Corps even knew it actually wasn’t true.

Hard as it is to believe, in the three years of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, not a single life was lost.  Not one, despite all those mountains, rivers, brutal weather, natural disasters, predators, and other obstacles.  Well, that’s not exactly true.  A week or two after they set out, one member of the Corps developed peritonitis and died of sepsis.  That would have happened if he stayed home, most likely, and it should not taint the astonishing leadership and judgment of Lewis and Clark.

As to the reason I needed to go to Fort Clatsop, one of the things that reflects best on America happened upon their arrival at the Pacific in November 1805.  They knew they had to winter there in that milder climate because their route home across the mountains and plains would not be passable until spring.  There were two  possibilities.  First, they could stay on the coast and hope to flag down a passing ship, for trade had opened up along the coastal route by then.  Second, they could go a short distance inland, where the forest would offer better protection, but they would miss the chance to be picked up.

Lewis and  Clark did what I think is a quintessentially American thing. They could have just decided themselves which to do, but they didn’t. They presented it to the group for a vote. Everyone got an equal vote, including Sacajawea and York, an enslaved man Clark had brought along as his servant.  They were the first African American, the first woman, and the first indigenous person to vote in American history.  The group voted to go inland, and that was that.  Fort Clatsop (replica shown here)  was the result.

 

 

That’s pretty impressive, but I don’t want to sugar coat these two men.  They were products of their time, and deciding that everyone deserved a say in that situation is not the same as thinking everyone is inherently equal.  After their return to Missouri, York fully expected to be freed, and was astonished that Clark refused.  I am astonished as well.  Clark also persuaded Sacajawea to let him take over the schooling of her child back in Missouri, so he could grow up in white culture.  Also cringeworthy, so let’s not leap to declare him a saint.  But let’s not throw him out as a racist SOB either, for he was so much more complex than that. 

The story of the vote on the shore of the Pacific reveals the simple truth that sometimes the best leaders  are those who know when to follow. Leadership means more than issuing orders. True leaders enable.  True leaders listen. True leaders know when to get out of the way. That is what the American founders thought leadership would entail in this new experiment in democracy. The country was still so new when Lewis and Clark set out that the greatest intellect behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, was not only still alive, but the one who sent them.   

How far we have fallen  from that profound moment on the Pacific shore. How far we have fallen from the idea that everyone should have a voice—or, with a truncated census, even be counted at all.  How far we have fallen when our president will not even promise  he will honor the results of the election.  How far down the Missouri River would this expedition ever have gotten with what passes for political leadership today? Lewis and Clark showed what America could be.  Lewis embodied it when he insisted Clark be treated as his equal.  They both embodied it when they shared power with their companions.  They both embodied it when they treated no one as expendable.

Up here in the northwest corner of the United States as I write this,  I offer up to the universe the hope that the best that was in Lewis and Clark can prevail in a better America,  where everyone matters, and where York and Sacajawea are treated as equals not just sometimes but—unquestionably—always.

Yesterday morning I acted on a realization I wrote about in my last post —my tendency to rush everything. The day before,  I had looked for opportunities to pass cars on two-lane roads, but yesterday as I was driving toward Crater Lake I reminded myself to  begin that change I want to see in myself,  and just take it easy. The few minutes I might gain weren’t worth the stress, and really, how about just enjoying the scenery? It made a huge difference In the quality of my day just to decide that the person in front of me (well, for the most part) was driving fast enough.

And then there’s what I allow into my consciousness in the car.  I finished a so-so audiobook on the way to Klamath Falls, and normally I would just start another, but yesterday morning that little voice that is trying to guide me to a richer life pointed out that a mystery or thriller  is good for passing time but that really there are far better ways of truly enhancing it.

Opera, I said to myself. How long has it been since I listened to Angela Gheorghiu, one of my favorite sopranos? On the way to Crater Lake I was bathed in Puccini, Massenet, Charpentier and others, and  when that album was done, the music switched to Mysterium, a second album by her I forgot I had. It starts with several Eastern Orthodox pieces she sings in concert with a choir . There’s something about that style of music that goes straight to a deeply embedded place far beyond where the rational brain  can travel.

And so, as I climbed through the pines to Crater Lake, my thoughts blossomed. Here I was,  traveling in geologic time, forest time, medieval church time and my own moment all at once. Most of us treat time as linear, some see it as cyclical, and some believe that it doesn’t exist at all but that everything is happening all the time. It’s far too much for my limited brain to go there, but I got a glimpse of that yesterday as I saw myself as a passing flash in the forest, a speck of dust in earth time, but still fully present as my day unfolded minute by minute.

And here I am now, on the Oregon Coast, in the temporal and spatial middle of my journey, coming from timeless mountains to boundless ocean.  Today will have new messages, I am sure, but the thought that keeps running through my mind is the closing line of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

It’s a bummer of a sentiment if you choose to invest it with a sense of hopelessness, but I don’t see it that way.  The past is the raw material of the present. We wouldn’t have mountains or music without it.  Today  will be a good day because I will bring my whole life  to meet it.

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday I left California.  On my first day I drove past the story of much of my life, starting with San Diego, where I first arrived in 1964 as a teenager, driving past UCSD, where I spent an important chunk of my career, to San Clemente, where the grandparents who gave me Canadian citizenship lived among horses and wild grass on a hill that is now covered with houses.

I went past the exits for Glendale, in the San Fernando Valley, where I was born, then on up the Central Valley of California to Sacramento. This stretch is also very familiar, as my first husband was from there and we traveled once or twice a year when my boys were young, to visit his family. I had originally planned to stop in Davis for the night, the site of my second birth, in 1967, when I went off to the university.  Instead, I stayed near Nancy, my “best friend for life,” whom I met at Davis, so that momentous chapter in my life was honored as well over beer and tacos at a local brewery.

Once north of Sacramento, the journey took on a new shape because I was in unfamiliar territory for the first time. I did recall having seen Mt. Shasta once, and it hit me the same way again, more as a force than a mere mountain.(See  photo below)  I slept just over the Oregon border in Klamath Falls, and am now starting the third day of my drive. In an hour or so I will leave for the short drive to Crater Lake, which I have only seen pictures of but has long been bucket list for me, then on to the Oregon Coast  for the night.

What is this journey like?  It’s more than a road trip, because I won’t be returning to my old life.  It is a relocation to a place I have never seen, but I’m okay with that. My closest friend in recent years, Jane, asked me before I left what I wanted to take with me and what I wanted to leave behind, and I didn’t have a good answer. I  like the person I am, and though I look forward to yet another chapter in my life, it doesn’t feel as reinventive as some big changes have in the past. It’s more the logical extension of the person I am.  I am hoping to take my best parts with me, which include resilience, curiosity, and joy in the new and undiscovered. I will need to leave behind some reluctance to engage with other people, and a sense that I need to be in a rush about everything. In a way, this is a second form of retirement, moving beyond what my post-professorial life looked like in a San Diego without the escape of cruising. I will use my strengths to build this new life into what it needs to be.

Last night I had my first “what the hell have I done?” thought, and I am sure it won’t be my last. But the answer to “ what am I going to do today.” has certainly gotten far more interesting. So I am off to Crater Lake and beyond. I’ll tell you what today was like  after I have found out for myself. Waving to you from the road!

 

 

Finally on the road to go find out the answer to this wild and precious question.

Anybody who has cruised with me knows how much I love champagne, and how my treat to myself after a morning lecture is wine at lunch, because I am off the hook for the day.  Anybody who knows how I am at home knows that I don’t drink much at all—at most a glass of wine a day, and often not even that. Today is an off-the-hook kind of day, though, and I am doing something I almost never do at home—settling in with a wine spritzer at one in the afternoon.

I am ready to go.  I have finished all the work associated with leaving  San Diego, traveling for the next week, and getting my car and myself across the border. It’s all done except for the last few things I can’t do until just before I leave.  Even coffee  for the next two mornings is ground and in a baggie so I could pack the grinder.  Can’t be without that!

To my great relief, all I want to take will indeed fit, however tightly, in my car, and it is organized so I only have to take out what is essential every day and cross my fingers the car alarm keeps the rest of it safe overnight. Dan says “don’t leave anything visible in your car that you aren’t prepared to lose,” but after having shed myself of almost everything I own, I have a pretty casual attitude about what losses aren’t survivable.

Between now and the notary appointment this evening to sign papers for escrow on my condo, I have nothing to do.  This is part because I managed to exceed my to-do-list this week.  I even have a full tank of gas already.  Tomorrow I have nothing on my calendar because I have learned to leave a day before any big trip for the last- minute crises that would otherwise freak me out.

Tomorrow, nothing as well.  I could leave but now I am in a zone where just resting and breathing seems like a better idea.  Saturday will arrive soon enough.  Time to enjoy the sunset of this chapter before waking into another.