Hiking January 13, 2020

It is really quite late in my life that I have come to appreciate the wonder of hiking.

A few years before I retired, I got it into my head to walk the Bay Area Ridge Trail, and I asked my buddy Barbara to join me. This discontinuous circuit falls along the crest of hills that circle the San Francisco Bay to the tune of ~350 miles, and it takes car shuttling over ten counties to complete it.  Filled with spectacular views and as-spectacular weather, the Bay Trail is one of the many jewels of the Bay area.  Barbara and I managed to make it through all of Marin and Sonoma Counties before fizzling out for various reasons.

Indeed, I got distracted from the Ridge when I signed up for a trail-hiking challenge in 2012 to celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of Point Reyes National Seashore.  This was a far easier enterprise logistically because very few car shuttles were required. Still, to keep myself going, I roped in friends weekend after weekend to complete my goal, and by that October, I had been on at least part of almost every trail in the Seashore.

Now in full steam, I booked a trip for the Milford Track, an iconic hike on the South Island of New Zealand, for daughter Annie and me during her Christmas break from college.  As a warm-up, while still on the North Island, we did the Tongariro Alpine Crossing Track, a 12-mile hike across an occasionally active volcano.  It turned out to be way harder than the Milford Track itself, mainly because the first few miles were steeply uphill, including several flights of steps.  It is eerily beautiful, if not a bit disconcerting as one encounters lights that flash in case of an eruption. The Tongariro track – which I hiked at age 60 – taught me that my years of hiking were limited.  It was time for a bucket list.

First on that list was the Salkantay Pass in the Andes, one of the routes to Machu Picchu.  Again, I wheedled Annie into my new-found obsession with an REI trip over another holiday break.  I hadn’t appreciated that the pass was more than 15,000’ high, and as we made our way over the ridge, in a stiff, cold wind and some precipitation, I asked her whether we might cross Kilimanjaro off the bucket list.  “Cross it off, cross it off!” she enthusiastically concurred.

I have a few more trips in mind for the next few years – the Laugavegur Trek in Iceland, the hut-to-hut in the high Sierras, the W route in Chilean Patagonia, to name a few – but for now, I’m back into the Bay Area Ridge Trail with some new recruits that live around the Bay and with the hope of completing that before I turn 70.

How important hiking has become to me, and how surprising that discovery!  A few years ago, when my daughter was in the depths of her addiction, my friend Julie walked a long loop with me in the National Seashore.  She listened to my grief, and step by step, I felt myself healing.  It was as though the act of walking, the slow but steady and determined pace of it, gave me the slow and steady strength I needed to get through the horror of those days.

Now that I have more time, I am trying to walk for an hour each day.  I have my own little route of trails right behind my house, up on Mt. Sutro and another set of paths in Golden Gate Park down below.   I don’t listen to music or a podcast, I walk alone.  I think, I breathe, I hope for Annie’s health, for mine, and for a better world for all of us.   

The Daruma Dolls January 10, 2020

A few years before I retired, I hired a life-coach named Cathy to help me think through possibilities and to prepare for the next phase of my life.  At one point, when I started singing again after a break of about twenty years, Cathy offered me a small red-painted Daruma Doll, a Japanese image of the monk Bodhidharma who meditated for so long that his arms and legs withered away.  The doll is used for goal-setting, in that both eyes are empty white circles: the aspirant fills in one eye with an intention, and then fills in the second eye when the goal has been achieved.  By working with Cathy, my goal had become obvious – I wanted to sing with the San Francisco Opera Chorus. 

So I filled in one of the eyes with a large black circle and on the doll's underside I wrote the words Opera Chorus.  When I retired, I started vocalizing every day and began auditioning for a few things here and there.  I sang with the West Marin Players in Pirates of Penzance, and I joined Marin Oratorio.  I started to take voice lessons again and to work with my beloved vocal coach Daniel. Eventually I got up my nerve for the annual auditions for SFO Chorus (which I had also done probably 30 years previously).  I polished up the Jewel Song from Faust and learned a new Mozart aria from Clemenza di Tito.  And I did it!  I made it through the aria, I did not forget anything, I did not pass out or throw up. I did not make the cut, but now into my seventh decade, I was very proud of myself for trying.  Yet the poor Daruma Doll had to remain one-eyed.

Meanwhile I was hopping along on some other paths, and I said, “Cathy, I need a few more Daruma Dolls!”  I had written a draft of a short book on the discovery of RNA splicing, and at the time had found a literary agent to shepherd my book to publication.  One eye of little doll #2 was filled in and underneath it I wrote “Splice”.  But the literary agent and I had to part ways, do to his inaction and my impatience, and – what with one thing leading to another – the book remains unpublished and that doll is still blind in one eye, too.

Doll #3 was the last to be declared, and the first to be fully filled in.  On its bottom is written M Arch for Masters of Architecture.

On reflection, I think these Daruma Dolls kept me going.  They are a physical reminder and testimony to my determination and tenacity. I kept thinking, “I am not going to quit!  I want at least one of these dreams to come to fruition.”

And so one has.  I keep the M Arch doll in my car’s glove compartment now, along with a Sharpie, waiting for a chance to get together with Cathy, who now lives in Napa.  I don’t want to fill in the second eye without her.  We did this together.  

Swimming December 3, 2019

As I was preparing to leave UCSF, the University ran a series of talks to help prospective retirees navigate the transition financially, medically, and psychologically. It was recommended that we not make big plans immediately, but rather let our passions percolate, trusting that eventually a vision would bubble to the surface. In fact, the counselors advised, it was often a childhood activity or dream that would grab our attention and propel us forward.

And so it was with me.  I started taking art classes at College of Marin after I retired, not because I had ever taken art before, but because I hadn’t.  I wanted to see what this was all about and whether any kernels of talent or creativity lie within me.  Yet as I continued, it was my childhood fascination with architecture that was rekindled, and recently that has prompted me to reflect about the simple joys of my Boomer girlhood.

Summers growing up in Pennsylvania in the 50s and 60s were lazy, and I loved that.  I would ride my black bike along the narrow streets of our neighborhood and over the dirt paths on a nearby golf course, often by myself.  We kids would congregate in our family’s large side yard after dinner, playing Red Light or Simon Says or catching fireflies till we couldn’t see anymore. 

On rainy days, my mother would take us to the Pottstown Public Library, whose smell I can still dredge up, and we’d borrow a stack of books that would keep us going for the next three weeks.  One summer, I think I worked my way through every biography on the kids’ shelf.  How I loved to settle into a read on our front porch during late afternoon thundershowers, gently bouncing in the embrace of a soft-cushioned metal chair whose arms and legs were formed by a single sinuous ribbon of wrought iron.  Or sometimes, my sister and our friend Carol and I would build a Barbie world in our cool cinderblock basement with bits of wood scraps my father had set aside for that purpose.

But above all, there was swimming.  Our family joined the North End Swim Club when it was under development, and by 1960 it was the centerpiece of my existence for the next decade.  I wasn’t a great swimmer, but I joined the swim team anyway, because that’s just what we did!  Practice was in the morning, rain or shine, and on warm sunny days, we spent the rest of the day there, playing canasta on our towels under the spruce trees, leaping off the diving boards for a cool plunge, frolicking like a dolphin, flirting with the boys, playing tetherball, or grabbing a Fudgesicle from the snack bar for all of 7 cents.  There was rhythm, consistency, friendship, sport, and delight. 

And so finally, 50+ years later, to celebrate my new relationship with unstructured time, I joined a small swim club in Marin, to slice through clear water in a lap-lane, to soak in some sun, to listen to the still-60s music blaring over the pool speakers, to rest in a chair, to read, and to refresh.  This is summer. This feels like home.