It's been entirely too long since I've written.  Over two weeks in fact.  In part, this lapse was due to the many days we spent travelling across the prarie states, and then days in Seattle busily preparing to vacate the trailer for a week to come home.  It's easy to make excuses when things get really boring, but I've realized that these times can, in a way, also be the most interesting/real. The photos are definitely not as exciting though.  I must be on the verge of thinking myself a writer, because I find myself resisting it these days -- a sure sign that this is not the metier for me. 

We left Kenora after getting our truck fixed again (not really, they just turned the light off in order to get the power back to normal until the next time it comes on) and headed out in the hopes of making some real progress across the continent.  Because of the uncertainty with the truck, we decided to keep our route further south, skipping Banff and Jasper until the Spring, and staying on the gentler grades.  We also finalized our plans for coming back here by flying through Seattle.

 The drive after Kenora through the rest of Ontario was fairly boring except for some pretty spectacular wildlife encounters while driving.  First, there was the powerful and swift moving gray wolf that crossed right in front of the truck as we were heading out on the trans-Canada from Thunder Bay.  Then there was the bald eagle that practically flew into the radiator grate while we were speeding along.  There were two bald eagles in fact flying around a carcass of some sort on the side of the highway.  Both encounters too speedy to catch on film -- so brief that it was somewhat surreal.  But a good omen just the same I thought.  

 I must have been right about that because we proceeded to make amazing time across the prarie provinces, not having any more pesky engine light incidents.  We travelled 480 miles on the first day from Kenora to Moose Jaw, Manitoba, 400 miles from Moose Jaw to Lethbridge, Alberta the second day and on the last day a shorter trip to Fernie, British Columbia.   I'd obviously become addicted to our new camera because despite the lack of interesting subjects, I turned the lens on our everyday experience (sitting in the car and staring out the windows).  Lots of trains, lots of grain elevators, lots of cranky passengers. 

 There were a few interesting sites along the way though.  Like the world's longest, highest train bridge in Lethbridge, Alberta.  The train bridge crosses over a huge coullee formed by the Old Man River and at the base of the coullee we found a nature preserve with many trails snaking through the cottonwoods bordering the river.  Kell and I learned all about swales and how they're formed, as well as the geological formation of coullees and the microclimate that has grown up under the train bridge.   Then, to top it off, we were finally rewarded with the sight of a long freight train crossing the coullee.

Before entering British Colubmia, we passed through the mining towns of eastern Alberta, one of which, the Town of Frank, was buried in the early 1900's when half of a mountain collapsed on top of the town, the rock debris gaining such force coming down the mountain that it travelled a mile or so up the other side of the valley before coming to a halt.  The debris is almost exactly where it fell, except for the snaking lines cleared through it for the rebuilding of the road and the train bed.  It was quite eerie, and only a few trees have managed to colonize the massive piles of rock so it looks much the same as it did shortly after the slide.  

 Though the driving was hard to take after a few days, there was nothing like the feeling of catching our first glimpse of the Canadian rockies and seeing snow there!  This little stretch of Alberta heading towards B.C. was quite beautiful -- rolling hilly farmfields, cattle ranches and wind farms all in shades of tan while the backdrop of the rockies stood misty gray and white and blue.  

We decided to split our remaining days in B.C. before heading back to Seattle between Fernie and Nelson.   Fernie is a small but burgeoning town in the Kootenays.  It wasn't on our short list of potential places to live (PPLs), but we found that it had a lot to offer.  The local ski resort seems to be gaining in size and appears to have some serious terrain, plus lots and lots of powder in the winter.  While the Town used to depend on coal mining, it seems more and more to get its life from visiting outdoors folk -- biking, skiing and fly fishing.   The downtown is filled with old brick and stone buildings that were mandated in the early 1900s to withstand the perils of forest fires that had previously ruined the area.  It had a few cool ethnic restaurants and a really great hiking lodge up near the top of Mount Baldy, in the local provincial park.  I guess the housing stock is being driven up in price by Calgary money coming down for second homes, etc., but it was still very cheap compared to what we're accustomed to.  We didn't get a whole lot of time there, but enough to go hiking near the snow line and get a taste of Island Lake.  

 We moved onto Nelson just in time to camp out at their city park, which would be closing two days after we arrived.  Nelson was stunning in many ways -- and is on our PPL list.  I was never exactly sure why Miles had picked it, but I quickly saw that he had good instincts about this place.  It's also in the Kootenays, although more difficult to reach due to being nestled in the small valley at the bottom of which lies Kootenay Lake -- a long beautiful stretch of lake that it took us 30 minutes to cross on a ferry.  We took the ferry to avoid the only other route -- through a steep pass that  we didn't want to risk with our shaky truck situation.  Unfortunately, we crossed just after dark so no pics. 

Nelson has a slightly urban feel because its main rsidential housing stock is nestled on few streets that climb up from the lake's edge into the mountains surrounding the lake.  The housing itself is very moderately priced by our standards -- $350k will get you 3 or 4 bedrooms and 2 baths in a cute cottagey type house on one of the town's main residential streets.  Think Sag Harbor houses, in a sausalito type house atop house arrangement, surrounded by lush green mountains shrouded in clouds and mist.  The downtown has a few long commercial streets, packed with lots of mom and pop local shops that have a distinctly bohemian feel.  A few nice restaurants and a nice hotel as well as a concert hall where we got to see the Zelinsky quartet on the eve of Miles' 40th.  It also has a renowned Waldorf school that has apparently attracted families from all over the world.   And finally, it has a large (at least in relation to its population of 10,000) Shambhala sangha to which would enable Miles to continue his practice and that would be a great resource for both of us. 

It does have some drawbacks -- it's hard to reach (3.5 hours from either Spokane or Calgary), in winter the clouds tend to get trapped in the valley making it gray a lot of the time unless you get up to the ski hill and pop out of the clouds.  And the ski hill, while being pretty high up there (10,000 ft), is barely developed with only two old lifts to serve the terrain and a ramshackle building serving as its only lodge.  But I guess any town that has only been developed in a limited way has to have some drawbacks, right?  

We did spend some time with folks from the Shambhala group, hiking up a mountain across the lake from the Town to get a birds-eye view.   We got to know more about why some of them moved to Nelson, what they do, and how they like it.  We got a bit of the local perspective from a guy our age who has lived there all of his life.  I got totally whipped by the hike -- but Kell did miraculously well with the help of the Center's director, a retired outdoor guide.   We also a few mediocre pics that don't do the town justice, but ...    

 More than anything, this visit showed that we have a lot to learn about the PPLs.  And we're going to have to find a way to spend time in each one despite our long list of things we want to be able to do and see on this trip.  

We left Nelson on Miles' 40th birthday, with me feeling like a complete failure at finding some significant way to spend his 40th other than driving clear across Washington in one day.  Oh well -- we made up for that later.  When we arrived in Seattle, we spent most of our time arranging for the truck to spend a week at the dealer getting a special not-yet-released fix to its EGR valve and computer to fix the mysterious engine light problem.  The airstream also went in for service on some warranty issues, including a leaky in the seal between the skylight and the plexiglass that protects it from the interior of the trailer.  The truck is fixed but we haven't heard word one from the Airstream dealer so we're not feeling so hopeful about that.  We spent one evening checking out downtown Seattle and giving Kell a taste of the Space Needle -- he would have been happy to ride the short monorail all night.  

 Then, we had an easy trip back to NYC.  Six hours on a plane to cover all the territory it had taken us two months to drive across.  Small world really.  Anyway, we have been here since taking extreme advantage of all the willing babysitters to do grown up things and just generally enjoying being with friends and family.  We spent two nights in NYC to celebrate Miles' bday in proper fashion.  The first night we saw Aida at the Met, which was stunning and mesmerizing.  Equally stunning was the booming base-filled music that was pounding through the floor of our otherwise promising Soho hotel room. There was a nightclub directly under our floor -- and if we had had any brains, we would have gone down and danced until about 4:30 when the music stopped, but instead we tried in vain to sleep.  We spent the next morning sleeping in and looking for a new hotel -- which we found despite short notice on the upper east side.  There we had a beautiful 19th floor room over looking the East River and the bridge.  We made a brief stop at the Whitney, seeing a very cool exhibit by Rudolph Stingel, and then moved on to see John Oliver (the very funny British correspondent on the Daily Show), which was funny in the extreme.  Despite the cush accomodations of the second hotel, we had to leave early the next morning, Miles' nursing a hangover worthy of any 40th.  

We returned to my sisters' so that I could help my siblings complete the garden that would soon be consecrated with my mother's ashes.  This was something that we all wanted very much to do together and was really the main reason for my coming back here so soon.  It was a banner blue sky day and so ordinary in so many ways. There was a large Italian retreat going on at the Shrine where we were installing the garden and that seemed appropriate too -- given that my Mom spent so many years surrounded by Italians, but that's another story.   Getting our hands dirty is nothing new to any of us due mainly to our mother's knack for gardening and its influence on us as kids.  So, it seemed so right to be getting our hands dirty that day, as if she were watching over us as we placed each plant in its designated hole.  It even seemed ordinary when we each plunged our hands into the bag containing her ashes, the gray dust covering over the layers of black dirt, so we could place handfulls in the ground where it would mix with the soil supporting each plant.  I think I can safely speak for us all in saying that this was truly the perfect resting place for her ashes -- she loved nothing more than getting her hands in the dirt and later in life, being close to God.  Here she would have both. 

Coming out to the Hamptons the next night, I realized how much I missed being home where my friends and family are --- and that pull will always be here.  But it was strange not having a "house" to come home to that was ours.  On the other hand, I don't miss living here.  And I realize that I'm not craving it even now that I'm back.  The light is spectacular, the landscape can often be so peaceful but there is still that unending push to succeed, to be well off, to fit in, that I'm not sure I can be at peace with.  I've really enjoyed these months of never blow-drying my hair, not wearing makeup, and wearing practical shoes all the time. 

Here, I feel like I need an identity other than Mom, Miles needs to be someone who has an important job and is really smart and Kell needs to be perfect, beautiful and over-achieving (ok - well that wouldn't be such a stretch ;) ).   I know from past experiences that this will also be the case in other places though, so I'm trying to remember that as I fantasize about living in one of these towns or another.  I'm trying to remember that the grass is not greener, it just looks different and it might be cheaper.