The straight and narrow

For the last in this series recapping our August visit to the US, we find ourselves on this road, a well-maintained bike path cutting through the green summer woods of Ohio.  This unassuming but tidy sliver of pavement has run through my hometown for years, but it wasn't until our recent trip that I actually had the chance to get on it and check it out for myself.

I've been an avid bike rider since I was a kid.  I can still recall the hours that I spent in abandoned construction areas in my neighborhood with a BMX bike and a couple of friends, tearing up and down the dusty paths that gave me enough momentum to go flying off the many hills built up in the clearings between the trees.  As I got older, I graduated to a mountain bike and started taking longer trips all around the city.  The simple act of going from one side of town to the other and back using nothing more than my own legs gave me a great feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment, far greater than the intangible reward of a high percentage on a report card, for example.

Once I was old enough to drive, I got a car and pretty much left the idea of bike riding behind, up until a day at the university when I was driving home and got plowed into head-on by another college kid making a left turn.  He was apparently too eager to get to the party around the corner and didn't bother to look before he went.  Neither of us had been driving very fast but the impact was still enough to have torn up a lot of what was under the hood of car.  Enough so to have resulted in the other guy's insurance company declaring my car totaled and cutting me check for its value.  I spent a few days considering what kind of car to get next, before ultimately deciding not to get one at all.  Instead I bought a new bike and used it to get around Columbus for the next year or so.

In so doing, I rediscovered the youthful joy I had once derived from going from place to place under my own power.  I also found a new satisfaction in cruising around the college campus and beyond on a warm sunny day, experiencing the urban environment without the filter of windshield and motor.  I made the most of both sidewalk and curbside lanes on the road to maneuver through heavy traffic as I pleased, and found new single track and new hills and mounds to get a mountain-biking fix every now and then.  There were also days when I'd be out and far from home and the sky would open up with an unrelenting downpour.  On days like that I'd ride home with the spray from both tires pelting me front and back, quickly reaching that saturation point where it didn't matter anymore how much it rained because I was already soaked.

Today in Cuenca, I'm back in that place again, car-free and leaving it up to my own feet, my mountain bike of the moment, and public transportation to get me around and out of town.  During those rare times when I do find myself in a car, I can't help but feel like I'm buckling into an amusement park ride.  It was with that frame of mind that we visited the US recently.  At the same time, by virtue of our cross-country trip and the desire to see many parts of Ohio while we were there, I was behind the wheel of a car for the first time since I left the States some years ago.

I even had a bike waiting for me in Santa Fe, but due to lack of space in the car we drove across the country, I ended up giving it away at the last minute to the Chain Breaker Collective, a non-profit dedicated to getting people on two wheels in Northern New Mexico.  I was happy to be able to give the bike away to a group like them, but sad at the same time to say goodbye to that particular bike.  I'd had it for over 10 years, and even though it had been slowly rotting as it waited for me in Santa Fe, it was the only bike I had in the States, and I had been hoping to get out and do some riding once we got to Ohio.

Fortunately I was able to borrow two bikes while we were there after all, and so Nancy and I were able to get out and do some riding together.  Plus, on a few different mornings and afternoons when little else was going on, I took the opportunity to finally get on that trail you see pictured at the top of the page.

Once I was on the path, I discovered that I had entered Ohio's veritable Highway 1 for bikes (and other forms of non-motorized travel).  A quick look at the map posted at the trailhead revealed a growing network of such trails.  Years ago, many of these trails didn't exist, but they are slowly beginning to link up, incorporating already existing paths within cities and connecting them with long stretches such as this one, between towns.  Maybe in a few years, it will be feasible to travel from one State to the next on your bike, using strictly these designated bike paths.

Projecting yourself into such a future, you can begin to imagine a new sort of cycling trend emerging, one in the same vein as an intrepid hike along the full length of the Appalachian Trail.  On a bona fide network of interstate bike trails, one could take a tour of any given region of the US, visiting its respective cities and national parks.  You could camp each night if that were your angle, or you could stay in the hostels or roadside inns that had sprung up to accommodate all the traffic passing through.

Such is the vision of the Rails to Trails Conservancy.  By taking land once set aside for our nation's deteriorating system of railroads and carving out a 8-10 foot wide stretch of pavement along the easement, you create an affordable bike trail that runs along a relatively flat and straight path.  And since defunct railroads exist throughout the country, a comprehensive project to establish such trails along enough of them would lay down the foundation for an interstate transport system to rival Eisenhower's in its scope, but for nowhere near the same pricetag.














With some luck, we'll have something like that to look forward to.  In the meantime, I made it as far as one town to the south and one town to the north of my home in Springfield.  My first destination was to the south, none other than Yellow Springs, Ohio.
 

Once I had jumped on the trailhead on the north end of Springfield, I followed the trail over an old train trussel.  When I was younger, I thought these things were just a way to take a dive into the river below...

Later, the trail led through Springfield's rusty industrial district, and also within sight of my old church and elementary school grounds:

Next I rode through downtown Springfield, past the old Marketplace building you see on the left, and then headed into the south end of town.  Here, the trail spills out onto residential neighborhood streets before picking up again as a separate trail south of town.

Once out of town, the trail makes a straight shot towards Yellow Springs, through the woods and cornfields of rural Ohio.  One fundamental difference between riding in the high mountains I've gotten accustomed to in recent years and the low country of the Great Lakes is of course the expansive stretches of flat land you'll find in Ohio.  Another important difference for a cyclist is the bugs.  Ohio in the summer is rife with insects, and sunglasses are a must even on a cloudy day, unless you want to pick bug guts out of your eyes while you're riding.

Between Springfield and Yellow Springs, you ride for many miles along a flat course girded by trees on both sides.  With the sound of leaves and locusts in your ears and the uninterrupted line of the bike trail unfolding endlessly before you, you reach cruising speed and just keep going.  And then all of a sudden, the line of trees breaks and you're in a new town:

The Yellow Springs station.  Once a true train station, the rails are gone and its original purpose has given way to a rest area and information center for cyclists.  With a public restroom and drinking fountain, as well as endless brochures and a map of the bike trails throughout the area, this is indeed a welcome center for all those arriving to town by bike.

Yellow Springs is a college town, a liberal enclave and a tourist destination well-known throughout the area.  It's a preferred destination for me because it has the great combination of good restaurants and one of my favorite forests, Glen Helen.  And yet, in all my life I've only this one time gotten there under the power of my own two legs.  And it took me just over an hour to get there from my doorstep on the north side of Springfield, and that was with all the stops I made to take pictures.  Not too bad!

This trail, I'm told, can be taken all the way down to Cincinnati and the Ohio River.  That particular day I contented myself in having made it as far as Yellow Springs, as dusk was already setting in by the time I got there.  But I was buoyed by the feeling of empowerment I got from connecting these two nearby communities by bike power, and vowed to do it again as soon as I could.  And on my way home, as I was pummeled by a new salvo of nocturnal insects, I decided that one day soon I'd follow the trail to its northern terminus in Urbana, the community north of Springfield.

And sure enough, it wasn't more than a week before I took off spontaneously one morning, determined to make it to Urbana.  I originally planned to ride as quickly as I could to Urbana and back again, just to see how long it would take.  But then I found a sign for Cedar Bog, a state park preserving a small segment of what was once a huge swamp covering a large portion of the State.  I hadn't been there since I was a kid and I couldn't resist ducking into the woods and having a look around.

Upon entering the park, the sight that greeted me was this fine tree standing at the entrance to the forest, and a wooden trail carefully laid out atop the marshy wetlands underfoot.  I'm not sure if it was meant for bike traffic, but since it was Labor Day and there was no one around to tell me otherwise, I decided it would be alright.

It turned out that this wooden platform extended throughout the park, and I was able to coast along the length of it as I explored.  The park, while relatively small, covers several different ecosystems, including some open meadows and a nicely shaded forest with a river running through it.  Along the way I learned from the various signs that some 25% of Ohio's plant species can be found within the park.  I also learned the fine shades of meaning between a fen, a bog and a swamp.  If you're interested in such things for some reason, I'd be happy to share.








After I had gone all the way around the park without ever actually having set foot in it, I got back on the trail and followed the railroad into Urbana.

Quietly emerging from the vast fields of central Ohio into one of the countless small wooded towns poking out from the sea of yellowing cornstalks is a normal, everyday task when you do it in your car.  In fact, passing through a town like Urbana often means a resigned foot on the brake and a prolonged wait at a series of traffic lights before thankfully speeding back up to 55 and punching the cruise control back on again.

But when you do the same thing on a bike, when the first sign of the ubiquitous water tower or church spire signals your triumphant entrance into a new town, you first feel the satisfaction of having traversed a wide open space in order to get there.  Then you see the place through a new set of eyes, ones bare of the glass and metal filter that often rob us of the real experience of being in a new place.  There was also something about riding around the streets of Urbana that brought back the many memories I'd had in that town.  At the same time, as I stumbled upon neighborhoods and alleyways I'd never seen before, I felt as if I was experiencing it for the first time.

When traveling, whether it be cross country or just across town, you'll see more in an hour on foot or on your bike than you'll see all day in your car.  Likewise, a five mile trip across the countryside or urban landscape under your own power and out in the elements will reveal more about that place than hundreds of miles will grant you when you're behind the wheel.  Don't get me wrong, our trip this summer would have been impossible without the various cars we used to get around.  But I was happy to have also gotten the chance to experience my old stomping grounds once again on a bike, because that's how I got to know them in the first place.

That's nice!

As many of you know, we were in the US in August.  It was the first time there for my wife and daughter, and only my second visit home since coming to Latin America over three years ago.  My first time back during that time was for just two weeks, and happened more than two years ago, already.  Some people talk about being away from the US and then feeling culture shock all over again when they got back.  I never felt like I had any kind of "reverse culture shock" or anything like it, myself.  In fact, it was really easy for me to adjust to being there again.  But knowing that I was there only for a visit, and being there with someone who'd never been there before, these things helped me see the US through a different set of eyes than I had before I started my extended stay outside of its borders.

I also had the opportunity to engage in one of my favorite aspects of international living, which is to take a look at certain things people (including myself) take for granted as they go about their daily lives in their respective countries.  I'd say that in any given country, there are certain things that people do as a society - usually without thinking consciously about them so much - which work really well.  Then there are things that they do which really don't work so well, but they do them anyway.  Mostly because from their perspective, that's just how things are and even if it's annoying, that's life.  So I'd like to spend a few photos and paragraphs today looking at three institutions that I see in the US which I highly admire.  Institutions we have the fortune to take for granted in the US as always being there, which may not be the case in many other parts of the world.

The first on my list will be beer:

The carryout you see here is in Columbus, OH and was never more than a short trip from any of the several apartments I lived in there.  Inside, you can find dozens of high quality imported and domestic beer and wine.  There are dozens of other locally owned carryout stores like this one throughout the city, and a comparable number of local bars with plenty of good beer on tap.  There are so many of both in a college area like this one that an easy-going college kid has no reason to ever doubt in the reassuring ubiquity of some tasty imbibe.

Many people don't know that we owe today's deluge of microbrew varieties to Jimmy Carter and the Congress of his time.  In 1978 an amendment was added to a federal tax bill that permitted the making of beer and wine at home with no need for registration or taxation.  When Carter signed that bill, a time-honored industry of American craft beer was revived in the US.  What had been a web of costly legal overhead costs which all but prohibited amateur brewing became a wide open opportunity for anyone to try it out with very little investment.  Many of those amateur brewers, once satisfied with their unique and delicious creations, decided to go professional after all.  30 years later, we can enjoy the many fruits of their labor.

Today, we are enjoying a renaissance in craft brewing made possible by that small detail in a tax bill.  It's ironic that's all it took to bring it back, considering the veritable golden age of brewing in the US was cut short by a full-out 18th Amendment to the Constitution in 1919, known popularly as Prohibition.  Looking at Columbus again as an example, today there is still a part of town known as the Brewery District, which prior to Prohibition had been the home to five local brewing companies begun by German immigrants.  Before the waves of German immigration and the widespread national embrace of their brewing styles, Columbus and the rest of the US had been drinking English-style ales.  Personally, those are my favorite.  Today's blending of American barley and hop varieties with traditional English ale styles is as good as it gets.

In Ecuador, in comparison, there is a woeful dearth in beer options.  Ecuadorians love beer, especially their Pilsener querida.  Right on the label of the iconic 22 ounce Pilsener bottle (meant for sharing), it says ecuatorianamente refrescante, paying homage simultaneously to national pride and the beer's refreshing quality on a hot day.  I'll admit, especially when it's nice and sunny, or if I'm eating seafood, I do enjoy a Pilsener.  But there are few other beers around to be had, and those that do exist closely mimic that same commercial, light lager style that you can find repeatedly from any given country throughout the world.  Red Stripe, Corona, Budweiser, Molson, Foster's or Tsingtao, every country's got at least one.  Don't get me wrong, that style is fine for the right occasion, but some other options would be very much welcome.

Needless to say, after two years straight of largely doing without, during our trip I made a point to sample many different styles from different parts of the country.  From 2nd St. Brewery to Marble in Santa Fe, from Rogue in Oregon to Red Tail in California. Goose Island from Chicago, Great Lakes from Cleveland.  And bigger names like Fat Tire and Sierra Nevada.

I was so hot on the trail for beer that I even stumbled across an extended swath of wild hops:

I thought they were hops when I saw them, and some comparisons with photos of the real thing prove (as far as I can tell) that these are, indeed, hops.  So what were they doing growing out in the wild?  Seeing as how hops are not native to North America, I can do no more than speculate that the area I was in might once have been planted with hops in order to supply breweries, and now their progeny stand in silent tribute to the days of brewing past.

Whatever the case is, someday, if I'm living in the States again, I'll go to that place, cut me a viable switch from those vines and perhaps revive a strain of hops forgotten by the ages.




One thing I will say in defense of Ecuador's brewing industry is that it still operates under the very pragmatic system of the bottle deposit.  The deposit here is 25 cents a bottle, quite high compared to the 10 cents that Michigan requires, especially when you consider the difference in cost of living.  Let's say you have empty bottles in your house.  You go down to the store with your empties and exchange them for full ones, and that way you don't pay the deposit.  Each store, in turn, has cases of empties that they swap out for full ones with the distributor.  Easy, simple, and it prevents waste.  Most conspicuously within the city, where you don't see broken glass all over the place as you often do in the US.  The thick bottles look a little roughed up on the outside from going through the bottling process over and over, but they're fresh on the inside!

Our second consideration for today is the parks system.

There were a number of things that I was looking forward to as I anticipated our trip to the US, and one of them was a walk in Glen Helen.  Located just outside of Yellow Springs, Ohio, it's technically part of Antioch University.

In high school and college, I spent countless days and nights wandering around that place with various friends or by myself, often bearing witness to things no less than magical.  The quintessential trail through the green forest for me will always represent the simple joy of being alive and in nature.  I'm endlessly thankful that there are places which are left to be forest in a world full of cities and planted fields.




The parks we visited were forests.  They were also manmade lakes:

Surrounding this reservoir outside of my hometown is forest, a disc golf course, and a meadow of wild flowers and grasses designed to recreate and preserve the wild meadows that once blanketed the extensive wetlands now drained and given over to cornfields throughout much of the State of Ohio.











Parks are also grounds for historical reenactments, such as the Fair at New Boston, which I hadn't visited since I was a kid.

This Fair recreates the time of the early independence and expansion of the United States beyond Ohio and the Great Lakes.  My interest in history only grows as I get older, and this reenactment was an enjoyable way to spend a day at one of the many green spaces outside of my home town.











One of the smallest but most beloved of the parks we visited was Iuka Park:

It's a small, slender sliver of green space running along a ravine through Columbus.  It runs past the nicest of the many apartments I lived in during my college days, and was the setting for some laid back Sundays and fun parties for a couple of years.  I imagine it still is, for the people living there today.  I was happy to see that the massive slice of tree trunk I had rolled up onto my front porch and called a table was still where I had left it.

I was also happy to see that some permanent garbage cans had been placed throughout the park, as litter was a serious problem in the park when I lived there.  Which was inevitable, since there were places to sit and eat, but nowhere to discard your waste back then.  Once I had even gone around town and taken some public garbage cans from areas of town which I thought had enough already, and planted them in the park.  I called that Robin Hood tactic "urban osmosis."  For a few months, someone even came periodically and collected the garbage from those cans, but then one day the cans were gone.  The day we visited, the sky was blue, the grass was green and the park was clean.  Still a fantastic place to spend an afternoon.




My last praise of the day is for our libraries, universities and other educational institutions.

This is the Columbus Library.  As the banners say, it was voted the Library of the Year for 2010.  It's been repeatedly ranked as among the best libraries in the country.  Above the front door, it reads, "Open to All."

I have great respect for our libraries.  They are an easy thing to overlook, and lots of people don't really use them very much.  I went with my mom to the library all the time when I was a kid, both in my hometown and in Crestline, where her parents lived.

When I moved to Columbus, I discovered the extensive public library there, and the many modern services it offers.  Music, movies, and an advanced system of requests and holds allowed me to find just about any book, album, film or TV series I could think of and have it delivered to the library branch in my neighborhood, for free.  I even received an email message telling me my request was ready to pick up.  US citizens enjoy countless privileges, but our virtually unlimited access to knowledge and culture via libraries is perhaps one of the greatest among them.

The Ohio State University, besides being a first rate institution of higher learning and a virtual city within the city of Columbus, also has an incredible library, 11 stories in height.  Here's a view from the top:

We spent an afternoon exploring Ohio State.  I lived for seven years in the campus area, and now it's been about eight years since I moved away from there.  The campus area and its surroundings have changed a lot since then, seeing the construction of many new buildings and facilities, and the revival of some classic ones.  One great improvement to the library is the 11th floor.  I used to go up there during long breaks between classes, as it was always quiet and offered views like the one you see here.  But at the time it was a functional floor of the library, full of flickering fluorescent lights and dusty stacks of books, with a utilitarian desk situated in each window well.

We rode the elevator to the top floor during our visit, me with the intention to show Nancy the view.  Little did I know that this level had been remodeled into very comfortable observation deck, complete with wireless internet, overstuffed chairs and couches, good lighting, wooden floors, and big desks for studying, providing an excellent space for the appreciation of the panoramic views of the campus.  This change echoes many of the tasteful changes made around the area, in my opinion.  The new buildings do their best to look modern and blend in with the older structures around them at the same time.  Attention has been given to outdoor space and pedestrian traffic, as well as to the "live-work" concept that has needed to be reinvented in the US after decades of overly assertive zoning codes.  There is also room for local business rather than strip mall after strip mall of parking lots and big box franchises.  Those parts of town certainly exist and continue to expand in their sprawling way, but the new growth in the more central parts of town reflect a paradigm shift in urban planning that I hope can take root throughout the country.  In short, Columbus has seen some tasteful improvements in the past several years, and has remained one of those cities I consider to be a nice place to live.

Another place I always enjoy visiting in Columbus is the Franklin Park Conservatory.

Located in the middle of a big city park, itself in the middle of one of the more stately of Columbus' older neighborhoods, it is a gigantic greenhouse and a sort of zoo for plants.  While one can feel sorry for animals stuck in a cage or artificial habitat, as long as a plant gets its requisite amount of light, heat and nutrition from its soil and what have you, it will be content to be where it is.  Hence this conservatory makes for a happier place for a gardener and animal lover like myself to visit.

The conservatory is divided into several habitats, including a desert, a jungle and the Pacific Islands.  It also has a great palm tree house which reminded me quite a bit of the outdoor gardens along the river in Guayaquil.  There's a bonzai exhibit which features a little tree much older than the US Constitution, and a current outdoor exhibit of carnivorous little pitcher plants.  A truly remarkable place for kids and grownups, if you've never been.

Ohio, like much of the United States, is blessed with nice parks and educational places.  They often operate in conjunction, such as this Conservatory in Franklin Park, or Glen Helen and Antioch University.  That seems right, as education leads us naturally to a place of peace and quiet, and it is peace and quiet that provokes a thoughtful state of mind.  I hope you'll think of such things as you go to the polls in November, for example.  While omnibus spending packages often go without a popular vote, parks and schools always seem up against budgets hinged upon the public whim.  Maybe you have kids in school or maybe you don't.  Maybe you use the parks and libraries, or not.  Either way, there is something very important about knowing that they're there, and that they define our country in a remarkable fashion.  I hope I can take my grandchildren to Glen Helen, to the statue of Horace Mann in the tall grass, and then take a walk in a manicured field in front of this beautiful Antioch building with them, full of the enthusiastic young and old.

High desert dreams

During our trip to the US last month, we visited our friends Andy and Amanda on their wide open land out in the northern New Mexico countryside.  While there, I bore fleeting witness to this gentle unfolding of the Ortiz Mountains.  These mountains were once the backdrop to a four year chapter in my life, and to have them spreading out before me once again revealed at once the distance and nearness where New Mexico now sits for me.

At that moment, as four of us walked around together, it occurs to me that each of us were walking a different path.  Nancy and Tamia found themselves on a trail they had never seen before.  Andy was casually walking along the same territory he might venture out upon on any given day.  As for myself, I was passing through a place I had once considered close to home, and was now taking in everything I could during our brief tour.

The day before, we had met Andy and Amanda on the other side of another mountain range, the Jemez Mountains.  The Jemez are a long stretch of mountains lying some 30 or 40 miles west of where I was then standing, and along their north-south run there aren't many more than two or three ways across by car.  To pull off such an unlikely rendezvous, we had set out from Santa Fe, crossing the Jemez range from their northern end.  Andy and Amanda, living further to the south, chose the way across from the mountains' opposite extreme.  And where did we meet, but a secluded set of hot springs tucked away several miles in from the highway.

Despite being so far from the beaten path, quite a few other bathers were present that day, and after we had enjoyed a nice soaking, and intense hydro-massage from the gush of hot water issuing forth from the source of the springs, we decided to adjourn to a more private place, a meadow further down the hill.

There, we communed awhile and sipped Rioja from the bottle.  Then, as dusk began to set in, we made our way back to the highway and took the long drive to Andy and Amanda's land.

The ride back was punctuated by bouts of curiosity as to what we had all been up to for the last few years.  I won't say that there were quite enough hours for the whole story to be told in the roundabout fashion it was revealed, but I'd like to think we all managed to get into it deeply enough for the time being what it was.  Once we got where we were going, it was very much nighttime and past our collective bedtimes.  Our hosts showed us to their guesthouse and retired up the hill, and we didn't bother unpacking before we climbed up into the loft bed and were asleep.

The light of the morning gave me a better glimpse at the guest house I had stayed in two years prior.  In the meantime, it had evolved in some noticeable ways:

Our guest lodging for our stay is a one room strawbale house. It's an ongoing project carved out by an extended community of contributors who each come to the land when they can to further its development.

The first time I stayed there, (if I'm remembering well) the interior still revealed the straw walls, and the loft bed was one of the few furnishings.

Upon our recent stay, the tree mural on the left wall and a further layer of mud plaster were two of the changes to the outside.  The inside had gotten some plaster as well, and was now graced with a little woodstove, a wash basin, and also a desk furnished with a reading lamp, accompanying guest book, and some light reading by Joseph Campbell.

Another practical inclusion to the project is the water cistern:

Since our friends live off the grid, they look to the land - and at least as often to the sky - for their resources.  A big part of that means water collection.  Every roof on their land provides that much more square footage of area for capturing the rain and funneling it into storage.  As you can see, the slightly slanted roof directs water into a downspout leading to a cistern.

Lamentably outside the frame of the photo here is the destination of the overflow tube, a spiraling rock garden which (I gather) allows the water to be absorbed into the ground gently, contributing to the well-being of some nearby plants without causing undue erosion.  The ladder and other building materials laying about will further illustrate the work in progress that is the guest house.

Before I go any further, I'll make a short aside to elaborate more on Ampersand.  A name for both their land and their project, I might say that it describes their own personal manifestation of sustainable living, and the countless, conscious ways of considering their daily lives in order to achieve it.  While they draw deliberately from the past work and research of other people on similar paths, the beauty of such nascent projects as modern sustainability is that they're wide open to creative innovation, and many of the details you'll see are very much their own.

Amanda and Andy acquired their land about seven years ago, not long after we met.  I recall their inaugural party on the land as a starry night illuminated by a campfire and righteously like-minded people.  Since then I've been lucky to spend many days and nights on that land, and while each time has been unique and distinct, I can't say that there's been a single time I've done so that hasn't felt incredibly memorable and powerful.  I hope you'll take the time to look at their website which I've linked above, especially if you hold sustainable values and live or plan to be in New Mexico.  There, you'll see plenty of specific goals and projects going on.  Here, I hope I can present a complementary narrative that comes from my own interaction with my friends and their vision.

And so, delving back into our time on the land, we climbed the hill from the guesthouse and made our way up to their place.  I was anxious to see it, as my most recent memory of it was of a home still very much under construction.  It had walls, floor and a roof, but they were all still in the rough stages of completion.  But what we saw that morning was unmistakably a well-lived home:

While this picture doesn't capture the full scope of the exterior of the house, which is even more striking seen from the front, it does reveal some of the functional aspects of the design.  If you look to the right, towards the rear of the house, you'll see the solar array that provides electricity to the home.  It's tilted so as to have maximum exposure to the sun's rays, much like the leaf of a plant.  And even more like a green leaf, these solar panels follow the sun automatically as it crosses the sky, thanks to a passive hydraulic tracker driven by the heat of the sun.  An elegant system guided by the very source of energy itself.

If you follow the line of the roof back towards the solar panels, you'll see a tube leading to another cistern, this one much larger than the one pictured above.  The water collected there is diverted for all water uses: washing, bathing, and gardening among them.  And for drinking water too, after passing through the attractive and functional filter/dispenser found in the kitchen.  Water for the shower is first heated, through a solar water heater that operates naturally through the principal of thermal siphoning.  Cold water naturally descends into the heater, while heated water naturally rises up into the shower or any other hot water source when the faucet is opened.

A portion of the garden can be seen above, several plants growing in containers.  An in-ground garden plot is around the front of the house, in front of a cold frame greenhouse.  Those plants are irrigated with greywater flowing from the shower and sinks from within the house, and additional water is provided from the cistern as needed.  I won't go into too much detail about these kinds of things, as it's all nicely laid out on their website.  But suffice it to say that an edible desert oasis can be yours, with no more than rainwater and the right kind of thought and determination.

That morning we had breakfast in their lovely home, and afterwords took a trip into Madrid, a nearby village like none other.  As it was for a time my first contact with humanity whenever I left my own little patch of high desert solitude years before, it was interesting to see it again.  Once a coal mining community, it was rescued from its fate as a ghost town in the 60s and has risen again as a sort of art community, at once reclusive and open to the public, and defies simple definition.

We stopped in to visit the community garden, managed and maintained by a small cadre of gardeners including Amanda.  On the way through town I noticed that while I could still recognize the most successful businesses - the coffee shop, the bar, the general store and some of the more prominent art galleries, namely - many of the shops had changed hands and been renamed, repainted, and born again.  All in all a look down the main drag revealed a town largely unchanged from the one I'd had in my mind's eye, though, which was nice to see.

Then, a trip down to the garden.

When I left the area, it was more of an idea than an actual garden, so seeing how it had taken shape over the course of a few years was great.  We collected some peas and a couple other veggies but the garden was, much like northern New Mexico generally seemed to be at that particular time, overrun with mosquitoes!

While they only seemed to come out at night everywhere else, these mosquitoes were raging in broad daylight.  We did our best to ignore them at first, and then to actively try to keep them off us at any cost.  But soon we realized that we were fighting a losing battle, and our only chance at avoiding more itchy welts was to just get out of there.  Which was unfortunate, because the garden was a pleasant addition to the Madrid community and I'd hoped to relax there for awhile in the shade.  Maybe next time!

Afterwords, lunch at a new and highly recommended restaurant in town, across from the bar.  Great sandwiches, well-peppered grits, and best of all, microbrew beer.  I couldn't help but have a couple of those.

Back up on the land, Amanda was done working and by all reckoning it was cocktail hour.  We had all the ingredients for some homemade margaritas, and so margaritas we made.  And took them down to the wash for some arroyo bocce ball.

Arroyo bocce has, over the years, become one of my favorite traditions associated with Ampersand.  One not to be missed during any visit.  Indeed, on a prior trip there, a friend sustained considerable injury to his arm during a hike among the sandstone rocks and cliffs in the area earlier in the day. Nonetheless, he soldiered through the pain and blood in order to nobly take aim at the elusive little pallino target later in the evening.

That particular day was a more leisurely outing, and we played until the evening had set in deeply enough to prohibit proper visibility.  At which point we adjourned up the hill and prepared for a tasty dinner.

Back at the house, I noticed that the floors were especially clean, to which Amanda replied offhandedly that she had mopped.  But aren't they earthen floors? I asked.  Indeed they are.  Made entirely with natural materials and simple earth being among them, the floor was poured with mud, smoothed out and then allowed to dry and crack.  The cracks were filled in and smoothed over again and again until an even surface was achieved, and then sealed with beeswax and linseed oil.  Making it proof against a wet mop, and great to walk upon with your bare feet and toes.

We were to be joined that evening by Carl, a common acquaintance of ours.  I hadn't seen Carl in many years and his visit that evening was a great surprise.  The fact that he brought a cooler full of nothing less than several home brewed beers made the evening that much more excellent.  In fact, the beer happened to be a light one put up in green bottles, giving it a resemblance to something like St. Pauli Girl, but with a creamier mouthfeel.  Perfect for the end of a hot day in the desert.

That night, spring rolls were on the menu, and we were all on board to roll them up.

Or rather, on the floor.  What better place than on your own hands, knees and backsides for dipping your fingers into raw, local food?  Having twisted up some burritos and what have you in my time, I greatly enjoyed the natural cling you get from a wet spring roll wrapper. And they went well with the beer.

I can't remember what I was on about in that picture, but I'd like to think it was relevant, somehow.  Amanda was certainly giving me her attention, but whether she was truly interested or just indulging me is an open question.

Indeed, that night was full of bold gesticulating and cracking wise.  Some music was played.  And all around, good times were had.  The hour came for Carl to leave, and when he did, while that screen door you see in the background was left momentarily open during his exit, a truly incredible quantity of mosquitoes flew in the house.

A sort of mosquito slaughter ensued, us swatting and wondering over the unlikely number of pests that had gotten inside during such a brief opportunity.  At one point Andy put his ear to the screen and was amazed at the subtle buzz that could be heard outside.  If you were quiet, very quiet, you could hear the insect menace swarming out there.

Eventually, we needed to say good night and go down the hill.  We endeavored to make a quick exit once the screen door was opened.  We rushed down the dark path, determined to get home without a bite.  But then, we glanced up and saw what every city dweller in the world becomes entranced by when he visits the countryside.  Stars!  So many of them.  I knew how it was, I'd lived there before.  But that was a beautiful night sky.  Starstruck, if you will, we indulged in several minutes of shamelessly staring at it.  Sure, we sustained some welts for it, but we had no regrets.

Down the hill and in the guesthouse, we holed up for a good night's sleep.  The next day, Andy and Amanda had business on the road up into Santa Fe, a convenient excuse to drop us off back in town.  And so that morning, we shared a car ride and a good bye.  That trip was full of hellos and goodbyes, every day.  Until we meet again!

When I met Andy and Amanda years before, I felt a certain kinship with them immediately.  At the time, I had a house in the same area and was living out, as much as I was able, a similar vision.  Seeing them again, in addition to being a great time spent with good friends, gave me the chance to see how we've all grown and evolved during those years of knowing each other, too. 

Every day, our minds are filled with vague and random ideas, taking shape from the influences around us.  When something worthy comes to mind, we might be moved to dedicate ourselves to it, and begin making choices that bring our lives closer to that vision.  And then, over time, we might stay with it, or find ourselves compelled to move more into other directions.  In my life, I can see how my own focus has shifted from that intention of sustainability, for example.  At one point, it was a primary goal.  While it's still something I value, I can see how it has, in my daily practice, moved to the periphery in lieu of things like travel here in Latin America, and all the things that have come with that.  I love the choices I've made, and I'm happy where they've brought me. 

I see my friends on their land, where they took what was a temporary dwelling and a campfire out in the country, and built it up into a home and learning place built with their own hands.  That's what you get when you dedicate yourself for years to the same vision.  I have great respect for them both, above all for that dedication.  Every day they can wake up surrounded by what they've realized of their dream so far, and take satisfaction from that.  For my own part, I still have a long way I want to go, but I can say that the fruits of my choices over the past several years bring me satisfaction, too.  Being able to express myself in a new language, and understand the people of this continent when they speak.  A few years ago, I couldn't have said that.  Whatever your vision is, to whatever you may dedicate yourself, take pride in what you've done, be thankful for where it's led you.

Back from the homeland

Just as this blog has started getting hits from GO! Overseas as being a top blog for Ecuador, I took a month off from writing.  That's because we spent the month of August in the US, visiting family and friends, and traveling a good bit around the country, too.  And to further vex anyone in search of some good travel stories from Ecuador, the next couple of months will be all about the United States, as I recap our trip last month.  But, if you're in search of those kinds of stories, all you have to do is go back to previous posts, starting with this one.

So to kick off my triumphant return to writing after a month's hiatus, here's a photographic summary of what we got into while we were gone:

One of the things I had been looking forward to about being back in the US was the beer.  Good, honest, craft beer.  And as I was happily surprised to learn, our first of many hosts had gotten into homebrewing since last I saw him.  So it was that our first night in the US was spent in Albuquerque, playing obscure board games and drinking delicious, dark beverages.

Our trip, as you may have gathered, began in New Mexico.  I had lived there for several years before I turned my sights to Latin America.  Long enough to have accumulated lots of earthly possessions, many of which I had left there.  And long enough, too, to have gotten to know some great people, whose good taste and generosity led to such things as us staying in bedrooms like this one:

Good friends opened up their homes to us to spend the night and their front lawns for me to sell off my personal belongings in a good, old-fashioned yard sale.  They also drove us around endlessly.  Once, we even drove here, where some of New Mexico's nicer hot springs flow.

As hard as it was to leave the beautiful State of New Mexico behind us, the time came to get into a rental car and haul what was left of my personal possessions back to the land of my birth.  We chose a route north, through northern New Mexico's countryside.

We drove through Denver, where we spent the night with another kind friend.  And then, we made the big push across the Midwest, on the way back to Ohio.  Along the way we drove through corn fields.  Lots and lots of corn fields.  And to our surprise, a big wind farm.  In the State of Kansas we saw the biggest collection of windmills I've ever witnessed, and while places like California and Texas are better known for their wind farms, it makes sense that Kansas, smack in the middle of tornado country, would be getting in on the game.

And finally, after two days of driving cross country - and thanks to the generosity of so many, our only night spent in a hotel - we made it back to Ohio.  This trip marked my first time behind the wheel of a car in three years, and while it was fun for the first few hours, the novelty had worn off long before we got where we were going.  Once in Ohio, we were able to unpack our bags fully, and relax at last with my family.

The weeks there will always stand out in my mind as a time spent in places at once familiar to me and new for my wife.  It was her first visit to the US, which meant the first time seeing many things the average American takes for granted.  Big back yards, a multitude of grassy parks, and the expansive Lake Erie were among the things that were impressive to Nancy, and so we made sure to spend time in all of them.

It was a great trip, and we had a great time.  Up until the last day, when the time came to say goodbye to my family.  After spending several weeks together, it was easy to forget that our time was limited, after all.  But even when people are perennially close, geographically, I suppose it's still important to remember that time will always be limited, and that we always need to make the most of the time we have.









And for now, I'll leave it at that.  There's plenty that I haven't included here that will make it into the next few posts, and even more that is just as nicely shared among ourselves and our loved ones.  But the bottom line is, it was great to be home!

Cochapamba

Early last year, I found myself standing alone on a brisk morning, on a nearly deserted street downtown.  I was surprised by how empty the street was, as Calle Tarqui is a major bus route through Cuenca's center.  The street is one of the few that provides access to downtown from the city's newer section, and the layer of black soot covering the street's crumbling, once-stately buildings reveals the burden of heavy traffic it has endured, even at times when there's nothing going on.

So what was I doing on a melancholic avenue, so early and devoid of people?  I was awaiting a ride up to a small community far outside of Cuenca, although I had no idea at the time precisely where I was about to be taken, or that I would soon be blessed with high mountain scenery like this:

All I knew, as I peeked into cobblestone patios through keyholes and cracks in dilapidated wooden doors, was that soon a curly-haired professor would emerge onto the scene and give me a ride to an undisclosed indigenous village.  Or at least, that was what I was hoping, as the minutes ticked by.











At the time, I was attending an indigenous culture class at the University of Cuenca, with a few of my friends and coworkers at CEDEI.  Our teacher, Julio, was as knowledgeable as he was vague about certain details the rest of us considered important.  We all knew that he was full of valuable information, but all the same we often left class wondering exactly what we had learned that day.  Was it that, as teachers ourselves, we came with heads full of pedagogical hangups that blocked us from fully absorbing all that was presented to us with open hearts?  I'll chalk it up to something like that.  For truly, our teacher presented a vast amount of information about Ecuador's many indigenous groups, which left me scribbling constantly in my notebook to take it all down.

In addition to university survey-level lecturing for initiates like us, he also presented to us videos which ranged in scope from indigenous political rallies to illustrations of Andean cosmovision.  Most intriguing for us, we were also promised some field trips, where we would visit communities and experience the life and culture there firsthand.

The first such expedition, prior to the one I hoped to embark upon that day on Calle Tarqui, is probably what was filling my head with doubt as I waited.  One day in class, we were told that there would be an indigenous dance celebration in Cuenca's Coliseum, and we were invited.  Well, that day, I showed up a little late, and my classmates had already ventured into the Coliseum before I arrived.  As it turned out, there was no indigenous dancing to be seen, but rather some sort of big Christian prayer event.  That was fine and all, but decidedly different than what we had come for.  Repeated calls to Julio's cell phone left us consistently with his voice mail, and after some time hanging around outside, we called it quits and went for smoothies.

What would unfold for me this morning then, as I loitered about and watched the traffic begin to roll inexorably onto Calle Tarqui?  Not even my classmates had shown up yet.  Had I missed something?  A text message from Eric indicated they were on their way.  And then, moments later, Julio rolled by in the passenger seat of a white pickup truck with an extended cab.  Behind the wheel was another Ecuadorian, and the backseat had just enough room for myself and my two other companions for the day.  Minutes later, the two said companions Eric and Eva walked over, and we were on our way!

And yet still, we weren't sure where we were going.  Julio, engaged primarily in conversation with the driver, was decidedly short with his responses to our many questions about the day's events.  We drove up and out of town, through Sayausí, then, through Cajas.  Time went on as our backseat conversation rambled from one topic to the next.  We crossed the continental divide, and began the stomach-churning descent towards the coast.  We were on the road to Guayaquil, but how far would we go?  Would we be visiting a coastal indigenous community?  That sounded interesting.  But we began speculating just how and when we'd be getting back, if that were the case.  Thoughts of my wife, pregnant and indulging of my absence that day, began to fill my head as we wound our way further and further down.

But then, still many miles and vertical meters from the coast, the truck pulled off the highway and began wheeling up a dirt road.  The landscape, still high up and much like Cajas in its windswept, shrubby mountain way, reminded me over and over of northern New Mexico with every similar type of vegetation or scenic vista I saw.  This new road carried us far up, regaining much if not all of the altitude we'd lost.  For several miles there were no houses, nor farms, just wild páramo landscape.  Then we began to notice a house here and there, and then more, until we had entered the community of Cochapamba.

What you see pictured here could be considered Cochapamba's center.  Indeed, this smattering of adobe buildings, the church, and schoolhouse shown in front of the few tall trees, comprises the densest portion of human habitation for miles and miles.

To compare a community like Cochapamba and another indigenous community which I've mentioned here, Ñamarín, reveals many dramatic differences.  One of the more obvious ones, due to its remote and inhospitable location in the often frigid páramo, is size.  Miles up an unforgiving dirt road where buses are unlikely to pass with any frequency, Cochapamba finds itself at a degree of isolation you don't often encounter, especially within a few hours of a major city like Cuenca.  But then, Cuenca didn't have paved roads leading to it until the 1960's.


Far from being a perfect system, Ecuador's government has nevertheless attempted to guarantee that even remote communities like this one have access to education.  While there, we were asked to speak to a group of students, who ranged in age from 8-16 or so.  Their teacher was a young lady from Cuenca who was tasked with coming to teach in Cochapamba on weekends.  She was paying her dues as a beginning teacher, like most teachers in the public school system, by teaching for some time in rural communities.  While most teachers ultimately choose to come to the city once their level of experience permits it, this system ensures that these communities do not go forgotten, and that their young people have the opportunity to at least a basic education.  It also harnesses the youthful enthusiasm that the young teacher here embodied, and that beginning teachers the world around always seem to have.

My wife's parents, also teachers, spent years working in such communities as well.  Nancy's formative years consisted of life in various small communities as remote as Cochapamba, although ranging from cold, high altitude locations to much lower, tropical ones near the coast.  Her parents are full of stories from those times, like riding on horseback in order to arrive at a rural community in the mountains, where they would live for the next several months.  For their part, they have both chosen to remain involved with education in rural communities, with Nancy's mother still working as an elementary teacher at a school not far from Cuenca, and her father going frequently to supervise schools in another community two hours from town.

Also owing to the extreme altitude and climate, the people of Cochapamba will always be limited in what kinds of agricultural products they can produce, as well.  With the prevailing temperatures at such an altitude, potatoes are and probably always will be a primary crop for the people here, for example.   While there, however, we met a man named Walter, who was something of an informal leader for the community.  He spoke to us of a funded project to expand the size and scope of the community's agricultural production, and took us on a tour of what they were working on.

Here, we were shown the linchpin to any serious agricultural project, the irrigation system.  This simple reservoir, consisting of a small basin lined with waterproof plastic, is fed by a small pipe tapping a natural spring.  This provides water security in times of drought, for crops and people alike.  This kind of grassroots waterworks project goes a long way in demonstrating the simplicity and integration of a community agricultural project.

At the other end of the pipe, you can see one of the places where that water goes.  Once collected into a clean, man-made pond, the water can then be funneled into any number of hoses running to various sections of planted land.  What once ran down the hill untapped can now by harnessed to irrigate a wide spread of fields.

Since the pool is uphill and the fields down, gravity is the only force needed to get the water where it's needed, and the turn of a valve is the only human input necessary to turn it off and on.  A simple, inexpensive and effective irrigation system, indeed.











Of course, not only people and plants are counting on a reliable source of water:

Water is also important for home construction.  As in many traditional communities in the Andes and throughout much of Latin America, adobe is a common building material.  As you may know, adobe consists of three primary, plentiful ingredients: earth, straw, and water.  These are mixed together, formed into bricks, and allowed to dry before being laid into the walls of buildings, like this one:

Here we've got at least two generations of buildings coexisting, the older one not quite having given way to the newer.

But of course, one of the most important recipients for Cochapamba's water are the plants.  In the foreground is a plot with a variety of medicinal herbs.  Walking the perimeter is Walter in the lead, with Eric and Eva trailing dutifully in line.  In the background, a planted grove of pine trees.

Here we can see at least two forces at work.  One, the medicinal herbs, is a relevant consideration for a community so far from the city and associated medical care.  I've found Ecuadorians in general - even city dwellers - to be more knowledgeable about herbal remedies than your average person from the US, for example.  But in a rural community like this one, where modern medical care is a rare event, most likely reserved for true emergencies, this kind of garden is a sort of insurance policy.


The other force, a plantation of pine trees, provides a source of lumber not only for this community but potentially for sale to other communities as well, as Walter explained.  Yet again, a significant agricultural addition to the more traditional staple food crops one would expect a community like this one to be coaxing forth from the land.

In this case, a controversial one as well.  Páramo, an ecosystem existing only at high, equatorial altitudes, provides a unique habitat often surrounded completely by warmer systems below.  As such, páramo climates like this one harbor a high level of endemic plant and animal species, which are suppressed by the acid content in the bed of needles quickly built up around the base of introduced pine.  Such an artificial transformation of the native landscape has effects not just on the wildlife, but on people as well.  One of the important qualities of páramo vegetation is the regulatory effect it has on the watershed.  In an area with intermittent rain, the local flora has the ability to absorb and retain moisture like a sponge, and then release it at an astonishingly consistent rate despite the fluctuating level of precipitation.  This has clear effects on groundwater levels in times of drought, and flooding of rivers in times of high rain.  It also prevents erosion on steep slopes due to runoff.  Pine trees do not share these qualities, and out-compete local flora in the ecosystem.

In small scales like this one, perhaps we're not talking about big changes.  But further down towards Cuenca, one can see massive swaths of hillsides completely given over to tidy rows of pine trees obviously planted by human hands.  That ambitious project is consuming large portions of natural habitat, and has predictable consequences locally and further downstream.  Walter, throughout his description of his community's project, gave great attention to the concept of sustainable production.  Let's hope that future generations take that idea equally to heart.

Some very reassuring evidence that they will is embodied in Walter's home:

A beautifully handmade adobe building, Walter's home has dedicated space for high school-level education within the community.  Here, Walter conducts classes and hosts outside teachers for the young people in the community, taking the government-funded schooling a step further.

Pictured here with another teacher from Cuenca, Walter was inviting us to speak with a small group about our impressions of the community and some insights that we could share from our own.  An appropriate topic, given the title written on the sign in the corner: Intercultural, Bilingual High School, La Paz.





While we spoke with Walter, his colleague, and their students, his family was busily preparing lunch downstairs in the kitchen, where we joined them:

And so we shared a meal and conversation with the kind and eager people of Cochapamba.  After visiting a community like this, and then pulling out in a truck back down the long, winding dirt road that leads to the long, winding highway far below, it becomes clear that such a visit is a special occasion.  A true opportunity to share what you have with people from another place.  Walter, as an articulate spokesman for his community, demonstrated this with his smile and his invitations for us to contribute, to learn, and he hoped, to return someday.







For our part as fleeting visitors, I hope that my recollection of our visit to Cochapamba, more than a year later, will in some way show the appreciation I have for these people living simply and humbly, close to the Earth.  And, in lieu of a second visit still unrealized, may these words and photos, shared with you, represent a return to that beautiful, high mountain place in my mind, if not in person.

Expanding the scope

As some of my regular readers may have picked up on by now, recently I've endeavored to take what began as a haphazardly updated travel blog and publish on a regular, monthly basis.  After about a year of consistently managing to publish that often, I've decided I've got it in me to begin writing twice a month.  At the end of every month, I'll keep writing longer pieces, with the same narrative focus on places we've been and interesting things we've seen and experienced.  Around the middle of each month, I'll be adding a new sort of feature, probably much shorter.  With these, I hope to share some more personal insights into living in Latin America.  These might be general reflections, some actual experiences out in the city, or, as is the case for our debut feature today, a review of some creative product of Latin American culture.

Here in Cuenca, I've got the privilege of being able to stay home every day with my daughter in the mornings, while my wife goes to work.  She comes home for a lunch that I've prepared, we catch up for a short time while we share our meal, and then I go to work in the afternoon.  I come home to dinner prepared by her, we enjoy our evening together.  And, with some interesting variations here and there, so it goes with our quotidian life.

And, while our daughter is still young and not walking around and getting into everything yet, I find myself with the time to pursue lots of hobbies around the house.  Writing, reading, studying and playing music.  And also, on many mornings, goofing around for hours on the internet.  Over the course of the past several months, I've stumbled upon lots of websites I enjoy, and quite a few that emerge from all over Latin America.

Like Arte Callejero.  Here you can find loads of graffiti from the streets of cities around Latin America and other parts of the world.  At the bottom of the page you've got an itemized list of cities, artists and graffiti styles, which assembles an instant collection from the website in one click.  Having lived briefly in a city known for its quality spraypaint, I clicked on Oaxaca to see what was there.  I was surprised to see that many of the pieces I'd taken pictures of myself were also there on the website, like this one:

(this one is my rendering of the same stuff you can find on theirs.  Don't want to step on any digital toes.)














On the left side of the page, you get links to other websites dedicated to street art.  And if you follow the blog regularly, you get a new update just about every day.  Usually they put up images, but occasionally they share a video, like this one, which went up a few days ago:


BIG BANG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

This video is all over the internet.  And now, it's here, too.  The Italian artist who created it worked on it for a year or more, and at least part of it was filmed in Montevideo and Buenos Aires during a South American tour which lasted several months.  Definitely take the time to let it load and watch the whole thing.  From my perspective, it's the little details which make it superb.  The audio, the flashes of pedestrians, the interaction with the urban landscape.  All of that led me to watch it a couple of times already.

The internet, almost completely unfettered by the borders that confine us geographically, can provide endless glimpses into foreign culture.  More than ever, people can experience international culture in ways limited only by their tenacity in seeking it out.  Type any concept in the world into a search engine, and chances are, somebody has already put it online. Sometimes you just get a few lines of text and some lousy pictures, and other times you find a site well geared to showcase the material it's there to represent.  Now that you know they're out there, maybe you'll find some time to play around on Arte Callejero and Blu's website as well.