Inherited Distance: When Blood Is Not Enough (05/26/2026)

Recently, I spent an afternoon with friends and learned a lot about family dynamics. She is a good friend of my wife, and her daughter has a lot of issues with her uncle. I am just amazed that there is nothing new under the sun. People fight with each other, especially with those close to you. It reminds me of a saying in my native language: “good neighbors are better than a distant relative.” We have been trying to live our life that way, especially now since we have absolutely no relationship with my siblings, sometimes to my regret, but also often to my relief.

My parents were perfect role models for family feuds; we must have learned it from them.

On my father’s side: Once my uncle Karel died of meningitis in the 1960s, we lost contact with his wife and two kids. It seems my uncle was a player (well taught by their father) and they were about to divorce. When I finally met my cousin in 1971, we were 18, she did not want to acknowledge me, she actually was angry at me at first sight. We ended up in the same classes in college, but she always stayed angry with me and once told me that her mother had told her what scum we were. I finally met her brother around 2001 but he was friendly and told me that she always had an angry outlook on life.

My uncle Willem also screwed around and divorced his wife. They had four daughters and he had a son from the affair. Once they divorced, my parents chose sides against the brother. My father and his brother finally reconciled a year or two before Willem died of cancer. My father always appeared to be sorry that the break lasted so long and that they only had two years to catch up.

On my mother's side: Things were not any better. I previously wrote about how my grandmother mistreated my grandfather and my mother. One of her brothers (Jan) died in a German concentration camp. But eventually my mother broke her relationship with her two remaining brothers. Simon fooled around, got divorced and again there was a choice against him. Eventually my mother did allow him to visit her, but this was a few years before she died at the age of 76. Her other brother Cornelius and mom had a mutual breakup and they never reconciled. The breakup was also wife related, my mom and my aunt could not get along, and the breakup occurred sometime in the 70s and they did not see each other for 30 years although they lived less than 2 miles apart.

I have often wondered why both had these issues. While it is easy to assume what brought it on, my parents did not accept unfaithfulness or divorce, I doubt whether my father was faithful. It is easy to blame my mother, she seemed always angry, had a strong character and was principled, uncompromisable, and stubborn. I should have asked them what made them like this. Now it is too late; they are gone.

In a later post I will eventually chronicle why my siblings and I all broke up. But this post is getting long. We broke up around 2005. Around that time I told my siblings that we were emulating what our parents did with our own interactions. “Fuck you” was my sister emailed me in a response. My brother wrote me: “Now you did it.” In other words, we have not spoken since 2005. Do I miss them? I think about them at times; but I feel that I tried to make amends but was pushed away. I have given up, I will no longer make an attempt on reproachment. I told my wife that I will be open and respond if or when they contact me. I will be friendly but be very cautious and probably will not allow myself to become too close.

What will I recommend you do? Try to treasure your parents, siblings and extended family as much as you can, but don’t let them abuse or bully you, your family, or the life you lead. In an article in Very Well Mind the authors write that if fighting is unavoidable, it is best to not take things personal; find support elsewhere; try not to perpetuate it; invest in your own family; and accept the reality of the situation. I think I have done all these things in my situation. But if all fails get professional help by seeing a therapist. I just hope our daughter breaks the cycle.

My sister and I.  I was probably 11 here in this photograph and she was 2 or 3.

My brother an sister.  We visited the Holland American Line's Rotterdam when it visited Curacao where we grew up.  I think they were 9 and 4 at the time. 

Sucking the Marrow Out of Retirement (05/21/2026)

It has been more than a month since I have written here and updated the world on what I have been up to. I am not planning to stop or disappear from the written word or the world, but these past five to six weeks have been absolutely jam-packed with excitement or activity.

It all started out with the delivery of our new travel trailer or camper: an airstream (model, World Traveler). We got a Ford F-150 the week before, so we had something to tow the airstream with. I drove the airstream home with a friend and backed up into our driveway in the dark. It was all successful. But we had applied for a loan to pay for all this, and that was the stressful part; all the hoops we had to jump through. We can afford all these purchases, but a loan made sense from an investment strategy.

Our neighborhood had a community wide yard sale three days after parking the trailer in our driveway. On a whim, I put a for sale sign on our camper van, and to our surprise we got an offer on the van that we could not refuse. Next was getting the van ready, emptying it. But we also needed to outfit our new rig. On top of that, my wife took off for California to visit the family. Followed by an exciting board meeting at our UU church (of which I am the president) where we decided to follow our principle and spend around $80,000 to put solar on the roof of our church. That weekend we had our annual cluster meeting where all the local UU churches come together. This was followed by a trip to the airport to pick up my wife. Subsequently, we needed to get ready for our shake-down cruise, our first (weekend) camping trip with the new camper, to figure things out. Mixed in to all of this is managing the church contracts for solar and another meeting or two. And here they tell you that life gets slower when you retire.

The word life, reminds me of a YouTube clip I watched where someone old stated something like “I don’t know how much longer I have to live, but I want to make the best of it: I am going to make sure that I use and enjoy the remaining time to the best of my ability.” This reminds me of the words Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden: “Suck out all the marrow of life,” or “when I came to die, discover I had not lived.” I have noticed that you become more aware of your mortality when you grow older. “How much time do I have left” has been going through my head. It hasn’t stopped us from buying the camper; currently I am planning a three-to-four-week trip through the Canadian maritime. I hope to do this early in September. But first an off-grid trip to The Peaks of Otter campground on the Blue Ridge parkway to celebrate our 49th anniversary. Interesting fact, Thomas Jefferson thought that the Peaks of Otter were the tallest mountains in the entire USA.

So yes, life sometimes gets in the way of writing my blog posts, which are a form of diary for myself as well as an update to the rest of the world. I promise I will keep doing this as long as I can; but maybe not that frequent.

The airstream arrived in our driveway!  We are still debating where to place it.

Camping in Westmoreland State Park.  We decided to cook our first meal outside, which we will probably do with more.  It was just very pleasant to be there with the dogs.  Westmoreland is one of our favorite parks.  We have stayed here at least three other times in the cabins.  This is our first time camping. 

Our first meal in the new camper.  We cooked steak, fried potatoes with onions and peas.

All you need is love (2/7/2026)

What a world we live in. A goon squat patrols the streets, murdering unarmed US citizens; what a dystopian world we live in. It looks like that they want to prevent folks from protesting and showing their empathy. In this country where weapons are ubiquitous, it is open season on folks like you when you show empathy for your fellow human beings. Let’s not talk about what they try to do to you if you are against what the current administration is doing and you carry a weapon. It is dangerous what is going on; it really tastes like what Hitler did in Europe. Anything to distract from the Epstein case; we don’t want to know what our current Hitler wannabe (tRump) did with underaged girls. It is very distressing to me.

Initially, I wanted to write a post that detailed the retreat that I attended last week in the mountains on the border of Idaho and Montana. We discussed the settlement of the western part of this country that the USA obtained as part of the Louisiana purchase. I left Missoula for home on a high, much like the retreat last year. We were with eighteen folks and had the best time, intellectually and just in friendship. I knew at least eight of the attendants either from last time or meetings we have on Zoom. It was so familiar and there was an atmosphere of pure love and respect for each other. I liked the discourse and the deep thinking we all did. We all respected each other even when there were disagreements. It almost felt like a meeting at the forum at our Unitarian Universalist Church. This is how our country could and should function.

While Jefferson was highly educated, well cultured, a great writer, scientist, and a wonderful tinkerer and inventor, he absolutely had some non-admirable qualities. Were these a reflection of the times he lived in? For example, in the Declaration on Independence wrote in it that “All men are created equal,” he was a slave holder and considered the Native Americans savages. I do not think tRump believes that all men (human beings) are equal; in his eyes you have the humans (rich, multi-millionaire) and the savages (middle class and poor). He called Somalis savages. I believe he considers many non-citizens barbarians. The emperor has no clothes, that’s for sure.

How the hell do we solve this problem? I have learned one thing over the years: whether you live in the USA, Singapore, Hong Kong, Brazil (the four top countries where my readers come from) or anywhere else in the world, Your Vote Matters! Secondly, I stand on the side of love. As the title says, love is all you need! What the current regime is doing is broadcasting hate. The only way we can conquer hate is with love. Yes, love includes demonstrating for what you believe: our love for our fellow human beings. All of course, by the right have cost the lives of Heather Heyer (Charlottesville), Renee Good or Alex Pretti, and of course all those people who died in the custody of those goons. It needs to stop, this is insanity. All we need is love!

Photo of the day.  It has been crazy weather here in Virginia.  Global warming is showing its cards.
These crazy love birds met each other 50 year ago this past January.  Yes, we have had fights, arguments and alike, but are still able to solve our differences.  Having gone through so much together in our past, nobody would be able to understand our psyche anyway. 

Before I die and before I’m gone (1/4/2026)

How would I look back at my life, my accomplishments, regrets, failures, things or places I never did? I already have written about an eulogy as I described in part over in this blog post. But is that all? I have written about other things that are going on or have occurred in my life; however, I somehow feel more contemplative during the days with the least daylight in the year. Christmas and the new year are ideal times to reflect. Most of my regular readers know that I am not a guy for New Years resolutions. I discussed that in my recent blog post for my church and in this regular post here.

Do I feel my mortality? Maybe a little, I am getting older and I feel like I am getting slower. My joints hurt, I get mysterious muscle pains, I am looking forward to my mid-day naps, and I have become more cerebral and reflective. I am no longer that interested in the advances in biology but I have changed interests to history. I am still interested in science and I consider myself a naturalist who enjoys being out in nature and I hope to continue chronicling my forays into and opinions of the natural environment.

The truly most enjoyable things I have done in my life involved nature; those events stayed with me over the years. I have been above 14,000 feet three times in my life and those are among my favorites. The top of Mount Elgon (14,177 feet or 4321 meters), Grays Peak (14,276 feet or 4351 meters), and the north slopes of the Annapurna (we estimated to approximately 16,000 feet or 4800 meters). Our visit to Gros Morne National Park was another highlight. Finally, our hike on the Isle of Sky ranks up there as well.

My failures and most troublesome experiences include my job and stay in Uganda. I have had a difficult time holding on to jobs over the years. I am sure it was caused by my sometimes-abrasive behavior and my cynicism and sarcasm. Early on I had a difficult time compromising; but then I hate hypocrisy and that is how I perceived the world (and sometimes I still do). During my job in Nepal, I walked into my supervisor’s office and saw him bent over a chair with his pants down getting screwed in the rear by the assistant supervisor. That surely did not help, both were male and married to women. I lost my job fairly soon after that.

Anything I still want to do, experience or place I still would like to visit? I am 72 years old. How many more years do I have in me; how much longer will I live? Five, ten, fifteen, twenty years? I better hurry up. They call the 80s the slow go years (obviously even slower than right now), and the 90s the no go years. My wife thinks we will be strong and independent for a long time; seventies is the new sixties she keeps reminding me. There are places I would like to return to: Curacao, Newfoundland, Scottland, Uganda, Nepal, Japan, just to name a few. I would love to visit New Zeeland, the Easter Island, Chili, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Finland, the Faro Islands, Iceland, Alaska. Things to do? Take a Rhine cruise, eat in some high-end luxury restaurants, visit the Albuquerque balloon festival, go to the Munich October fest, take a stroll on the beach of Ipanema (I guess that I am still a dirty old man), visit Rome and Florence. I am sure there are a lot more things, but I better keep it realistic.

These are some of my thoughts about going into the new year. Politically, socially, and environmentally, 2026 is going to be an interesting, albeit very stressful year. Put on your seatbelts.

A picture from our hike on the Isle of Sky in 2011

Road trips of the past (11/11/2025)

I now have taken four extended road trips since we retired two and a half years ago. I made one solo trip and three with my wife and our dogs (2023, 2024 and 2025). As part of these trips, I have seen the Grand Canyon twice (the South Rim during our first visit and the North Rim, a half year before it burned down, during my solo trip). After twice visiting the town, I have learned why folks always say, “Get the hell out of Dodge.” Maybe more about these events later, However, I do not want to make this post another report of my trips. Wherever possible, I have tried to stay away from the Interstate Highway system, interact with people I met on the way (one of my favorite books is Blue Highways, by William Least Heat-Moon). Highways were some cases unavoidable, or they saved us a lot of time.

Now, this is going to be a long post.

The overarching item that I learned from our trips is that every state we passed through had absolutely beautiful areas. I am sure there are also horrible parts in each state, although we have not seen many of them. What I mention as ugly may be because of the place’s sordid history. Moreover, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. When I am writing about ugly areas, I am thinking of places like Uvalde (TX) that had a mass shooting and we visited the memorial. But I am also thinking of Selma (AL), where we stayed overnight and walked the Edmund Pettis Bridge. This small Alabama town seems to be very depressed and probably ignored town of very important historical significance. Sorry Alabama, the 16th street Baptist Church in Birmingham elicited a similar reaction in me. While nice looking, these spots were saddening because of what took place there.

What were the most memorable things we saw or experienced? This will be a list, and I will start with the most recent. The ferry between Ludington (MI) and Manitowoc (WI); the drive from Van Horn to the McDonald observatory (TX); Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks in Texas; Death Valley (CA); the Dignity of Earth and Sky statue in Chamberlain (SD); The Grand Canyon (AZ); Theodor Rosevelt National Park (ND); Lemhi Pass (MT and ID); Sedona (AZ); Selma (AL); Uvalde (TX); Naca Valley Vinyards (Nacogdoches, TX); and Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes National Lakeshore (MI). I am sure I am forgetting one or two, but these are burned into my memory bank.

What were the most disturbing things we encountered? Driving through Georgia and South Caroline (Macon to Savana) we were amazed by the hurricane damage so far from the Gulf of Mexico and now more than three months after it happened. It remined us of our situation after hurricane Isable in 2003. Other items that bothered us included the begging coyote in Big Bend National Park, the stop at Uvalde, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and our visits to Selma and Freedom Trail. We both graduated from Utah State University in Logan and were sadly reminded of our lives there when we visited.

Were there things we really hated? Driving a whole day to heavy rain is no fun. It ruined our driving pleasure between coastal Texas and coastal Louisiana. That drive from Victoria (TX) to Baton Rouge (LA) was stressful and horrible, oh well. It would have been nice to see the Louisiana bayous from the road or even stop here and there, but the rain was relentless.

In the western part of Texas, we were plagued by very heavy desert winds between Fort Stockton and El Paso. It is a shame because this is one of my favorite eco-regions. I got my Ph.D. doing graduate work in the Chihuahuan desert. Writing about weather, the 105 degrees we experienced in September in North Sioux City (SD) provided little camping pleasure and we had to spend that night in a motel.

While there must be nice areas in Kansas (for example the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve), the region around Dodge City isn’t it. The area is full of feedlots and slaughterhouses. The area stinks and has more flies than you can shake a stick at. It almost made us vegetarians. We need to feed the nation and therefore need hamburger producing regions like this, but it added very little scenic or cultural value to our trips.

Which folks are staying with you in your memories? Two young waitresses are still on my mind. One in Selma (AL) and the other in Pratt (KS). Both were in their late teens or early twenties. They both seemed resigned to where they were in life, but not happy. They wanted to get out of the town they grew up in, which is understandable when you examined the towns we were in. Both appeared to be at a loss on how to get out and go to the big city and have a life. They tried to make the best of it and earn some extra cash waitressing.

At the North Rim, I was served by a set of waiters that came from Turkey. They were engineering students at the university in Istanbul and spent the summer months working in US National Parks to earn some extra money and learn about the US. I had fun talking with them.

There were these two couples in the tram going up the St. Louis Arch. They lived a couple of blocks apart (less than a mile) in Madison, WI and did not know each other. They even had friends in common but met for the first time on that tram going up the Arch.

We had a great evening talking with a younger couple while sipping wine at the Naca winery near Nacogdoches (TX). She was a teacher, and we talked about education, vacations and the world in general. She would spend the summer in an RV somewhere along the TX coast and her hubby would visit on weekends.

We met a lot of interesting camping owners or hosts. The lady in Miles City (MT) was a riot, and so was the manager of the McDonalds in that town. It must have been the water. We met a couple from Florida that managed a camping area on the Blue Ridge Parkway and the lady with a colostomy bag in the UP of Michigan. A lot of the hosts were retired and got free camping in a beautiful spot or maybe a small stipend. The lady in Lisbon (OH) either made a little money or had free camping while hubby worked at a refinery nearby. They were from Billings (MT) and she homeschooled her two kids, while they followed her husband’s job.

Talking with people was fun, and I noticed that most of them are friendly and nice, especially if you treat them the way you want to be treated. We tried to stay away from the hot button issues like politics and religion. Although, when we told them during our first cross country trip that we were either on our way or returning from our daughter who was going to be or just was ordained as a minister, everyone melted and reacted very friendly.

I wanted to make this essay a lot more detailed, but once I started listing the items I noticed that I could write a book about these experiences. I hope you like this. My message is, smile, be kind to people and start a conversation.

Driving the north shore of Lake Michigan

Ready to descend into Death Valley

My eulogy/autobiography (7/4/2025)

I just turned 72 and am sitting here on pins and needles waiting for the word that my first grandson was born. This will be a thing of the past by the time this writing will be made public, either as part of a memoire and/or a blog post. Why now, can we blame turning 72, my grandson, or my daughter or her wife for this introspection? I don’t know; it is probably a combination of a lot of things.

I am in a men’s group, and we assigned ourselves the project of writing our own eulogy. If that wasn’t enough, during a birthday get together a good friend asked me all kinds of biographical questions, and unbeknown to me he taped the whole conversation. He showed me that he was recording it after my birthday dinner at a Mexican restaurant. This made me feel self-conscious, and together with the fact that I now will have someone to carry on the torch (a grandson), it made me want to record a little more of mine and my family’s history. I have done a bit of this already in some of my blog posts, and I may refer to them when appropriate. I expect that I will publish sections of this writing in my blog, again in the hope that those of my direct family that comes after me will read it and find it interesting, useful and informative.

Where to start? But below is a section of the eulogy that I wrote for myself or maybe for those celebrating my life on this blue marble once I kick the proverbial bucket.

“What the heck is Kalemi? Well actually it is a town in the far eastern part of Congo. During colonial times it was the Belgium Congo, and the town was named Albertville after one of Belgium’s monarchs. I (my name) was born in that town on June ??, 195?. We are gathered here to celebrate the premature passing of Jan-Willem or as many of his friends knew him “Jan the man.” As he often told us that when at a doctor’s office no one got up when a name was called, it meant it was his turn to see the doctor. Everybody seemed to have difficulties pronouncing his name, and then when “Jan” got up they seemed even more confused. Is Jan a guy?”

Did it frustrate me that folks had difficulties with my name, my first and last name? Not at all, I found it amusing. In its own way it showcased the lack of cosmopolitan experience that I have observed in this country. Living in Cincinnati in the late 1990s I was always tickled when during our first meeting folks would ask me which high school I had graduated from. Like the majority in the area, they had never spread their wings, and they could obviously not fathom that there was actual life outside Cincinnati. Even more fun was when they told you about the great vacation they had in Indiana, a state maybe less than 20 miles to the west. Here in the Hampton Roads, where I currently live, it is a little less narrow-minded, since there is a large concentration of military and ex-military that have spent time in foreign countries on military installations or at war.

During the clandestinely recorded interview our friend Mason wanted to know how the heck I ended up being born in a small town situated on Lake Tanganyika (or now Lake Tanzania). Well, my father had a job there as director of a furniture company. That raised even more questions, so here we need to pause and start with the story of my father, which then raised the question of how my father and mother met. As you can imagine, the questions never ended.

I'll stop here.  If there is a next post it will be about my father before 1948.

Me as a 10-month-old on Lake Tanganika in the Congo

My dad and I around the same time.

Mother and son

What a week, part 2 (1/19/2025)

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

What did I learn during the retreat? About Clay Jenkinson, members of the group or myself? I will not detail very personal information on the first two, but I guess that I am somewhat of an open book to my regular readers, and I will write a bit more about myself and the activities I participated in.

What did we do? On Sunday we started out with a gift book exchange, where you gift a favorite book to someone in the group, while introducing yourself to the group. I gave “Solace of Open Space" by Gretel Ehrlich to one of the participants and received a book on poetry from another (“The Trouble with Poetry” by Billy Collins). On Monday we started with meetings in the morning and afternoon. There was a campfire every evening and some free time, sprinkled in between. We ate our meals together. I was surprised by the copious amount of alcohol that was consumed in the evenings. Folks shared wine, single malt and there was beer as well. We had a hike to the river to discuss Lewis and Clark and another time to reenact Thoreau and throw burning sticks in the river. A trip to a hot spring was the capstone to our get together.

Clay is as intelligent as he sounds on the radio and podcasts. He runs a fairly tight ship during the meeting and is an amazing facilitator. He is clearly the best-read person I have ever encountered with a great number of interests. He is caring and is very interested in the well-being of the participants. He engages in personal dialogues with folks during the discussions and social hours. Clay was trying to be as non-political as possible, hinting at the fact that he lived in a conservative State; however, he kept mentioning a great number of times that “Your vote matters.” My guess is that all but one participant were liberal; however, all were very well off (I counted four of the nine participants in first class on out plane on the return trip from Missoula, and I was definitively not one of them). Lastly, his daughter and future son-in-law had joined us for the first few days, and you could see his pride and love for those two. Both are also very intelligent and well read.

The participants ranged from a winemaker and his wife, to a foreign service person and wife, to retired naturalists, to retired park rangers/managers, to writers. Let’s not forget the copious number of retired lawyers (3), a financial advisor and a wall street guru. An eclectic but at the same time a very intelligent group. At least two were searching for what to do with the rest of their lives. This search was brought out to the foreground during our Walden discussions. Thoreau champions simple living, with nature. As a transcendentalist, Thoreau discusses spirituality, self-determination and personal growth. Coupled with his love for nature made most of us that week could consider ourselves to be Thoreauvian in some form or fashion. Hence, the search by some of us for the deeper meaning of life and the next step in the life we are living. Clay was good I hearing them out and making them think.

I had one of the most wonderful experiences in my life, psychologically, mentally and intellectually stimulating; it was a good kick in the ass: get going, there is such a wonderful life still to live. If you are a regular reader of these posts, you must understand that I at times have struggled with the purpose of the rest of my life. I am retired and have blogged about getting old. I have mentioned that it sucks! I too am (was) trying to find purpose in (the rest of) my life. This clearly was an issue that one of the participants was struggling with and I eagerly listened in to what Clay had to tell him, without saying much myself. My understanding is that in a Thoreauvian sense, we all have a purpose in the greater whole, but sometimes we do not understand what it is. We should embrace where we are in our stage of life, suck the marrow out of the life we have been given (to loosely quote Thoreau). Yes, getting old sucks, but at least I can blog and hopefully teach something to someone. As I always thought about the classes that I taught, if one or two of the students in my class of 40 goes home thinking “I learned something” (and hopefully also thinks “and I am going to apply it") than my task for that day is done. The workshop that week somehow enforced that idea. I do not have to be an Einstein, a Thoreau, or an Abbey to have an impact on other people's lives and to make a difference how small that is.

Yes, I came out of that week refreshed and optimistic again, even though the results of the elections had left me depressed and ready to move to Mars or some other place sane. I realize that “your vote matters," and in future elections I will make mine count and make sure that you all vote as well. In addition, I will be reading more and not get sucked in so deep into the television (especially the news) and social media. I need to do more for my family and finally do more for myself. Like Clay, I will be trying to declutter my life. Wish me luck.

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The Lochsa lodge

Ready to discuss Walden

 

 

 

What a week it has been (1/13/2025)

What a week it has been. I write this while sitting in the Missoula, Montana airport, waiting for my flight home. A guy all the way from the East Coast in cold wintery Montana. As I have mentioned in a few previous posts, we decided that it was my turn to do something different or extraordinary and go to a week meeting (or workshop) at the Lochsa Lodge with likeminded folks. The workshop was put on by Clay Jenkinson and his “Listening to America” organization. Clay puts on two winter workshops back-to-back. In addition, he has a number of summer programs. I went to a four-day (and evening) retreat/discussion on the book “On Walden Pond" by Henry D. Thoreau, and “Desert Solitaire” by Edward Abbey. On first thought an interesting comparison. I am not sure if this post will turn out to be a book report, an account of our meeting, or a free-flowing dump of my impressions and takeaways. Maybe it will become a combination of all three. I will try to keep it somewhat short and sweet, the length of most of my regular posts.

For those of you who do not know who the heck this Clay Jenkinson is, he is a humanities scholar who used to impersonate (played) Thomas Jefferson on a radio show (The Jefferson Hour), he also is an expert on Oppenheimer and on top of that an accomplished scholar on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Here I am just giving you an extremely short resume of Clay, but since this is my blog I have some discretion on what I write about the man.

Comparing Walden and Desert Solitaire may seem somewhat far fetched. When I mentioned Abbey to my friends on the east coast, only a select few (one) knew who I was talking about; and she is a Ph.D. in English literature and professor who teaches composition. Out west he is a more familiar person. I learned during our meeting that everyone who joins the National Park Service in the Southwest is recommended or maybe even required to read his Desert Solitaire. I learned about him in the early 1990s when I lived in Gallup. Abbey is an interesting character; the way I try to describe him to my friends is part hedonist, part environmentalist, conservationist with libertarian tendencies. But that might be too mild for someone who writes about his “love rocket" in his journals. An interesting character, indeed.

History is not certain if Thoreau had a “love rocket” and it is speculated that he died a virgin. What a contrast to discuss in our meeting in the mountains. Honestly, our discussions were more ethereal than the sexual exploits of our celebrated authors; however, this particular subject was good for a few laughs and (nervous?) giggles. For the readers who know my political leaning and the company I tend to keep, it also elicited some noises of indignation by some of the feminists in the group.

I am not sure if we ever came to a conclusion or if that even was necessary, but I think the group really felt that Thoreau was more difficult to read, he was more flowery; very observant and descriptive; at times arrogant or dismissive of the folks around him. He was a transcendentalist and in his own way very spiritual. I was somewhat tickled by his overt love of some of the east Asian and Chinese traditions, the knowledge of which must have been in its infancy in the mid 1800s.

Abbey was more crass, more in your face; however, the beauty of his descriptions mirror those of Thoreau. He is a true nature lover and he showed his disdain for the development of the National Parks. I think we concluded he was a visionary, somewhat predicting the over use of the parks and what we see now, the rationing of access to some parks.

I can write books about our meeting in the Bitterroots on the Idaho-Montana border. I suspect that it were fertile grounds for potential books that Clay might write. I have just scratched the surface here and plan to write some more about it in the future; albeit I am not planning a book. It was a fun week; it challenged me intellectually, something I have not had in some time. Moreover, it dealt with self-improvement and resolutions (simplify, simplify, simply). I will make this vague promise to revisit this past week again and again in future posts; however, I still need to decompress and determine what I think we accomplished there, socially and intellectually. Stay tuned.

Below a few photographs of my week at the lodge.