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A Tale of Two Airports

(With Apologies to Charles Dickens)

 

Wow! For all the traveling I’ve done over many years, I think of myself as a veteran, but coming home Thursday evening, 22 January, from the exuberant and deeply touching wedding celebration of niece Bridget and Victoria was one adventure after another.

My hosts, sister Cecilia and Rick, duly deliver me to the American Airlines departure area 4 hours early because I had discovered upon arrival two days earlier that it was difficult to navigate the airport. It was barely early enough.

If you’ve not been in the Miami International Airport in a while, prepare yourself: It has never been an easy airport to go through but now it is undergoing a massive MODERNIZATION project, which they advertise on huge signs that obscure most of the signs that you need to use to find out where you need to go. As they’ve “modernized” they’ve added “new” signs that conflict with the information on the “old” signs that they’ve left up such that you have no clue which is which, nor which to follow, so you wind up trying all of them, one after another. Directions are wanting but there are a zillion bars to stop at along the way!

At any rate, it takes an hour to find the right security line and then another hour to find the right departure gate for Knoxville, which they then change on the flight boards (none of which agree) four times. When I finally get to the right one, they change it again minutes before what is supposed to be our 10pm departure time—scarcely time for a restroom stop.

So, skipping along in time, we are all lined-up to board outside when we wait and wait and wait. At one point, the gate officer leaves and returns to address our long line. He holds up a purse and I see it and think: “Hmmm that looks a lot like my old Coach purse that I bought in New York City when I was 22 years old and have used ever since.” Then I realize that it IS my purse when he calls out my name. He comes over to me and gives me a stern little lecture on how lucky I am that the purse was found and with contents intact, no less. I thank him profusely, despite the lecture. I have no idea where I left it, likely that quick bathroom stop. Or maybe security?

Half an hour later, we are still standing there when they decide to change aircraft completely, sending us back into the gate waiting area. We are nearly all bosom-buddy friends by this time —even kinder, gentler ones because there is no alcohol to purchase in a bar nearby. A publisher waiting in line tells me I should really publish my stories and I tell him: “Oh, I do!”

Half an hour after that, we process back out to a distant new gate area and hastily board the plane which is, of course, stuffed to capacity, to a degree I could never have imagined in previous decades of travel. As I board, the gate officer asks me if I still have my purse—the long line of boarding passengers laughs in concert—and I thank him, yet again. The flight is perfectly fine and we arrive at Knoxville two hours late, at 2am.

I never leave my vehicle at the Knoxville Airport garage but I had done so because we are also in a vast construction frenzy at the airport and I didn’t want it to be stuck in ice or snow on the surface lots, given the dire weather prediction. Well, I remember perfectly well where I left it, even though there are no signs now in the garage—just a lot of construction barriers hither and yon, but after a half hour of walking in the sprawling 4-story garage I still cannot find my little blue truck. So I finally hail down the only security cart I catch sight of. Fortunately, I remember my license plate and it is a distinctive one for the Appalachian Trail. An hour later, with the help of two security carts on duty, traveling ‘round and ‘round the levels, we finally find it in a barricaded area that was left open and then closed-off in error by construction workers. It is 3am. After thanking the staff for their help, I am lucky that the expected ice storm has not yet arrived and I get home safe, but maybe not completely sane.

Dropping down onto my bed with all my clothes on, cat Coco thinks I should stay awake and listen to her complaints about being left for three days. When I pick up dog Gracie the next morning and bring her home from her diligent and supremely gracious caretakers, I tell her this long story of my travel home, and she falls sound asleep in her favorite bed while I nodoff repeatedly on the couch in front of the fire. I feel very fortunate to have family and friends to go to visit at my advanced age, but I am also grateful to be home. I suggest to both Gracie and Coco that we need to start-up a comedy club in our home so we could tell funny tales like this one, and others, but they do not want to hear about it.

I add the parking attendants and airline gate officer to my long list of acquaintances and hosts, and others, to amply thank in the coming week. I am grateful for all the help along the way.

While I write this, snow is falling softly outside our windows, at 30 degrees, which is good news because it means that the imminent ice storm, with temperatures predicted down to 7 degrees, will likely deposit ice on top of the snow—and thus not be nearly as perilous to walk or drive on. Caring well for a beloved dog in this kind of weather is not for the faint of heart.

Y’all come visit, with or without your own travel stories!

With much love to all, Theresa

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Sunset Beach and Bird Island

People are always asking me about my favorite beach, which prompts me to chuckle to myself because in recent years I’ve only had the chance to visit the beach once every five years or so. But this month and year finally gave me a good answer—one that challenges my enduring, longtime love of the mountains:  A place with the most pristine beach and natural, flourishing dunes untrammeled by overbuilt human mansions and surrounded by miles of conserved land teeming with wildlife, especially birds—board walks the only construction in sight. A large, active volunteer corps offers well-informed nature talks and guided walks.

beach sunset

As much as Kenneth and I loved visiting and meeting friends in older parts of the Outer Banks, especially Ocracoke, it is a sad fact that the east-facing coastal chain of barrier islands is steadily losing ground to erosion brought on by climate change. Remarkably, the south-facing island of Sunset Beach and the marshland of Bird Island take-in sand from coastal tides and currents while most other beaches today are losing sand. Not long after Kenneth died in 2017, I spent a week on Little St. Simon’s Island collecting trash that had washed up on its shores. Somehow it seemed good therapy for grief to clean-up what had been heedlessly tossed into the sea by others elsewhere. The seas remind us that “no man is an island.”

Beach flower

During our recent October visit to Sunset Island, Gracie and I could walk for miles on the strand—eventually catching this single bloom of a beach morning glory dusted with sand at the foot of a frontal, oceanside dune. Secondary dunes stand as high as twenty feet, with sea oats the dominant plants that hold the dunes in place; the upper zone is a critical nesting area for loggerhead sea turtles and ground nesting shorebirds such as the American oystercatcher, terns, black skimmers and Wilson’s plover. (Gracie especially liked to move, always-on-leash, in concert with the plovers, who seemed to enjoy her company.) The grasslands sheltered by the sand dunes host plants such as saltmeadow cordgrass, broomsedge, carex, prickly pear cactus, pepper grass, blanket flower, goldenrod, and pennywort. Monarch butterflies fluttered about the plants and the sea waves. Nearly every night, clear skies and no nearby artificial lights made it possible to star-gaze for hours.

Walking back to our rented vacation home, tucked behind several series of dunes, we caught up with retired university friends in long and thoroughly-enjoyable conversations while taking turns preparing meals and working on an immense table-top puzzle of underwater creatures. Five days flew by. We’ve already made another booking for seven days next year!

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Travels with Gracie

We are just back from two weeks of traveling in our trusty little hybrid truck—2,000 miles and 30+ hours—to attend a course of dog training at the monastery of New Skete and visit with three sets of the best of old friends in upstate New York and Virginia, the kind of friends one invariably concludes an email or phone conversation with by saying “We’ll visit soon!” Then recently it happened that my wish to visit dear friends before I run out of years to do so and a class opportunity at New Skete coincided. But as departure time neared, I began to dread the long drive and wondered whether I wasn’t overestimating my stamina and expectations of Gracie and myself.

Well, it turned out to be one of the most glorious trips I’ve ever undertaken. We tested Google Maps to the utmost. Friends greeted us royally and gave Gracie the chance to learn how to be a favored guest in four different households. In addition, during the five days of training, we were fortunate to stay at Maurice Sendak’s farm near Cambridge, New York, taking in a grand view of the mountains ranged along the border with Vermont at every moment we were there and awake.

At Lanntair Farm in the mid-1980s, Kenneth and I used the monks’ 1970s book How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend to train our two black American Labrador Retrievers Dame O’Casey and Finn McCoo. With that training, those beloved dogs oversaw our horse farm for 12 years. Every morning McCoo looked at us as though to say “How can I lay down my life for you today?” and Casey looked at him with “Aw, get a life, let’s get on with it!” The monks have published many other highly successful books since then but also now offer training onsite at the monastery. Their approach is both spiritual and gentle, emphasizing insight into the dog’s nature, making connections, and building a relationship.

And yet, after almost two years of living with Gracie since her retirement as a hard-working Mama, I wasn’t entirely convinced she even needed formal training. She is inherently eager and willing to acknowledge her Pack Leader (me) and reasonably smart. She is thrilled by any old tennis balls that come her way. But education is always a good thing, yes? Poor Gracie: I was the “old dog” who repeatedly fumbled directions and training aids. (We had in common, though, that both of us were thoroughly exhausted at the end of every day.) There was one instance at the course where Gracie got the chance to show off a new skill, with that English Labrador tail proudly wagging with enthusiasm, and she earned applause from the assembled class for that. I nearly cried when I saw how pleased she was for both of us.

Gracie will never be a cool-and-aloof show dog, but she is now a little bit more willing to take my cue on whether to seek to greet every human and creature who passes by. “Sit” still doesn’t come naturally to her because she’d much rather lie down and roll over to show her pleasure at meeting new and old acquaintances. But it also turns out that she genuinely likes to launch into what trainers call a Purposeful Walk, except that her companion (me) cannot last in power drive nearly as long as she can!

Since arriving back home, I am astonished by how much Gracie learned and how wonderful that seems to both of us. Still, if she ever stops wanting to make friends with everyone she encounters, I’ll know something’s up; when she stops rolling over and showing her belly to people she thinks of as her special friends—all of them—I’ll know something is wrong.

Every day with Gracie is a day of grace and joy. I am most grateful to know and care for her.

Our best wishes for a most enjoyable summer to all family and friends! —Theresa

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Travels with Theresa

When it hasn’t been centered on work or family, most of my writing over the years has been inspired by travel abroad and the experience of returning home from those journeys. I fantasize about someday having the time to do nothing but write, preferably in a deck chair on a ship or in a cozy seat by the fire at home. But the reality is I steal moments for writing from the scores of things I love to work on just about all the time. It turns out that it was a great gift to learn to love to work from the earliest age and in all kinds of places—one I was loathe to learn at the time.

In 2010 I wrote a journal when I stepped off the work carousel on my home turf to travel around the world on a Semester at Sea voyage. I sent each logged entry to friends and family, took a lot of photos (my first attempt to use a camera on a trip), and then my talented friend Carolyn Rice Dean helped me put the account on a website, complete with a beautiful logo on the name Blue Note Garden that derived from what the Irish fancifully call “long” or “bent” notes of blue. The 2010 account begins with a picture of a blue and white beach chair and it ends with a photo of touches of blue in our garden, hence the name Blue Note Garden. Since then, I’ve added categories for other journeys, some of which I’ve not yet finished writing. I must and I will. But in the meantime, we’ve had to turn our attention to more practical uses of the website. As my husband and I grow older, we realize we will not always be able to scurry around on task at all hours of the day and night, and seasons of the year. After building and renovating several homes and gardens through long hours of effort and limited funding, we are now the stewards of an exceptional property in a town we have grown immensely fond of. Knoxville is a community we feel privileged to be a part of. But how will we be able to afford help to sustain our home when we can no longer do the work all by ourselves? Not to draw too heavily upon the plight of Downton Abbey, but we can well understand the erstwhile search of its earls for income to support its continued existence when servants were no longer an option! Lucky for us, the first floor of our large home here in Blue Note Garden was perfect for two guest suites. Kenneth and I both come from large families and it has been par for the course for us to have family members and friends stay with us for varying amounts of time nearly all of our 40 years of married life. Not long ago we updated both of those suites into the apartments you see offered on these pages. Just like our quarters “upstairs” these ground floor accommodations look out to spectacular garden views on all sides. Thomas Wolfe says “you can’t go home again” but I think the likelier story is that we can only really travel well if we do go home, again and again. What I mean by that is that the best journeys are ones where we get to know people in the places where they are most at home. We hope you will travel here to stay with us and enjoy our home in a unique setting in one of the most beautiful parts of the world.