Off season

Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park

The photo above was taken yesterday afternoon in Glacier National Park in the middle of the afternoon. Note the lack of people and vehicles. It's off-season here in northern Montana. After speaking at the state teacher conference in Missoula on Thursday, the LWW and I are taking a couple days to visit this beautiful place.

I've always been a fan of visiting popular areas off-season. Fewer people, no lines, better rates for hotels, and just a calmer experience. Sure, plenty of things are closed. I may need to just live with the fact that I will never get to see the "Mysterious Montana House of Vortex Mystery." At least the scenery is still open, even if not all the roads are.

Perhaps there is some lesson to be drawn from this. Or maybe not.

Oh, this is how you tell you are getting old. The hotel in Missoula had Hooters and IHOP restaurants right next to it. It was the pumpkin pancakes that I got me excited. Sigh...

From Going to the Sun Road, Glacier National Park

North to Alaska

I've had the privilege of being invited to speak at conferences in Alaska twice - in Anchorage in 2000 and in Fairbanks in 2004. With this great state so much in the news as of late, I started reminiscing a bit about my short experiences there.

Two conversations especially left an impression on me.

The first was with my van driver on a 14-hour-long trip from Fairbanks to the Arctic Circle. I'd booked an extra couple of days hoping to get to see Denali Park after the conference was over, not realizing that Alaska actually closes between Labor Day and Memorial Day. Really. No trip to the park. But I did ante up an ungodly sum of money to ride in a supply van from Fairbanks along the pipeline to the small rest area you see in the photo above. I then got in another van and rode back to Fairbanks. I did see a couple of moose and received a signed certificate that proves I was north of the Arctic Circle (by at least a foot or two.)

I heard a lot about Alaska life from the van's driver, a former Alaska Department of Transportation worker. I learned mostly about building roads on permafrost. But I also learned that he goes out hunting each year and makes sausage from the bear he shoots and that he and his wife enjoy eating their bear sausage for breakfast each morning. I appreciate hunters who actually eat what they hunt. And I sense most Alaskans do just that.

The second conversation was with a bus driver in Anchorage. I overheard him complaining about "goddam taxes." I was curious.

"But you don't have a state income tax, do you?"
"No."
"And you don't have a state sales tax, do you?"
"No."
"And you get an oil revenue check from the state each year, don't you?"
"Yes."
"So what taxes are so high?"
"Property taxes. Goddam property taxes."
"So what's the value of your house and what do you pay? I'll let you know what mine are in Minnesota and we can compare."
"Well I live in a camper on the back of my pickup so I don't actually pay property taxes. But I hear they are goddam high."

Unfairly, I'm sure whenever I think of Alaskans, I think of these conversations. Of course, I met and talked to lots of educators who seemed to be pretty nice, normal people. Well, at one event, they were wearing Velcro suits and using a trampoline to vault themselves onto a wall where they hoped to stick, but other than that...

I also left with an appreciation that there really are other places in the world with colder climates than Minnesota. The living conditions in the state are challenging for many residents. Alaskans, in my experience, are tough people.

Oh, this is no way an endorsement of Ms Palin as VP pick. Just a reminiscence...

One of the few rest stops from Fairbanks to the Arctic Circle. March, 2004.

End of a season; end of an era

Brady at Cry of the Loon Resort, Labor Day 1993

My friend Cary and I have been bringing our families and friends "up nort'" to a small resort nearly every Labor Day weekend since 1993. Over the years, it become tradition. (See 2006 and 2007 reports.)

But next year the tradition ends. Bill and Nancy, the owners of Cry of the Loon, are retiring and will rent no more. Knowing this, I spent an entire weekend with a lump in my throat. And I am not a particularly sentimental person. Or maybe I am since I've been spending lots of time thinking about tradition and its importance to kids.

When I was a little boy growing up on the prairie, my family's traditions centered around the big holidays - primarily Thanksgiving and Christmas, every year going to the same set of grandparents, eating the same sorts of food, and pounding on the same set of cousins. My grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins all lived within driving distance and the terms "blended" or "nontraditional"  family were not in our vocabulary or experience.

Cary's and my kids did not have the "traditional" holiday experience. More than two sets of grandparents often living at great distances ruled out much consistency in how they spent Thanksgiving and Christmas. But for our kids, the Labor Day pilgrimage each year to Cry of the Loon became the tradition.  Each year we religiously:

• Arrived on the Friday night and left on Monday morning.
• Took a bike ride around Lake Itasca.
• Climbed the park's fire tower (making it to the top was a rite of passage).
• Had malts served in the big steel cans at the Douglas Lodge.
• Watched the Tom Hanks movie Big.
• Grilled burgers and dogs.
• Braved the cool lake waters for a "last summer swim," pretty much regardless of the weather.
  

I have always been surprised at the vehemence with which our kids held the weekend's events sacrosanct. Staying in a different cabin or even sitting at a different table in a favorite restaurant was met with protest. New food items were held in disdain. Order and sameness and regularity were the rule and violation from it was a sin.

As we were packing up to leave this morning, 7-year-old grandson Paul asked, "But Grandpa, aren't we going to watch Giant before we go?" I could not figure out what he was taking about. I told him that the movie Giant was for adults and he wouldn't like it and if he was thinking of Iron Giant, the cartoon, the lodge didn't have it. Finally in frustration, Paul explained the plot: "You know, Grandpa, it's where the boy wakes up grown up and dances on the piano in the toy store." Ah, it was Big, not Giant, he wanted. A new generation demanding tradition as well.

I also believe tradition is as (or maybe more) important to us older people. I realized on my drive back that I always take the back roads, the Blue Highways, from the lodge to home. It started because I wanted to avoid the holiday traffic mess on the popular roads, but yesterday I had to admit that I just plain get pleasure from driving in the country past the small lakes and old barns and little towns with little intakes of breath at how beautiful our state can be. Back roads add an hour, perhaps, to the 250 mile trip. But it is an hour well-spent.

Rob Rubis is struggling with the conflict between the traditional and the new in his school and library program at ISB, as I am sure many of us are. Are we too quick to dismiss the traditions in our schools and in our practice? Do both our students and our staff genuinely need some continuity, some sameness, even if it seems dated, in their speedy, changing lives?

Do we offer enough traditions for our kids? And how do we build these routines and beloved practices? Something I will be thinking about as our students roll back in tomorrow.

Last swim. Paul at Cry of the Loon, Labor Day 2008.