Do it while you can

I have been enviously viewing a friend’s Facebook posts about her trip to Africa - Benin and Kenya to be exact - with my memories of a long ago trip there and the lesson it taught me stirred…

The NESA (NearEastSouthAsia Council of International Schools) teachers’ conference in 1987 was held at the Kenyatta Conference Center in Nairobi. And I, as a school librarian for the ARAMCO schools in Saudi Arabia, submitted a breakout session proposal (reading aloud to secondary students) that was accepted. So, off to a new country…

I remember little about the conference itself, but I vividly remember the few days following the conference when I “went on safari” in the Masai Mara. 

After a long van ride, a small group of teachers was housed in a lodge just outside the perimeter of the national park. The lodge consisted of a large hut-like structure which included the reception area, bar, and restaurant with a dozen or so smaller huts spreading like wings that each contained a couple bedrooms. One’s room was accessed by a sidewalk with bushes growing in close proximity. After dinner when it was time to go to one’s room, a Masai tribesman in native dress complete with a long spear accompanied each guest - just in case a lion should attack.

After supper the first night, a small table was set up in the lobby. A company which offered hot air balloon rides over the park was taking reservations. When I asked the cost, I found it was a whopping $219! At a time when a US teacher’s beginning salary was about $15,000, that was a lot of money. But after a great deal of angst, I signed on for the morning excursion.

Early the next morning when the rest of the tour group was going out in a jeep to look at hippos, I was riding through the dark, dodging hyenas, toward the balloon staging area - an open plain again guarded by Masai tribesmen. As the sun started to peek above the horizon, the brilliant flames of the gas burner began to inflate the multicolored balloon. Rising slowly with the burner’s roar, the balloon grew huge, inflated with buoyant hot air.

About half a dozen tourists were crammed into the waist-high wicker basket along with the pilot. And off we went, slowly and peacefully rising into the brightening sky. Soon the entire plains spread before us. On sighting a herd of elephants, the balloon descended and the elephants lifted their trunks to trumpet at us. We rose and fell as we viewed giraffes, wildebeest, zebras, and antelope. A number of other balloons of different colors shared the sky with us. Any acrophobia one might have had was displaced by awe.

We floated above the open plains for about 2 or 3 hours and then landed near a single tree on an open expanse of grassland where a jeep was parked. The jeep was carrying our champagne brunch and was our game viewing ride back to the lodge. The balloon safaris always landed in the same place and the length of tide depended on the strength of the winds, I was told.

I never once regretted spending the $219 dollars on the ride. Never. I recognized at the time that even at my then young age of 35, I might never have the opportunity again to soar above the African wilds. And although I have been back to Kenya, I’ve not been in a situation where I could float above the world again.

My motto became, and remains, “do it while you can.” And as age slowly takes its toll on my physical strength and mental ability, the motto has become even more meaningful. 

Oh, a few other things I learned on the trip:

•  Lesson of the Ngong Hills 
• Don’t sunbathe on the equator - I got a very bad sunburn the last morning at the lodge.
• It’s a lot more interesting to see animals in the wild than in a zoo, even if from a jeep. Same reason I loved the Galapagos.

Photo source (I took slides of my trip, including the balloon ride, but I tossed them for some reason.)

Rustic barns and the beauty of aging

Back last Friday from another “back road” drive from Minneapolis to Atlanta by way of Sac CIty, Iowa to visit my family over Thanksgiving and after. About a 2500 mile round trip. Thankfully, I was not in a hurry.

I started this post as a rant about the need for our country to just clean-up. Only about 25% of the farmhouses near where I grew up in northwest Iowa that I remember from my childhood still remain standing - the rest torn down and plowed over for the additional acreage gained, the housing unneeded by the corporations now owning the land. Many of the remaining older homes are badly in need of a good paint job. And it is not just the farmhouses, but the paintless barns, the decrepit machine sheds, the rusting animal enclosures that create an air of desolation. Rusted tractors, wheelless pickups, and junked farm implements litter the untended groves. Large turkey and chicken "barns" stretch close to the roads, uniquely lacking in style or grace. And the industrial sites along the Mississippi River (I’m looking at you, Quincy) rival any ugliness of agricultural lands.

But then I started re-reading William Least Heat-Moon’s narrative of traveling America’s backroads in the late 1970s, Blue Highways*. And Heat-Moon reminded me of those pleasures of a slow drive on rural backroads - the leisurely pace, the modest beauties of farm fields, pastures, and wooded lots. I find the cooking of small town cafes, the lack of traffic, and memories of former workplaces and homes agreeable. 

I am a fan of rustic barns. (I even have a book of them.) The sight of them takes me back to a childhood of swinging on haymow ropes, milking cows, and putting up hay. The odd gray pickup truck on blocks can be decorous. Like a human face with good structure and character ages well, so do old farmsteads. The forlorn windmill, the religious billboard, and the smell of fresh spread manure on a recently harvested cornfield create a time machine, throwing one back into what seems like simpler times.

When I return home, it is to a suburban townhouse development that is a bit anal-retentive in its regulations about what one can and cannot do (Christmas lights, parking, siding colors, etc.). The place always looks very nice. Prim and proper. I am sure such tight rules increase our property values. But do they do so at the expense of interest and character, even a kind of beauty?

*Would I had a tenth of Heat-Moon’s observational abilities and writing skills. If you have not read this book, or have not read it for many years, pick it up. It’s truly an American classic.

Image source