Atop Mt. Magazine

Serious mountaineers, who check 14,000+ foot peaks off their "To Climb" lists, might call a 2753 foot elevation "puny, pipsqueak or even peewee."  Such men and women who scale dizzying heights and don't even get dizzy, might flick such a lowly "incline" off a list of true mountains like a fly off a sandwich.  "Don't waste our time on such trifles," they might exclaim, if asked to don a pair of L.L. Bean hikers, grab a picnic lunch, bottle of water and follow an "ordinary" trail upwards to what they might mockingly refer to as a  summit. But they would be missing the point.

I scaled one of those so-called pipsqueak peaks this week.  The highest point in Arkansas - Signal Hill - atop Mt. Magazine.  Well, granted I drove the gently curving, scenic state highway 309 for all but the last .6 mile, but the climb was not "the thing."  It's what surrounded me, or more accurately, what enveloped me for the 20 hours of my stay.  A cocoon of white clouds caused the Arkansas River Valley below to vanish, intensifying the world of the mountain top, forcing me to pay attention.

My friend, Marian, and I arrived late in the afternoon, checked into The Lodge, and were content to relax for the evening.  But the sun edged over the top of the cocoon at dawn inviting us, hurrying us outside, lest we miss the morning's glory.   

Mist followed us, or perhaps we followed it, as we walked the loop around the base of Signal Hill and Cameron Bluff Overlook Drive, the damp air frizzing our hair and glittering the spiders' webs.  We breathed deeply of damp leaves, cedar branches, pine needles and air cleaner than a morning shower, keeping a steady pace, until we were stopped by the sight of. . . 

retreating clouds revealing vistas of solitude

craggy rock faces yawning, "Good morning"

                                           

 camouflaged pair of deer posing in grayness 

(look closely in the lower, center     

foreground)

                                        show-stopping trees performing the Can-Can

                                               and blinding light bursting the cocoon

Nature led the way to the mountain's top while reminding us that a destination, regardless of its size, is of little consequence. . . if the trail leading to it is ignored in the rush to advance.  

   

                                                     We couldn't agree more.       

10 hours 53 minutes and counting

The right engine's on fire!  The left engine's on fire!  The plane is losing altitude - faster and faster, hurtling towards the ocean.  "Prepare for a crash landing!" the pilot yells over the intercom.

Sitting calmly in my aisle seat 34, 000 feet above the Atlantic, I take a deep breath and say to myself, "Now, there's a serious problem."

Allowing my imagination to run wild for 10 seconds, I catch it before it has a chance to get totally out of control, and drag it back to reality. No flaming engines, no frenzied voice, other than perhaps my own, searching for a way to put minor irritations into perspective.  On my way back to Arkansas, I'm into hour five of the 10 hour and 53 minute flight from Moscow to Atlanta. . . and I need an attitude adjustment.

The beverage carts have squeezed up and down the economy aisles a couple of times, the pasta or chicken dinners have been passed out, two of the four movies have aired, and people are beginning to get restless.  The lines to the toilets in the midsection seem particularly long, about 7-8 people deep on both sides of the center aisle, but I decide to stretch my legs and wait it out.  Fifteen minutes later, I discover the reason for the slow-down, a yellow rectangular sign hanging from the knob of toilet #2 stating, quite matter-of-factly, "defective."  Defective?  You mean for the next 5 hours and 53 minutes, all these people in all these fully booked seats, have to share 3 tiny toilets?  Is there no plumber on board?  I take my turn, then stop drinking for the rest of the flight.

Adding to the toilet traffic are the drinkers in the back. A frazzled flight attendant, with fading make-up and strands of hair escaping from her once perfect bun, confides to me, "Several men are having an issue with their alcohol."  By their alcohol, I wonder if she means that  they are consuming duty free purchases, the ones I saw 4 or 5 of them toting on board in the clear, plastic, suppose-to-stay sealed packages.  By the boisterous laughter and unfettered voices that bellow from row 40ish to where I sit in row 25, it's obvious they're taking the pilot's advice seriously to "sit back, relax and enjoy" their flights.

Popping up out of their seats, three children a couple of rows ahead of me decide that it's "Exercise Time!"  Running up and down the aisles, waving their arms and screaming is great fun.  The leader, a  boy who looks to be around eight years old, turns to face the crowd and blasts out a song, then another, then another.  Perhaps he's taking requests. The noise awakens the peacefully sleeping baby in the center bulkhead row, who harmonizes, with gusto.

Minor irritations. Minor irritations. Minor irritations.

I picked up the mantra several years ago when I heard Michael J. Fox interviewed on one of the late night talk shows.  The host asked if he were afraid of being typecast in the Alex P. Keaton/Mike Flaherty kind of  character he portrayed in the t.v. series, "Family Ties" and "Spin City."  Fox replied something to the effect that every day thousands of people around the world starve to death, die of treatable diseases, and are killed as innocent bystanders of war.  The possibility of being type-cast? "A minor irritation," he said. Today he has Parkinson's Disease.

But still, even minor irritations can be so IRR-I-TA-TING! Like the lady sitting behind me whose swifts kicks to the back of my seat feel like a massage chair who's out to get me.

Deep breaths. Think of 5 things you're grateful for.  More deep breaths.  Now pop those earphones in, turn the volume to high and watch "Crazy Heart," for the third time.

Minor irritations.  Thanks for the reminder, Michael.


  



  

Levitan's Lesson

Continuation of "A Picture Perfect Day in Plyos, Russia"


The tea has simmered, the walk has ended; it’s time to open the envelope in my pocket and discover what the perfect day has to teach me. . .  
  
It involves a man I've never met and will never meet.  A man who spent time in Plyos, 120 years before I arrived. A man whose work touched me before I even knew his name.


When I visited the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow for the first time, I bought only one item in the gift shop, a 5 X 7 print of Golden Autumn.  Of all the paintings I had seen that day, it was the one that I wished I could enter, to sit on the grassy river bank, to hear the jostling of the yellow and orange leaves as the breeze played hide and seek among their branches, to feel the sun on my face, to be warmed by Nature. A perfect day.


I wondered about the man who created it.  Issac Levitan, a painter of landscapes.      

"Self portrait," Issac Levitan
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

I encountered him again in Plyos, as I wandered from room to room in his museum, seeing a re-creation of his apartment/studio, a small collection of his paintings, and learning about his journeys to the town to paint.  I imagined him climbing up a wooded hillside, strolling along the Volga's embankment, balancing on a precarious log across a meandering stream, searching for landscapes that "spoke" to him.   

My lesson does not lie in the telling of Levitan's story, except for three facts.  He experienced extreme poverty in his early life; he died 3 weeks shy of his 40th birthday, and he left "more than 1000 oil paintings, water colors, and other works on paper." 1000! (Issac Levitan)

When he was hungry and homeless in Moscow, why didn't he get a "real job," something, anything, to pay the bills?  Why not delay his passion for painting for a few years, when his life was more stable?  Put it off a while.  He was young.  There would be time for such an indulgence when he was older.  What made him think he could be a successful painter anyway? 


Doubts. Reality. Choices. For Levitan, the drive, the necessity to create, must have outweighed all the "cons" on his "What To Do With My Life" decision-making list.  The force of nature and his deep connection to it, must have propelled him forward, leaving little choice but to act.  Nine hundred and ninety-nine or so pieces of his art depict nature, devoid of any human forms.  Only one, Autumn Day Sokolniki, shows a woman walking on a path, dwarfed by the blowing trees and swirling clouds. Yet his own words reflect his feelings of inadequacy in doing justice to what he sees around him or feels in his heart.


"What can be more tragic than to feel the grandeur of the surrounding beauty and to be able to see in it its underlying mystery. . . and yet to be aware of your own inability to express these large feelings." 
-Issac Levitan

Still, he persevered.


 Levitan's lesson to me as a writer is to forge ahead, to honor the words that need to be voiced, valuing my uniqueness to express them. As his short life reveals in the gifts of art that he left us, life may not wait for the perfect day to get started or to keep going.


And what about you? Is there an envelope hidden in your pocket?

"Golden Autumn," Issac Levitan
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

To view more of Levitan's work, check this website:
http://www.artistsandart.org/2010/08/russian-landscape-painter-isaak-levitan.html






      







          

A Picture Perfect Day in Plyos, Russia

Tucked into every perfect day, there's a lesson, like a tiny cream-colored envelope with a hidden message inside.  You may not discover it until days later when you absent-mindedly stick your hand in your pocket and feel its pointed corners, pull it out and wonder, "Where did this come from?

I had a perfect, or as near-perfect day as I could imagine, last Saturday.  Try as I might to find one piece of it that I would change, I'm at a loss. Pictures of the perfect pieces fill my camera.  The lesson is still being processed.

Drew and I took a weekend trip to Plyos, Russia with our friends, Ann, John, Zhenya and Matvey.  Rumor has it that travel time between Moscow and Plyos is a mere 5 hours by car.  We decided that an over-zealous worker at the  Plyos "tourist commission," started the 5-hour fabrication in order to lure travelers to come and spend money.  Friday afternoon traffic out of Moscow, which accompanied us miles past the city, added another 4 hours, making our arrival time in Plyos at 1:30 am.  No, this was not the perfect day. It started the next morning with homemade blinis filled with blueberry jam and sour cream.

Maya, our hostess at "The Volga" hotel, sent us off with a cheery, "Have a lovely walk," after filling us with plenty of coffee and tea to keep us warm.

  Zhenya and Matvey, who own property in Plyos, guided us up a hill past homes with gingerbread-house window frames.

  Turning around as we reached the top, the view was beyond the words, "picturesque, breathtaking, beautiful, wow" we used to describe it.  Silence among beauty is sometimes the only worthy response.  I snapped a picture of the Volga River, framed by the autumn hillside dotted with rooftops, and took a deep breath.

Trees, proud of their new fall frocks,                                              
posed for pictures.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        



                    






              

                            

                                                             Black and white birches brightened the dense woods like prancing zebras.                         

                                                                                                                                

Churches pointed their candle-wick domes skyward.

Flowers, unaware of the change in season, continued to bloom. . .
,                                             joyfully.

Watering holes waited for (real) feathered friends to sip and chat.








Returning to afternoon cups of ginger-lemon-honey tea and sweets, followed later by plates of pelmeni, we ended the day with warming sips of Plyos' Cranberry Tincture and more tea in front of a crackling fire.
                                               Quite the perfect day with. . .                                                                                                                                                                                  

and Drew!

Matvey, Zhenya, Ann, John

                

But what of the lesson?  What did I find in my pocket?  Lessons need time, time to steep like my cup of chamomile, before they can be fully understood and appreciated.  I will write about it in a day or so.  Check back. Now. . . for that tea and a walk in the woods.  

Fishing for the Right Words

Circling the lake on my morning walk through the Moscow park, I pass by his spot.  By 7:30, he's re-created his space just like it was yesterday and the day before, in such a perfect way that I wonder if he ever goes home.  His two-legged folding stool, with shiny silver legs and green canvas seat is situated at a comfortable distance from the water, so that the pole stretches out to the precise location where fish gather for a quick bite before heading off to work.  Similar to Starbucks, but with a catch.
A white plastic, recycled grocery sack sits to his right, flanked by a stainless steel thermos - his breakfast, I presume.  An identical bag sits to his left - his bait, I presume; hopefully, never the two shall be confused.

The fisherman is not alone.  Every few feet along the bank is another, sitting on or standing beside a similar, if not identical stool, plastic bags and knapsacks at his feet, pole precisely postioned, staring at the water's surface.  One morning, I counted 14 members of the community ringing the perimeter of the lake  watching, waiting.  Paying closer attention during a week's worth of walking, I noticed that the same fishermen occupied the same territories.  Could it be that there is an unspoken agreement, much like with church pews?  Heaven help the first-time church goer or weekend fisherman who stumbles upon a presumed vacancy, later to discover an invisible "Reserved" sign as he's nudged further along by its rightful occupant.

So, what's different about "my" fisherman?  He speaks to me, or did for the first time this week.  He happened to turn in my direction as I was fast-walking past.  His eyes met mine from under the brim on his gray, floppy hat.  He said something in Russian; I shrugged indicately that sadly, after being in his country for going-on seven years, I can count my Russian vocabulary on the combined fingers of my hands plus a couple of toes.  Not giving up, he moved his right index finger in a circle over his left palm, and I understood. 

"How many times do you circle the lake?" he wanted to know.

"Dva," I answered, at least trying to say something, anything in Russian.

"Two," he replied, trying to do the same in English.  

He nodded and smiled.  I nodded and smiled.   I walked on.

Early the next morning, there he sat on his stool, reading glasses perched half-way down his nose, opening a ziploc bag.  His bushy gray beard reminded me of Santa Claus (or Ded Moroz, in Russian), along with his round cheeks and bowl-full-of-jelly belly, camoflauged under his fishing vest.  

"Dobraye utra" (Good morning), I said.

"Hello," he answered.

"Two," he continued, holding up two fingers, smiling, remembering our conversation from the day before.

I nodded and smiled, which I've gotten quite proficient at, I might add.

Walking on, I waved and offered my farewell in Russian, "Dasvidaniya."

Hesitating slightly, as if to make sure he was formulating the correct response, he replied in a resounding, baritone voice, "Good af-ter-noon!"

I smiled and nodded.  Yes, it was indeed "good," no matter what the time of day.