A Day to Sing About at the Polls

On Tuesday, I performed a civic duty.  At least, that’s what people call it.  I spent the day – ALL day, from 6:00 am to 9:30 pm – shuttered inside a room filled with strangers and machines.  The machines themselves were strange (not always easy to figure out) but, thankfully, the strangers were not machine-like.  In fact, they made a point of being human, expressing their sincere gratitude to me and my co-workers.   “Thank you.”  And, sometimes, “Gracias” or “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

On that gorgeous spring Tuesday, with the sun shining bright, trees and flowers busting out, and a perfect 70 degrees, my companions and I were held captive inside the polls.  We had chosen to work as Election Judges, committing ourselves to, as the state law says, “ensure the integrity for administering voting procedures and ensuring a fair and accessible election.”  We welcomed voters to the primaries, signed them in using the somewhat eccentric electronic poll books, helped them cast their ballots on the voting machines, and – the best part! – gave them their prize, a red, white and blue sticker that said, “I Voted. Yo Voté.”  Yes, in my Maryland county, ours included the Spanish.   And, that’s one of the reasons I signed up to be a Judge.   I am able to offer a service that not everyone can:  Spanish-English interpretation to those who need it.

As I’ve implied, what impressed me the most about my day at the polls was how we Election Judges garnered so much respect for our work.  The comments we received demonstrated how seriously American voters take the electoral process – in spite of its flaws.  Of course, I hasten to say that the voters who showed up were definitely the most conscientious.  They represented fewer than 10% of registered voters in our precinct, a predominantly Democratic and with few contested Democrats.  (To be fair, dedicated voters probably consisted of more than 10% since some cast their ballots during early voting the week before.)

Nevertheless, our grateful patrons saw us as making a big sacrifice for them.  Maybe we did, though they probably don’t know that we get paid for our work.  I made a big $10/hour plus doughnuts (which I didn’t eat).  And, I gave up outside enjoyment of one of those rare, perfect spring days.   Was it really a sacrifice, a relinquishing of something valuable for little return?  I might have thought so, if not for Ken.  He helped me realize that in spite of the long day of work, where I was only able to use my Spanish abilities once, my service was not a sacrifice.  It was a gift.

Ken was one of two Chief Judges (theoretically, one from each of the two dominant political parties) directing our team of ten poll workers.  The day after the election he wrote me an email, saying “The way of the world is that your beautiful work with the older Latino gentleman was the real human story of the day for me.  Or David’s with the woman who was blind.  Unsung and unnoticed, sadly.”

Not so unnoticed now.

Colombia Rocks!

Gold jewelry and icons in the Bogota Gold Museum

Catchy title?  I hope so, but I’m going to ask your help to make sense out of it.  We’ll share the task.  You tell me – whether you’ve been to Colombia or not – why you think Colombia rocks, in a figurative sense.  That is, what do like about it (by hearsay, even) and why is it cool?  Use the “Leave Comment” section, below to tell us.  And, I’ll tell you about rocks (those hard ones that form much of the earth) in Colombia.   Why?  Because the unifying feature of the places I visited on recent trip (see my earlier blogs, and photos) is the ubiquity of rocks and the minerals and elements that they consist of.

Around Bogota, two examples:

• El Museo del Oro – the Gold Museum in Bogota, one of those must-sees in the capital city.  (In fact, it’s one of the relatively few tourist attractions there.)   It houses the largest pre-Hispanic goldwork collection in the world, including some amazing pieces such as a Muisca (indigenous peoples living in pre-colonial central Colombia) raft portraying the indigenous chief, covered in gold powder, engaged in a ceremonial offering of gold ornaments into the lake.  The chief was known as El Dorado, and the legend about El Dorado, the lost city of gold, is based upon the rituals he carried out.   (The museum is excellent – modern, full of history and geography, info on metallurgy, and amazing gold works.)

• La Catedral de Sal – the Salt Cathedral in Zipaquirá, about 30 miles from Bogota.  It’s hard to imagine if no one tells you what to expect.  I thought it might be a huge Gaudi-like cathedral, like the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, made of out salt.  But, I wondered, how could it withstand be eroded away every time it rains?  It turns out that La Catedral de Sal is underground.  There’s no exterior.  It’s a huge cavern 200 meters down, carved out an old salt mine, and consisting of a long walkway that passes the 14 stations of the cross, each with its own cross (carved out of salt) and a central cathedral with three naves.  It’s dark and cool, and smells like sulfur.  And, it’s busy – one of Colombia’s major tourist (including local tourists!) attractions.

Near Villa de Leyva, a colonial town (and National Monument) 110 miles north of Bogota:

• First, there’s the main square, La Plaza Mayor.  It’s huge – 14,000 square feet – and empty, surrounded by the requisite church and tile-roofed stores and restaurants.  The only thing that you see are the stones it’s paved with:  thousands of cobblestones.  There’s no asphalt, at least not now.  I’m told that it had been paved for many years but was restored to its original form in the 1950s.  The nice thing is that the square and the side streets coming off of it (also cobblestoned) are closed to cars.  The not so nice thing is that the surface is so uneven, you need to walk with your nose to the ground.  Oh well… It’s quaint….

120 million year-old kronosaurus fossil

• Then, there are the various attractions around the town.  El Fósil is a 7-meter long rock that takes the shape of a bony crocodile missing one leg and its tail.  Rather, it’s the fossil of a kronosaurus, a marine reptile (not a dinosaur, but related to lizards) that lived 120-million years ago.  When found, it was left where it was, and now there’s a museum built around it.  Other “rocks” in glass cases nearby include ammonites, coprolites (Know what they are?  Think scat), fish fossils and petrified wood.  Pretty cool, I’d say.

• There’s the Estación Astronómica Muisca, also called El Infiernito (“little hell,” the Spanish name):  a field of funny-looking (and that’s putting it nicely!) rocks.  It served as an observatory for the indigenous Muisca in the first or second century AD.  One area has two rows of equally spaced stones – kind of like gravestones – used to determine the time and seasons.  Nearby is a lawn populated with tall stones with rounded tops and a ring carved around them.  If you look at the photo, you’ll see why I called them “funny-looking.”  (I won’t say more…)  A guide told me that they were placed in various places around the countryside to ensure a fertile crop.  

• Even the Convento del Santo Ecce Homo, a Dominica convent founded in 1620, is full of rocks.  It’s a beautiful old colonial-style building with a large flower-filled courtyard in the middle.  Visitors can tour the rooms to learn about the life of the monks and how they interacted with the Muisca, and to view colonial period art.  But to me the neatest part was examining the walls of the place.  They were made of trilobites, ammonites, and other creatures from the deep past.

In the north, on the Caribbean coastal plain, rocks are everywhere:

• Tayrona National Park, one of Colombia’s most visited parks, consists of rainforest and gorgeous beaches that front up to the Caribbean Sea.  It’s the beaches that are the draw, but it’s not a figurative walk in the park (!) to get to them.  You hike through the lush forest, climbing up and over rocks to get to the first beach, where swimming is prohibited because of dangerous currents, and then clamber along a boulder-filled trail to subsequent beaches where heaven exists in the form of fine-grained rocks and silica minerals – i.e., sand.  I’m told that if you hike inland and up the steep hillsides, you’ll find ancient terraces built long ago by Tayrona peoples.  What are they made of?  Rocks, of course!
  

  Rock-filled trail in Tayrona National Park

• Further inland towards the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta National Park, is the town of Minca, with a population of 600.  Music blasts at full volume from the pool hall on one side of the bridge and from restaurant just a few meters away on the other side.  No, they’re not synchronized by any means…  Most of the people, however, can be found in the river, on the rocks, jumping off them, and wading between them.  My favorite use of the river rocks was as a restaurant.  It seems everyone drags their plastic chairs and tables into the river to keep cool while eating their hot soups and tamales.  There’s no shortage of rock surface to balance furniture on and as long as there’s beer to hold the lightweight plastic down, no one worries.

• El Dorado Bird Preserve, a private nature reserve with nearly 20 endemic bird species, sits on the edge of the Sierra Nevada mountain range (the tallest coastal mountain range in the world).  You can’t possibly miss the presence of rocks there.  From the second you get into a vehicle to go there, you’re feeling their jarring effects.  The dirt road to and through the reserve – and, the best place to birdwatch from – is not really a dirt road.  It’s a rock road, full of boulders and ruts.  So, hold onto those door handles.  Throughout the forests of the Sierra Nevada you find rocks, some of which were strategically placed by ancient cultures 1200 or so years ago to create terraces and roads.  And, metamorphic rock is the basis for Picos Colón and Bolívar, the fifth most prominent – i.e., having the greatest relative height – mountains in the world.  (How’s that statistic for good use of Wikipedia!!)
  

  Rock friend at El Dorado Reserve

You get the picture…  I don’t know whether my observations have rocked your boat, but I’m ready for yours (see above) to rock mine.  Bring on your comments about how Colombia rocks!  And, if you don’t have any right now, maybe you’ll need to consider joining me there for an ecotour next February.  What do you think?

 

 

 

 

Albert Einstein and My Grandfather: Monumental Figures with Relativity

Albert Einstein Memorial

Springtime in Washington means a lot of things.  And one of them is the influx of tourists who come to enjoy the balmy weather and the many attractions unique to the capital.   First, they flock to see the ornamental cherry trees (this year marks the 100^th anniversary of the first 3000 trees from Japan).  And they visit the Smithsonian, which (to people from out of town) sounds like one big museum, kind of like the Louvre.  Actually, there are 17 different Smithsonian museums in Washington (plus two in New York City) – enough to keep you occupied for weeks.   But trees and museums aren’t always enough for the typical tourist.  Rightly so, for there are some very impressive monuments to behold – well over 100, in fact.

Do you know which one is my favorite?  It’s not one of the huge stone edifices commemorating a President, General or Veterans of War.  Nor is it a gallant man sitting heroically atop on a horse (of which there are more than 30 in DC).  It’s of a scruffy-looking dude with rounded shoulders wearing a sweater that lies in rolls around his waist.  He sits casually on some steps, with one hand on the ground for balance and another holding an open notebook with scribbles all over it.  He looks a bit tired, or maybe perplexed, and not the least heroic.  But, he’s a hero of mine and is known around the world for his theories explaining the physical world.  He’s none other than Albert Einstein – declared “the greatest physicist ever,” by a 1999 poll of 100 of the world’s leading physicists.

He sits by himself on a major street corner in DC, hidden behind holly shrubs and elm trees.   On the plaza in front of him is a circular dais made of Norwegian granite pockmarked with 2700 metal studs representing objects of the night sky – the sun, planets, moons, and stars.   It’s a reference to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, which made possible the Big Bang explanation for the formation of the universe.  Albert fits right in – as one of the world’s great stars!  When I visit, I want to be there too, so I climb onto his lap and rub his nose.  I’m certainly not the only one who’s done this – witness how shiny his nose is, much like a Buddha’s belly.

Why have I always loved that monument so?  In part, because of its drollness – very appropriate since he had such a well-tuned sense of humor (think of the classic photo him sticking his tongue out as his long white hair billows behind, or any of his numerous quotes – for example:  “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.”)  I like the monument because he looks so haphazard.  Not what you’d expect from such a genius of a man, without whom we’d know so much less of how the world works.  And, because the monument is so understated, hidden from the masses of tourists, a calm respite from the madding crowds (so to speak) on the Mall.  And, because it’s a memorial that allows you to get up close and comfy – to interact with a heroic figure, and to pretend he’s your grandfather.

And now I have a new reason, speaking of grandfathers….   I’ve just learned that there’s relativity (not in theory, but in fact!) between me and Albert Einstein.  It comes via my own grandfather – who was not droll or haphazard, humble or humorous.  He was a German Jew, born poor in a small town in Prussia, now eastern Germany.  He received little formal education, but on his own he became a man of many accomplishments:  a scholar and avid reader, a collector, a Zionist, a department store magnate, a philanthropist and founder of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a patron of literature and the arts, and the founder of internationally recognized book and newspaper publishing enterprises.

Zalman Schocken, my grandfather

So, what does that have to do with Einstein?  It turns out that among his collections, my grandfather, Zalman Schocken, owned Einstein’s handwritten text of the theory of relativity.   Pretty cool, I’d say.  The two men were contemporaries, Jews who lived under similar pressures, sending them from Germany to Switzerland, Palestine and finally the U.S.  Though they were not friends, they traveled in the same circles, meeting in 1919, if not before, in Berlin at a gathering establishing an Academy of Jewish Science, a research center to promote the cultural renewal of German Jewry.  They convened with other prominent German Jews throughout the 1920s at exclusive clubs and associations promoting Jewish arts and science.  And, as founders of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, they were together at the university’s formal opening in 1925.   Both were strong proponents of philosophy, science, the arts, ethics and scholarship, and the belief that people of all walks of life should have opportunity and freedom.

While they held many of the same noble truths, they were very different men.  And, to illustrate that fact, the monuments portraying them couldn’t have been more different.   Einstein’s invites you to climb all over him, to finger his appendages, and to straighten the wrinkles in his pants or tweak his overgrown mustache.  He looks you in the eye and you can imagine it twinkle with some revelatory or humorous thought.  On the other hand, the granite bust of my grandfather – which sat on the piano in our living room throughout my growing up – makes you want to look away, to avoid his glance as he avoids yours.  His bald pate and stern demeanor exude seriousness and disinterest, even to the inclinations and aspirations of his own offspring.

I was not yet three when my grandfather died, so I have little personal memory of him.  But, I’ve heard the stories and read his biography – The Patron:  A Life of Salman Schocken, 1877-1959.  I know of his many feats and talents, and I’m proud to be his granddaughter.  Truly, I am.  But, I also feel like I never had the kind of grandfather who I could get close to, to appreciate for a gentle, humble spirit and/or some quirkiness.  (My paternal grandfather died many years before I was born).  I would have liked to have a Grandpa Albert.  Instead, I have a big bronze statue in downtown DC to embrace.  And, you do too, if you want to make use of it.

 

P.S.  In case you’re wondering, my grandfather donated Einstein’s handwritten paper on relativity to Hebrew University in 1925, days after he (and Einstein) attended the university’s formal opening.   (And, Zalman/Salman can be spelled either way….)

 

Spring in Washington – with Aunt Dora and Louis J. Halle

Cherry blossoms in Washington, DC

All that’s been on my mind this week is the outdoors.  The weather has been gorgeous – sunny and in the low 70s.  It’s springtime in Washington.  At least that’s what the birds, trees and flowers are saying.  Even as I sit here – indoors, but with windows and doors open – I hear the crowing of a blue jay and the chipping of chickadees.  When I look out the window, I marvel at the dark pink petals of the flowering magnolia in my neighbor’s yard.  And if I breathe deeply, I inhale a bit of maple pollen that’s the bane of many an allergy-sufferer.   It makes me restless, as I want to spend my entire day strolling the streets and nearby woods to witness nature coming alive, even after a balmy winter.

Spring in Washington.  I’m reminded of a little book that my aunt Dora, an inveterate reader, gardener and bird lover, gave me when she moved out of her home of over 45 years.  She was divesting herself of the hundreds of books she’d acquired, a task which couldn’t have been much fun for her.  When she came across the 1963 (third) edition of Spring in Washington by Louis J. Halle, she thought of me as I had recently bought my house in the Washington, DC area and I, too, am a nature lover.  Now, seven years after Dora died of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), it is one of the few physical mementos that I have from her.  I’ll admit that I haven’t read it all – it’s the kind of book you can dive into on any page – but page 44, originally written in 1945, seems oddly contemporary:

Monday, March 12, the wind was heavy from the south and the day grew steadily warmer.  Tuesday was clear, cloudless, and balmy, the wind from the west.  Wednesday the wind rose again from the south, the haze and warmth returned.  The south wind continued Thursday, the warmest day yet.   It continued Friday, and by four o’clock the record temperature of 86° Fahrenheit had been set.  It continued Saturday, when the temperature rose to 87°….. Doors and windows were thrown open, and in the evening people coming out of hibernation congregated in little groups about the street entrances of their homes to discuss the weather.  It was surprising to find what thronging life the city contained.

By the end of this week robins and mockingbirds were in full song all over the city.  House sparrows and starlings were carrying bits of straw, the sparrows bedeviling one another noisily in the gutters.  Flickers, red-bellied woodpeckers, and a phoebe appeared in the city.  The pintails were departing for their nesting grounds in the Northwest…

So, spring in Washington 65 years ago was remarkably temperate, just like this year.  Now don’t even dare to think that I might be about to deny recent evidence of climate change and local warming of temperatures.  For every trend there are outliers, and I strongly believe that humans are responsible for the weather abnormalities we’ve been witnessing in recent years.  My point here is not to get political, rather it’s to remember and appreciate spring and its associated memories.

The budding, flowering and falling of petals happens so quickly.  Yesterday, just a couple of the tulips we planted in the fall were still tightly furled, showing only a tiny bit of red, but by the end of today, six of them are in full bloom – deep red vases with bright egg-yolk centers sprouting jet black stamens.  Tomorrow the petals will be faded, lying on the ground, waiting for a breeze to float them away.  Meanwhile, the robins are busy collecting twigs, old leaves and grass for their nests.  It won’t be long before we’ll hear tiny chirps and squeaks from inside.  Maybe I’ll even find a nest to easily observe day after day, as my friend Joan did one recent spring.  (She kept a photo log which she sent me each week.)

There are a few harbingers of spring that I don’t find so enticing.  One, currently broadcasting its uninvited presence wherever you look or smell, is the Bradford pear.  The odor of its white five-petal flowers is stifling.  Some say it reeks like dead fish, while others describe it as musky.  I’ve also heard people say it smells like sperm or semen.  I don’t know….  But the odor, plus the fact that these Asian natives have become invasive pests in our area, outcompeting native trees, are enough to wish them away forever.

Spring in Washington, 1963 edition

Louis J. Halle (1910-98) had much to say about natural phenomena, though he wasn’t a professional naturalist or biologist.  In fact, he was a diplomat, working in the State Department in 1945, the year that he tracked nature’s awakening in Spring in Washington. While he published nearly 100 books, articles and book reviews about foreign policy, nature and humanity, the little volume that my aunt gave me is probably the most eternally relevant of all of his writings.  He makes this point himself in the passage below.  And, what he says rings even more true today, as our connection to trees, natural areas and open spaces seems to diminish as suburban growth and development spread.

A government functionary would not believe you should you tell him that the price of wolfram* in Turkey today is not so important as the perennial process of budding and leafing in the neighboring woods.  Nevertheless, the opening of the leaves concerned his human ancestors five thousand years ago, though they never heard of buying wolfram, and this alone should give point to what you say.  The price of wolfram is not, like the budding of trees, a dependable fact of life.  It vanishes from sight in the long perspective; it is excluded from the final reckoning.  When the official has completed his operation in the wolfram market he has not really done anything to enrich the life of man or increase his stature; but if he will observe the trees he may preach revelation to remote descendents.

*wolfram, it turns out, is another word for tungsten

Aunt Dora certainly was “an observer of the trees” though she didn’t relegate her appreciation of nature to spring and early summer.  All year long she maintained a bevy of houseplants.  In fact, most of the windows of her house were occupied by potted kalanchoes, begonias, African violets and even small trees.  Wherever sunlight fell indoors there were green leaves to absorb it.  And, when she had to downsize her possessions to move into a small apartment in the retirement home, she brought along as many of her beloveds as she could.  She tended them faithfully, while also observing the blooming of forsythias, cherries and maples, and the arrival of chickadees and sparrows in their season.

So attuned she was of nature and its changes, that she chose to die in her favorite season, the same one she had been born in.  She took her last breath in the month of May at the age of 90, but not before ensuring that Spring in Washington would be well appreciated.  I am the lucky recipient, but only of the 1963, $1.25 paperback edition.  We can all be lucky recipients of springtime in Washington – or elsewhere – when we open our senses to it.

Exploring Colombia, Part Two: The Caribbean Coast – For the Birds

Tayrona National Park

Colombia and the Caribbean?  Does that sound a bit oxymoronic?  If so, it’s time you look at a map of South America.  If not, I’m here to tell you about some of the wonders of the north of Colombia.  To get you going, here’s one right off the bat:  the Caribbean region of Colombia has the tallest coastal mountain range in the world.  Yes, the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta reaches an altitude of 5775 meters (almost 19,000 feet) at Pico Cristobal Colon, Colombia’s highest point.  And, it’s only 26 miles from the ocean.  Figure out the average slope if you’re mathematically inclined, but if you’re like me, those numbers are enough to tell me that I wouldn’t want to attempt the summit from the beach.  In fact, precious few people have climbed the mountain at all, in part because it’s sacred to the indigenous peoples living in indigenous forest reserves nearby.  More on the Sierra Nevada later…

On my recent trip, I flew from Bogota to the coastal city of Santa Marta, Colombia’s oldest settlement, founded by the Spanish in 1525.  It’s where Simón Bolívar (the Latin American liberator) died; you can visit his hacienda and gardens just outside of town to learn more about his conquests.   While Santa Marta is a sizeable commercial cargo port, its downtown has several blocks of colonial architecture, much of which has been renovated for tourism – with small hotels, a variety of restaurants and bars.  It’s very laid-back, with weather that’s always tropical.  And while the beach isn’t great for swimming, the town serves as a gateway to Caribbean beaches and national parks to the east.

When I arrived on the Saturday night of Carnival weekend, the downtown was packed with families.  Locals sported bright pink or green wigs, huge polka dot bows, or plastic Mohawk hairdos, and the kids ran around spraying foam – shaving cream – on their friends and strangers alike.  Meanwhile, a couple of hours away in Baranquilla, the streets were jammed with costumed revelers at the second largest Carnival celebration in Latin America (after Rio).  I heard it was quite a party, but I was glad to be on the quieter side.

The next day I checked out Tayrona National Park, one of Colombia’s most popular parks.  It’s right on the beach, so I had to check out the water – as respite from temperatures that were consistently in the mid-80s (unlike Bogota which was in the 60s and 70s during the day and cooler at night).   I took a bus from Santa Marta and should have arrived within an hour.  But as luck – and Latin American custom – would have it, the bus broke down half way there.  After waiting around on the highway in the hot sun for nearly an hour, several of us decided to hitch the rest of the way to the park, where we stood on line for half an hour to pay our 35,000 peso (ca. $16) entrance fee.  After that, however, I became master (mistress?) of my own time, hiking through tall, verdant rainforest and along bright sandy beaches, and then lolling in the gentle Caribbean Sea.

Warning sign in Tayrona National Park

While the park’s natural features are gorgeous, and it sounds like paradise, it’s not all that pacific (I know, it’s the Caribbean, not the Pacific J!) in terms of swim-ability or management.  The first beach that you get to – as you have to walk to the shore (about 45 minutes) or hire a horse to take you through forest – has dangerous currents.  There are signs all over saying that over 200 people have drowned there; (obviously) swimming is prohibited.  I knew this already.  When I was in Santa Marta for a protected areas conference in 1997, the park director sent his apologies for not appearing to give his presentation.  The day before, his wife and young child had been swept into the ocean and drowned, on that same beach.

I heeded the signs and walked another 20 minutes through coastal forest, up and over granite boulders, to friendlier beaches with classic white Caribbean sands and lapping waves.  My favorite was Cabo San Juan, about 40 minutes along the coast, with its two sandy coves bisected by a rounded cape and thatched bungalow atop.  I chose to ignore the wasteland just back from the beach:  a vast field of cheap tents, hammocks, grungy restrooms and high-priced restaurant serving backpackers who spend weeks at a time hanging out there, sometimes not too salubriously.  As I said earlier, not all is well in paradise.  In fact, a large portion (some say 70%) of the park was taken over by private interests during Colombia’s drug wars, and the government is now struggling to get it back.

Diners in the Minca River

Next stop was the small town of Minca, 12 miles southeast of Santa Marta at 2100 feet above sea level.  It’s becoming a tourist destination because the climate is nice and there’s good birding, trained bird guides, trails through the forest, waterfalls, a rocky river to swim in, mountain biking, coffee farms, restaurants (where diners eat their lunches at tables in the river!), hostels and hotels, and – in case you’re bored by all this – plenty of loud music blaring out of loudspeakers at the pool hall and at the restaurant four doors away (!).  An American friend of mine is working at a hotel in town – it was once a monastery, until rumor spread that the Mother Superior was spending too many late nights with the local priest.  I was better behaved, sleeping soundly and getting up early to observe the many birds flying around the property. Including 18 species of hummingbirds sipping sugar water at feeders hanging next to the dining room deck.

Minca is on the way to the El Dorado, the destination of most interest to me on this trip.  No, I wasn’t prospecting, expecting to come home with sacks of gold.  Rather, I wanted to see one of Colombia’s most renowned birding sites – a 1600-acre nature reserve of subtropical and montane forest bordering the Sierra Nevada.  It has over 360 species of birds, including numerous endemics, and high concentrations of endemic and threatened amphibians.  And, it’s one of the sites that I’d like to bring my next group of ecotravelers.  I was favorably impressed – with the comfortable lodge (at 6000 feet altitude), views of mountains and the distant Caribbean coastline, well-maintained trails, and the ability to observe wildlife (birds, frogs, monkeys, moths and small mammals).  Again, I was entranced by the hummingbirds.  At all hours of the day feeders and flowering shrubs lure dozens of iridescent birds to within easy viewing reach.  Flickers of blue, green and purple buzz by to sip sweet liquid and show off their talents for standing in mid-air.

Endemic bird sign at El Dorado

I spent three days at El Dorado, part of a constantly rotating international assemblage of birders and nature-lovers.  We hiked up the traffic-less (so unlike Bogota) dirt road towards the Sierra Nevada national park (and a military camp), looking for rare birds (the two-winged variety – I told you that I behaved myself!).  With good guides, it’s not too difficult to see many of the 635 species of birds in the Sierra Nevada, nor some of the 36 endemics.  Even if you’re not a birder, I’ll quote two more statistics so you can comprehend the incredible diversity in this mountain range:  35% of Colombia’s bird species are found here – in an area that’s less than 2% of the size of the country’s area.  Wow!

View of snow-capped Picos Colon and Bolivar

If that doesn’t convince you that the forest is worthy of conserving, you should know that it is also home to approximately 40,000 indigenous people (belonging to four different groups), as well as the archeological site, La Ciudad Perdida (The Lost City).  Backpackers hike there on 5-day treks – through the forest and past indigenous communities – to see the remains of terraces, circular plazas, tiled roads, and stone steps up the mountainside.  As much as I’d have liked to partake in a long forest hike, I’ll have to save that adventure for another trip.  But, I got some spectacular views of my own.  See the adjacent photo to see the snow-capped mountains of Pico Colon and Pico Bolivar).  And, now we’re back where we started from:  the tallest coastal mountain range in the world.

Stay tuned for my final blog on Colombia – entitled “Colombia Rocks!”

Exploring Colombia, Part One: Bogota and Surroundings

Abi and frailejone in Chingaza National Park

I just got back from Colombia, safe and sound.  I say this right off the bat because the first thought that many North Americans – even you, maybe? – have is that Colombia is not safe.  That may have been true some years back, but is not now.  Most of the country is perfectly fine for visiting, as the last two presidents (Alvaro Uribe, 2002-2010, and now Juan Manuel Santos) have succeeded in reducing the crime rate tremendously.  If you are an aware and savvy traveler (my apologies to the synonymous NPR program), you will find a country with rich, regional cultures and traditions, and friendly, generally well-educated people proud of their heritage and diversity.  And, if you’re into nature, you’re in real luck.  Colombia is one of the top three most biologically diverse countries in the world.  For example, it has about 1880 bird species, more than twice the number of the U.S. and Canada which, when combined, are 17 times larger.

The purpose of my trip was two-fold:  to scout out sites and logistics for an ecotour to Colombia – which I plan to offer in early 2013 – and to assure myself that the country is, indeed, a secure and wonderful place to travel.  I was successful on all accounts.  International tourism is on the rise, with increasing numbers of tour operators from around the world offering trips to Colombia.  (For instance, the day after I got home, Eileen showed me the 2012 Overseas Adventure Travel catalog, touting it’s “NEW! Colombian Colonial Jewels & Caribbean Coast” tour.)  And, the government is taking the bull by the horns.  Aware of its image, it adopted a marketing slogan of “The only risk is wanting to stay,” and has posted security guards throughout the cities, towns and rural areas.

I started and ended my trip in Bogota, a huge and busy city 8600 feet high on the edge of the eastern cordillera of the Andes (consisting of three ridges in Colombia vs. two in Ecuador and one further south).   It has small colonial center, with a large plaza – Plaza de Bolivar – surrounded by government buildings and a huge cathedral.

Colombian desserts (dulces)

The day I visited, the entire surface was covered with small vendors displaying productos campesinos – cheeses, processed meats, corn cakes and breads (including the very popular arepas), desserts made with milk, cream and fruit, organic vegetables and handicrafts.  The place was crawling with Colombians eager to indulge their sweet tooth.  I found respite in the Gold Museum, housing the largest collection of pre-Hispanic gold in the world, including the Muisca raft associated with the El Dorado legend.

In contrast, the northern part of the city, where I stayed (thanks to the generosity of a Colombian friend’s mother), is full of shiny high rises containing offices and residences.  It’s quite upscale, with luxury condos and an international assortment of bars and restaurants, but still full of traffic.   There’s plenty of construction of offices, international hotel chains, malls and retail business, as well as residential units creeping up the hillsides to the east.  On the most northern edge of the city are a series of private high schools, country clubs and well-endowed cemeteries.

But, with nearly 8 million people, Bogota has too many people and too much traffic for my tastes.  The drivers are amazingly assertive, driving on the lane dividers so that they easily switch into which ever lane is advancing faster, switching lanes whenever there are just a couple feet of space between cars, and nosing into intersections to take advantage of any momentary hesitations of oncoming cars.  I guess driving small cars allows for a reduced amount of personal auto space.  To its credit, the city is working hard to reduce the number of taxis, personal cars and soot-belching buses.  Bogota now has an extensive network – 186 miles worth – of bike paths on sidewalks or as dedicated lanes, which serve 300-400,000 riders per day.  And on Sundays, an additional 74 miles of roadway are closed to cars and open to cyclists, bringing 2 million people, rich and poor, out and onto their bikes every weekend.   In fact, Colombia’s biking culture and its amenities are a highly touted model for the rest of the world.

Since I didn’t have my bike with me and wanted to avoid the traffic, I got out of town as quickly as I could.  I visited nearby Chingaza National Park, consisting of montane forest and vast open paramo.  The natural area provides water for 80% of people in greater Bogota and also is famous for its lakes, frailejones – very tall daisies found only in high altitude areas of northern South America (see earlier photo), – endemic birds, and other fauna (including a friendly white-tailed deer with huge antlers that let me get to within 10 feet of him).   My guide and I were the only visitors to the park the day we were there, and I gather that outside of birders looking for the dusty gray Matorral Tapaculo (an endemic) and Nature Conservancy staff (establishing a conservation trust fund to assure a continuing supply of drinking water for Bogota), we may have been among the few visitors at all.

The Catedral de Sal

Just about every Colombian I spoke to before my trip told me that I had go to La Catedral de Sal - 30 miles north of Bogota in Zipaquirá – the country’s most highly visited tourist attraction.  I acquiesced, not quite knowing what to expect.  Turns out that it’s a creative and lucrative way to make use of a huge hole in the earth, while also promoting Catholicism and the history of Jesus.  Visitors descend 200 meters into a former salt mine (operating for hundreds of years) to be guided along a dimly-lit 1 km trail that passes the 14 stations of the cross and then into a huge cathedral.  Each stop has a large cross, carved out of salt and lit with colored lights.  The cavern is huge, somewhat damp and cool, and slightly sulfurous, but the religious statues, the salt waterfall, the rather hokey 3D film about the history of the salt mine (featuring a rather weird robot), and the souvenir vendors at the end of the tour bring one back to reality quickly enough.

Main square, Villa de Leyva

About 3 hours northeast of Bogota is Villa de Leyva, a very old (founded in 1572) colonial town maintained (and renovated) to preserve its original character.  It has one of the largest squares in all of Latin America, now treeless and paved with cobblestones.  All the nearby streets have also been re-paved with stone, which requires some concentration while walking around gazing at the many stores, museums, inns and restaurants geared towards an increasing number of tourists.  The majority of visitors I saw there on a Sunday afternoon are Colombian, but there is incipient attention being made to accommodate international visitors.  Aside from the quaint “downtown,” the Villa de Leyva outskirts offer paleontologic and archeologic attractions, including 110 million year old fossils and phallic rock monuments erected (catch the pun…) by the Muisca Indians for astronomic and agricultural purposes.  And, there are waterfalls, caves, a wildlife sanctuary and a couple of wineries to visit – on my next trip.

Stay tuned for Part Two: Colombia’s Caribbean Coast

Revealing Memories of My Mother

Last month was the 30^th anniversary of my mother’s death.  It’s hard to believe that it’s been that long since I became motherless.  I was just 25 when she died, and while it didn’t feel that young to lose a parent (after all, I’d lost my father at the age of 8), I now realize that it was.  There was so much more I needed to learn from her, and so much I wanted her to see in me as I grew into an adult.  I guess that’s a common lament of children whose parents die before their time (my mother was 63), and it’s one that was recently brought to mind, again.   We’ll get to that in a minute.

First, though:  after all these years, I’ve pretty much gotten used to the fact that I have no mother.  Not to say I don’t miss her.  For the first ten years or so after she died, I’d find myself becoming envious when friends talked about their mothers, even if they were complaining about them.  I’d wish that I could speak with and be with mine, just like they could.  And, I’d get indignant (silently) when they said negative things about their moms.  They should be happy to have a mother at all!  I’m pretty much over those feelings, but I still wish she were here.  I want her to tell me more about our family history, what I was like as a child, and what she thinks of me.  And, there are still times when I long for a hug and words of comfort and understanding that only a mother, who’s known me all my life, can give.  (No offense to Eileen here.)

In lieu of all this, and to honor her memory, my three older brothers and I, along with our spouses, a nephew and a niece, got together recently to reminisce about Mommy.  We convened over bagels and lox (don’t forget, we’re Jewish!) in my oldest brother’s sun-filled living room near Boston.  It must have felt ceremonious in spite of our informality, because Eileen asked if this – this talking about one’s parents on big anniversaries of their passing – was a Jewish tradition.  A good question – as Jews do have a strong sense of family and emphasize the importance of remembrance, and we honor Yahrzeits (the yearly anniversary of someone’s death) by saying the mourner’s Kaddish (prayer) and lighting a candle.  But the answer was no.  This purposeful reuniting of the siblings to reminisce about our parents is something that my brother devised.  Thank you, Nathan, for initiating what could easily become a tradition for others, too.

Our gathering was bittersweet, with many tears shed – even by those who had never met Mommy.  We had a difficult time getting started, not knowing where to begin.  I (and the spouses present) wanted to hear what she was like, how she acted in particular situations, and what her views were on family, life and the world.  But, those stories didn’t come easily.  We spent the first half hour talking about her death and the illnesses leading up to it.  The six-year period – from when she was diagnosed with leukemia, underwent treatments, experienced a healthy remission, and then the last few months of suffering from a variety of complications – was obviously a memorable and worrisome time for us all.  But remembering her demise did not shed much light on who and how she was while alive.

Indeed, my mother was not an easy person to get to know.  She was reserved, quiet in large groups, and didn’t share her stories easily.  I remember her lamenting that, unlike many Americans (she was born and lived in Germany until her early teens), she did not know how to make small talk.  I think only a few of her closest women friends really knew what she was thinking and feeling, at least in their common realms of life and family.  We children, even when grown, were rarely party to her opinions or her concerns.

As a child and then a young adult, I wanted to know what my mother thought of my actions, my choices and my decisions.  But, she was reticent to provide feedback of this sort.  She had domineering parents and knew the negative impacts of that sort of upbringing.   When she was a teenager, her father disapproved of her boyfriends, and (twice) sent her off to America on her own – to get her away from them.  He stifled her independence and creativity.  So, in response to this heavy-hand approach, Mommy did the opposite, withholding her views so that I could blossom in my own way.   While there is merit to that approach, it often left me guessing about what she really wanted.  Hence, my continuing wish to know her better.

Of course, there are many things we know about her.  She had strong opinions about what the world should be like, and she had strongly held values – such as the importance of a close, loving family.  But she did not tout them.  Instead, she was a doer, responding to issues and challenges that she believed in deeply.  Education was one of her primary interests – she taught underprivileged children to read and helped them gain access to a good education.  She also provided emotional and financial support to women in need and to the emerging women’s movement.  And, in the 1970s, as editor and then president of our family’s book publishing company, she pioneered the creation of a line of books on women’s studies, as well as one on early childhood education.  These are just a few examples…

But, to return to our family gathering:  To get us on track after our conversation about Mommy’s last days, my sister-in-law asked us to talk about the mother we knew growing up.  We tried, but still had trouble.  Maybe we all felt we didn’t know her well enough…  Instead, we spoke about the men she chose as husbands (our father and stepfather).  Both had a great sense of humor, clearly a feature that she appreciated, though maybe felt she lacked in herself.   We talked about the individuals she helped by providing educational opportunity.  And, about how her brother in Israel died within a couple of days of her own death, and that neither of them knew about the other’s passing.  Then, in remembering how she woke us for school each morning, a small and telling window opened.  She’d come into our bedrooms, pull up the shades and then, before coming to our beds to gently awaken us, she’d spend a moment looking over whatever she found on our desks, hoping to learn something about us that we hadn’t told her.  Maybe she felt she didn’t know us well enough either…

We turned to some of the letters we dug up from old files, and read them aloud.  Some were letters of condolence sent to our stepfather after she died.  They revealed how others – family friends and work colleagues – viewed her:  strong and silent, compassionate and dignified, appearing aloof at first but always devoted and concerned.  Others were ones that she sent to my oldest brother.  And, for me, they were the most revealing and heart-wrenching.  Finally, some of my questions were to be answered.

In the two letters – the first written two years after our father died (at age 50) and the second for my brother’s 25^th birthday, two years later – she expressed her loneliness and her misgivings, emotions which (I fear) prevailed throughout much of her life.  She regretted not reaching out more to her children for mutual support over our common loss, and for not offering us more of the love and wisdom she kept bottled within.  These two missives, so artfully written, told me a lot.  And, the tears and sniffles heard throughout the room told me that I wasn’t the only one touched by her admissions.  Even now, 30 years later, she continues to teach all of us within her reach.

Postscript:  Our gathering clearly demonstrated that Mommy’s ideal of creating a close and loving family has not been diminished through the passage of generations.  And, it turned out to be a timely moment to reaffirm that fact.  In the room with us, just two weeks away from taking its first breath, was her first great grandchild.  She would have been thrilled, just as the rest of us are.  The prospect of a new generation delights us, even as we hold our sadness.