Author: rljwander

 

St. Andrews, Scotland

October 8, 2018

John Updike  wrote, ” . . . golf appeals to the idiot in us, and the child.”  That about sums it up.

For fifty years now I’ve been pursuing this idiocy with childlike fervor.  And today, here at St. Andrews, the ancestral home of golf,  I brought it to a new level; maybe not a high level, but a new one.

I opened with what has become my ritual: tea and a Walker’s Shortbread cookie in my room.  A wee taste of Scottish culture (note the thistle colored tartan on my blankie)

And then it was off to the St. Andrews Golf Academy

And this young man.

This is Mike Lander. I want to be Mike when I grow up.

Did you know in Scotland there is a college major in golf studies?  Says right here in Mike’s bio that at 16 he decided to enrol (apparently, they drop the second “L” in Scotland) as a student at Myerscough College to study a National Diploma in Golf Studies. (They also drop prepositions). This apparently covered ‘all things golf; coaching, technology & equipment as well as sports science; physiology, psychology & biomechanics.” (The psych emphasis was put to the test with me) Mike completed this course with high distinction and went on to the University of Central Lancashire where he studied a BA Honours in Golf Coaching & High Performance (again with the frugal prepostions).

Mike and I worked on my swing for three hours and in the space of those wee three hours I learned that much of what I have been doing for 50 years was . . . just a wee bit . . . wrong.

My stance was too upright; my feathery grip too tight at the top; my swing plane too upright; my descent too steep, yada, yada, yada. I worked with a wrist hanger, a noodle, and more directional guidance systems than NASA.

I now have a video account at the St. Andrews Academy with all of my lessons (more to follow this week) And I even have a video app to remind me just how screwed up my swing is.

The Rob on the left is the old idiot; the Rob on the right is the new idiot.

DVDs are available in the lobby. I will be here all week.

After a morning session with Mike, I took to the links . Was a wee bit breezy.  Came in runner up in the Archie look-a-like contest.

Was a very pleasant round all by myself on the windswept Strathtyrum Course, the high point of which was driving the green on a downwind four par and just missing the eagle putt.

I’m at a loss for words to explain the childlike joy this idiocy brings. I’ll leave it to John:

“I have asked myself what the peculiar bliss of this demanding game is, a bliss that at times threatens to relegate all the rest of life, including the sexual concerns that Freud claims are paramount and those even more basic needs that Marx insists must be met, to the shadows.

“The immensities of space, beside which even polo and baseball are constricted pastimes, must be part of it. To see one’s ball gallop two hundred and more yards down the fairway, or see it fly from the face of an 8-iron clear across an entire copse of maples in full autumnal flare, is to join one’s soul with the vastness that, contemplated from another angle, intimidates the spirit, and makes one feel small.”

Updike was right

 

 

 

St. Andrews, Scotland

Sunday, October 7, 2018

 

I’m feeling old, tonight.

It might be that after leaving Santa Rosa yesterday at noon, laying over in Dublin for a couple hours, flying on to Edinburgh, and driving here to St. Andrews, I haven’t slept in 34 hours.

It might be that several times today, kind young men and women in the airport or aboard my Aer Lingus flight referred to me as “sir”, not your usual obligatory courteous  “because-you’re-the-customer-“sir””, but the solicitous “you -look-like-you-could-use-a hand, -old-timer– “sir”.”

It probably is the memory of one guy  honking at me as I might have . . . just might have . . .  cut him off while abruptly exiting a roundabout outside of Glenvothes.

Or it might be the young man who, just a few minutes ago,  just came to my hotel room door inquiring, “are you alright sir?” after I pulled this red cord suspended from the ceiling in the bathroom.  I thought it was a light switch.    Easy mistake, right?

 

Or it might be the fact that I am staying in the historic MacDonald Rusacks Hotel which borders the 18th fairway of the Old Course at St. Andrews.

Mind you, there is a “New Course” at St. Andrews that is next to the “Old Course”; they call it the “New Course” because it was built in 1895. It was designed by Old Tom Morris who is not to be confused with his son Young Tom Morris. Old Tom lived to be 87; Young Tom? He died when he was 24.

 

Or it might be that I am staying in the The George Whyte Melville Room here at the MacDonald Rusacks.

I wasn’t familiar with George so I Googled him. George was apparently all the rage in his day for writing horse and hound adventures. (I just don’t understand why your steeple chase novels don’t sell like they used to)

 

It was ol’ George who first penned the phrase, in his 1876 poem entitled The Object of Life,   that we should “eat, drink and be merry; because tomorrow we die.”

Thanks George. I feel much better.

Still in Santa Rosa.

October 3, 2018

 

Okay.  I’m a bit nervous.

It’s been a while, okay?

The first time? Oh, I don’t know. I was young, inexperienced.  I didn’t know. I’d never done it before, but my brother John was screaming instructions to me with a walkie talkie.  The second time?  I think Ian just did it and Mark and I watched. And the last time? All I remember was closing my eyes, taking a deep breath, and putting what little faith I have in the hands of an all-knowing, all-seeing,  totally amused and totally uncaring God.

You’ve been there. You’re no virgin. You know what I’m talking about, right? Wink, wink . . . nod, nod . . . say no more.

Dancing? No.

Sex? Eeeeeuuuu. I’m close to my brother but walkie talkie guidance?

Come on people. Get your mind out of the gutter and onto the road. I’m talking. . .

Driving.

 

You know. Scotland . . . Ireland . . .left side of the road? Final resting place for rearview mirrors. Roads the width of your thigh.  Stick shift dyslexia.  Roundabouts that flow like a toilet in Buenos Aires. (Maybe, that’s Alberta . . . I can never keep straight which way the water flows in which hemisphere.)  You know. Ireland! Where shoulders are stone walls and the only thing on a straightaway  separating you from certain death is your own uncertainty on where the right side of your car is in relation to the right side of the car bearing down on you.

That’s what I’m talking.

See, this time I don’t have my brother John, out front with his fam in a VW Van, barking instructions to my kids on the walkie talkie, “Tell your dad to take  the nine o’clock on the roundabout. Maybe it’s the three o’clock.” “Which one Uncle John???”  “Oh hell, tell him to make it 6:30” I don’t have Ian, who must have taken his first driver’s test at the Ross ancestral DMV in Dornoch, to drive for Mark and me ( or is it Mark and I? I think it’s “me” because it follows a preposition).  And I can’t close my eyes in the back seat like I did on the last golf junket  while John’s golf buddy Art screamed down straightaways talking up a storm on the way to Ballybunnion .

No, this time, I’m alone. As in A LONE. As in “you’re on your own, doofus” alone.

So, I’ve done what all resourceful red blooded single men do when encountering a life- threatening crisis.

Google it.

Yep. Says right here in the August 2018  edition of Smarter Travel there are “15 Tips for Driving on the Left Side of the Road.”

Let’s read on . . .

Tip No. 1 . . . “Get an automatic transmission.” Check.

Tip No. 2 . . . “Take it easy.”    I AM TAKING IT EASY.

Tip No. 3 . . . “Get to know your car.” That’s a good one. I figure at least an hour in the parking garage at Edinburgh International. Then, I’ll put it in “drive”.

Tip No. 4 . . . “Be careful at the beginning of each day”   Right . . . I’m thinking that “beginning” would be  the same “beginning” that follows the jet lagged   sleepless “end” of the previous day?   Got it.

Tip No. 5 . . . “Allow Extra Time.”   Come on; didn’t we cover that in Tip No. 3. I’ve got a tee time at Portrush.

Tip No. 6 . . . “Don’t distract yourself”    You’re not referring to my nifty new air vent mounted  iPhone holder I ordered from Amazon that Ian told me was a must to monitor my Google Map whereabouts, are you?

Tip No. 7 . . . “Put your Copilot to Work” and the corollary Tip No. 12 “Let Someone Else Drive at First” . Uhhhhhh………..hmmmmm…….did I mention I will be playing as a single?

Tip No. 8 . . . “Beware the Roundabout” . . . Says here, “get your wits about you before entering one.”   Hmmmmm……..”wits” you say?…………I don’t know; I could be wrong . . . but I’m thinking stopping to………how did you put it? . . . “gather my wits” might not go over too well with that lorry driver climbing up my ass.

Let’s fast forward . . . “Be Careful About Pedestrians on your Left” . . . “Make Stop Signs Your Friend” . . . . here’s a good one under “Use Caution with Mirrors” . . . says “it can be jarring to look out the left-side mirror and see parked cars whizzing by.”    YOU MEAN THEIR PARKED CARS MOVE TOO??

Crap. This place is a death trap.

Okay, one last one. Says here, under the heading “Accept that You’ll Make Mistakes”,  “get yourself into a safe spot and figure out how to get yourself back on the correct side of the road.”

No metaphor there. Thank you Editors at Smarter Travel.  That’s exactly what I’m after. A safe spot where I can figure out how to get back on the right . . . I mean “correct” . . . side of the road.

Hey Siri . . . .where’s the nearest pub?

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends,

And say that my glory was that I had such friends.

William Butler Yeats

 

Before I set off for Sligo to find the countryside that so inspired Yeats, I have one more stop.

The Fall Classic.

For 28 years, on the first weekend in October,  eight old farts traipse into Truckee to play golf.  We spend three days chasing the ball, telling and re-telling and re-telling again stories of our youth which, by now, we  all know by heart.

We are, like old worn golf gloves, growing stiff with age. Our hair has grown gray ; we can’t read a score card without glasses.  We don’t  play poker late into the night like we once did, but one by one fall asleep on the couch, in the Lazy Boy, or stretched out on the  1970s shag carpet of the Ergos’ cabin as the familiar sound of autumn baseball drifts from the television.

 

Each year, we comment on the crisp air, the smell of the pines, the sound of the wind in the Ponderosas as if it were our first autumn in the mountains.  Each year we descend on the same coffee shop, our waitress Eve will, as we open the  creaking screen door, greet us saying, « Has it been a year already, boyz ? » Each year Ian will have egg whites only and wheat toast dry ; Rob will have scrambled eggs and bacon and a large glass of grapefruit juice ;  Each year Dan will give Eve a good natured hug.

Seldom do we call each other by our given names, but will instead go by  Andy Boy or The Skipper, Bow, Ergs. Murph. Fitz. Danno,  Ass-Dot-Com, and Sparky. Ian will always sleep in the Murphy bed. Murph and Bow will sleep in the bunks. Danno on the couch. The Skipper in the Cave. Me on the deck, though the nights seem colder each year.

For these old friends, the Fall Classic marks the passage of time. It is the end and beginning of the year.  We anticipate it like giddy children do Christmas eve. We leave a bit melancholy.

We are, like the aspen surrounding the 14th green at Coyote Moon, golden in our glory and foolishly defiant in the face of winter.

 

 

“Being Irish,

he had an abiding sense of tragedy,

which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”

(Attributed to William Butler Yeats)

 

 

My father taught me many things. He taught me how to play golf, how to read aloud, and that in all things concerning love there is no explanation. When I was young and would walk the fairways with my dad, and curse in quiet frustration the seemingly endless stream of misfortune the wretched game would bring down upon me, he would turn from that maddening silence with which he approached all things, in golf and in life and smiling, murmur, “the game was meant to be a torment, Rob.”

At the time, I didn’t get it. So wrapped up in my own anger, I didn’t see the love in his eyes or hear the wisdom in his words. His teasing seemed as much a torment as the misfortunes of the game. The arbitrariness of life, what the Scottish call “the rub of the green”, was lost on a fourteen-year-old, whose adolescence, so stretched by things raw and random, yearned at least when walking at his father’s side, for a world of fairness and just outcomes.

It would take a lifetime to understand that in all things–golf, life, but most of all love–the game is best understood as a torment.

My dad was a student of the spoken word, an English major who became an insurance underwriter, but kept throughout his life a leather-bound book into which he would stuff Shakespeare and Milton, Melville and Emerson. He would often pull it from the shelf, jot down something witty or well phrased, and then insist that my brother, sister and I listen as he slowly read some passage. It frustrated him that the cadence of fine literature, when spoken aloud, was lost on children so eager to do anything other than listen to their father read.

He tended toward verse that rhymed, particularly Kipling and Service and Tennyson. I think he longed for a Victorian sense of order, where words were measured and made to fit into a preconceived rhythm and rhyme. He was a slow reader, his lips barely moving, as if he was searching for the sound as much as the meaning of the words. While he may have surrendered to the notion of silent reading, it wasn’t without a fight.

And so I learned to understand golf and read poetry aloud. But love itself? Hmmm, that one may take a bit more study, dad.

When, in junior high I moped about the house, my heart broken by the most recent break-up du jour, dad would look up from the paper, return to reading, and from behind the day’s headlines I would hear him murmur, “matters of the heart; matters of the heart.” At the time it seemed . . . like his wisdom on golf . . . a pithy cop out. “Matters of the heart? What the hell does that mean, dad? I need something more than a refrigerator magnet, pop. Give me something to work with. Some explanation, some reason, some . . . I don’t know . . . justice.”

I am 62 years old and now only beginning to understand what my father was trying to say with so few words almost 50 years ago. In all matters of the heart, there is no rhyme or reason, no measure, no meter, no fairness, no justice. Try as the poets may, at the end of the day, the damn thing just doesn’t lend itself to words, silent or spoken. One day, it’s there. One day, it slips away. It’s no one’s fault. It just happens.

John Irving said, “Sorrow floats.” That’s true, but not for long.  The game may be a torment, but it’s still a game. In love, just as in golf, good things will happen. I think they already are.

For four years, I have set off to Paris each fall hoping to find something: an uncle, a crevasse, as Jimmy Buffet put it, “. . . some answers to questions that troubled [me] so.” Not this year. This year I’m returning to this bridge on this golf course where 12 years ago I walked with my friends Mark and Ian and then I’m on to Ireland to explore some family history, maybe see a Connemarra pony, maybe peer over a cliff on Inishmore.

There’s a new game to be played. Time to leave the torment behind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Santa Rosa,  California

September 24, 2018

When I first visited Paris four years ago, my most memorable experience was not visual; it was audible.  I had just left the Louvre, was feeling a bit lost and lonely, when in the distance I heard this:

In a dark pedestrian tunnel,  a young flautist was playing Danny Boy as folks walked past him in conversation.  No one stopped; no one seemed to even notice. After tossing a few euros in his case, I gestured with my phone and asked if it was okay to record him; he smiled and nodded.

It seemed, at the time, a strange mix, Danny Boy in the Louvre. But there has always been a connection between the Irish and the French.  Joyce went blind writing Ulysses in Paris. Yeats went mad for Maud in Paris.  Oscar Wilde spent his final days in Paris, so despondent, cooped up in his hotel room, that the parable goes that his dying words were “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go.” (The wallpaper stayed.) Beckett  wore a beret and spoke with a brogue (wouldn’t that be cool) when he wrote “En Attendant Godot.”

In my experience, Danny Boy, like bagpipes, can generate one of two reactions: either it makes you nauseous or it makes you weepy.  If you fall in the weepy camp, I have a theory. I call it your “geographic DNA.”

Hear me out on this.

Have you ever traveled somewhere and had an abiding sense, though you’ve never been there, that somehow, some way . . . “this is home.” It’s more than a nagging suspicion that you’ve been there before, it’s a voice that whispers from deep within “you belong here.”

My theory is that woven somewhere into our double helix is the zip code of our ancestors. It’s a genetic postmark–an encoded “return to sender” label-  stamped so indelibly  in our soul that for most of our lives it goes unnoticed.

Until . . .

Until one day, if we are fortunate, we round a turn, crest a hill, or grab an empty chair in  a pub and find ourself back where we belong.

That’s the plan this year.  I’m going home.

 

 

Santa Rosa, California, United States
September 14, 2016

 

Well . . .I’ve done what I set out to do. Which, I suppose, is a good thing.

I bought a bike in Paris. I rode in the French Alps. I spent an afternoon immersed in France, it’s food and its language, with a gracious and hospitable couple. And , at least for one morning in this, my sixtieth year, I prétended to be a mountaineer in the Alps climbing mountain passes and stepping over childhood fears.

As picturesque as they were, memories of the sights will fade long before the memories of the many kind people with whom I spoke . . . in French:

• the kind young man in the small appliance store on Rue de Universite from whom I bought a European power cord for my iPhone;
• the taxi driver in Annecy with whom I spoke a bit of Russian before discussing in French what a difference there is between the English and the Scottish and how we both préfer the latter;
• the young man in the Apple Store beneath the Louvre who, after I explained in broken French that the wi fi in my airbnb was AWOL, invited me in and had me sit at a table, so that I might poach wi-fi behind his boss’ back;
• the bike shop owner who took a couple hours from his day off to box my bike and meet me at his store so that I might return home a few days early;
• the owner of a cafe who, seeing me wait outside one early morning waiting for my train asked me in and suggested, even before I opened my mouth to betray my nationalité, that perhaps i might like a chocolaté croissant.
• The couple in Marthod who gave up an entire day, opened their home, and must have worked for hours to prépare a six course lunch, all for a perfect stranger whose only connection was to have been a language student of a childhood friend they hand’t seen or heard from in over sixty years;
• the kind woman who ran a small boat concession, not exactly thriving with business, who rather than take me on as a paying fare, suggested I walk a short distance to a less expensive comptitor so that I might get back to my flat sooner and sooth my aching feet;
• the élégant woman at the Aubade shop who laughed when I suggested, after overhearing a conversation between her and another woman about bras and breast sizes, that sometimes it was best not to understand French better than I do;
• the waiter at the outdoor cafe which catered to folks in the nearby campground, when I asked him for chocolat chaud after dinner one warm night, said to me with a laugh and a twinkle in his eye, “okay, but that is so boring”;
• the young couple who leased a room in their family lakeside home with whom I struggled to articulate the différence between the concept of “home” and “house” in French so as to find the right word to compliment them.

 

 

So many kind strangers, but now it’s time to get home to those I know and love. Croissant–out!!

 

Lyon, Rhône-Alpes, France
September 12, 2016

Je suis assis dans le siège numéro quatre-vignt-cinq dans en voiture numéro seize dans un train de Annecy à Paris Gare Lyon. Nous sommes quelque part au sud de Lyon.

Tout le monde dans la voiture sont endormi, sauf moi. La couple de Chine, leur têtes doucement penchée avec les courbes dans les voies ferrées. La petite fille, peut-être trois-ans, avec ses nouvelles lunettes, sa mère tente de la réconforter.. La femme, peut-être vingt-et-une, avec les cheveux rouges et longe, et son jeans plus serrés, donc auto consciente de son apparence. Et le vieux homme, qui a lu son magazine, « Le Point. » avant d’aller dormir. Il a tenu les pages à proximité de son visage.

Je voulais lui demander.

« Eh bien,, est-ce la ? » La pointe, là-dedans ?

Oui, j’ai mon téléphone portable avec mon Google Translate, et oui, je utilise ça, mais j’essaie d’écrire sans elle. parfois, il me dit ce que je sais déjà. C’est bon.

Je ne peux pas dormir. Je veux dormir. J’ai besoin de dormir, mais il y a trop de voir.

Je crains que ma vie, comme cette train, aller trop vite. Mon voyage sera plus tôt.

Mon problème est je l’ai jamais appris à chercher obliquement. Trop souvent, je veux pour voir ce qui vase passer, pour en savoir à partir du passé, regarder l’arrière fenêtre. Où, je veux pour voir ce qui arrivé, préparer pour la future. Je regarder l’avant fenêtre.

J’ai besoin d’apprendre regarder obliquement.

Maintenant. En ce moment.

Voici.

Comme ce point de vue d’un train rapide.

Mon dieu, cette chose vole.

___________________________________________

Translation of lousy French

I am sitting in seat 85 in car 15 on a train from Annecy to the Paris Lyon station. We are somewhere south of Lyon.

Everyone is asleep, except me. The Chinese couple, their heads gently tilting back and forth with the curves in the track. The little girl, maybe three years old, with her new glasses, her mom trying to comfort her. The woman, maybe twenty one, with long red haïr, and tight jeans, so self conscious of her appearance. And the old man who was reading a magazine “The Point” until he fell asleep. He held the pages close to his face.

I wanted to ask him. Well? Is it in there? The point? Is it in the magazine?

Yes, I have my cell phone and my Google Translate. And yes, I use it, but I am trying to write without it. Sometimes it tells me what I already know. That’s good.

I cannot sleep. I want to sleep. I need to sleep. But, there is too much to see.

I think that my life, like this train, is going too fast. My trip is almost over.

My problem is I never learned to look sideways. Too often, I want to look backward, out the back window, to learn from what happened. Or, I want to look forward , out the front window, to prépare for the future.

I need to learn to look sideways.

Now. In the moment.

Right hère. Right now.

Like the view from a high speed train.

My god, this thing flies.

Talloires, Rhône-Alpes, France
September 11, 2016

Awoke this morning with sore feet from a strange dream about going toward the light.

 

 

 

 

 

Packed the old “rucksack” , as the French call it, and said good bye–and I do mean “good bye”, not au revoir,–to the jovial manager of the airBNB where I slept in Chamonix. A fella named Ashley.

Ashley must be 55, thin wiry gent, has a gray/white beard about a foot long, and is one of those guys who “winds up” as if he were pitching sidewinder when he shakes hands. A big hearty roundhouse leading to a shake. . He hails from Kenya, but speaks with a British accent and laughs more than I do. He told me has lived in Chamonix for 30 years, apart from the “misguided” two years, “the missus and I thought the schools might be better elsewhere, but that nonsense didn’t last long, ”

Said our good-byes and I walked to the train station.

 

I arrived by train back in Annecy to find the town packed. Apparently, a marathon. Sheeez. Because of the packed streets, the next mode of transportation I had planned, a taxi, was not to be found. The kind man on the téléphone told me “‘c’est impossible aujourd’hui.”

 

Great!!!! These feet are already dying; don’t think they’ll make 14 km to Taloires schlepping this portemanteau. How am I going to get to the other side of this lake.

Hmmm, there’s something I’m missing here. There’s got to be a better way.

 

 

Chamonix, Rhône-Alpes, France
September 10, 2016

 

I am sitting in a pleasant outdoor cafe watching the setting sunlight filter through late afternoon clouds and waiting for my omelette and frites to arrive. I am in no hurry to get up and go.

That would require walking.

As luck would have it, Chamonix is crawling with young athletes hobbling on bandaged knees and ankles tonight. Apparently the French have found a way to elevate triathlete competition to a new level of suistanble lunacy and called it Evergreen Endurance.

The timing couldn’t be more perfect as everyone will think the old guy gingerly walking down the rue to return the crampons he rented from the sporting good store must have been in the “senior” division. (“Did you see that old fella? What a stud!” ) No one need ever know the cause of the hitch in his giddy-up are not shin splints or plantar fasciitis, but good old fashioned ginormous heel blisters he got from a simple walk in the snow.

In my defense, it wasn’t a walk in the park. My new friend Fred, a 57-year-old veteran mountain guide, with two children less than two years old–I did say children, not grandchildren–atta boy Fred–the same Fred who regularly travels to Chili, Iceland and Iran to take “clients” up remote mountains to ski down…the same Fred who has 1% body fat…that Fred didn’t get the memo to go easy on the pathetique American with congenitally weak ankles.

 

We drove through the famous 12 mile tunnel beneath Mt. Blanc to Italy, took a state of the art gondola that rotated as it climbed, arrived at the foot of Mt. Blanc, strapped on the harness and crampons, roped up and set off.

 

 

 

 

“Hey Fred, throw this old Saint Bernard a bone. I’m doggin it back here.

 

Fascinating point for you wannabe mountaineers. When you climb, your guide goes ahead. When you descend, he walks behind. I guess, so that if the client-pathetique falls, the guide can “arrest ” the client’s fall from above without the human Avalanche taking him out as he picks up speed. Had Fred started with a descent with me in front of him, he would have seen just how slow I was. My tugging on the rope from behind as we climbed wasn’t having the desired effect.

But no, setting off up hill, Fred put himself and safety first. Just as your good guide will.

Nothing gets by me.

Well that’s not entirely true. Several hikers, many seemingly older than me, got by me all day with very kind words of encouragement. I drew some laughs when I heard one woman commentent in French she has never understood Shakespeare and I spoke up–between panting– to say in a sentence Evelyne might have been proud of, that English is the only language I know and even I don’t understand Shakespeare.

“The old American is slow, but he’s kinda funny.”

On we went. Five hours above the clouds. Absolutely stunning. Glorious views. Breathtaking.

 

 

But I didn’t feel half as exhilarated as I felt … well…

Sad.

The glaciers are dying.

I “knew” this from my reading, but until you see it firsthand, you don’t “feel” it. It’s like watching a bear pacing in a cage. Powerful. Enormous. But, sad. Just trying to fight off death and knowing he’s losing.

Fred pointed out several places where 30 years ago there was ice and now one can see only a field of gravel skree. Places where climbers once climbed, but can’t now because there is no snow. We agreed, after bonding over a shared love of Snicker bars. Which thankfully he thought to bring, that my grandchildren and his children will likely never see a glacier. Not in the Alpes. Not in Glacier National Park.

After returning to Chamonix, Fred dropped me off at the lift to Augile Midi. “Beam me up, Scotty.” Make it snappy..”Up” was the operative word today.

The top was everything I expected. One hell of an engineering marvel.

 

Hell, I even steppedi into the void. Felt kind of silly in my slippers, and uneasy standing on a floor of glass looking down several thousand feet, but it was, I have to say, exhilirating.

I also saw the start to the Vallee Blanche hike . Thank god those cable cars got stuck between Augile Midi and Helbonner. There was no way in hell I could have stayed upright on that knife edge of a snow ridge.

But I know what you’re wondering. Did you see a crevasse, Rob?

Hell yeah I did. Stepped over a bunch of them. Not huge, but not babies either. Real enough that Fred gave them considerable respect by giving me extra rope and cautioning me not to linger long to look into them. (That might be mountain guide schtick for rookie climbers, but it worked on me.)

Yep. I stepped over a crevasse today. Kind of a silly box to check off on the bucket list. But there you go. I suppose, like childhood friends, we all have childhood fears as well. Irrational fears. Flying monkeys.

It’s good to have the chance to conquer one. Before the glaciers, and with them the crevasses, are all gone, and the opportunity is lost.