Check out my new travel website!

Adam helped me create this website so you can track our travels in Great Britain this fall. Okay, and there are some photo slideshows of past travels too - both US and foreign. Check it out!

www.spinningcompass.net

Leatherback!

I was walking the beach Thursday night looking for loggerhead turtles. I was a guest of the Florida Oceanographic Society’s turtle scouts whose job it is to locate nesting loggerheads on the beach two nights a week for a permitted, guided turtle walk. The turtle walk begins with a talk on sea turtles at FOS’s Coastal Center on Hutchinson Island and ends (hopefully) by witnessing the actual laying of eggs on the beach. It’s a marvelous program in my hometown of Stuart, Florida, during the months of June and July.

But while we were scouting for loggerheads, we came across something even more unique: a leatherback turtle. There are three species of turtle that nest on the Treasure Coast beaches: leatherbacks, loggerheads, and green turtles. The leatherback and green turtles are endangered, so even if you were to see one hauling herself out of the water, which would be rare just given their numbers, you would not be permitted by law to approach her and observe her nesting. The loggerhead, on the other hand, is only “threatened,” and it is possible to observe one nesting on the beach IF you’re in the presence of a permit-carrying turtle guide.

I have seen loggerheads nest before and hawksbill and green turtles while snorkeling in ten feet of water off the coast of St. John, USVI, but I never thought I’d get to see the largest of all sea turtles, the leatherback, the only remaining species in the genus Dermochelys and considered to be the most quickly declining large animal in modern history.

We stood staring at her for several seconds before comprehending what we were staring at. After walking the beach for an hour and a half scrutinizing every dark mass on the beach, it was a surprise when one of the masses materialized into a turtle. And not just any turtle, it was a mama leatherback the size of a chunky coffee table almost at our feet. They are enormous animals, weighing up to a ton; the sheer size of it startled us into stepping back and allowing it to progress up the dunes alone in search of a nesting place.

Animals give birth every day, but watching these giant reptiles emerge from the ocean (its natural habitat), crawl over the sand (not its natural habitat), and dig a hole in which to deposit her eggs is to witness something awe inspiring. Have you ever seen the flippers of a sea turtle? You just try crawling over abandoned sand castles and escarpments left by storm surges on those paddles! Then, try digging a hole with them!! (My turtle scout companion once witnessed a loggerhead with only one rear flipper dig her nest in the sand.) Despite the obstacles, they have an amazing capacity to persevere. And then, by no means the easy part, they give birth, rest for a bit, cover their nests and pack them down to protect them from predators, and make the slow trek back to the ocean, never to see their babies hatch. Thousands of eggs, laid in batches of 50-100, so that one turtle may survive to adulthood. Given the odds, it truly is a miracle!

Food Truck Invasion!

Finally! Food trucks have arrived in Martin County. With one son living in Portland, OR, and the other in Austin, TX, we have been food truck fans for years. Although an article in the local paper stated that food truck popularity arose from the recent recession, they have been alive and well in Portland and Austin since well before the recession. Maybe Stuart is just not weird enough. (Portland and Austin have a friendly Keep-our-city-weird competition going on. What does it say that my two children chose to live in these cities?)

The food trucks invade Stuart’s Memorial Park every Monday evening this summer from 5:00 until 9:30. Bring some friends, lawn chairs, bug spray, and maybe an umbrella (for either rain or shine), and enjoy. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried the Banh Mi (Asian barbecued pork sandwich)!

Where have I been?

I haven’t posted in nearly five months, and I have missed it. A project of a different sort has consumed every scrap of my free time. All non-essential projects (the fun stuff), like writing and scrapbooking, were put on hold while I researched an upcoming trip to Great Britain. Not that I didn’t enjoy the research, but five months of it can overwhelm.

Since I was a child good literature has teleported me into the settings of the written word. Some settings were so vivid I couldn’t tolerate the film versions. But no literature has affected me more than British literature. I longed to see the hedged farm towns of Thomas Hardy’s Dorset, walk the hills in Jane Austen’s Hampshire, and soak in the beauty of the rugged Scottish Highlands of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, the damp castles of Mary, Queen of Scots, the desolate moors of the Brönte sisters, the rocky coastline of Daphne du Maurier’s Cornwall, Robin Hood’s forest in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, and the soaring cathedrals that inspired Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth. I started a “classics” book group with a couple of friends just over a year ago (we don’t usually read anything published after 1900), and the rich novels we have read and discussed have rekindled that spark to see the lush, green countryside of Great Britain.

Last winter my husband handed me an article from the Wall Street Journal about couples who retire, sell their homes, and travel the globe one rented house at a time. They may stay for a few weeks, a few months, or even years before moving on to the next. I was instantly drawn to this vagabond lifestyle. While I’m not ready to give up my home (because despite my love of travel, I am a homebody at heart), I began to think about the possibility of long-term travel. Two to three weeks in another country is not long enough to immerse in the culture. If we rented houses, I reasoned, we could really get to know a place. We could shop and dine with the locals in our adopted villages, buy rounds at the pub, and establish a cache of friends all over the world.

I planted the seed in my husband’s mind. I wanted him to love the concept before he considered the bottom line. After all, we wouldn’t be selling our home. We would still have to pay for utilities, insurance, and other homeowner essentials while we also paid to live in a second home. But his love of travel prevailed, and the idea took root.

So we have the airline tickets. I have secured 18 B&B’s. (Despite my desire to stay put in one village for the entire three months, day trips to all the places I want to see just aren’t feasible. We are, however, staying a full week in as many places as possible.) And the rental car is waiting. After spending five months planning a three-month trip, we have nothing to do but sit back and anticipate.

The birds are back!

We left Stuart last September to spend a couple of weeks in Nevada and California. During that time, the Army Corps of Engineers determined that Lake Okeechobee was approaching dangerous depths - 15 feet - and posed a risk to the surrounding area by threatening to burst its seams (the dikes) and cause devastating flooding. They started bleeding the polluted lake through its two major arteries, the Caloosahatchee River to the west and the St. Lucie River to the east, in order to relieve the pressure. 

When we got home from our trip at the beginning of October, we looked forward to going out on the boat. Friends told us not to bother; the waterways (not only the St. Lucie River, but also the Indian River Lagoon and the St. Lucie inlet) were a disgusting mess, and the Corps was still bleeding the lake.

We waited patiently for the bleeding to stop, but it continued another month. We made frequent trips down to our dock during that time, and what we saw broke our hearts. The bait fish had left the river, and so did the birds and our beloved dolphins who ate them. 

We have no idea what has happened to the oyster beds that locals were working so hard to restore. I read that an adult oyster, which can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day, would not survive three months in the freshwater river we now had. (The salinity level, which usually hovers in the teens (parts per thousand), was then around 0.5 - essentially fresh water.)

They finally stopped bleeding the lake during the first week of November. We went out on the boat a month later. The river still felt like a cemetery. 

Last week we went out again. As soon as we got down to the dock, we felt the difference. The birds were back! Huge flocks of terns. We watched a pelican try to swallow a fish that seemed way too big, even for its flexible throat pouch. And - wonder of wonders - our great blue heron was wading along the shore by our dock eyeing the fish in the shallows.

Dolphins? Not yet, but we are hopeful. Where there are bait fish, there is hope.

Great literature makes good travel even better.

I love to travel. As an Air Force brat, I can honestly say it is in my blood. I moved every couple of years in my childhood. Although in my early years there was always the thrill of where we would be stationed next, I was more along for the ride than following a desire to experience the world. As an adult I have perfected how to get the most out of my travels. Perhaps it was attending boarding school in Switzerland for two of my high school years, where travel was a major part of our curriculum. On second thought, no. During my high school years I was too much into taking a train somewhere - anywhere - with a group of my best friends and no chaperone. It was more about the freedom.

I think it was traveling with my own children that really taught me how to travel. As a parent, I took my role as educator seriously. My two sons, bright and inquisitive, made it fun for me to provide never-ending nourishment for their curiosities. The library became one of our favorite haunts. When they were seven and nine, we had the opportunity to move to Germany for my husband’s job. I longed to show them the Europe I had fallen in love with during high school and teach them to appreciate the diversity of the planet we lived on.

Their first experience in a foreign country was not what I wanted it to be. We were having dinner with friends in a biergarten. Biergartens are such a wonderful microcosm of German life. People come together to sit outdoors under the chestnut trees, enjoy live music, eat some würst and drink some bier, and socialize while the kids play together nearby. Only my children clung to my side. “We don’t speak German,” they whined. “We can’t play with those kids.” What? When had my inability to communicate ever stopped me from exploring a new place? I had roamed our neighborhood in Bangkok at their age with only the ability to count to ten in Thai. They needed to get off the bench and get into the game. Or was it too late? Had they missed out by not being launched into the global playground from birth? Ridiculous! We could do this, and it was my job as parent to make sure it happened.

I stumbled across the path to success shortly after the biergarten incident. Before leaving on a trip to Florence, a friend recommended I read The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone. It so immersed me in Michelangelo’s Florence that I was moved to read a passage to my family as we sat in front of his statue of the biblical David in the Accademia Gallery. It was a masterful telling of how the citizens of Florence, beaten down by the perennial onslaught of the Catholic church, hostile neighboring city-states, and the powerful Medici family, responded to Michelangelo’s powerful symbol of defiance. As I looked up from my reading, I saw tears rolling down my husband’s cheeks, my kids were clamoring to know what happened next, and a small crowd had gathered round me surreptitiously listening to me read. I had discovered the key to getting the most out of traveling - good literature. Without Irving Stone, David would have been just another statue.

Twenty years later I continue my quest for good literature set in places I want to visit. A couple of months ago, I read Cannery Row aloud to my husband as we drove from Reno, Nevada, to Monterey, California. Because of Steinbeck’s engaging characters, we were not disappointed by the run-down buildings and vacant lots on the real Cannery Row. The real thing, once you got away from the schlocky tourist shops and luxury spas, was just as I pictured it from the book. I could just see Mack and the boys sitting on the front steps of the flophouse passing around the jug of “leftovers” Eddie collected from his bar-tending job and hear the strains of classical music from Doc’s laboratory over the pounding of the waves. Great literature makes good travel even better.

Holiday letter survey

Okay, now's your opportunity to vent on the subject of holiday letters you receive from family, friends, and barely-acquaintances. Since my kids were young, I have annually sent out holiday letters updating friends and family who don't live within visiting distance on what my family has been doing for the past twelve months. While opting not to brag about my kids' exploits, I have limited my writing mostly to places we have traveled. This format began when we lived in Germany for two years. It was so much easier to write one letter and duplicate it several dozen times than jot the same few brief lines on a plethora of Christmas cards. Somehow it seemed more personal to give more detail about our lives than to just skim the surface in an assembly-line kind of way. I always, however, kept the text to one printed page.

I still do this even though my kids no longer live at home. I know they don't communicate with my friends and family, so I keep everyone up to date. Often our friends have kids who grew up with mine. I love reading what their kids are doing, and I respond in kind. Until this year.... I'm having second thoughts.

My husband shared with me an article from the Wall Street Journal about the incessant bragging in today's social media. While I don't have a Facebook page or tweet my every thought, I do have those darn holiday letters (and now this blog - which very few people know about) which accomplish the same thing, only not with such consuming frequency.

How do you feel about holiday letters? Do you want to know what's going on in my life, or is a brief telling of my annual travels nothing more than poorly disguised bragging?

Are you out there, dear readers?

Please comment to this blog:
a) I enjoy reading holiday letters from friends and family, or
b) no offense, but no thanks.

I promise I will not hold your heartfelt opinions against you. This is a search for truth. Thanks!