Retirement Diaries 2023: It’s Fall Y’all!

It’s Fall Everybody! Summer passed by in the blink of an eye, what with moving mom across the country, frantically unpacking things day after day at her house, and then heading back out to Washington and Oregon for some good times with friends.

After leaving Washington on September 7, I headed back down to Oregon as a jumping off point for my trip back to Minnesota.  I had about a week before I had to be back, in order to have a few days for the turnaround before mom and I were scheduled to head to Knoxville, Tennessee for a jewelry making workshop.  I had a great time on the way back, digging for thunder eggs in Eastern Oregon, spending time at John Day Fossil Beds, having lunch with my friend Kiera in Boise, Idaho, and visiting Virginia City and Nevada City in Montana, before finally doing a beeline for home.  Of course, I did make a stop in Eastern Montana to to hunt for agates on the Yellowstone River.  It was wonderful to be on the road, and I can’t wait for my next trip!  I will definitely post in more detail about my goings on…

I did a 3-day turnaround, arriving at my house on Thursday afternoon September 14, and then departing for Knoxville on Monday, September 18.  Mom badgered me into signing up for the jewelry workshop too, even though I consider myself to not really have a crafty/creative bone in my body.  We drove down, and it was two solid days of classes and peopling.  But, a bit surprisingly, I enjoyed it! I did six classes and made 5 pieces of jewelry.  The 6th I did not finish because we ran out of time, but everybody in class ran out of time too, so it wasn’t just me.  Mom will help me finish these earrings when I’m ready.

The drive to Knoxville was long, and if we do it again, I definitely want to take a few more days each way so we have time to do some sightseeing.  As it was, we didn’t really have much time for stops along the way.  We did happen to meet up with my cousin and her husband in Louisville, Kentucky, as they were heading home to Michigan after a trip to Texas and Louisiana.  It was a fortuitous coincidence and it was great to see them!  We even had a chance to try the famous Hot Brown at the Brown Hotel in Louisville.  I had Hot Brown once before on my 2018 trip, but had never tried it from the source, as The Brown Hotel “invented” the Hot Brown in the 1920s.

On the homefront, I find myself with a gloriously empty home, after two roommates moved out.  It’s so quiet and relaxing!  I’m working on cleaning up, rearranging, and unpacking things that I didn’t have the space to have out before.  It’s nice and I’m loving it. The oak trees are changing color and dropping their leaves, the feed corn fields are about to be harvested.  Cora and Yellow are loving having me home, and are adjusting to the moving furniture and flurry of rearranging and cleaning.  The only downside is that I feel like I’ve been fighting a cold for a couple days so I’ve been moving pretty slow and taking a couple of naps, but I feel like I’m on the upswing now.

And the best news is that now that I’m home, I’ll be able to write more regularly and get back to my travel posts!

How are you all enjoying the first week of fall?

 

 

Book Review: A Gentleman in Moscow

A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles

Amor Towles is an author I first heard about when his novel, The Lincoln Highway, came out in 2021.  So it piqued my interest when I found the CD audiobook of A Gentleman in Moscow for sale at a library book sale for $1.  What a score!

 

This novel is set in Russia, beginning in the 1920s.  After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Aristocrat Count Alexander Rostov is arrested, put on trial and convicted of being a social parasite.  What’s this you ask?  Well, apparently, following the revolution and assassination of Tsar Nicholas II, all able bodied persons were required to work.  Therefore, being a rich aristocrat was considered a crime.  Count Rostov managed to avoid execution because of a pro-revolutionary poem attributed to him.  Instead, he receives a life sentence of house arrest at his residence, which happened to be the Metropol Hotel in Moscow. 

While not quite imprisoned, he must live out his years in an attic bedroom, which is a far cry from the opulent lifestyle he is used to.  However, he still has the entire hotel, its staff and the guests as his playground, so he certainly isn’t doing too badly.  He makes the best of it, making friends with the people he comes into contact with, and eventually becoming the playmate of a nine-year-old girl named Nina whose father regularly stays for long periods at the hotel.

His life changes forever when he sees Nina again for the first time in years, after she has grown and is working for the Bolshevik cause.  Her husband is arrested an sent to a labor camp in Siberia, and Nina chooses to follow him there.  She asks Rostov to watch her 5 year old daughter Sofia for a short period of time, while she travels to Siberia to find work and a place to live near her husband.  Suddenly Rostov is thrust into the role of father at the age of 49. 

Towles is a master of character development and description.  The novel is also well researched, allowing the reader to feel that it could be based on a real person and events.  While Rostov and the rest of the characters are fiction, The novel is slow to develop, and I wondered if I would like it, but his flowery writing style and character development won me over.  Rostov is a Renaissance man, educated and well-mannered, treating everyone he comes into contact with respectfully.  This makes him likeable, while never allowing the reader to forget that although he is technically serving a prison sentence, he certainly does not experience the poverty and hardships of his fellow Russians.

I won’t give away the ending, but just know that it is well-thought out and detailed, with an elaborate setup and description.  Towles tells the story in an unhurried manner, never rushing or abandoning his elegant writing style. 

The novel spans over 30 years, and the author uses time in a fascinating manner.  I didn’t catch it when I was reading, but apparently the novel begins one day after his arrest, with each chapter subsequently doubling the amount of time that has passed.  The second is two days after, then five days, ten days, three weeks, six weeks, three months, six months, one year, two years, four years, eight years, and sixteen years after the book begins. Finally, the passage of time reverses, with the time between chapters halving until the events of the last day of the novel. 

This is a must read novel, and I can’t wait to pick up another of Towles’ books.

5 stars.

Book Review: Two in the Far North

Two in the Far North, by Margaret Murie

A friend recommended this book to me – as someone who loves the outdoors, and as a woman who appreciates a good adventure, my friend thought I would enjoy it.  And I did.  I had never heard of the author, and now having read it, I wish someone had told me about her long ago.

This autobiography/memoir is the story of Margaret Murie, a woman who came of age in Alaska in the 1910s and 1920s.  She married wildlife biologist Olaus Marie in 1924, and accompanied him on several trips into the wilderness of Alaska during their marriage, where she made a life for herself as a naturalist, conservationist and writer.

Two in the Far North tells of Murie’s childhood in Alaska, her marriage to Olaus, and the adventures of their trips into the wilderness.  As a woman, it was nearly unheard of for her to join her husband on his expeditions, and even more so for her to participate in his hikes and gathering of specimens.  Her honeymoon was spent on a dogsled expedition in the dead of winter, to places where women seldom ventured.

Later, she even chose to join her husband on a wilderness expedition with their infant son, building a box for him in the boat they traveled in, and draping it with mosquito netting to try to keep the insects away.  After their three children were grown, she was still hiking the tundra wilderness of Alaska with Olaus, after having been flown in my bush plane to a remote lakeside camp. 

She was a remarkable woman.  Her prose is succinct and matter of fact, describing the scenery, and the Native Alaskans with both a precise, unemotional style, while at the same time reminiscing about a wild Alaska that was changing considerably by the time she wrote this memoir in the late 1950s.  The edition I read had been updated with more recent stories of her life in Wyoming, her grief after Olaus died, and her work preserving the wild places in Alaska for future generations.

Margaret Murie lived to be 101 years old, and died in 2003.  She left an impressive legacy, having spoken up for conservation in a time when few did, particularly women.  She won the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work, and should be a household name for young girls who need strong, intelligent female role models.

4 stars.

Ex Husbandry

I was out with a friend last Monday at a regular haunt of mine when I’m home in Washington. We split appetizers and a bottle of wine for happy hour; it was a nice little outing on a Monday.

As we were wrapping up, my ex husband walked in and sat down at a seat across the bar. And then his date came in and sat down beside him. It took him a bit of time to notice me, and I pointed him out to my friend.

Once he saw me he got noticeably fidgety and nervous, to the point where my friend asked if I thought he was on drugs. That made me laugh. Honestly, with him that could be.

I hadn’t seen him since I had to meet with him a few months after the divorce to give him his final settlement check. Back then the very sight of him disgusted and unnerved me. The way he had the audacity to go around so entitled, just expecting his handout.

But this time I felt nothing. No pain, no nostalgia, no anger. I didn’t feel sorry for him for looking so uncomfortable; after all, he did some really shitty things. But I didn’t feel joy either.  Last Monday night he was just another person I didn’t know at that bar.

It feels like a lifetime ago that he stealthily moved his things out that Memorial Day while I was out on a hike with a girlfriend. Since I came home to find his things gone.  I have seen him only rarely since then, in mediation during the divorce, and then to deliver that last check almost six years ago.

So much has happened since then.  Ups and downs.  Health scares.  Strange and stressful job situations.  Losing my Dad, my horse, and several friends.  Relationships begun and ended.  Settling back into my own skin and finding myself and the person I felt I had lost.  Moving.  My retirement.

The funniest part of this story is that he messaged me later in the week to say that he thought he saw me at that bar, and that he was happy to see me doing so well.  We hadn’t talked that night, so he wouldn’t know anything about whether I’m well.  And how could you possibly sit 10 feet away from someone, facing their direction the whole time and not recognize them as the person you shared a life and a home with?  I don’t believe for one second that he wasn’t positive it was me; that was obvious from the fidgeting…  So why lie?  But I suppose that’s all he knows.

Life moves on.  We all go through trauma, pain and grief.  It is part of a good life.  Not every story in our lives will have a happy ending.  But along the way we learn and grow, and leave behind some of those hardships that at the time feel like they will never stop hurting.  And some of the stories in our lives are happy, and we are blessed.  At least I am.

I’m such a different person than I was then.  In a good way.  That time in my life didn’t break me; it was a temporary rough blip on the long path of life.  My life isn’t perfect, and it isn’t as though I don’t have problems, just like everybody.  But I’m very lucky, and overall I am well.  And things are looking up from here.

If you find yourself struggling, keep moving.  Just walk.  Take one step in the direction that you think will be the right one.  Try it out.  Breathe.  And know that this struggle, in time, will fade.