When Your Kids’ Bucket List Becomes Yours

Nihongo wa hanasemasen (I don’t speak Japanese).

Japan was not on my bucket list. It wasn’t a longing. If someone would have said to me, “Are you ever going to travel to Japan?” I probably would have responded with, “Why would I do that?”

Now that plane tickets have been purchased and dates marked off our calendar, Juan and Crystel argue about who brought up the idea of traveling to Japan first.

Regardless of who did, Crystel gets the credit for selling the idea. She used a PowerPoint presentation to further promote her position. Crystel titled her demo, “What to Do on Our Japan Trip,” as if we had already bought the goods. She meticulously moved through each of her 29 slides, and many had links for further description. Such as, the pros and cons of staying in a Capsule hotel, hostel, or Ryokan. She could be a tour guide, I thought, as she described how she separated Japan into four destinations: city side, country side, Juan’s animé side, and beach side.

Japan is an island country that is seventy percent mountainous. Mountains and valleys split the land. It was her photos of Japan’s stunning coastal scenery and untouched countryside landscapes that began to sway me. She was easily making Japan an attractive destination. A hankering began to flicker.

It wasn’t long before Crystel and I were on the couch, side by side, researching the ‘Land of the Rising Sun’. She would plan our day to day activities, and I would secure the lodgings. You might think that I would be scared about letting a teen plan our pursuits. I admit to some trepidation. My unease fell away after I saw her ensuing PowerPoint presentation: an itinerary for Tokyo, Mount Fuji, and Gero. She had our schedule mapped from place to place. Each locale more beautiful than the last. She even planned an alternate choice for Jody and me while she and Juan visited Akihabara, the center of gaming, manga and animé culture in Tokyo.

Our three-week trip to Japan will close with seven days in the tiny fishing village of Asobi on the Tango peninsula. The peninsula is located on the Japan sea coast, allowing us to take day trips to Kyoto and the surrounding area. Crystel will enjoy planning trips to beaches, hot springs, and Kyoto. I’ve already downloaded the paperwork for an international driver’s license as Tango is most easily explored by car.

Crystel said she wanted to visit Japan because of the culture, Juan because of animé, and Jody because she didn’t want to be left at home. That’s not the all of it, she enjoys adventure as I do, and I stack them up when I plan our exploits. Now we have a daughter who is eager to explore as well.

Traveling together, enjoying new experiences together, that’s the best kind of bucket list.

I travel to experience difference.

Montana

I travel to experience difference.

I want my heart to pound with exhilaration. To swell and beat against my body. I want to instinctively hold my breath. I want to feel fear.

On the Big Mountain in Whitefish, Montana, I held my breath and pushed off the 6,817 ft. summit. My skis foreign under me. It had been years since I had downhill skied. I worked to tilt my skis onto their edge, providing the resistance I needed to slow down. Juan Jose’ and Crystel’s ski lessons from when they were four rose in my memory, “Pizza, Mama. Pizza.” I pizzaed and french fried down the mountain.

My first step off the summit, had the same feeling as jumping off a cliff the height of a 3-story house into Lake Atitlan, Guatemala.

Ultra Extreme zip- lining, flying over and through the jungle of Guatemala, jumping out of a plane in Wisconsin, and bungee jumping off the historic suspension bridge in New Zealand, where bungee jumping began are not things I need to do again. Nor is parasailing.

Never say never. I can imagine the kids wanting me to join them and there I’ll go again.

I travel to experience awe. Awe-inspiring landscape, whether it be in Montana, Guatemala, or the ocean is a feeling I want to hold onto forever. I want to breathe in what I’m seeing so deeply that I never lose my sense of wonder. I experience a connection with something greater.

Destin

Hiking along ancient paths in Sedona, the Upper Mayan Trail in Guatemala, and the Badlands provides a profound sense of being with the ancients whether it is the Yavapai of Sedona, the Kachekel Mayans of Guatemala, or the paleo-Indians of the Badlands. I can envision the singular, winding, upwards path of those who came before us, shouldering their belongings, carrying their infants, moving towards shelter.

When I travel, I often learn something new about myself or come to a deeper understanding.

It was in Destin, Florida strolling towards sunrise on the fine soft white sand, that it came to me: I feel most alive walking into the wind. That I create the world I live in. That right now, this moment, came to be because of all the choices that I have made before.

Jody, Cozumel

Family travel, sharing adventures, having others hold their breath in awe and fear are joys. The best thing Jody and I can give our children is the world in their palm and a passion for new experiences. Then, they too, can cultivate new and lasting relationships with the world and those around them.

We are planning a family trip to Japan in 2020. Crystel is organizing our travel plans. She is teaching herself Japanese. Juan Jose’ will also be traveling to Germany with his German class.

Travel is fulfilling. Rejuvenating. A time to take stock. Stretch boundaries. And, if you plan it right, to hold your breath.

Unknown Adventure

Juan Jose’, Ani, Rosa

“She needs a blood transfusion, and then if possible surgery. The hospital is so busy because of the volcano victims.”

As of June 6, 2018, At least 192 people are missing and 75 are dead as a result of the explosion of the Volcan de Fuego in Guatemala according to the BBC news.

“Her blood levels are very low. She has to be in the hospital. She did not know. It was a surprise.”

Jody, Juan Jose’, Crystel and I are traveling towards the Volcano of Fire. Before our trip is over, we will learn that entire villages on the slopes of Fuego volcano were buried in volcanic ash, mud and rocks. Hundreds of Guatemalans

San Marcos La Laguna, Guatemala. photo credit, Juan Jose’

are dead. Some have lost entire families.

Eight years ago, Volcano Pacaya erupted. Juan Jose’ and Crystel were 7. When we

landed in Guatemala on that trip, their first visit to Guatemala, volcanic ash was being shoveled from the airline strip.

Crystel’s words were, “We are in my country now.”

This will be our fifth visit to Guatemala.

Alex Vicente Lopez, Guide Extraordinaire

Before every trip, as I do with all of our vacations, I researched extensively. This year, I had planned a sailing adventure, leaving from Rio Dulce, Guatemala, sailing into Lake Izabal, and then on to the Caribbean after our visit with Rosa, Juan Jose’s birth mom.

All trip planning stopped, and we cancelled the sailing trip when we received a message that Rosa had advanced cancer.

This unpredictable country is Juan Jose’s and Crystel’s birthplace. Devastation, poverty, and constant struggle is a reality in Guatemala. News of volcanic eruptions and the hardships of birth moms who have given their children up in adoption slice Jody and I to the core. We provide what help we can. Our message to Juan Jose’ and Crystel is to be proud of where they come from.

Kayak Guatemala, Los Elementos Our Happy Place

Crystel was born in Amatitlan, in the shadow of Volcano Pacaya. Juan Jose’ is from the mountains of Rabinal. His grandfather and great grandfather died in the Civil War.

Through the help of our village of friends in Guatemala: Lee and Elaine Beal of Los Elementos Adventure Center, Lesly Villatoro, of El Amor De Patricia, and the organization De Familia a Familia, we received assistance for Rosa. Lesly accompanied

Rosa to the doctor. Rosa learned that she didn’t have cancer but a large fibroid that needed to be removed. We would be able to visit with her on our last day in Guatemala with De Familia a Familia providing interpretation services.

As in our four previous trips, we would stay at Los Elementos and have Alex Vicente Lopez as our guide for our 5-day stay at Lake Atitlan. And we’d have many unknown

Crystel in native dress. A gift from Juanita, Alex’s wife.

adventures, because plans can suddenly change.

We would be vacationing in Crystel’s and Juan Jose’s ever-changing birth country – traveling towards 37 volcanoes, 3 of them active, and 1 erupting.

Amongst the poverty, devastation, and volcanoes we would find beauty. Guatemalans are strong, proud, and loving.

Their country beautiful.

 

Comfortable on Any Turf

Lisa

More than a dozen years ago, Lisa Taylor Lake founded the writers group that eventually gave rise to WordSisters. Lisa’s original inspiration was that we could provide vital insight and feedback to each other. Over the years, the group grew to be so much more—mentors, cheerleaders, and true wordsisters. In spring 2012, Lisa died of cancer and this March, we are honoring her with two blogs—this one and one in a few weeks. Ellen & Elizabeth

I had belonged to Lisa’s creative nonfiction writers group for years before I learned she also wrote poetry. Inspired by classes she had recently taken, Lisa had created a chapbook of her poems and reserved a cozy room at her church for her first poetry reading.

When she invited our writers group to the reading, she had confessed to nerves, even though she regularly spoke in front of groups for her work in the state health department’s communications office. This was different, she said. This was her poetry. It was personal.

And it was beautiful. As she read, her audience of two dozen listened quietly—until several of us couldn’t suppress an ooh at a particularly lovely line. Silence broken now, as Lisa continued, more of us expressed mmms, oohs, and aahs, and shared appreciative nods and smiles. Our response emboldened Lisa to mention she had planned to end with the poem she had just read, but if we would like, she could read one or two more. When we applauded wildly and said yes, please, more, she stepped back, momentarily overwhelmed, and then she obliged us with pleasure.

Afterward, ever the good hostess, Lisa flitted among us, greeting people, directing us toward refreshments, accepting compliments, her eyes and feet virtually dancing.

Years later, my husband David and I sat at a lacquered pine table in a dark booth while I wondered what I had gotten myself into. An essay of mine had been accepted by a local online literary journal. A local church sponsored the journal and the editors celebrated each issue’s publication with an author reading at the Turf Club bar. Well, not in the bar itself—in the bar’s basement.

Lisa was the first of my friends to arrive, her eyes twinkling as she took in the wood-paneled walls sporting mounted fish and game. She and David ordered beers and discussed the typography of the beer signs and the design of the amateur northwoods landscape paintings that filled gaps among the taxidermy.

As I read, I remember the sensation of all eyes—those of the patrons, the bartender, and the mounted deer—fixed on me as people listened. Afterward, I felt the adrenaline rush of finishing without tripping over words or a microphone cord. Now I understood why Lisa was aflutter after her poetry reading—the lightness of heart that comes from risking and successfully entering new territory.

The last time we heard Lisa read her poetry, she looked artistic and angelic in a full-length turquoise dress that she couldn’t get over buying for herself for the occasion. The skirt flowed around her ankles so that she appeared to float rather than walk. We entered her church again. This time, many more of us filled a larger room that featured a wood-beamed vaulted ceiling and arched stained-glass windows.

Lisa’s writing group, our writing group—Ellen, Elizabeth, Rose, Jill, Brenda, and I—sat together, WordSisters well before Ellen and Elizabeth began this blog. We oohed and aahed over the dress, but moreso over the depth of meaning in her poems and her greater confidence in sharing them with us. We were not the only ones to surreptitiously wipe away tears, and not only as a reaction to her beautiful words.

Lisa could be comfortable in a vaulted spiritual space or in a basement bar decorated with dead animals. Lisa was game. (And as I write that sentence, I can hear her politely questioning whether I’m perhaps overreaching in my attempt at word play.) But she herself wrote in her essay, “Meeting with Royalty” about spending Christmas in England, “I was game for any adventure.”

Lisa took her good manners and tactfulness, her keen observation and sense of story, and her openness to new experiences with her wherever she went. Hiking and writing poetry along her beloved North Shore. Dressed like a tsarina in long underwear, a long wool coat, and a Russian-styled hat to see Britain’s royal family go to church. Tired and angry at a car and a relationship stuck in the mud. Driving with her sister to a family reunion—she wrote that they were “two gals pushing sixty in a rented red convertible that was pushing seventy.”

I hope Lisa pardons my paraphrase of that essay’s opening sentence, but it’s one of my favorite images from her stories: red-headed Lisa holding onto a broad-brimmed hat to protect her fair complexion, ever practical, yet speeding along joyfully with someone she loves, whether she was traveling on well-trod or unfamiliar turf.

What’s In Arkansas?

The Movie Shoot

Thanksgiving dinner, good company, excellent hiking trails, a movie shoot, and 50 degree weather.

The second question to arise in the ten-hour drive from Minneapolis is why is Arkansas pronounced AR-ken-saw?

Our van ride was more docile than the fight in 1881 over the State’s pronunciation.The pronunciation of Arkansas was made official by an act of the state legislature in 1881, after a dispute between two U.S. Senators from Arkansas. One wanted to pronounce the name ar-KAN-zes and the other wanted AR-ken-saw.

Hobbs State Park Conservation Area

I hadn’t done any research on the inlaws or the state of Arkansas prior to visiting. I returned to Minneapolis after our 4-day stay delighted in both. So much so, I thought about moving.

Prior to our visit, I had not given any thought to the geography of the state. I pictured it as a small postage stamp. What I found was surprisingly different.

The state’s geography ranges from mountains to densely forested land to  lowlands along the Mississippi River. Arkansas has 52 state parks.

Hobbs State Park Recreation Area, where we hiked has bluffs, rocky outcrops, limestone bedrock, caves, sink holes, and a fault line. Crystel has lately been in the habit of cartwheeling everywhere she goes and can now say that she has done it on a trail in Arkansas.

Signage in Arkansas could be an issue. In this picture if you look at the sign it clearly says that the War Eagle Valley Loop is straight ahead. That is actually Little Clifty Creek – the difference being a 9 mile hike instead of the 6 mile hike we envisioned ourselves on. I shouted after the mountain bikers and horse back riders what trail they thought THEY were on. And we weren’t thinking the same.

Orange tree.

One just needs to keep in mind the earlier dispute in 1881. There was obviously confusion there too and they even made it a law to keep it confusing.

Near our home base was a wonderful backyards trail in J.B. Hunt Park. The park covers 105 acres and was a beautiful hour walk that included a path around a  lake, a spring, and orange trees. The oranges looked like brains.

The children received their first ‘real’ paycheck in Arkansas. They were paid to be in a movie shoot with What’s Up, Que Pasa.

Ozark Video needed two 11-year old children that knew a bit of Spanish for a quiz show. Fortunately, we were available and Antonio and Crystel had the right complexion.  This could be the start of something big.

Arkansas is definitely a place to visit. Don’t skirt around it. Stop, if you are in the area.