Category: TRAVEL

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Gotham City

Everything that is loved and hated about America resides in the 5 borough metropolis known as New York City.  The most populous city in the United States retains its place as a leader in almost everything that is going to be anything, and often does it in excess.  In my trips there I have palpably felt the energy that so many people coming together to be in the high temple of the American Experiment create, and no other western city comes close.  Its in the speed of the walk, the buildings, the bustle, the lights, and the pizzazz that takes you in its bosom and makes you want to be part of it.  It is very likely, with all its irritations and headaches, what freedom feels like, and everybody there knows it.

    New York City was placed from the very beginning to be the crown prince of American commerce.  Positioned at the end of the Hudson and East Rivers and owning one of the best deep water ports in the world, early New York by the Revolutionary War was already the home to  pre-eminent citizens like Alexander Hamilton, and was a key battle ground in 1776 when the newly independent American nation almost saw its entire army get swallowed by a massive British force.  It remained in British hands through the war, considered too important to abandon even at the end of the conflict when British troops in Yorktown desperately needed relief.  The city was chosen as the early national capitol and the first President Washington to his oath and presided there.  The next century saw spectacular growth for the city with teems of immigrants initiating their search for the American Dream in New York City, and many staying.  It remains the ultimate first home melting pot that has always separated (at least until lately) the American immigrant experience from that of any other country on earth.  At 8.2 million people and a metropolitan population exceeding 23 million, the city holds sway over almost every cultural trend in entertainment, sports, commerce, fashion, health care, and education.

     Manhattan is the home of the New York image, and is felt in its massive skyscrapers in such a way that  other cities aspiring to be great, like Shanghai,  Singapore, Taipei, and Dubai City have sought to outbuild the skyscraper experience in an effort to capture the “power”  of New York.  Walking up 5th Avenue the king of buildings is still the magnificent Empire State Building, with a soaring structure of concrete and glass that speaks to  the power of great capacities and entrepreneurial will. From every direction it singularly dominates and reminds you always that this is  THE city. Close by is one of the great reading rooms in the world at the New York Public Library.  it simply makes you want to learn.   Just up the road is the vast Grand Central Station with a ceiling of stars that reminds the traveler that he is close to the center of the universe.  Finally at the corner of 59th and 5th, the majesterial Plaza Hotel guarding Central Park.  Its not important to stay there, where room charges exceed monthly mortgage payments, but its fun to pretend and imagine the days when the Roosevelts and the Vanderbilts used the carriage circle.   Across the wide boulevard you enter the otherworld of Central Park, designed by the brilliant Frederick Law Olmsted to be transformational zone of tranquility in the bustling chaos of the city.  

  

Mid-Central Park , the park is bookended by  Museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Natural History Museum , which have lavish collections that require days of view to appreciate their width and breath.

 If your legs haven’t left you, the west side avenue takes you to Columbus Circle, and down to Times Square and Broadway.  I finally end this tour with a nighttime skate at Rockefeller Center and imagine a night with the Rat Pack in the Rainbow Room. 

     Travel is meant to be transformative.  No one wants to feel at home when one takes the time and effort to be away from  home.  New York City for me defines city, and I have only scratched its wonderful surface.  If you get a chance, give this great city another look, and get ready to be entertained.

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A Fine Man, a Wattwil Native Son

       An especially favorite uncle passed today; he was a tremendous brother to my mother, a great friend to my father, a wonderful husband and father to his family.  I want to especially honor him today by reflecting  on how he brought his heimat – the love and attachment to a homeland –  to me, a nephew with whom he struggled to share a language, but with whom he communicated perfectly the importance of loving one’s family, one’s roots, one’s country and land.  He never lost the projection of wonder he felt for the shared experience with his family and the connection of the family to the physical surroundings.  I want to share these places with you , and in some small way, thank him, for making it all come real for me.

     He was born and raised in Wattwil, a textile town founded in the middle Ages in the valley of the Toggenberg in the canton St. Gallen in the country of Switzerland, framed by the mountains he loved and first presented to me, the majestic Santis to the north and the Churfirsten to the south.  He introduced me  to mountains as venerated places and as wonderful windows on the bigger world that dwarfs us all.

      A religious man, he introduced me to the soaring accomplishments of spiritual builders of hundreds of years before, in the spectacular facades and cornices of the Benedictine monastery at Einsiedeln.

      A physically fit and active man, he introduced me to skiing at Hoch -Ybrig and Engelberg and the wonders of hiking at Grindelwald and the End Of The World at Engelberg.


     A family man, he introduced me to my wonderful cousins, who have brought me into their lives and successes and cemented in me forever the awareness of the connection of people overwhelming any obstacle of time or distance.

     For all he brought all of us, I will miss him dearly,  remember him always, and wish him so very well on his new journey.

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Happy National Day, My Switzerland

   Switzerland is a small country in a sea of much larger countries on the European continent.  One doesn’t associate it with typically boastful patriotism; it has prided itself on an outwardly neutral posture on the world stage, which has served its independence well.  Regardless, it is my familial homeland, and  on this day of August 1, a quiet boastfulness is appropriate.  The birth origins of the country of Switzerland are more romantically and mythically linked then most countries. As history’s record would have it, in early August of 1291, a group of like minded proudly independent men met on the meadow at Rutli to form a confederation of three homelands, the current Swiss Cantons (or States) of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, to declare their mutual support , and assert their independence from the Austro-German Empire of the time.  The Emperor Rudolf of Hapsburg had recently died, and the swiss homelands were concerned that their relative independence in action allowed by the old emperor were not likely to be respected by the new ruler.  Legend has it the driving force for the pact was sealed by the actions of Wilhelm Tell, a Swiss archer who killed the evil and dictatorial Austrian bailiff Gessler, thereby throttling the independence movement.

     As with all independence movements the price to be paid was not without bloodshed; the difficult battle victories against the Hapsburgs at Morgarten in 1315 and Sempach in 1386 were required to cement the confederation’s independence in the eyes of the Holy Roman Empire. By 1353 the original three cantons had grown to eight, and further victories on the battlefield cemented the Swiss early reputation as invincible warriors and willing mercenaries. the Pope Julius II acknowledged this reputation in his selection of the Swiss Guards as his security force in 1506, a relationship that continues to this day.

     The Swiss passion for fighting continued for hundreds of years in their need to fiercely guard their independence. It took the mighty armies of Napoleon to finally overrun the Swiss and abolish the canton structure, resulting in the formation of the Helvetic Republic in 1798 under French rule. It took no time at all for Napoleon to realize his mistake, and the independence of the unruly Swiss was re-established in 1803, and formalized permanently by Europe at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.  Since the formal declaration of a Swiss Federation and Constitution in 1848, the cantons of Switzerland have maintained a position of neutrality in all future European conflicts, a course that has been maintained not without difficulty at times severe stresses.

     The land now known as Switzerland centrally located on the European landmass has always served a pivotal role in European history. From its home to primordial Bronze age man establishing lake communities ~ 3800BC, through the tribes of Helvetii known to Caesar as guardians of the crucial passes through the alpine backbone of Europe, to the early Christian monasteries established by St Gotthard and St Bernard, as a home of the Reformation drive by the Swiss theologians Calvin and Zwingli, through its current reputation as an engineering, banking and manufacturing powerhouse belying its size, the nation of Switzerland has been an important player in the development of western civilization.

Oh…and its not bad looking, either.     Happy Birthday, Switzerland!
…and a little video of martial pride…

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Great Drives – Highway 1 , Big Sur

     I have participated in many great drives over the last twenty five years that have expanded dramatically my sense of country.  One of my particular favorites is the stretch of California Highway 1 which prominently clings to the shore line and presents with some of the most beautiful  and spiritual vistas in America.   The thirty some miles running south between Carmel and Big Sur, California is particularly rich in jaw dropping views and has many special places that demand a stop and absorb kind of moment.  Just three miles south of Carmel, the State Park at Point Lobos is a must with spectacular ocean meets coast vistas and wonderful walking trails. Sea Lion Point and China Cove stay with you forever. From the park the highway continues south and opens into magnificent views and harrowing curves that were meant for an open convertible or motorcycle and should be experienced in that travel fashion to truly be memorable. Several more state parks organize the wild coastline for you and give many opportunities to drop to the beaches themselves. The untouched character of the coastline is what is especially appealing and when need to thank our forebears for their prescience. As the road climbs across Bixby Bridge and heads into the cliffs and woods of Big Sur, the views from Post Ranch make the Pacific Ocean stand up to its name as the greatest body of water on Earth.
If you need to get away a little, make the jog down from San Francisco and take Highway 1. It makes you glad that we still have places that we have preserved for the individual to experience nearly for free, what the king could not purchase for all the money on Earth.


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The West is Jackson

      A very special place on earth is Jackson, Wyoming. A little town of 8600 inhabitants sits in one of the most beautiful venues on earth and is definitely worth a trip to see and experience. The town is the gateway to some of the more spectacular natural formations on the American continent. Rising over thirteen thousand feet above the valley, the Teton range dominates the visual experience with its almost perfect isolation from its brothers farther north in the Absaroka range. The king mountain is the Grand Teton, shark tooth-like and intimidating, shadowing the crystal clear lakes below, Jenny Lake and the larger Jackson Lake , and adjacent to the equally beautiful peak, Mt. Moran.

The valley is rent by the the dramatic rapids of the Snake River, providing some of the best white water experience in the world, and flowing through the basin of the National Elk Refuge, a massive expanse that allows the wild herds of Elk to migrate from Canada south into their nature refuge for mating and raising their young, often followed by the Yellowstone bison herd.

     The town of Jackson is eclectic, with movie stars and former political stars hobnobbing with ranchers, outbackers, and cowboys. The real experience however is the sprawling outdoors that pulls the naturist in you to every corner of the entire valley from the Tetons to the great falls of the Yellowstone. Most of the excitement is on foot, but even surfers can find a reason to visit.

Western Adventure – that’s the idea….

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Don Pedro de Peralta’s city is 400 years old

     At the base of the majestic Sangre de Cristo mountains lies a small town with a history as big as the vistas of the ancient inland sea that lies before it.  The Spanish explorer Coronado was searching for the mystical Seven Cities of Gold in the vast southwest corner of the North American continent, but stumbled instead upon small collections of humanity the Spanish referred to as pueblos. These aboriginal people traced their scattered lines of ancestry back to the Anasazi, the great nomads that had inhabited the area with the retraction of the great glacier mass at the end of the last ice age.   The humble adobe dwellings did nothing to reduce the Spanairds’ interest in territory, however, and this area among others was incorporated into a massive New World empire formed by the Iberians with its capitol the former home of the Aztec race, Tenochtitla’n, renamed by the conquerors Ciudad de Mexico. Before long the value of lines of communication with the northern outposts brought the development of the Camino de Real, with a spoke of the trade road brought to the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, to the front door of the Tewa Pueblo.

     In 1610, the royal governor, Don Pedro de Peralta based his territorial capital proximant to the Tewa Pueblo, and renamed the new city, Villa Real de la Santa Fe’ de San Francisco de Asis, soon known as Santa Fe.  His Palace of the Governors still stands and is a working building to this day.  The heavy hand of the Spanish proved too much to bear, and a violent uprising by the Pueblo people led to the abandonment of the city by the Spanish from 1680 until 1692. Don Diego de Vargas brought the Spaniards back in 1692 in a “peaceful” rapprochement with the natives, which led to 130 years of quiet but uneasy co-existence.  This would prove undisturbed until a new competitor nation with an aggressive President Jefferson, bought the Louisiana Purchase from France and turned its young eyes to the great western expanse of the continent.

     It did not take the new American nation long to discover the strategic value of the little hamlet of Santa Fe.  The explorer Zebulon Pike in 1806, along with defining the southern extension of the Louisiana Purchase, managed to find the northern extension of the New Spain, and spent a little time in a jail in Santa Fe for his efforts.  Upon release, he reported a bustling commerce at Santa Fe that possibly would provide a trade door for American goods. It would take until 1821, when a trader named William Becknell, established a feasible trade route to Santa Fe and established what would become known as the Santa Fe Trail.  From 1821 until 1880, when the railroads finally overtook the capacity of the oxcart, a caravan of wagons annually travelled from Franklin, Missouri (modern Kansas City)  along a difficult six week journey across the inland ocean of plainsgrass to Santa Fe. The hazards and romance of this voyage are beautifully described in the diaries of Susan Shelby Magoffin, who travelled the route at its height in 1846-47.

  SANTA FE TRAIL   (wikipedia)

     The expansionist pull of the American nation to the Pacific shore and the Rio Grande inevitably led to the tensions with Mexico that led to war, and in 1846, General Stephen Kearny lead American troops permanently into the New Mexico territory and established the territorial capital in Santa Fe.  With the trains in the 1880’s came growth, and the new American state of New Mexico joined the union in 1912, with Santa Fe its capital. 

     I have visited this little city many times in my life, and have never failed to feel its history as much as anywhere I have stood in this great nation.  Happy 400th Birthday, Santa Fe, New Mexico.