The Long Winding Road to Get to the Alps

Before I write anything else, I need to acknowledge what’s going to be missing from this post: my Uncle Marc’s comments. Look back at pretty much any post on here before this one (I think every single one except the first four or five) and you’ll see a comment from him. His first comment, on my post about hiking around the Valle d’Aosta, said, “Thanks for sharing – brings back many memories of hiking/backpacking/mountaineering,” and it’s continued like that ever since. His last, about backpacking in the Sierra, repeated that sentiment, “I know the area well from years ago – nice to see it again.”

It’s been nearly a year since I wrote anything on here, and about 10 months since Marc died. To be clear, he killed himself. He was in terrible pain and his mental capacities were fading away. He made a choice I totally understand, but I just wish we lived in a world where that was an easier thing to discuss with loved ones and decide upon in a dignified manner. We all miss him. And I particularly wish that I’d had more of a chance to discuss his mountaineering adventures and perhaps to play a game of chess.

That said, I feel like the proper way to remember him is to keep celebrating the adventures I get to have. I’m sad I won’t get to see whatever little comment he would leave on the posts I write from here out, but, honestly, I mostly write these for myself. If someone else gets some pleasure out of reading my meandering thoughts, that’s great. But, I do want to go on taking the time to remember the best parts of life…especially in these days when so much of the world is deeply misery-inducing.

So…this summer.

This was my second summer working at UCSC. That means less travel time. It’s not like teaching which gave me a two month break every summer. So, we got in bits of fun and adventure as we could across June and July, before taking a working trip across the US and finally flying off to the Alps for three weeks of hiking in August and September.

One of the highlights of the early part of the summer was going backpacking with our friends Gina and Jason. They love the Sierra like we do, but hadn’t been backpacking since they were much younger. Jessica gave them her standard pep talk / warning about packing light and we made a 3 day loop plan. We drove into the Sierra basically as far as you can get in from the west side anywhere south of Yosemite — Lake Thomas Edison. It was a crazy twisty drive, where after a few hours of hairpin turns at 15 miles an hour, a sign ironically proclaimed “end freeway” as if we had been cruising at 60 the whole way.

Lake Edison is a dammed lake where a ferry runs daily from between the eastern end, just off the John Muir Trail, and the western end, home to Vermillion Valley Resort (a tiny hotel and campground that provides resupply services to backpackers on the JMT and Pacific Crest Trail) just beyond the end of our “freeway.” From there we looped north on the JMT, over Silver Pass, past the poorly named lakes, over Goodale Pass, and back down to VVR. The early season mosquitoes were a bummer, but the views and the company were great.

Of course, I also did some hiking around Santa Cruz, including walking around UCSC nearly every day I’m on campus. If you get far enough out, the campus backs right up to Henry Cowell State Park, and the redwoods there are incredibly lovely. Turkeys, deer, and banana slugs (actual slugs, not just students) are seen almost daily.

I went to the “No Kings” protest in June (and, actually, again just this past weekend). It’s nice to be with several thousand people who also think all is not well. My favorite signs were the ones that said something like, “There’s too much shit going on to fit on one sign.” I also enjoyed all the Star Wars: Andor references (“I have friends everywhere.”)

I wish I had more organizing energy, but I don’t. I do a lot of bouncing ideas around with Jess to help her out in all she’s doing with Council of UC Faculty Associations (she’s co-prez now), but just can’t get myself to do anything significant. Regardless, I’ll keep showing up where I can when others have something going on.

I also managed to get to a number of concerts recently. Elvis Costello at the Masonic in SF was fun, but sometimes he seemed a little off key or something. Lyle Lovett at the Mountain Winery was hilarious. He’s a great story teller and had some great babbles about his kids and even his morning checking out the Saratoga farmers market. However, his voice cracked a ton while singing. The music was still beautiful, but he’s clearly reaching the end of his singing career. (That said, the backup singers were AMAZING. The guy on the end closest to us had a bass voice that made the seats rumble.)

Probably the most fun I’ve had at a show in a while was when I saw one of the few reunion shows of the Dance Hall Crashers. They were a band I was into in my high school ska-fanatic years (and at the center of one of my favorite high school memories). They were exactly as I remembered them (Karina is a nut, Elyse barely moves), but older, with their kids in the audience. It was ridiculous high energy fun and was extra special being part of an audience where practically everyone knew every word of every song. Here’s one…

We also had some good visits with friends. Sarah flew in from Boston to spend a week goofing around with us, Matt joined us for a brief hike on one of his work visits to UCSC, we saw a couple of baseball games with John and AR in Los Angeles and San Diego, and we even got to spend an evening with Sam who was in the area (much closer than Germany!) for work for a few days. The only one who seemed not to be having a good time with us was Kona, Annie Rose’s gorgeous but grumpy cat.

In August, we finally got out of California. The first two weeks away, though, we were both working. Jessica attended the American Sociological Association meetings in Chicago, while I worked in my cousin Jim’s apartment with this amazing view…

Since I was working on Pacific Time, but existing in Central Time, I used the mornings (and weekend) to run around Chicago as much as possible. Overall, Chicago is a great city. Highly recommended. The waterways winding around the center provide some interesting visual breaks, and the mix of art deco and modern architecture is quite pleasant. One of the most interesting places I stumbled across (100% by accident! — the museum across the street was closed!) was the Chicago Cultural Center. It’s an amazing old building with all sorts of fascinating design elements, including the largest Tiffany glass dome in the world.

It also had a bunch of cool art exhibits. There was one on graffiti, another that played on the artist’s Haitian heritage, and one on Danish pro-social housing design concepts. That last one was particularly fascinating — I loved the model they had for a single-parents housing co-op made up of small apartments consisting of a master bedroom, kid’s bedroom, and a small kitchen, but with a huge common room on each floor with space to play, lounge, gather, etc. There was also an exhibit of posters celebrating the “Great Ideas of Humanity” with quotes and images from artists and social justice leaders among others. This one is a reminder to myself to get off my butt and do some organizing…maybe…someday.

Another day, I went to the somewhat disappointing Chicago History Museum. There were some fine things, but nothing that really got me too excited. There was one nice exhibit of Chicago movements of the 60s and 70s, including this sign that reminded me of a film I used to show my students about second wave feminist movements.

I also visited the always-incredible Art Institute of Chicago and worked there from opening to closing. I worked in a few different café settings, but also took advantage of the free wifi to work in galleries when I didn’t have to be talking to anyone. I worked in front of Chagall’s America Windows, in another gallery with a dozen Monets, and several others. I’ll also give the Art Institute a thumbs up for having publicly available power outlets. When I tried this same scenario at the Met in NYC earlier in the spring, I got told to move along by several security guards who didn’t like my use of the plugs.

We also managed to catch up with a couple of friends in Chicago, having dinner with an ex-coworker, Sierra, and walking around the Andersonville neighborhood with Michele, one of my co-explorers from 2024’s adventure in South Coyote Buttes.

We also had dinner with my brother twice! Once with Darlene and once with Rosa. But, how many pictures did I take of them? Zero. I’m a fool. Don’t worry Indiana Cohns — I still love you despite not recording it in a digital image! Looking forward to seeing you at Thanksgiving!

After Chicago, we made a quick weekend stop in New Haven, CT to attend Sam’s Bar Mitzvah. No, not Sam who visited from Germany (above), but Sam, the son of my friends Ira and Ruth. Despite the fact that I always get weirded out by religious ceremonies, it was actually really nice to be there. We got to renew relationships with a variety of Ira and Ruth’s other friends who we’ve met over the years and got to goof around with Sam and Sarah, their kids, a bit. There was a fun group dinner one night and a kite-flying, carousel-riding party after the ceremony.

Sam did a great job with his interpretation of the Torah portion he read (I can’t comment on his reading, but he wasn’t corrected, so I guess he did it well). The Torah portion was all about God smiting the enemies of the Israelites to give them access to new land. Sam cited a bunch of religious scholars saying, “that’s not how I understand God to function in the world,” more or less. Let’s just say it was a bit of an ironic Torah portion for a peace-loving kid.

And (face-palm), once again, I failed to get a key picture. The only picture I have of Sam from the whole weekend is one of him with his back to the camera while riding the carousel. Whoops! Sorry, Sam! I still love you too! Looking forward to seeing you at New Year’s!

Jessica and I then spent the next week with my parents in beautiful and tranquil Boothbay Harbor, Maine. We took walks in the morning, worked through the afternoon and early evening (still on California hours), and ate a ton of seafood while catching up with the Cohn crew.

Mostly, it was a pretty low key week. We enjoyed playing a bunch of games, completed a puzzle, and just chatted a lot. One morning we went to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens which has a ton of flowers, a ton of trails, and just a great overall landscape. Beautiful and highly recommended. On an unfortunately grey day, we took the mail boat to Squirrel Island. This was a great trip. We got excellent views around Boothbay Harbor with a bit of narrative describing the human and geological highlights of the area. At the far end of the trip, we pulled up to Squirrel Island, where mail was unloaded along with a handful of passengers. The island is only inhabited during the summer, but the most interesting thing there is the “no wheels” rule. There are no bikes or cars with the exception of two trucks that can be used for large deliveries on the island. Each family has a small wheelbarrow (those have wheels, don’t they?) at the dock that they use for carrying groceries and such to their houses, but otherwise it’s a completely walking-based island. Sounds pleasantly quiet.

I’ll finish the Maine travelogue by mentioning that one of my favorite things about the hundreds of lobster traps all around the area was the variety of the buoys. Each lobsterperson (lobsterman seems to deny the existence of lobsterwomen, right?) has their own particular color combination to mark which traps belong to them. I particularly appreciated the totem pole of abandoned buoys across the street from the house we were renting.

After our two weeks of working while traveling, the real vacation started. We enjoyed a stop for dinner with Sarah in Boston and then flew off to Venice to meet up with Jessica’s parents as the first step of our trek to the Alps.

We spent two days in Venice and basically did nothing other than walk and eat. No museums. No historical sites. No real plan. Just wandering and eating. And gelato. Lots of gelato.

Venice is built for wandering. There’s a million little alleyways and canals, dozens of gorgeous plazas and churches. And no traffic. It’s so quiet and calm and peaceful.

I was here one other time, during a break in college in 1999. The next year, I wrote my honors thesis about public transportation and urban space, and before I really focused in, I was pretty sure I wanted to write a chapter using Venice as the ideal of a walking city. It didn’t work out that way, but it really is an amazing place to just meander aimlessly and endlessly.

Like many other places in Italy, Venice has this wonderful quality of crumbling in an incredibly picturesque manner. How Italians manage to maintain so many places in a state just between crumbling and functional is a secret I don’t understand, but definitely appreciate.

I got a little obsessed with the variety of doors in the city. Stately, ornate, classic, modern, or even shockingly decrepit — the variety even along one calle or around a small courtyard could be quite dramatic. I really enjoyed the lack of standardized design choices within an overall unified look to the architecture of the city.

In my fantasy of living in Italy, I got very excited about the idea of having my own private bridge across a canal to my front door. Not that I’m big on private property or real estate in general, but I just thought it was such a great example of the ridiculous engineering that the canals of Venice demand.

Venice also has another type of door worth noting: the water door. These are doors that serve as direct house-to-boat exits. Obviously, they were even crumblier, but still beautiful.

Jessica also went out of her way to help demonstrate some of the most ridiculous doors…

Mark and Sue also took us to a most unusual place: a grocery store inside an old theater.

Meanwhile, in our wanderings, I joined Mark in his obsession with “the commerce” — the use of canals for getting everything in and out of the city. Probably the most fascinating were the trash boats. Small armies of trash collectors hauled carts around, delivering them to the boats’ cranes which lifted them over the canal and deposited them in the correct place. The mechanism that kept the trash in until it was properly positioned was pretty ingenious.

But, mostly, our time in Venice was spent in getting our bodies adjusted to the time difference so we’d be ready to hike. After a little over 48 hours in town, we gathered our laundry and got ready to head to the mountains…

More on the Alps in the next several posts.

Until I write again, sending my love to everyone in these terrible times. Let’s try to remember the lovely things in life that we’re fighting to preserve. And thanks to my Uncle Marc for sharing my love of adventure. You are missed.