This week, Julie and I are in rural Kentucky, about an hour south of Louisville. Julie’s mom is Chair of the English Department at Trinity Western University, and a prominent authority on Thomas Merton. Merton was, by apparent consensus, the most significant American spiritual writer of the twentieth century. He was also a monk, and spent the latter half of his life at the Abbey at Gethsemani, a Cistercian monastery here in Kentucky. Julie’s mom spends time down here most summers, and this year we decided to join her.
We’re staying in a house near the Abbey that’s operated as a retreat centre. It’s commonly called ‘the Solar House’, as it was a kind of early green architecture effort. It used to have a translucent roof, to let in the heat. It’s built right into the hillside, on a gravel bed, which I gather helps moderate temperatures throughout the year. It’s got a peculiar, pyramid shape (here’s a photo), though it sits very pleasantly at one end of a huge meadow.
The surrounding countryside brims with life. I’ve seen deer, box turtles, snakes (larger than we grow them back in Canada) and all sorts of birds–blue jays, cardinals, herons, owls, turkey vultures, turtle doves and dozens of other species I don’t recognize.
Of all the places I’ve been, Kentucky reminds me most of Ireland. It’s extraordinarily green–it has rained here every afternoon, like it does in the tropics–and has charming rolling hills. Of course, in Ireland the fences are made of rock, not barbed wire, and there are very few pickup trucks, but there’s a lot of similarity. For no reason other than my own naivete, I expected Kentucky to be more like the country around Austin, Texas. Where Texas was dry and brown, Kentucky is humid and verdant.
I’ve posted a few photos from our trip to Flickr. Tomorrow, time permitting, I’ll tell you about the monks.
We’re back in Bocas Town for some internet access and a few days’ change of scene after a week out at Punta Laurel. I just uploaded sixty photos from the trip (here’s a slide show). If I had to pick three favourites, they would be:
Punta Laurel is essentially a series of thatched huts connected by walkways, built around a big rock and above a coral reef. It’s designed for groups of up to about ten people, but we’re the only people here.
It’s a bit like camp. Things are kind of rustic–there’s a generator for lights in the evening and recharging our laptops, a composting toilet and an outdoor rainwater shower. There are simple activities–swimming, snorkeling, reading, sleeping like a teenager. And somebody cooks for us. Two local women come over in a little boat from the nearest island. The food is simple–fish, lobster, shrimp, lots of rice and fresh fruit–but very satisfactory.
The weather here is as changeable as I’ve ever seen anywhere. The sun shines, it rains, the wind whips up, the sun shines, all in the matter of an hour. It’s been mostly bright, with occasional intense showers.
Muchos Flora y Fauna
It’s a joy to be surrounded by so much wildlife. I spotted my first ever moray eel (I mean, aside from the local aquarium) while snorkeling the other day. I was floating about three feet above some coral, and he unfolded out of a crevice. He rose toward me, all freckled and the bright green of an under-ripe tomato.
I’m man enough to admit that I panicked a little. His snout was easily as big as a small terrier’s. There was no doubt about who was the resident and who was the interloper. He stopped after a foot or so, though, no doubt intimidated by my manic thrashing. I’ve returned to his nook on several occasions to observe the eel, but I’ve kept a little more distance.
I’ve seen dozens of other species of fish whose names I don’t know. Big schools of them. I also saw bioluminescent algae for the first time in my life. Little clouds of it floated by one evening, looking rather like (I searched for a more decorous metaphor) irradiated semen.
There are also flocks of seabirds who regularly circle our little island. Pelicans skim over the waves, frigatebirds wheeling overhead, big white egrets fish off the rocks and little terns spend their evenings perched on the dock. We also saw a harpy eagle, Panama’s national bird.
We’re headed to a different, waterborne resort for a couple of days, and then back to Punta Laurel for another five or six days. On Boxing Day it’s back to Bocas Town, then back to Panama City the next day. We’re going to explore Panama’s capital for a few days before it’s on to Manhattan for New Year’s, and back home in the first days of 2009.
When Twitter–the popular microblogging platform–is down for the count (something that’s been happeninga lot lately), they display this charming image on their website:
I think it’s quite lovely, in a surreal sort of way. And it always struck me as a bit existential. I started to wonder about those eight little birds, and how they must feel about their workload. So, I made this 2-minute video, which features the worst animation you’ve ever seen:
Apologies for my pitiful reading–I’m an awful actor. An actress friend of ours, Mercedes Dunphy, was in town for the weekend, so I got her to do the other voice. She raises the bar considerably. I lifted the opening lines from the seminal first episode of Red vs. Blue, and stole a couple of other lines from Waiting for Godot. There’s also a Douglas Adams reference which, given the presence of a plummeting sperm whale, seemed like a must.
I was a little disappointed by the way both Vimeo and YouTube processed this video. YouTube wouldn’t remotely keep the audio and animation synchronized, and Vimeo cut out the open three seconds of video (hence the overlapping groans), which shows the whale image above to aid with context. I’m pretty new to this video stuff–any recommendations as to how I can upload this to a video-sharing site without it getting all bollocksed up?
Three lizards
One adult finch
One baby bird, species undetermined
Sundry insects, fished from the pool (Except for one cricket, who turned out to be alive. It proved a worryingly excellent swimmer and eluded capture for at least ten minutes.)
We live in the country. It’s the first time I’ve ever spent any real length of time outside of the suburbs or the, uh, urbs. There have been a few things to get used to, chiefly insects and the array of animals, dead and alive, that pitch up on our backyard.
We’ve made friends with a couple of stray cats. Our favourite is a skinny tabby we’ve named Dine n’ Dash, because she tends to eat whatever we feed her, and then scamper off to safety and shade at the far end of the pool deck.
If I’m feeling lazy, I can just leave a corpse for a day or two. The cats will take it, or the patio ants will strip it clean. It’s a remarkable process, and reminds me of that scene in Lord of War where some Africans tear apart a cargo plane in half an hour.
This week, Julie and I are in rural Kentucky, about an hour south of Louisville. Julie’s mom is Chair of the English Department at Trinity Western University, and a prominent authority on Thomas Merton. Merton was, by apparent consensus, the most significant American spiritual writer of the twentieth century. He was also a monk, and spent the latter half of his life at the Abbey at Gethsemani, a Cistercian monastery here in Kentucky. Julie’s mom spends time down here most summers, and this year we decided to join her.
