George's blog

Did you miss Slow Down Week? Me too... According to a clever flash anime cartoon over at Adbusters, January 14-20, 2007 was national break-the-pace week, a reminder that "slow living" is good. Better. Necessary? We think so.

 

When I talk to people about the Margaux Project and the idea of "immersion travel" they often say, "Oh, you mean like slow travel?" Yes, partly that's what we're all about. As well as culturally authentic travel (or real travel), responsible travel (eco-tourism and sustainable practices), adventure travel and good old fashioned flaneur-ing.

I've just returned to the warmth of my brother and sister-in-law's apartment outside Paris after wandering around the Puce de Clignancourt in the rain. Rain... Yuck! It made me yearn for snow, and when I dropped by the New York Times for a look at the world, "Finding Bliss in Avalanche Country, British Columbia" grabbed my attention. I'm ready to go skiing.

"What makes the skiing there [Rogers Pass in the Canadian Rockies], great is also what makes it foreboding: its annual snowfall of 567 inches — over 47 feet — one of the deepest in Canada."

Mark Sundeen's article is a good read, not just for the good storytelling, but for his get-me-out of the mainstream approach to skiing.

"Hot tubs and sushi notwithstanding, for someone who likes the backcountry, skiing at resorts and sleeping in motels is ultimately a bummer. So the next day, we pasted climbing skins to our skis, tested our beacons and skied into the woods, where we would spend the next two nights at the A. O. Wheeler Hut, a rustic log cabin about half an hour from the road."

Of course this is after a day of lapping the groomers at the Kicking Horse resort in Golden due to the high avalanche risks brought on with the massive snowfall. But as soon as the conditions are safe (safer?) he and his buddy head for the wilds. After crashing out for the night with a couple of dozen Canadians, they awake and for higher elevation, treking on their skis. Despite carrying avalanche security beacons in their packs, the feeling of security was distant for the the author as they advanced into the avalanche-prone backcountry.

"I didn’t feel particularly safe. Munzke predicted that our ridge would very likely split an avalanche from above onto the flanks on either side, and assured me if I just breathed a bit more slowly everything would be fine. So we dug a pit to analyze the stability of the snow, which Munzke declared to be favorable, then sat on our packs and ate salami and cheese and pieces of chocolate."

Then they were off, floating down toward the valley below through thigh deep virgin powder. Sound good? Still raining in Paris...

I've just returned to the warmth of my brother and sister-in-law's apartment outside Paris after wandering around the Puce de Clignancourt in the rain. Rain... Yuck! It made me yearn for snow, and when I dropped by the New York Times for a look at the world, "Finding Bliss in Avalanche Country, British Columbia" grabbed my attention. I'm ready to go skiing.

Oooomph! Another wheelie suitcase is bashed into your shins as the mob jockeys toward the overwhelmed attendants at the gate. They've just announced that your "red eye" home from a business trip has been canceled. That charming news after sitting in the terminal waiting for two hours because it was delayed! With your pulse skyrocketing and your hopes plummeting you jostle through the crowd while dialing your wife on your cell phone to let her know that you might not be making it home this evening.

Hibiscus with Plumeria, Georgia O'KeefeBluebird skies, warm weather and few tourists. Friday's visit to the Shelburne Museum to view the Georgia O'Keefe exhibition was a technicolor success. We had friends visiting for the last week, a couple and their three young children, and we planned a day trip to see O'Keefe's paintings, to wander around the living history exhibits, tour the steamboat Ticonderoga and generally ramble the beautiful grounds.

Sometimes I realize that I've flagged too many things to blog and that the list is getting longer and I'm not catching up, so... I have to decide either to dump all the leads I wanted to blog or offer them up in mini-form. Here's my decision:

• Free Frequent Flyer Miles - "There are many, many ways to acquire free frequent flyer miles without actually flying on the airline giving you the miles.
  

A sort of uncanny coincidence pertaining to responsible/sustainable travel. Yesterday morning I was listening to a podcast from Travel with Rick Steves called "Ethical Travels on a Green Planet". If you've never caught this show on NPR, you should subscribe to his podcasts. You can access all the archives too. Although we've been known to take a poke at the Rick Steves approach to travel now and again, his radio show is good, and he interviews great talent. But I found something a little ironic about an episode dedicated to ethical travel that started out with Steves taking a call from a traveler who chronicled a rather unscrupulous incident in Egypt. And voicing his enthusiastic approval!

Edward Albee tackled that "tiny speck of South Pacific lava" called Easter Island in the New York Times recently. In addition to a slew of fantastic photographs, Albees article is filled with wonder and youthful enthusiasm (despite his almost 80 years), a sort of open rumination on one of history's mysteries, a culture "which grew, fell into decadence and vanished." He encourages an extended stay (no less than a five day stay is acceptable, he says) to fully experience this island settled over 1,300 years ago by wayward Polynesians who originally named it Rapa Nui. It should come as no surprise that Albee, a thrice lauded Pulitzer prize winner, tells his story well. He describes the view from Rano Kau, one of three massive volcanoes which formed the island:

Do you remember the recent New York Times redesign? (New becomes old so quickly online!) Executive Editor, Bill Keller, shares some words about the new look of the website in a recent "Talk to the Newsroom". Avnita, an NY Times online reader asked, "Where has the 'sexyness' gone?" and cited a shift away from the former site's "boldness, 3-D-ness, brevity, and focus... [to the new] flat, monotone, colorless, and long" format. Ouch. Gotta say, I'm a big fan of the new and mostly-improved website, but the "pop" factor does seem have have been reduced. I still can't articulate exactly what's bothering my eyes when I visit the the front page, but it does seem sort of flat. Too little color contrast in the ink colors, perhaps? Or too narrow a font? Still not certain, but it is somehow more challenging to read and navigate the actual pages despite the fact that the overall organizational and navigational handling is so significantly improved. Another reader, Kannan Nambiar, opines that the "cyan color that you use for the headings on the front page looks too light to me." Hmmm... could be.

It took a little waiting for, but it did finally come. And then, inevitably, I missed it! But fret not, patient e-Margonauts, I'll not let you likewise miss it. Here's the skinny... Former e-Marginalia Travel Editor, Nana Chen, was interviewed over at Wayne Yang's blog. If you missed the opportunity to get to know this stellar photographer/writer/painter, then you better start clicking. Here are the links you need:

• Nana Chen Interview, Part I
• Nana Chen Interview, Part II
• Nana Chen Interview, Part III

Nana's photos have inspired many, and her interviews with notable travelers consistently capture honest, frank snapshots of the sorts of adventurers that fascinate us so. It's refreshing to have the magnifying glass turned on her for a change! Several memorable passages lingered in my mind after reading Yang's new posting:

"In moving so much, I’ve come to long for things that hold still, that give me a sense of stability. I know this is unrealistic, however. Life is not still and wanting it to be so is such a contradiction... [W]hen I finish something, be it a photograph, painting or story, it is there to return to."

"I’m merely a gatherer of words, sentences and expressions that, on good days, can be retrieved when I need them..."