Less is Plenty

                                         Less is Plenty

Pre-departure Hope time. Definitely going to miss this!

    Part of what felt so overwhelming about leaving on this trip is that we have so many things.  2 structures, 3 cars, so many bikes, skis, instruments, tools, sheetrock, gallons of paint… etc… a dog, a hamster, a newt, our bills and services….  Things we don’t need here- a worm farm.  We found homes for our homes.  Made a list for everything else we wanted to re-home for a year and titled it “Beesley lending list.” One by one in the months before we left, items left our possession.  Cosmo, the newt you may know from the highly acclaimed story “Fire Belly,” found himself in the palms of his oldest friend and family.  Now, Cosmo gets to run his chilly little feet along two new sets of tiny palms.   

    As a casualty of Covid, the first thing to go was my job.  And with it went the act of flying, save for in my dreams.  Even now, one and a half years after I detached my headset from the last airplane I flew, asleep at night, I fly all over the world- often stealing airplanes and landing them in parking lots or airstrips cut into the sides of mountains.  Suzie decided not to hold on to her practice; letting go of a professional structure years in construction.  The house, yurt, bikes, skis, wood, cars, pets and on and on….we sold or rented, gave away or loaned until we reached our goal years in the making- to be unemployed with 500 lbs of luggage and enough money to last a year in Ecuador.  

    2460 miles and 15 degrees latitude took us to Missoula where our puffy coats, hats and gloves were useless.  We left our lives and friends in Alaska and delivered ourselves to family hugs and gatherings.  We wouldn’t see our friends for a long time but with grandmas and cousins, sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews, our lives felt full.  We had a fabulous lake house to sleep in, surf boat enthusiasts eager to teach us, and time sweet time to play games and laugh.  We celebrated the 4th of July in Trout Creek MT with ribs and beer and neighbors who spent thousands of dollars on incendiary devices.  They then blasted them off into sparkles above the water (talk about transient possessions!).  One family in the neighborhood satisfied themselves with about 50 bucks of fireworks and a handful of sparklers to air-write words and have Matthew and I guess.  

                                                                    

Sunset at Trout Creek

Oh, Robin!

The Montana crew: Avery, Claude, Nina, Sam, Susie, me, Reese, Noah, Allie, Matthew, Locke, Dianne (aka Mom aka Grandma), Sophie, Sara, Robin. 

                                                                   

Surfing was a highlight of our MT time!

    We wanted to travel in the lower 48 but we didn’t have a car so we bought one.  After a satisfactory virtual showing, we bought a silver minivan sight unseen and had it delivered from Portland to Missoula.  We also bought the world’s tiniest pop-up camper 5 people can sleep in.  We messed up on some math though.  The specs said that the van can pull 3500 lbs and our pop-up weighs 1800 lbs.  That’s fine.  But, our family weighs in at 600 lbs plus the 500 lbs of stuff we carried and all of the food we needed to travel and camp.  So, once we loaded up the van and lowered the tongue of the camper onto the hitch, the van squatted to about 3 inches from the ground.  We had to wrap the chains around the tongue so that they wouldn’t drag.  Nevertheless, we set off South from Missoula planning to cover thousands of miles in our low-riding new home, aka the Saggin’ Wagon.  

                                                                

                                                                   

    We drove through the tight canyons of Idaho.  We pointed out that one of Robin Sage Beesley’s names came from the plant that grew all over the hills.  As the temperature was always somewhere between 90 and 100, we were always looking for water to cool off.

    In fact it was so hot, sunny and dusty that we didn’t even bother to bring rain jackets on our backpacking trip.  Thought we could do without those.  After 14 straight days at surface of mercury temperatures surely 2 more sunny days were likely.  We hiked out to Alice lake in the Sawtooths (a pale, jagged, and wild mountain range with “gin-clear” water as my friend put it).  I love that piney, floral comparison.  We lathered on sunblock and made sure that we swam in the lower lake before we set out.  We marched up slowly, happy to have saved the 4 lbs. that our rain gear weighs.  “Ounces lead to pounds and pounds lead to pain.” -Dave Bass

                                                 

Looked like a great campsite!

    The next day at noon it rained and rained.  At the time, we were climbing a peak we named “bone crusher.”  We got wet— no biggie.  We were sure the shower would end soon.  But it rained all the way back down to camp and showed no signs of letting up.  So we crawled back into our floor-less tipi tent where we drank tea and ate ramen and played Mah Jhongg.  Water began to drip off the edge of the tent and run into the middle of the divet we chose to camp in.  As the game went on, a puddle grew and grew until the muddy murk encompassed a significant portion of our floor space and a third of Robin’s thermarest was floating in it.  We pulled the last card from the stack of Mah Jhongg cards and realized there would be no winner—a wall game, which frustrated us all.  We were wet, cranky, and low.  All three kids pushed for an immediate hike out, half in the dark.  But, when we got out of the tent to pack up and go, the rain had all but stopped.  And, looking at the ground around us, our little concave camping spot was the only pond around (besides lake Alice).  So, after much debate and child reassuring, we moved camp to a dry spot and had a great night.             

                                         

Dayhike to the pass, just before the rain started.

                                                                    

“Bone Crusher” summit!

                                                                    

Wow! I can’t believe we camped here. It seemed so great……. until it didn’t.

                                                                    

New camp spot

Beautiful Lake Alice

After the storm. Happy campers.

    Our party continued South to Craters of the Moon National Monument.  A series of volcanoes erupted there 2000 years ago and covered 618 square miles of vegetation with hot lava that eventually cooled into a sheet of black rock.  A perfect location for a deserted planet in a Star Trek episode, this stretch of seeming nothingness is not only stunningly gorgeous but also somehow home to an abundance of flora and fauna.  One person’s nowhere is another’s everywhere.  I recommend the stop to anyone traveling through.  The rocks are really sharp, however.  Locke discovered this underwater at a lovely nearby hot spring when one of those pointy, 2000-year-old rocks sliced through his skin a few millimeters away from his eyeball.  Suzie’s medical kit proved to be worth its weight and her glue training from medical school (which seems quite similar to the kids’ art class glue training) closed up Locke’s wound nicely and avoided a long, expensive trip to the hospital.  

                                                                    

The most perfect hot spring ever, until it sliced Locke’s eye.

Running up moonscape

    We parked our house on wheels in our friends’ driveway (thanks Greg and Missy) next to a pod that houses their own shedding experience.  They are happily snuggling in their small downstairs apartment just like us in the camper as they remodel their house.  Each of us with less, that night in their backyard, we enjoyed plenty of food, plenty of beer, and plenty of laughter.  Also, one thing that became very clear throughout the 60 degree latitude span of our travels: whoever makes those strings of outdoor led lights made an absolute killing last year. 

    Robin opened up a shop in Dinosaur National Monument called “Drinks” and operated it out of the back of the van.  Her inventory for the store consisted of the contents of the cooler. Each drink cost “free.” She worked on tips and we were her only customers. 

                                                                

Drinks!

The menu

     Also of note, Dinosaur National Park has a two story rock wall sealed into a football length structure with the exposed petrified skeletons of sooo many dinosaurs.  Apparently 149 million years ago a flood washed the corpses of dinosaurs (thought to have died in a drought) down river to the muddy bottom of a lake.  There they lay and slowly turned to stone over millions of years before paleontologist Earl Douglass found them in 1909.  He excavated a bunch of them and then advocated heavily for leaving a ton of them still encased in rock for all of us to see.  149 million years.  It’s tempting to round up to 150 but you’re talking about a million years there.  I stared up at the towering rock walls of the canyon next to our campsite and admired the product of a thousand million years of formation.  I stood now in the Green river which eroded those rocks over millions of years, and I tried to hold on to the forever of the place.  I stood on a riverbed formed somewhere on Earth right before the breakup of the pre-pangea supercontinent Rodinia as this winters’ snow melt flowed around my legs.  

                                                                    

Fossil wall

In Dinosaur we camped along the Green River. 

    In another celebration of impressive history, we got together with Suzie’s family. With a book months in the making, lots of love, hugs, and tears, we honored Rob and Marilyn’s 51 years of marriage.  This event took place on Michael and Rachel’s anniversary.  Also in Vail, we decided that we’ve now hit the peak of our full-family hiking endurance and took full advantage of it by wandering up and down trails, across rivers, over rocks while always taking time to stop and smell the bark of trees and for Rymer Lunch (think Italian Antipasto).

    Some very special talents came out in the annual Vail talent show.  The lineup was this: Superb Rymer dancing, Singing and dancing in comfys, Suzie- a radically empathetic personal trainer meets Michael- an interested but slightly overwhelmed potential client, I played a not very limber western yoga instructor instructing an abnormally flexible Robin with Suzie legs.  Multiple piano pieces, human body talents.    

                                                                       

Susie, Michael, Lucy, Rachel, Nick, Robin, Marilyn (Nana), Rob (Rocko), Locke, Sam, Colin

Nana and Rocko’s duet. Somehow Robin’s tip jar made it to the piano.

A year late, we got to give Nana and Rocko a book of photos and messages from friends and family for their 51st anniversary. 

Nana and her boys

    In Steamboat we caught up with our great friends Dave and Elizabeth, breathed the cool mountain air together with their family, and, together, discovered that the addition of peanut butter to a hamburger is not only perfectly acceptable but also quite useful in gluing slippery tomatoes and lettuce to the sandwich.  Please find attached a picture of an Ecuadorian menu item that proves the above mentioned truth to be international common knowledge. 

    Denver taught us again that friends from long ago are friends today.  It enriches our lives to see them again.  Rusha and Guy, Lily and David, Lauren and Joe so great to see you guys!!!

                                                                    

    We realized that we weren’t going to drive our setup the 40 degrees latitude and 4670 miles from Denver to Cuenca, so we needed a place for the van and camper to wait out a year until we maybe needed them again.  Storage?  Did anyone else want them?  Turns out van-no, camper-yes (Thanks Rusha and Guy! We want camping pictures).  Suzie’s dad caught a ride down to Denver and drove the van back to Vail where it’s been sitting in dark silence for a month.  That has been the fate of all these things stuffed in boxes and shoved in corners.  Gravity will hold them down and dust will settle on their unused surfaces until next July.

    When we boarded the airplane in Denver, we shed yet another layer (our mother language) like a sweater that would be too warm in the tropics.  Así tenemos menos palabras, aunque un numero suficiente para comunicar efectivamente.  A mí, este idioma es como una maquina hermosa que manejo como un niño manejando una Ferrari.  A veces llego al destino y a veces ocurrieron pequeños accidentes.  Los chicos están aprendiendo como el idioma viene del agua que toman.  Estamos agregando palabras poco a poco.  Creo que en pocos meses hablaremos bastante.

                                                                    

Late night Guayaquil arrival = airport hotel

Sleepy van ride Guayaquil to Cuenca

Got to preview El Cajas National Park on our way into Cuenca

                                                                     

               Cuenca arrival! Our rental is across the street from the Yanuncay river

                                                                    

Home Sweet Home. We were all ready to stop living out of bags!

Gracias a nuestros amigos y familias.  ¡Con ustedes, tenemos bastante amor y amistad!