I finally met Beth Whitman, a charming fellow adventurer from Seattle who has just completed her book, Wanderlust and Lipstick: The Essential Guide for Women Traveling Solo. Beth has been an inspiration to me and even put one of my anecdotes in her book. Do check out her very informative blog and website at www.forwomentravelingsolo.com Like me, she will be traveling in Asia this January.
Author: Meg Noble Peterson Page 28 of 30
I was privileged to play in two concerts of the Plainfield Symphony (Brahms’ Second Symphony and a night of stunning opera music being two of my favorites) in which I’ve been a member of the violin section for forty-six years. Hard to believe! We’re still going strong and will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of our present maestro, Sabin Pautza, this coming May. Just playing under such an exciting, innovative conductor makes all the practicing worthwhile!
I also kept up my theater diet with such excellent productions as Tina Howe’s Birth and After Birth, Bhutan, My Name Is Rachel Corrie, Butley (with Nathan Lane), The Little Dog Laughed, Dai, The Drowsy Chaperone, The Spelling Bee, The Times They Are A’Changin.’ Grey Gardens, and Heartbreak House There were a couple of turkeys, which will remain nameless. And there was some good opera, thanks to my niece, Margaret Magill, who plays with the Met orchestra. And, as always, excellent chamber music.
On September 2 my second daughter, Martha, was married to Gary Shippy in the garden of her home in Maplewood, NJ. Martha had been tending her extensive garden and adding plants and flowers guaranteed to be in bloom at just the right time. And then came the hurricane. I can’t remember which one, but it brought several days of rain, abating only on Sept. 3, the day after the wedding. Fortunately, Martha has two industrious brothers, Robert and Tom, and a tent was quickly erected, which, I thought, made the wedding even more cozy and intimate. It certainly was a gala affair, punctuated by thunder and lightening and the hypnotic drone of water—a small wedding with members of the immediate family, but with just the Shippy and Peterson clans combined, it was anything but small! After the reception there was music and dancing. Gary’s band, Walk The Dog, performed, as well as several other combos, all friends of the bride and groom, and all excellent. I demolished the lawn dancing with Joe Buck as the guitars wailed and Gary tore into the drums. What a day! What an evening! A truly happy time.(click here for pictures)
I was honored to read at the wedding of my dear friend, Anne Quarles, and her partner Trudi Williams, at St. Bartholomew’s Church on Park Avenue in New York City. What a gala two-day affair it was, ending with dinner and dancing at the Tavern on the Green in Central Park.
This past summer I spent in my two favorite places—Washington State, climbing in the Olympics, and New Hampshire, climbing in the White Mountains and swimming in beautiful Lake Winnipesaukee at the Noble family’s summer cottage near Alton, NH. I did my traditional climbs up to Crag Camp on the Randolph side of the Presidentials, with my niece, Rebecca Magill, staying overnight and going to Madison Hut the next day and down the Airline Trail to Appalachia. I also climbed with my daughter, Martha, up Falling Waters Trail and across the Franconia Ridge, coming down Mt. Lafayette to Greenleaf Hut and descending to Lafayette campground on the Bridal Trail. But the most exciting trip was with son Tom, who persuaded me to go four miles straight up on Lion’s Head Trail to the top of Mt. Washington, a stupendous trip. Returning at sunset down the auto road, we were picked up by two wonderful people, Jami and Tom Filiault, who run The Sunderland Center for Positive Change in Sunderland, Mass. They moved two dogs from the back seat to make space for us, and saved the day! A joyful and caring couple. This was a week after I’d been privileged to do a reading from my book at Pinkham Notch, the AMC headquarters in Gorham, NH. An appreciative, receptive crowd. I was surprised that it was the young people who seemed most excited about the concept of backpacking around the world alone.
After Martha’s wedding, I returned for a week at the cottage, and, while climbing Mt. Major, another staple in our family tradition, I met a young woman, Nan Rogers, who lives and works on “The Ice” in Antarctica every winter and travels in Alaska and the Midwest in the summer. She also is an expert on hydroponic gardening, one of her many talents and something she may pursue if the ice gets too cold and monotonous. We spent a delightful evening together at the cottage and she has promised to fill me in on her adventures in this most unusual of occupations.
I spent six glorious days of strenuous hiking with my old buddy, Jon Pollack, whom I met on the Annapurna Circuit trek in Nepal in 1999 and with whom I’ve hiked almost every summer since. He was even on the top of Mt. Washington with me three years ago when I broke my wrist and sliced my chin—an auspicious occasion that caused him great consternation because he had to stop singing “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round The Mountain” and help mop up the blood. But even so, we managed a week in Maine to give Jon a sampling of New England. I must say that he was totally unprepared for the rocky trails of the White Mountains, expecting, instead, the manicured paths of the great Northwest. I like the rock climbing…Jon likes the “exposure” of those great narrow cliffs. To each his own.
I arrived in Seattle on July 12 and the next day Jon and I headed for Mt. Rainier to stay in a secluded campsite of cedar and fir at Sunshine Point, near a small brook. This magnificent site was completely washed out during the floods and rains this past Oct.-Nov. and as of this writing Mt. Rainier National Park is still closed. We took a short hike to the spectacular Comet Falls before sunset.
The 14th was a long wooded climb to Gobbler’s Knob. To get to the trailhead we had to make our way over a grueling 3.6 miles of washed-out road and forest devastation. By noon we were at a rickety old lookout tower on the summit, then hiked down to pristine Lake George, a back country camp reminiscent of those old movies of the gold rush days. Twelve miles later we were back at camp.
July 15, another gorgeous sunny day, found us headed for Kautz Creek Trail, steep with myriad switchbacks, typical of the Northwest. We circled around Mt. Ararat, climbed over the pass and down 260 ft. to Indian Henry Hunting Ground, a vast alpine meadow rimmed in fir and cedar trees. In the center was a small park ranger cabin, an old-fashioned pioneer setting with Rainier rising in the background. We crossed the popular Wonderland Trail around Rainier, but returned on our original route. Several steep patches of snow led to the meadow, and I vowed to carry a stick the next day! I’m not crazy about trudging through snow on an incline. Wild flowers—especially bear grass, avalanche lilies, glacier lilies, daisies, and Indian paint brushes—covered the hills. In one photo I shot an entire hillside of the tall puffy grass that, at a distance, looks like tiny white crosses bisecting the hill. Though the hike was only 11.6 miles, it seemed much longer due to the final mile over a rocky riverbed and washed-out road, the result of flooding in 1987. We amused ourselves with numerous alphabet games, testing our knowledge of shows, operas, music, and famous people. We’re now ready for Jeopardy.
July 16 was very hot but afforded us the best scenery. We saw Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood, and Mt. Adams, as well as Mt. Rainier, up close. There were numerous crazy climbers headed for Camp Muir to start their summit ascent the next day. We, however, contented ourselves by watching the skiers and hiking the Skyline Trail, which became rather treacherous in spots due to residual snow. We had a 360 degree view from the ridge. Saw the black, striated Nisqually Glacier and the jagged summit of the Unicorn, part of the Tatoosh, which join more mountains than I can remember. By early afternoon we had reached Pebble Creek, eaten lunch, and headed down toward Paradise. The snow was blinding. After leaving Paradise we drove through a deep forest to Longmire, which bisects the Wonderland Trail. That night, after soaking our feet in a freezing brook, we brought out Trader Joe’s Two Buck Chuck and gathered enough (abandoned) wood from a neighboring campsite to build a roaring fire. What an evening!
Can’t say enough for summer weather in the Northwest. Perfection! On July 17 we headed for Nachez Peak, but after an hour couldn’t find the trail, so gave up and decided to climb on Pinnacle Peak Trail instead. This was our most difficult and, to me, scary day with over 1,000 ft. of gain and many areas of exposure, where one slip and you’d land in the valley below. Jon loves this—I don’t! The trail was very narrow in spots and covered in a slippery scree. I refused to give in to my fear and just stomped hard into Jon’s footprints and looked straight ahead…and prayed. But the views were tremendous! And around every corner. Sitting next to a bubbling brook at lunch, and wherever we were, Rainier was present with its patchy, black and white face. Ice, snow, Camp Muir, climbers scaling the top glaciers, meadows choked with grass and wildflowers, skiers zigzagging perilously. ( click here for pictures)
We broke camp on July 18 and took two interesting short hikes. The first—The Trail of the Shadows—was on the property of Longmire, who discovered mineral springs in the 1870’s and lived in a small cabin near a beaver dam with his wife. The second—Twin Firs Loop—took us through amazing old growth, a veritable forest primeval, with gigantic trees similar to the California redwoods.
The next two weeks were spent with daughter Cary in her cabin at Talking Circle in Langley, WA. She has her own gardening business, but is also heavily involved with The Land Trust of Whidbey Island and in the replanting of trees and shrubs that are native to the island. I always enjoy the beauty of this special place as well as the hospitality of Cary’s friends and colleagues. Over the years I’ve helped with some of her projects, like the replanting and revival of Saratoga Pines, and an area where beaver dams were causing all kinds of environmental and political problems. We attended several benefits, an excellent concert of the famous Mongolian throat singers, and an evening of Zimbabwe drumming, something that took me back twenty years to my travels in Zimbabwe. Enjoyed meeting Sharon and Fred Lundahl, retired State Department officials who lived in Asia and, as a result, have opened an exquisite oriental rug store in Langley, Music for the Eyes, where I gave my first slide show. What a venue—beautiful carpets everywhere! I also enjoyed finally meeting the lovely Christina Rockreise, a friend of Christopher’s, and renewing my friendship with Nancy and Bob Quickstad of Seattle.
This has been an exciting month! I finally pulled off a visit to my two youngest sons, Robert and Tom, and Robert’s wife, Gwen Abel, in southern California. Robert and Gwen live in a charming apartment in Playa del Rey, with Jacuzzi and pool, and Tom lives in Marina del Rey, surrounded by a plethora of orchids and resurrected plants that only a master horticulturalist like him could revive. At the same time I enjoyed a reading at the huge and unusual bookstore, Dutton’s in Brentwood. A highlight of the week was a dinner prepared and served by John and Bonnie Cacavas in the exotic setting of their elegant home in Beverly Hills. (They are superb chefs as well as musicians) Their son, John, wife, Stina, and small son, Eric, attended, along with the Petersons and Gwen’s mother, Ruth Abel. I’ve known John since our days in music education, when he was a top band arranger, going on to Hollywood to compose for TV (notably the Kojak show) and many movies. He and Bonnie are superb musicians, song writers, and arrangers. ( Click here for a most unusual entre)
I returned from a book reading and signing in Washington, DC on April 5 in time to play the children’s concert with the Plainfield Symphony over the weekend. My signing was at the fabulous Candida’s World of Books on 14th Street and attended by a large group among whom was my old friend from the Annapurna Circuit trek, Ron Pollack (no relation to Jon), head of Families USA, and Charity Goodman, an anthropologist for the GAO. I also was able to meet with Peter Beach, who was on my International Advisory Board of Music Education for the Handicapped (MEH) until 1986 and, in his capacity as Director of the Office of Veterans Affairs and Military liaison during the first Gulf War was heavily involved in epidemiological research on WMD’s and their terrible effect on our troops after we blew them all up. Prior to that he did 20 years of research on Agent Orange.
I was also blessed with a visit in the home of Judy Wyman and John Kelly, and their beautiful daughters Leah and Sarah. It’s always a treat to see Judy, who, with her mother, Sylvia, was part of the Peterson/Wyman self-appointed climbing camp (christened Camp ManWyPeson) which scaled the Presidentials with backpacks in the early ’70’s and ’80’s.
It was with deep sadness that I received the call from Rosalie Pratt’s daughter, Sandy Jones, that Rosalie had died. The loss of such a good friend and colleague was staggering, but the thought that she was released from almost constant physical suffering made it easier to bear. And how grateful I was to have had those few days with her last October. I cannot express how much I will miss her. I tried to recapture a bit of our life and travels together, and have written my own eulogy to a most unusual, accomplished, and beloved woman. (click here for file)
I broke my right little toe at the end of October while racing around, looking for the perfect outfit for Barry Hamilton’s and Ruth Klukoff’s wedding in St. Petersburg, Florida. And a most unusual wedding it was! I flew to Tampa with Kit Sailer, and we celebrated along with many other Summit High classmates of Barry’s and daughter Martha’s. I felt as if I’d gone back twenty-five years and was living on Badeau Ave. in Summit, NJ. But this time I was not THE MOTHER. I was just a friend. It was fun swimming in the ocean and sitting on the beach and going for a treasure hunt on the pristine island where the ceremony took place. Ruth’s Zukuki violin students provided the music in a perfect setting of sun, tropical flowers, and palm trees. The food was sensational and it wasn’t until the sun was a red ball on the horizon that we dispersed to continue the party with good conversation and margueritas. Warning: Never drink margueritas before entering a hot tub. They don’t mix!
An added plus from my Florida trip was finding Max Croft, a sensational web designer and professor of digital media at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He is responsible for the design of my site and I shall be forever grateful to him.
Several weeks later I returned to Florida to work with Max and to see Barry and Ruth once again. I also took a side trip to University Park (Sarasota) to see my old friend from music education convention days, Jane Beethoven, and enjoyed her luxurious pad. She’s still working in the field of music and publishing, dividing her time between Florida and Lugano, Switzerland. And she’s as beautiful as ever!
The month of November was spent playing in two Plainfield Symphony concerts and taking in some new shows and musicals to feed my NY theater addiction. If you’re interested, call me. I’ll tell you what to see and what NOT to see. There are some klunkers out there, too. But for $3 audience extra tickets, I can afford to take chances.
