Meg Noble Peterson

Here I am back in New Hampshire at the family cottage on Lake Winnipesaukee. The swimming is glorious and the weather perfect. This year the entire family descended, including married granddaughter, Cally, and husband, Zack. traveling from York, England. How about that? Together we are eleven!

Our first mountain expedition was the traditional Mt. Major near Alton, NH. It’s small but has trails that include sweet cliffs and ledges. A great starter. Tomorrow we head for the biggie…Mt. Washington. Will get back to you on that. This is great training for my return to the Himalayas in November. Nothing, except the increased altitude, is more challenging than Lion’s Head or Huntington Ravine on Washington.

Here is the Peterson gang, with Winnipesaukee and its islands in the distance.

Photo by Quinn Slayton, sculptor

Heading down….

Did you ever think you could get me out of the mountains and onto an eight-story floating hotel with a casino, swimming pools, Jacuzzi, and enough space for me to get lost on a daily basis? Well, it happened a month ago when an old friend of forty years, Peter Beach, a member of my Board of Directors of MEH (Music Education for the Handicapped) made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. So I put my prejudices aside and took the leap. 

The Enchantment of the Seas, is one of the premier ships of Royal Caribbean International. Its itinerary was to include stops at every imaginable port on the east coast from Baltimore to Key West to Nassau in the Bahamas. Activities ranged from crocodile and dolphin watching to snorkeling and swimming in the warm waters of the Caribbean. I persuaded myself that these underwater delights, found only on such a cruise, would be a reliving of just such adventures as I had had snorkeling in Elat on the Red Sea so many years ago. And also provide relief from the cold weather in February. How could I resist?

Shortly before sailing we were informed of delays due to a faulty engine (two is the optimum number for a ship that size). There was much scrambling and talk of repair and we sailed hours late…but we sailed. Tensions rose as we realized that we could go no faster than 15 knots and would be experiencing a choppy north Atlantic for a lot longer than we had hoped. Few people had packed warm clothing, so, like them, I braved the wind and cold on the outside prominade and pretended that I was fighting my way around the Annapurna Circuit under less than optimum circumstances. The imagination is a wonderful thing and indispensable in such situations.

Three days into the trip our charming Swedish captain, who was always full of witticisms and gems for the day, announced that a full refund would be given to all passengers, since we could only stop for half a day at Port Canaveral and one day in Nassau. We had to miss Coral Cay, Rose Island, and Key West, which Peter had been so eager to show me.

Nevertheless, the dance lessons continued, the entertainment and special receptions went full tilt, and the dip in the ocean in Nassau was worth waiting for. We met two delightful and very compatible couples with whom we shared dinner, talked, laughed, and lived the good life for those ten fateful days.

It wasn’t easy for me, a recent Vegan convert, but I managed because of the excellent Indian cuisine at the bottom of the menu and the incredible soups at the top. And nobody was looking when I sneaked an occasional filet mignon or dish of ice cream. Oops. I couldn’t be expected to be that perfect, could I? 

So picture two thousand plus people milling about, eating constantly, sunning themselves when the sun was available, Jacuzzi-ing, jamming the two large pools, one heated and one brrr, and enjoying free hot and cold running service at the expense of Royal Caribbean. Add to that incredible nightly shows in an auditorium to rival Radio City Music Hall, complete with a magician, several comedians, and great musical comedy, and you can see that there were few complaints about “the situation.” Fortunately I brought my laptop and some good books, so filled the time that would have been spent snorkeling and exploring the Bahamas with relaxing activities.

M.P. and Peter before the farewell dinner….

Will I do this again? Dunno. I’m keeping an open mind, but have a few mountains to experience in Mongolia, Pakistan, Alaska, and Russia before I return to the ocean. Let’s see how my engine holds up….

Theater update: I don’t want to disappoint my fellow addicts, so here are my recent theatrical experiences. You won’t want to miss Other Desert Cities, headlining the superb Stockard Channing; Look Back in Anger, a powerful revival of John Osborne’s 1956 play; Edward Albee’s The Lady From Dubuque at the stunning new Pershing Square Signature Center, with an outstanding cast led by Jane Alexander, and the riveting Freud’s Last Session. I was very disappointed in the three one act plays, Relatively Speaking, but thoroughly enjoyed my old friend, Adam LeFevre, in the off Broadway production of a new play, How The World Began. A special note about Libby Skala, who performed a one-woman show, A Time To Dance, about her amazing great aunt Lisa Polk, a close friend of mine, who started the American Dance Therapy Association and was a head-liner at two of my MEH symposia.

I shall be enjoying Donizetti’s The Elixer of Love at the Metropolitan Opera next week, and, thanks to my niece, Margaret Magill, a violinist with the Met orchestra, my sister, Cary, and I were privileged to see the dress rehearsal of the new production of Verdi’s Aida. You can’t beat that!

And begorra…a Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you all.

My neighbor shot out of the driveway, dressed in running outfit, her daughter rattling around in the back of her SUV (known to me as a Suburban Assault Vehicle). She drove the three blocks to the elementary school, getting there at the same time I did on foot. Traffic was heavy. Mothers and fathers were parked solid on several streets adjacent to the school. My neighbor let her daughter out of the car and went on to the gym to exercise. She would walk and run three miles. She looked slightly guilty as we exchanged greetings. I suggested that she could get her first mile by walking her daughter to school and going back home for the car. And she’d have a good up and down hill stretch in the bargain. She thinks I was kidding. I was dead serious.

This traffic jam had become a familiar sight to me, but it gets even worse in the winter. God help us if some child should brave the elements, or maybe strain a leg muscle in the process of walking. My children almost never got a ride to school and seemed to enjoy the camaraderie of their peers, from snow fights to shuffling along in piles of leaves. They got plenty dirty, but they also got plenty of exercise. And when they were teenagers they used bicycles as their transportation of choice.

I try very hard not to be judgmental. That only works if you’re Andy Rooney or Lewis Black. Just because I walked two miles to school every morning, then back and forth for lunch, and home, again, in the afternoon…six miles in all…for one day’s efforts, is no reason to behave as if I’m Laura Ingalls Wilder on the rampage. And just because my mother rode a horse to high school in rural Missouri is no reason that I should have eschewed the sidewalk for a comfortable saddle. But I think that what sent me around the bend on this particular day was the rows and rows of cars with their motors running and smoke belching out of the exhaust pipes.

It was a cool, crisp day, to be sure, but not polar bear weather. I walked up to one old diesel van with black smoke belching forth, and knocked on the window.

“Excuse me, M’am, but there is a rule in this town that you can only idle for three minutes and your car is running full blast, emitting black noxious fumes, poisoning the air.”

The lady was civil, but said, tight-lipped, “I have an infant in the back seat.”

“Is this infant clothed?” I asked. She nodded.

“M’am, I had five infants and know that they loved the cold air. I dressed them warmly and left them out in a carriage on many occasions, just the way they do in Norway. That’s why the Vikings were so strong. [I was getting carried away.] And, I don’t know of any babies in an SUV who died of over-exposure, but plenty of people die of carbon monoxide inhalation and lung cancer breathing polluted air every day. The choice is yours.”

After a long hard look and commensurate silence, I went on my way, fuming. She never turned off her car. It was still running ten minutes later when I completed my loop.

I really despair of solving this problem, which stems not from the fear of a pedophile around every corner, but the misguided desire to make sure our children are not stressed in any way, inconvenienced, uncomfortable, disappointed, tired, or have to put forth the effort to get themselves up and out of the house in time for school. I do not blame the children. It’s the parent’s responsibility to set an example of good health and to establish priorities.

We are not doing children a favor coddling them in this way. They are going to find out as they grow fatter and weaker, with less energy and gumption (there’s a medieval word for you!), that the joys derived from walking in the woods or up a mountain or onto a playing field or participating in one of the multitude of exploratory journeys this life presents, will be greatly diminished for them. For as they become older, their bodies will reflect the results of a lifetime of neglect and inertia. And they’re going to wonder why.

Take heed, parents. As a close friend of mine used to say, “Don’t go to heaven with an unused body. Get up and move!” Building a strong body begins when you’re a kid. Waiting is not an option.

And remember, you’re old a lot longer than you’re young.

I have always wanted my prayers answered. Who hasn’t? And I have always wanted to hear a voice of authority, male or female, coming down from on high to direct my life at crucial junctures and in moments of excruciating indecision. But nobody seemed to be giving out instructions from “up there” when I most needed them.

“You have to be still–be quiet–to receive these messages,” admonished my daughters, both spiritual practitioners.

“Still? I AM still,” I insisted.

“No,” they said. “The engine is always running and the clatter of busyness never leaves you. Quiet is not your strong suit.”

But when it comes to taking chances and risking a walk into the unknown, I am assured by my daughters that the unseen spirit I so yearn for is right there keeping me from falling off a cliff, or a moving train, or into the side of an Indian taxicab. Yes, I have had some major close calls over the years and luck doesn’t seem to be the whole answer.

When I hung from my right knee on a strap in the third tier of a third class Indian train a year ago today, plummeting to the floor and being caught by my companion seconds before my head would have hit the floor, it seemed a miracle that I walked—hobbled–away. And when I found a vegetable stand to throw myself into, avoiding a direct hit by another out-of-control Indian driver, that was definitely a blessing, ‘though the owner of the stand might disagree. Obviously, I can’t rely entirely on this hovering helper, but the fact that I keep going back for more says that I have a strong belief in the “protection” of the universe. Still, I remind myself to guard against doing something completely stupid.

I have tried meditation and yoga (I am totally inflexible!) and quieting the inner beast, but action of a rather constant variety seems to be my modus operandi and is securely imbedded in my DNA. Perhaps, someday, the Angel may get through to me, or I may have to wait until she greets me on the “other side” with an “It’s been a great ride, hasn’t it?” Then I will know for sure that my daughters were right and I do have a Guardian Angel. And I will thank her with all my heart.

May your Guardian Angel love and protect you all through 2012….

You’re obsessed, Meg. Get over it and move on. But first, let me groove one more time on those splendid waterfalls that were around every bend as we climbed along the Lewis River in Washington last August.

I know I sound like a broken record, but truth to tell, Jon and I spent three days and nights at the most beautiful campsite of all time beside the Lewis River. We walked in a thick forest with sun streaming through, making the foliage seem almost artificially green. We overlooked the river, sometimes pale emerald and sometimes deep aqua, with cliffs of red soil, moss, and rocks rising from a shoreline of narrow pebbled beaches.

Campsite

The river below our campsite

I photographed the waterfalls from every angle, and stood down below, bathed in the spray and enveloped in its pervasive roar.

Nature can sure make you feel small!

Delicate beauty popping up everywhere

Tiatnapum Falls

Goodbye to the waterfalls

Lunch on the shore

The weary hikers

Before I left Washington I spent a few days with my daughter, Cary, on Whidbey Island, working in the Good Cheer and the Chinook Gardens and meeting with old friends at a final potluck supper. Just like the good old days. How I love the community at Talking Circle in Langley!

Now it’s on to 2012 and the surprises and possibilities lurking just around the corner.