Kew Gardens, 12 May 2012

Also, laryngitis sucks.

First Great Western, 08:41 train from Exeter St. David's to London Paddington, Friday 11 May 2012

I didn't go so high as my mountain goat students--I swear, I lagged behind to take pictures for just a few minutes

and this started to happen before I could stop it:

(That's a pretty high rock, by the way, and I took that picture from a perch up on the one across "the avenue" from it, not from ground level, so you can imagine how high up she'd gotten.) It's for the best that I didn't stop her, I think, because if I had, then I wouldn't have ended up climbing the rocks myself. (For the record, the students only had to spot me on one of my descents.)

I have climbed more things this year than in the whole rest of my life put together. In fact, I've probably climbed more things--and more fearlessly--in the past month than in the whole rest of my life put together. I

In the self-portrait shots I took while I was on that tor, I am already, even with 30 and 50 SPF sunblock, so, so freckled in that high May sun.

Now, my guess is that if you read here, you probably know Sendak's work better than that of the Beastie Boys, and my goal is always to put things in front of people that they might not encounter without me. So this post in memory of two badasses from Brooklyn is going to emphasize the Beastie Boys just in case you're wondering what that sadness has been about. Keep in mind that MCA was their bassist and one of the anchors of their politics:

(That moment at 2:55 has always been one of my favorites in their repertoire.)

I've been so numb about this since I received the news from my brother on Saturday morning in London. I know that no one death is necessarily more tragic or more to be mourned than any other death; we're all humans, and all lives matter. But I also don't know that I could tell you, or anyone else, how much these guys and their sounds are wound up and in and through and around the past quarter-century of my life. They are an enormous part, even the dominant part, of my soundtrack.

We arrived home on Tuesday evening, after five hours in two trains, and the students were able to see the Queen on Wednesday afternoon. And no sooner do we all catch our breath and say goodbye to the first of those who will now steadily and swiftly depart, but we're off again, this time for one last group excursion to London. Next week, I suspect, I will sleep the sleep of the weary.

I have seen and done so many more things than I can report. Most of it has been unequivocal pleasure: a dolphin leapt beside our ferry back from Inishmaan, the middle of the Aran Islands, on Tuesday afternoon, and that felt typical of the kind of luck we've had on this trip. For the most part, our weather has been glorious. (Today was an exception, but we didn't have plans anyway, so everyone was able to take a day and just relax.) Only one person has had to go to the hospital, and that was for a condition that pre-dated our trip. Some moods have gone low; fewer feelings have been hurt than I would have feared; tempers have only smouldered, not flared. And we have seen, and talked, and heard, and moved, and eaten.

And eaten. One of the students said tonight to next year's group (with whom we chatted briefly online), "You will probably never eat as well as you will eat during this program."

He's probably right--for us all.

Also: perhaps my favorite landscape of the entire trip--an almost unbelievable place called the Burren.

I may finally have figured out the key: if I see a sign that suggests that a driver might need to be concerned about her car's going off of land and plunging into the water, I'm probably somewhere I want to be. And it might even be somewhere where I'll see a dolphin (even if I do have to rely on local high school students in order to know it's there).

Watching a dolphin at sunset with one of the Aran Islands in the background is more fun than watching fireworks.

After a cruise up a fjord, and a visit to a place I've loved for years because of a postcard, and a gorgeous valley drive through a mountain range, this sight felt to me as though it summed up our evening's destination, despite its much-vaunted status as a place people love to visit. Too many people, is my problem, and I suspect that my spectacularly poor choice of hotels for myself and our driver hasn't helped anything at all--though after yet another fine dinner, I will prove to myself once again tonight that I can sleep through nearly anything, up to and including techno dance parties raging in the bar two flights under my hotel room--and up to and including afterparties (and highly voluble Frenchmen and Irishwomen) raging literally outside my hotel room door.

If that skull gave you a start, imagine how I felt when I realized that it was only a few inches from where I was standing, taking the picture just before it in this set. I was keeping one student company while we waited for everyone else to come down from a mountain (at which point I was able to scramble up and look around up there myself). We both jumped and shouted a little. And then I started taking pictures. And then she joined in.

Tomorrow begins the intensively outdoor part of this Grand Excursion. I am thinking of it as Encounters with Mountains, all in the name of this grand man:

It turns out to take a lot of taxis to move fourteen people and their luggage around.