Musings

Reflections on life lived by a coast

Wet Sand, Wet Boots, Birds

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Wet sand, wet boots, happy me. Who would have guessed that there are so many walk­ing trails here on Cape Cod. Or so much birdlife!

Despite the raini­est April ever recorded in Mass­a­chu­setts, I’m out on Cape Cod’s walk­ing trails every day. It’s beau­ti­ful here, even when it rains. The sum­mer peo­ple haven’t arrived yet, so the trails are vir­tu­ally empty. I may pass a dog walker or two, but oth­er­wise the bird life pre­dom­i­nates.

It’s mat­ing sea­son so the birds are com­pet­ing for atten­tion with vibrant col­ors, pas­sion­ate cho­ruses and chore­o­graphed mat­ing dances. If I stop and wait qui­etly, there are mar­vels to see and hear.

Flirt­ing car­di­nals, eye-catch­ing Bal­ti­more ori­oles, danc­ing dow­itch­ers, ele­gant swans, mal­lards, osprey, robins and blue­birds, great blue and white herons, tufted tit­mice, finches, spar­rows, chick­adees, red-winged black­birds — the list goes on and on, if only I had the skill to name all the birds I see or hear.

Thanks to years of hik­ing in the Pacific North­west, I’m well equipped to enjoy nature’s courtship rit­u­als and musi­cals, despite inclement con­di­tions on these coastal trails. I put on a Gore­Tex jacket, don a rain hat and off I go. For pro­longed down­pours I just add rain pants, some semi-water­proof hik­ing boots and a pair of warm wool socks.

Rain mists my glasses, speck­les my out­er­wear and the birds wel­come me back. The sand crunches under my boots. It’s a daily bless­ing to be here.

Living with Vintage Items

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Our beloved Carver Receiver is being repaired

Vintage HiFi for Music Lovers

We own two Carver receivers that we’ve used for over 30 years to play music from CDs and vinyl records. Both are proud mem­bers of a dis­ap­pear­ing breed of hifi com­po­nents designed and man­u­fac­tured in the US, and aimed at music lovers. They’ve become col­lec­tors items, prized by peo­ple who still own CD/DVD play­ers and turnta­bles for vinyl records.

Carver receivers appeal to audio­philes who appre­ci­ate high qual­ity music with sig­nif­i­cant detail and def­i­n­i­tion dur­ing play­back. There’s a warm spa­cious­ness to their sound that few of today’s dig­i­tal devices and com­pressed codecs can equal.

Although we also own dig­i­tal com­po­nents with today’s stan­dard HDMI, USB and coax inter­con­nec­tions, includ­ing WiFi access, we far pre­fer the sound pro­duced by this Carver Receiver.

That said, these vin­tage devices are com­pat­i­ble only with audio devices that include legacy input and out­put con­nec­tors — no HDMI con­nec­tors on board.

Built to Last

Our Carver receivers were built to last. They weigh more than 30 pounds. Their build qual­ity reflects tra­di­tional prin­ci­ples that no longer drive con­sumer brands: the notion that con­sumer devices should be designed for long life­times and ease of ser­vic­ing.

This is a stark con­trast to today’s real­ity, where brand name devices are designed for early obso­les­cence. All too many 21st cen­tury devices break just days or weeks after the war­ranty expires, and end up in a land­fill not long after.

Unlike today’s con­sumer elec­tron­ics you can still buy spare parts on eBay for our receiver, 33 years after it was man­u­fac­tured. Long after the Carver brand went out of busi­ness, as a sad con­se­quence of US labor costs that could no longer com­pete against cheap off­shore labor.

Thanks to the Carver’s core design, if you know how to use a sol­der­ing iron and have the skills to work with cir­cuit boards and ana­log parts, you can fix the Carver’s typ­i­cal fail­ure points (the out­put relays) in about 30 min­utes. Sadly, my hus­band and I lack the skills and the know-how to do this.

Preparing for a Tune-up

The design flaw of this receiver is the way its out­put relays fail after 10,000 hours of use, prob­a­bly due to heat-related chal­lenges. We’ve learned that our receiver needs a tune-up about once a decade, when its out­put relays even­tu­ally fail. It was over­due…

Our Carver stopped work­ing last year, so I’ve been on a 6-month quest to get it repaired. I bought replace­ment parts on eBay for about $30, and down­loaded a copy of the ser­vice man­ual writ­ten for repair tech­ni­cians.

Then I had to solve the real chal­lenge of obso­les­cence, find­ing some­one who knows how to use a sol­der­ing iron, under­stands schematic dia­grams, and can put those skills to use to repair a vin­tage ana­log device. These are fast dis­ap­pear­ing skills…

Vintage Items, Specialized Skills

Get­ting ready to sol­der the replace­ment parts in place

I’m not the only one look­ing for prac­ti­cal repair options for vin­tage gear. For­tu­nately, I live in a place where eco-minded peo­ple are exper­i­ment­ing with options to help us all keep stuff out of the land­fills.

For exam­ple King County’s Eco­Con­sumer group is on a mis­sion to help peo­ple repair bro­ken house­hold items, includ­ing torn cloth­ing and bed­ding mate­ri­als. They’re exper­i­ment­ing with com­mu­nity-based solu­tions.

They’ve begun host­ing Repair Café events. They line up vol­un­teer “fix­ers” will­ing to take a stab at repair­ing house­hold items that local com­mu­nity mem­bers will bring to those events.

The event hosts try to match on-site repair spe­cial­ists with the items need­ing their atten­tion. Besides man­ag­ing atten­dees’ expec­ta­tions about what’s fea­si­ble, the event host declines items that are out­side the skills or scope that the day’s vol­un­teer fix­ers are will­ing to tackle.

King County Repair Café event, Octo­ber 2017

Luck­ily for me, last weekend’s Repair Café included two spe­cial­ists who know how to repair a broad range of con­sumer elec­tron­ics, includ­ing vin­tage receivers like mine. They’d brought the right tools for the job includ­ing the sol­der and sol­der­ing iron.

That said, my Carver could not have been fixed if I hadn’t come pre­pared. Thanks to online research and advance plan­ning, I came equipped with the right spare parts. I also had a copy of the ser­vice man­ual on my iPad, so the tech­ni­cian could check the wiring dia­grams. These were the key resources my fixer needed so he could do his magic with the sol­der­ing iron.

Many Needs

Repair­ing gar­ments at the Repair Café

While I waited for the spe­cial­ist to repair my Carver, I looked around to see what other kinds of repairs were pop­u­lar. To my sur­prise the busiest “fix­ers” were the women oper­at­ing the sewing machines. They restored a num­ber of torn gar­ments, bro­ken zip­pers and dam­aged quilts.

I over­heard that a num­ber of the items await­ing repair had recently been pur­chased from thrift shops… A sewing machine had come from a pawn shop — indica­tive of how badly these events are needed by peo­ple strug­gling to make ends meet.

While I was there, the fix­ers repaired a weed whacker, sev­eral lamps, a Singer sewing machine, a juicer, a gar­den orna­ment made of stained glass, at least two music com­po­nents, and dozens of torn gar­ments. Plus my vin­tage Carver Receiver.

I couldn’t help but notice that most of the vol­un­teers pro­vid­ing repair ser­vices are well over 40 years old.  Their skills may be a dis­ap­pear­ing art…

The room was crowded through­out the event. There were always peo­ple wait­ing in line for the next avail­able fixer. Clearly, the Eco­Con­sumer group is on to some­thing that our com­mu­nity wants and needs. Atten­dees went home delighted.

I’m grate­ful to have found some­one at the Repair Café with the sol­der­ing skills my Carver needed. This made me happy all week­end.

My hus­band and I are thrilled to know our vin­tage Carver is now ready to keep work­ing for another 10,000 hours!

Slowing Down

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After the multi-year adren­a­line rush of a high-tech career, I’m down-shift­ing: learn­ing how to slow down and savor each moment as it comes. I’m test­ing out what it might feel like to be retired — what­ever that means these days.

Bak­ing arti­san bread at home (French boule style)

Pur­pose­fully down-shift­ing is a form of mind­ful­ness prac­tice in its own right. It’s harder than it looks.

Slow Mo, Slow Cooking

I’m try­ing out how it feels to pur­sue slow-paced, inher­ently time-con­sum­ing activ­i­ties, such as:

  • Bak­ing no-knead, slow rise arti­san bread — a process that takes 24 hours or more
  • Knit­ting shawls and sweaters — projects that take weeks to com­plete
  • Plan­ning, shop­ping and prepar­ing slow-cooked meals, gourmet din­ners that sim­mer in a slow cooker for 6–8 hours
  • Learn­ing how to adapt a vari­ety of dishes to the slow cooker
  • Walk­ing for 4–6 miles most days

This lifestyle is slower, but not bor­ing. I wake up each day happy to under­take mul­ti­ple hands-on crafts, tasks and projects.

Food for the Brain

On a less pos­i­tive note I haven’t fig­ured out how to keep my brain as actively engaged as it used to be. This is a chal­lenge for some­one who earned her liv­ing as a con­sul­tant and excelled as a big-pic­ture thinker…

But it’s more than just an iden­tity cri­sis. I don’t want to end up like my mother, addicted to cross­word and sudoku puz­zles. My hus­band and I are talk­ing about down­siz­ing, so I’m not ready to buy or learn to play the piano.

Sci­en­tists say that using a sec­ond lan­guage keeps the brain plas­tic and youth­ful. Before embark­ing on a high-tech career, I was flu­ent in French and pass­able in Span­ish, but those skills eroded through lack of use.

Last year I worked to regain some French lan­guage skills, while prepar­ing for a 3-week trek across south­west­ern France. Now that I’m back in Seat­tle, it’s not so easy to speak French on a reg­u­lar basis, so I rely on Net­flix and French movies as a fall­back.

Clearly I need to find some activ­i­ties or pur­suits that engage my brain as thor­oughly as my crafts, hikes and slow-mo cook­ing engage my hands and eyes.

Reflections on My Camino

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pedestrian bridge to Bouziès

After 2+ weeks of walk­ing, leav­ing the Célé Val­ley

It’s Camino sea­son again, and it’s also long past time for me to write about my own expe­ri­ence along the Chemin de St. Jacques last year.

In 2016 (much like other pil­grims) I dis­cov­ered how liv­ing a slower and pared-down life, savored at walk­ing pace, can be a tran­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence. It was such a pow­er­ful expe­ri­ence that it’s taken months to blog about it.

Last Sep­tem­ber I accom­pa­nied a friend on a 3-week trek along old pil­grim­age routes in south­west­ern France. We hiked a 150-mile seg­ment of the Via Podi­en­sis, a lit­tle-known set of trails in rural France (GR 65 and 651.)

We walked 10–15 miles a day, car­ry­ing just hik­ing poles, day­packs and the day’s sup­ply of water. We opted not to carry camp­ing gear or back­packs; instead we lux­u­ri­ated in a bag­gage ser­vice that shut­tled our duf­fels from one guest house to the next.

Was this pil­grim­age a truly life-chang­ing expe­ri­ence?
In many ways, yes…

Six months later I’m still think­ing through what I learned from this pil­grim­age, what the journey’s teach­ings sug­gest for the next phase of my life… Despite my joy in telling sto­ries or talk­ing about it, I’ve been unusu­ally chal­lenged in writ­ing down my reac­tions to this pro­found expe­ri­ence.

GR 651 sign­post in Bouz­iès

So what have I learned so far? Here are a few of my take-aways, listed in no par­tic­u­lar order:

  • Spend­ing lots of time and energy on a pro­fes­sional career has lost its attrac­tion.
  • Talk­ing with peo­ple, shar­ing expe­ri­ences — in per­son and face to face — is pow­er­fully com­pelling. Why have I allowed social media alter­na­tives to dis­tract me from those basic truths?
  • Long walks, in rain or shine, need to remain a reg­u­lar fea­ture of my life — if not daily, at least many miles walked through­out the week.
  • Suf­fer­ing and dis­com­fort are unavoid­able, but can be accepted and tran­scended. They do not need to be all-con­sum­ing.
  • I do not need so many things to be happy.

Walk­ing offers a life­long path to hap­pi­ness and well­be­ing — and as my sis­ter says, may help me stay “younger each year.”

Walk­ing 35 miles or more each week has become a won­der­ful com­ple­ment to my on-going yoga prac­tice. Walk­ing offers many med­i­ta­tive qual­i­ties, but it’s also eas­ier to share with my hus­band and friends than a yoga prac­tice.

Going Off the Beaten Track in France

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If your heart is set on a pilgrimage or walking tour in France, and you don't want to pay a commercial touring company, where can you look for help with travel planning? It's not always as easy as you might think. Hundreds of thousands of people … [Continue reading]

100-Day Milestones Toward the Camino

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In 100 days I'll begin a 3-week pilgrimage, hiking centuries-old trails in southwestern France. I started training for this journey in February, testing boots and equipment, and embarking on some necessary conditioning. At the halfway point for … [Continue reading]

The Quest for Happy Feet

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When I agreed to go on a 3-week walking tour in France this fall, I assumed my beloved Lowa boots would join me on that journey. We've been together for many miles over the past 15 years... But all it took was one long walk on woodland trails … [Continue reading]

On the Path to Our Camino

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Several of my most recent posts have discussed my intent to walk a segment of the Via Podiensis. The Via Podiensis (or le Chemin du Puy) refers to a network of trails that lead from central France toward the starting point for the Camino de … [Continue reading]

Training for the Trek Begins

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Last month I wrote about plans to walk a 150-mile stretch of Le Chemin du Puy, a French pilgrimage trail, later this year. It won't be an arduous journey, but each day's trek will entail 10-15 miles of walking across somewhat hilly terrain in south … [Continue reading]

Virtual Valentine to Mom

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This Valentine Day's weekend was a time to remember Mom. My memories were triggered by the sound of sewing shears cutting through fabric on the dining room table. I was cutting out pieces for a meditation cushion, using a fabric remnant from curtains … [Continue reading]