Geocaching souvenirs

If you've followed me at all, you will know that I enjoy geocaching as a pastime. Well, today we were at it again: just the two of us, plus Milo the geodog, in Mt. Madonna Park, Santa Cruz County, on a nice loop trail that took us among redwoods, tan oaks, and eucalypts. We found 13 caches on our hike, plus 9 on our drive in and out of the park, for 22 in all (plus 3 DNFs...). Here are a few photos from the day:

An old pumphouse

I can't help it, I like graffiti

An astonishing number of cars were on
this dirt road, which we had to take back
to ours: we suspected that an event had
just let out—until we saw that huge line
of cars driving around in confusion up above
and finally turning down an adjacent road,
at which point we decided they were just lost
getting to wherever they were going...
But the dust they kicked up made for
a pretty sight.

But what I came here today to write about is geocaching "souvenirs." Because Geocaching HQ likes to dream up challenges—be it finding a cache at the end or start of a year; celebration of May 3, 2000, the day the "Blue Switch" was flipped and the first cache was planted; various nation days; geocaching milestones such as 3 million active hides; special dates like 10/10/10 or, coming right up, 2/22/22; International Geocaching or EarthCache Day; the annual GIFF (Geocaching International Film Festival); Pi Day. You get the picture: pretty much anything can serve as an excuse for a souvenir.

And the reason I bring this up is that today's outing finished off the latest series of souvenirs, called Reach the Peak: collecting points that equal or surpass the heights in meters of the world's highest mountains. Because today we climbed Mt. Everest! Yes, indeed. And it was a breeze! We started this quest in August with Puncak Jaya in Indonesia (representing Oceania), then successively, month by month, worked our way up Mt. Vinson (Antarctica), Mt. Elbrus (Europe), Kilimanjaro (Africa), Denali (North America), Aconcagua (South America), and finally, today, Everest (Asia). Huzzah! Here is the final bonus souvenir, for completing all seven, plus a base camp and a summit souvenir. So many—15 in all. And they are quite attractive, I must say. Kudos to the artist.

And no, don't worry, I don't put any stock in these "souvenirs." They are silly. And yet, they do often get us out caching. So those geniuses at HQ aren't earning their big fat paychecks for nothing. 

A few other series we've completed have, despite being pretty much totally arbitrary, been fun, simply because of the anticipation of collecting the souvenirs, which translates to a job well done. For example, the Natural, Ancient, Modern, and Solar System Wonders of the World, seven wonders each:

The final-final souvenirs being, WORLD and ULTIMATE EXPLORER! Yes! Of course we are!

Last year we had The Science of Discovery—rocket science, environmental science, futurology, and geology:

There may have other sciences celebrated, but those four souvenirs are all we got.

The "challenge" of these last ones was simply to find a cache of a particular designation, as randomly assigned by HQ. But I imagine HQ also hoped we would read the descriptions as we collected our milestones and ultimate prizes. Learn a little something?

Back in August 2013 they had a month-long series, 31 Days of Geocaching—as in 31 consecutive days. Of course we got them all. It was a challenge—not in the sense of being difficult, more in the sense of "be there or be square." Maybe we do take these silly souvenirs a little too seriously...

My favorite souvenirs to collect are, arguably, the geographic ones: the states of the US and the countries of the world. So far, I've got CA, AZ, NM, NY, NC, MN, WI, HI, WA, VT, MA, OR, AK, MD, DC, VA, PA, WV, and DE. Nineteen. I've got a few more to go. And as far as the world is concerned, I've got hundreds to go, but so far under my belt: USA, UK, Norway, New Zealand, Israel, Italy, Vietnam, France, Chile, and Antarctica. 

All together, I've amassed 181 souvenirs. I wonder what those wacky kids at HQ will dream up next?

Update 2/22: Make that 182!

Book Report: A Gentleman in Moscow

4. Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) (2/15/22) (BB#3)

The other day I met my friend Barb for lunch and a walk, and we, as always, talked books. She mentioned this one, said she loved it. I knew I owned it. (Turns out, I owned it twice over: in paperback and in hardback.) When I got home, I sought it out. And dived in.

The pundits on the back cover call it transfixing, irresistible, delightful, beautiful, joyful. It is all those things. I totally enjoyed this book: gobbled it up in a few days. 

It's the story, tout court, of a Russian aristocrat hauled before a Soviet tribunal in 1922 at age thirty-three and sentenced to eternal house arrest: in the luxurious Metropol Hotel in downtown Moscow. He'd already been living there for four years, but now he is consigned to the garret—a hundred square feet (which he soon doubles, by accessing the next room over through his closet). 

Over the next thirty-plus years, he makes many friends—the hotel chef, the maitre d', the concierge, a nine-year-old girl who grows up to become a comrade, a seamstress, another small child whom he fathers, a Party monitor. We learn about his life before, about his homeland of Nizhny Novgorod, land of apple trees, and his sister and his old apartment mate. In the end, his life is as rich as any could be, regardless of the circumstances.

Towles is a wonderful writer, both technically (his language!) and in terms of imagination. 

I did feel a bit hermetically sealed into the hotel (our hero, Count Alexander Rostov, is not allowed, on pain of death, to set foot outside—though at one point, or maybe two, he does leave, to our great relief). We hear nothing about the atrocities committed by Stalin, or about WWII (though the story ends in 1954). But nevertheless, the joy of this book is seeing all the life that can happen without the possibility, or even necessity, of escape from a confined space. 

Towles himself says he wants to "gather together a pile of brightly colored shards of glass" and swirl them into a kaleidoscopic view. He does this well. The historical import of place and time may be somewhat elusive, but the life he conveys is lovely.

I flagged many passages, and may transcribe one or two later on. For now, I just want to count this big book (not quite 500 pages, but close enough) done. Huzzah!

Here is an interesting interview with the author.

Ōtagaki Rengetsu, potter and poet

In The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki, there is occasionally a chapter of a fictitious book called Tidy Magic by a female Zen monk. At one point she tells about her master's favorite teacup, "an antique cup, very old and very beautiful, with a poem inscribed on it," which she accidentally drops. His only calm comment is, "Already broken"—though in fact, the cup is fine. When she asks why he said it was already broken, 

he held up his cup and admired it. "It's quite old, you know. Maybe two hundred years. It was made by Rengetsu. Do you know who Rengetsu was? She was a great beauty, but she had a very sad life. She was an illegitimate child and was given away for adoption when she was just an infant. Later, she married twice, but both husbands and all of her five children died, and so she shaved her head and became a Buddhist nun. She was poor but creative, and so she started making pottery and writing poems on her cups and bowls. They became very popular, and she made a lot of money, but she gave it all away to the poor."
     I listened to him impatiently. He often did this. Went off on some tangent and forgot about my question, but this time I was determined to get an answer. He was reading the nun's poem on the side of the cup.
     "The world's dust, swept aside here in my hermitage. I have all I need, the wind in the pines—"
     "But Hojo-san! The teacup isn't broken!"
     He looked up, surprised. "To me, it is," he said. "It is the nature of a teacup to be broken. That is why it is so beautiful now, and why I appreciate it when I can still drink from it." He looked at it fondly, took a last sip, and then placed the empty cup carefully back on the tray. "When it is gone, it is gone."
     That day, my teacher gave me a priceless lesson in the impermanence of form, and the empty nature of all things.

Years later, the cup does break: during the magnitude-9 earthquake that hits Japan on March 11, 2011, causing such destruction and loss. 

The earthquake shook us awake, and the tsunami washed away our delusions. It caused us to question our values and our attachment to material possessions. When everything I think of as mine—my belongings, my family, my life—can be swept away in an instant, I have to ask myself, What is real? The wave reminded us that impermanence is real. This is waking up to our true nature.
     Already broken.
     Knowing this, we can appreciate each thing as it is, and love each other as we are—completely, unconditionally, without expectation or disappointment. Life is even more beautiful this way, don't you think?
     Much later, I found a traditional craftsman who could repair that Rengetsu teacup with gold and lacquer to hold the pieces together. Now, in the cracks, there are delicate seams of gold, which honor the cup's brokenness. To my eyes, it is lovelier now than ever.

I wrote about this sort of repair, known as kintsugi, here. It's a beautiful practice.

And I was, of course, curious as to whether Rengetsu was a real person. Why, yes! Not only was she a waka poet and a potter, specializing in tea and sake vessels, but she was a master of martial arts (her adoptive family were well known as trainers of ninja), dance, sewing, and the tea ceremony. She lived from 1791 to 1875, in Kyoto.

Here are a few of her creations, and you can find more, some with translations of the poems written on them, here and here. (Click on the images to see them larger.)

Book Report: The Book of Form and Emptiness

3. Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness (2021) (2/6/22) (BB#2)

Ruth Ozeki was ordained a Zen priest in 2010, and the two books she has written since then, A Tale for the Time Being (2013) and this one, certainly embody that philosophical tradition, in a most pleasing way: you come away feeling a bit wiser, more empathetic, looser and yet more grounded. 

The story here does involve a book, and a fourteen-year-old boy, Benny, who hears objects (like books, but also like shoes and windows and scissors) talk—though in this case, there is a special Book that is his story, which spins out as his life proceeds apace, and he converses with it. 

And his life is complicated. He recently lost his father, a Japanese jazz clarinettist, in a dumb accident. His mother, Annabelle, comfort-eats and has piled all manner of garbage all over their small duplex (ostensibly for work—she follows breaking news stories and must archive the materials, but still: she has a problem getting rid of stuff). When he starts hearing voices—everywhere—he is committed for a time to a Pediatric Psychology ward, where he meets eighteen-year-old Alice, aka the Aleph (a nod to Jorge Luis Borges's famous story). At Pedipsy (pe-DIP-sy), he learns some coping mechanisms, and is sent back home. But normal life eludes him. Instead of going to school, he goes to the main library (modeled on Vancouver's) and reads about medieval armor and fairy tales—when he's reading, the voices die back somewhat. He also starts discovering little slips of paper with instructions on them (à la Oulipo)—courtesy, it turns out, of the Aleph, who soon appears at the library with her pet ferret and takes Benny under her wing. She introduces him to a one-legged, wheelchair-bound Slovenian poet, Slavoj aka the Bottleman.

And events ensue. The elements of magical realism combine with real-world troubles: threats of eviction, rioting following a disastrous election, homelessness, and Annabelle's efforts at cleanup, aided by a self-help book very reminiscent of Marie Kondo's, but more practically by a new friend she meets while worrying about Benny. (For a little more on the self-help book, or at least the person who "wrote it," see my next post.)

Throughout, the Book tries to teach Benny lessons about acceptance, and about agency. What is real? becomes a guiding question. The problem of material consumption is another theme: "What makes a person want so much? What gives things the power to enchant, and is there any limit to the desire for more?"

The book's title is alluded to in various ways. For example, here is Slavoj:

"Let me tell you something about poetry, young schoolboy. Poetry is a problem of form and emptiness. Ze moment I put one word onto an empty page, I hef created a problem for myself. Ze poem that emerges is form, trying to find a solution to my problem." He sighed. "In ze end, of course, there are no solutions. Only more problems, but that is a good thing. Without problems, there would be no poems."

Later, Benny tells Slavoj about the voices and the stories they tell, which "are more like memories or dreams."

I told the B-man all this, and he said poetry was like that, too, like breezes or winds in the mind. At first you might not feel much, not whole words or sentences, but more like currents of air moving across an open wound. You have to keep your mind open and try to feel the voice of the poem as it blows by, even if it hurts a little. He said the trick is not to grab at the wind because as soon as you do, it won't be there.

Or as the Book puts it, "What is a story before it becomes words? Bare experience, a Buddhist monk might answer. Pure presence. The sensation, fleeting and ungraspable, of being a boy, of losing a father."

I enjoyed this book (though the Book did pontificate a bit too much), and pretty much sacrificed the last few days to simply sitting and reading. Now, I need to get a few things done. Like, clearing out a bit of the material detritus around here.