Faith

February 24, 2015March 4, 2015 / rreckin / 1 Comment

Faith Zollars Spencer

1925-2015

My favorite memory of my grandma is a small one. We’re sitting at her kitchen table – white enamel with a gold swirl in the corner – and we’re playing cards. I’m probably seven or eight, and it’s just she and I, wood paneling on the walls, fake plants lining the stairway, carpet in the kitchen, orange owls on the windowsill, and the sun filtering low through the branches of the poplar tree outside. My tongue is bright blue from eating a Mr. Freeze, and we have the giggles. Midway through a spirited round of Spite and Malice, grandma grabs a spoon, breathes on it, and sticks it to the end of her nose. I follow suit, and we spend the rest of the game trying to keep the spoons on the ends of our noses as we shake with laughter.

Grandma and I.

Up through the final months of her life, when Alzheimer’s had so ravaged her brain as to remove most of her memories and render her almost incapable of speech, grandma, mom and I were still getting the giggles. Mom would accidentally spill on her while helping with dinner, or I’d be pushing her wheelchair on one of our walks and she’d grab the arms dramatically, like she was afraid with me in charge. One day, when her disease had progressed so that she was rarely speaking, I was trying to get her to stop scratching a small rash on her arm. Finally, after I removed her hand with an especially insistent “no, Grandma, you’re only going to make it worse,” she looked at me, rolled her eyes, and saluted. The woman could be sarcastic anytime, anywhere. No words necessary.

Faith with her kids: Linda, Nora, Kurt and Tracy.

Her roommate in the care center was an equally sassy 98-year-old named Gaynell, who also suffered from dementia, and who loved music as much as grandma did. They would often sing to one another across the dining room – mostly hymns and old pop songs. One day, when mom and I arrived for our visit one of the CNAs stopped to tell us that grandma and Gaynell had been sitting outside their room in their nightgowns the night before, singing “Buffalo Gals Won’t You Come Out Tonight” at the top of their lungs. They never remembered they were roommates, but every time we reminded them, they were thrilled. In a final, remarkable act of unconscious solidarity, Grandma and Gaynell died the same day: February 14, 2015. I like to think, wherever they are, they’re having their first real conversation.

Faith and Leonard Picnic Faith and Leonard.

She was not a saint, my grandma. She was kind and sassy and funny and real, a bit of a problem child who would take her family’s red flyer wagon, throw her knapsack in, and take off down the dirt road that was Libby’s Louisiana Avenue toward the river, dramatically declaring she was running away. At which point her mother would just call the houses down the block and tell them to keep an eye out for Faith. Grandma liked to tell the story about the time she was upstairs in that Louisiana house, saw a policeman walking by, and called “help!” from the window just to see what he would do.

Walt Irene Zollars Family

Walter and Irene Zollars with their children: Faith, Ferne, and Walt Jr. (Buddy).

Like so many women of her generation, grandma took on the expected posts of full-time wife and mother, and I think she got genuine fulfillment from them. My grandpa built their home of sixty years on land given to him by his parents, while his two brothers and his sister built houses next door. My mom grew up on this little family compound, party phone line and all, with her three siblings and twelve cousins. Even when I was little, Spencer Road was packed to the gills with Spencers, and the chaos was managed by three formidable women: my grandma and her sisters-in-law. As a child, I remember thinking that grandma seemed so happy, carrying green jello filled with pineapple through a crowd of grandkids, wearing one of her shirt aprons, and calling to us to take off our crick shoes before we went in the house. At 90, grandma had outlived her husband, all of her in-laws, and her brother.

Spencer Family

Faith and Leonard Spencer with their family.

Grandma’s parents named her Faith because they had been told they wouldn’t have children, and she was their first. The name was apt – she was always very good at faith, both in her family and in her church. She was a Presbyterian who loved teaching Sunday school, and she paid for my sister and I to go to our Lutheran choir camp every summer. She also had a remarkable ability to place her faith in people without saddling them with her own expectations or agenda for their life. It’s virtually impossible for most of us to do that – to be thrilled for a friend who has a new job without also secretly wishing that job didn’t mean they had to move away. We want our friends and family to live close by, to share our hobbies, to fulfill a dream of ours so we can live vicariously through them. We all have expectations for one another; it’s the basic human condition. But, somehow, beyond demanding that I work hard, she let me know that she genuinely didn’t care if I was a doctor in New York City, a small-town teacher, or anything in between, so long as I was happy. Or, if she did have expectations, at the very least she kept them entirely to herself. When my sister and I clearly weren’t that into golf, which was her favorite hobby, she didn’t push. We played cards and did crosswords instead. I have more than my share of unconditional love in my life, but that, to me, was her superpower.

Spencer family handprints at the house on Spencer Road.

Grandma’s smile was radiant, transcendent. It was the last thing that really stuck with her, and it was remarkable to watch that smile bring such joy to those around her even in the final months of her life. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a quote from Roald Dahl: “and above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” So thank you, my beautiful grandma, for teaching me to keep my eyes bright and open, for finding faith and love in what may seem, to some, to have been a small, simple life. Thank you for giving me my loud, warm, competitive, sarcastic family. Thank you for bringing that light, that smile, that humor to the world. You were magic to me.

grandma rachel001

Grandma and I.

Gremo v Hribe – Go to the Mountains

February 3, 2015February 3, 2015 / rreckin / Leave a comment

The actual color of the impossibly blue Soca River, Slovenia.

On just our second day in Slovenia, in a mountain hut perched on an alpine plateau high above Lake Bohinj, I was handed a plastic bag that read “gremo v hribe” in stylized letters. “What does this mean?” I asked our host, Ivan. He shrugged. “Go to the mountains,” he said, “of course.” By day two I had already decided that Slovenia was my kind of country. This moment, with an eastern European middle-aged former ski jumper, and a virtual stranger, solidified my sense of kinship. If I were ever to get a tattoo, it would be the John Muir quote “the mountains are calling and I must go.” It’s simple, it’s to the point, it’s how I feel all of the time. And, evidently, Slovenia shares this sentiment with John Muir and I.

Slovenia’s most famous tourist attraction by far, Lake Bled.

Church at the foot of Lake Bohinj.

Slovenia is tiny, barely over double the size of my home county in Montana. But it packs a punch. With nine thousand foot peaks running down to the Mediterranean, it has everything. Wine country, alpine meadows, ridge top castles, giant underground caverns, impossibly blue ocean. And everyone was out IN it. This idea, this “go to the mountains,” which we found out later was a slogan for the mountain huts, was clearly much more than a catchphrase. It snowed a foot and a half our second night there, and it seemed like the entire country was outside the next morning, sledding and skiing and riding their beautiful mountain ponies. The silhouette of their highest mountain, Mt Triglav, is featured on the Slovenian flag. One of their former presidents once said it was the duty of every Slovenian capable to climb Mt Triglav. These are my people. We, ourselves, had come to Slovenia for the mountains, and for the snow. I was traveling with two wonderful Aussies, old friends who were nice enough to let me join them. I repaid the invitation with my snow driving skills, and several different varieties of ski lessons. But more on that in a minute.

The three of us above Lake Bohinj.

On our very first night in Slovenia, we stayed on a working farm that rents out rooms to tourists, perched on the side of a mountain in a tiny village with all of the alpine charm of the villages I’ve seen in Switzerland, but much less of the Swiss polish. This place smelled like cows, there were woodpiles everywhere, blue plastic drums for rainwater punctuated the corners of buildings. It was wonderful. We were met at the door with traditional Slovenian cakes, and a wry, quick hostess with an eye roll for the ages. On our drive there, we had made a list of Slovenian trip goals – things like traditional foods, accordion music, homemade schnapps. By the end of that first night we had to make a brand new list, as we realized the next morning, dazed, that we had crossed them all off. Evidently, we arrived on the night when boys wander the traditional villages, playing the accordion, singing songs, and wishing everyone a “srecno novo leto,” or happy new year. They carry a basket for their payment, which comes in the form of eggs, sausage, cheese, and of course, homemade schnapps. And so, for the first time in my life, I found myself taking no less than three generous shots of schnapps with a fifteen-year-old accordion player in traditional Slovenian garb. Also, inexplicably, one of the boys was dressed as a woman. When asked why, they just shrugged. “Someone has to be the woman!” Obviously.

Our hostess also sent us out that night, with her son, to attend what essentially turned out to be a Slovenian house party in the local museum, a traditional house that’s been kept as it was in the early 1900s. We entered to thick, acrid smoke filling a traditional chimney-less “black kitchen,” and felt our way through to a table piled with yet more homemade sausage, cheese, and cakes. Rollicking accordion music came from the corner, and a little boy zoomed his tiny red fire truck across every available flat surface. Some things are the same everywhere. A note on local food in Slovenia – we learned early on there was really no need to ask people if the food they were serving was homemade. Most of the time, when asked that question, people looked confused and had answers like “well, my farm is three kilometers away,” or “I made it in the barn. Is that what you mean?”

Traditional Slovenian black kitchen.

Much of the reason we had come to Slovenia was to ski, but they had very little snow. All of the Alps, in fact, has been hurting for snow this entire winter. So when we arrived at a ski rental shop in the tiny town of Ratece, the day after their first snow of the season, they were not exactly prepared. “All I can rent you are the skate skis,” the young, flustered shop worker told us. “The classics are not ready.” I must have looked comically horrified, because he hurried to add “you have skied, yes?” I have spent my whole life skiing, and I do have some skate ski experience, but my Aussie companions have literally none. One had been on downhill skis seventeen years earlier, the other had snowboarded a bit. Skate skiing, for those unfamiliar, is definitely the most difficult thing you can do on skis. You have to balance on each foot as you push and glide forward, which is a challenge even if you are familiar with the feeling of having giant, slippery boards strapped to your feet. But we had a reservation at a mountain hut that was only accessible through four and a half kilometers of uphill trail, so, against my better judgement, we walked out with those skinny skis in hand. And I attempted to teach, quickly and on a slope, as we hurried to the hut before an early midwinter nightfall. To their immense credit, the guys were wonderfully coachable, and they didn’t seem to mind becoming repeatedly acquainted with the Slovenian snow. And, the next morning, we woke up to this view, and incredible skate and classic skiers of all ages whirring around the freshly-groomed tracks near the hut.

Dom v Tamarju mountain hut.

There are more than 169 mountain huts in Slovenia. 169. The things are everywhere. We only stayed in two, but both were delightfully well-kept and cheap. We spent our entire first mountain hut night, with the aforementioned Ivan, watching the Slovenian ski jumping team, of which he was formerly a member, compete in the European championships. So, as snow fell heavily outside, we leaned against a radiating ceramic wood stove, learned the intricate ins and outs of ski jumping, and took celebratory shots of schnapps as we cheered at the top of our lungs for Slovenija. Who won, of course. Because, as became the theme of our trip, Slovenia is a goddamned fairytale.

(Far From) Home for the Holidays

January 12, 2015January 12, 2015 / rreckin / 3 Comments

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St John’s Hall at Christmas.

Well, I’m proud to say the only dish I own in Cambridge is a pie plate. I think this means my priorities are in order. Mostly, though, it means it was the holidays, and even away from family I can’t make do without a Grandmother pie. So I made four – count them, four – pumpkin pies in a one month period! And it was in search of those pies that I found myself, the day before Thanksgiving, riding my bike through a torrential downpour for six miles to a large, high-end grocery store in a neighboring town. The idea of baking with pumpkin, and indeed of canned pumpkin in general is quite a strange thing here, and this was my last hope. But they had it, and I bought all six cans on the shelf. Then, during my misguided fist pump of gleeful success, I accidentally dumped all of the rainwater in my hood into the basket of another poor shopper. I hereby acknowledge her groceries as an unfortunate sacrifice in the baking of those pies. Four fluffy, spiced, delicious pumpkin pies, if I do say so myself. I think her soggy egg carton was a small price to pay.

Me with pie number 2.

One of my favorite places in Cambridge thus far, St. Peter’s Church.

At a fellows and grads event in November, I met one of St John’s College’s most beloved and well-known characters: “the Borderer,” an eighty-year-old professor emeritus who now spends his time tirelessly planning wonderful events for the students at John’s. He’s one of those small old English men who seem to be made entirely of some form of wire – wiry old muscles, wiry knobbled fingers, and eyebrows that seem determined to escape his face in every available direction. We got to talking, and my revelation that I’m from Montana immediately invoked the response “oh, so you’re Canadian! Lovely!” Without a pause for me to remedy his mistake, he launched into a discussion of his upcoming Christmas ghost story event, and how he would love to have a Canadian story represented. I should explain – it’s a Cambridge tradition, bolstered by famous former King’s fellow and writer M.R. James, to have ghost stories told in the colleges before Christmas. In James’s case, he used to write a new, exclusive ghost story just to be read to King’s College Fellows on Christmas Eve. In this vein, the Borderer plans an annual night of ghost stories in St John’s Combination Room, a fantastically beautiful wood-pannelled room with a famous plaster ceiling, which is lit entirely by candlelight. So I promised the Borderer that I would try to think of an appropriately Western ghost story to contribute to his list of readings for this year. Several days later, I sent him a copy of “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert Service, which is set in the Yukon gold rush, and is the most fantastic ballad. And I thought that was the end of it. His response? “Fantastic! I’d love to hear you read it before I finalize the program. Could you come by to rehearse on Wednesday at 12:00?” To clarify, there had been no discussion up to this point of me actually reading this poem. I thought I was contributing an idea that hardened actors could then execute. I made varyingly desperate attempts to get out of any kind of performance, in which I leaned heavily on the argument that my accent wouldn’t be quite right as it was a Canadian poem and I am not, in fact, Canadian. But my protestations were fruitless, and before I knew it I was sitting by candlelight in the combination room, reading this wonderful, colloquial poem to about 150 extremely international listeners. It was yet another surreal experience, but a warm one, too, and it felt lovely to be celebrated as a Western voice. There are so few Westerners here.

Me, reading my ghost story.

I have been sick more since I arrived in England than I have been in years at home, and so, inevitably, I managed to get a terrible cold right before Christmas. By the time Christmas Day came around, I had virtually no voice, and a terrible, painful cough. I had agreed to co-plan a sort of orphan’s Christmas dinner sometime earlier, and on Christmas Eve we realized we didn’t have quite as much booze as we thought we’d need. So, Christmas morning, it fell to me to walk down to a small corner store that was open and buy three more bottles of wine. Now I’d like you to imagine this from the perspective of the shop worker. In comes a bedraggled-looking American girl, alone, on Christmas morning, hacking up a lung and buying three bottles of wine at once. I’m pretty sure he thought I was the most pitiful person on the planet. And I had no voice to actually explain the situation. As I left, he called out “hang in there!” I think he genuinely believed I was going to go home and self-medicate with all three bottles of that wine. Poor man. To clarify, I did consume plenty of grapes that night, but they were mostly used as flavoring in my cough syrup. Ah, Christmas cheer…

King’s College Chapel by candlelight.

Cambridge Christmas lights.

Christmastime in London.

The View From the River

October 27, 2014November 24, 2014 / rreckin / 1 Comment

Punting on the Cam – typical Cambridge.

Weirdly, Cambridge is all about water. This seems strange to me because it’s not on the sea, and the river that runs through it would qualify as a creek in Northwestern Montana – and a small one, at that. But in fact much of East Anglia, the region where Cambridge is located, was removed forcibly from a waterlogged existence by drains and canals in the 1700s. Up to that point, much of the landscape was given over to bogs and marshes, known locally as fens. Essentially, this means it’s flat here. REALLY flat.

Canal in the fenland surrounding Cambridge, lined by raised dykes.

The river Cam, which runs through Cambridge (get it?), is essentially a canal with a series of locks, lined with long, thin houseboats and filled with swans and punts. Punts are shallow, flat-bottomed boats quite similar to gondolas, which are steered by a single long pole and most often occupied by students and tourists. Steering them is much more difficult than it looks, and it’s not uncommon to see a boat drifting away from a pole that’s stuck in the mud at the bottom of the river. Thankfully, the punts come with a small and dramatically ineffective paddle that tourists can often be seen flailing through the water, trying in vain to regain their lost pole. There’s no more beautiful way to see the “backs” of the colleges than from the river, though, especially on a sunny day.

Three Montanans in Cambridge!

Me taking an unconventional “kayaking” approach to the pole while punting.

Long boats (house boats) along the Cam.

Riverfront in the nearby cathedral town of Ely.

During the first few weeks of my time here, I had three separate people approach me in my college, St. John’s, and ask if I would be rowing. I would love to say this was thanks to my grace and obvious athleticism, but I have no illusions there. They need tall girls. Rowing is a huge deal at Cambridge; most folks I’ve talked to have tried rowing for their college for at least a term during their time here. To row for the University team – the blues – is a huge deal. Every year, Cambridge competes against Oxford in an event simply known as “The Boat Race,” which is watched by as many as 250,000 people in person and 15 million on TV. Cambridge has won this race 81 times, and Oxford 78. Many of the rowers go on to race for Great Britain.

Anyway, I was persuaded to join St John’s boat club, which is called the “Lady Margaret Boat Club.” Affectionately known as Maggie. The Cambridge legend is that the boat club was no longer permitted to call itself St John’s after one of its members murdered a cox from the rival Trinity boat, and “St John’s” was banned from rowing at Cambridge. So they simply came back under the name of “Lady Margaret,” the foundress of the college. Like most Cambridge stories, this is probably elaborately fabricated. It is true, however, that the term “blazer” came from the Maggie tradition of wearing a bright red jacket, which was called a “blazer” for its color. The term went from there to describe any jacket of that cut. Those eye-wateringly red blazers are still worn proudly by senior rowers in the club.

Lady Margaret Boathouse and the River Cam.

But a senior rower I am decidedly not. I’m in a novice boat, meant for those of us who have never rowed before. And let me tell you, rowing is a heck of a lot more technical than it looks. For starters, the boats are TINY. So narrow our hips barely fit, and incredibly difficult to balance. Rowing is, essentially, a repeated deep squat, where we place our oars in the water and push back away from them. Our coach calls this motion “standing on the spoon.” The spoon is the oar, which I will confess took me some time to figure out. I kept thinking cutlery made a strange metaphor for water. Our coach, Lance, is a character who treats us with absolute honesty, genuine affection, and general hilarity. He and the other eight girls have taken to calling me “Indy,” as in Indiana Jones, to differentiate me from the other Rachel in the boat. The other day, as Lance rode his bike along the bank beside our boat, he shouted “Bloody hell, Indy! Get on, you bastard!” This was said in a tone of admiration and meant as a compliment, I think, but it made me laugh so hard I lost all momentum. I adore the other girls in my boat – five English girls, two Americans, and an Austrian. All are quite a bit younger than me, which has also led to Lance calling me “mother duck,” and to him placing me at stroke, which is the position that sets the pace, so that “all the little ducklings can follow their mama.”

Maggie Novice Women’s 1 Boat

Our boat in action in our very first river race, where we did much better than expected!

Boats lining up for the Winter Head race.

Riding along the towpath, cheering for the Maggie men during the men’s division.

And one final water story:

A couple of weeks ago, I was running along the river early in the morning and saw a woman perched precariously on the gunnel of one of the boats, working on its roof. After I had passed her, I heard a splash and turned to see that she had fallen into the water between her boat and the stone wall lining the shore. Running back, I half-slid down the bank and helped to haul her from the water, which is hardly fast-moving but is quite cold. Once she was back on her feet on the bank, unscathed and thanking me profusely, I found myself in one of the stranger moments of my life. I was standing, dripping, on the bank of a European river, in the early-morning fog, next to a soaking-wet middle-aged English woman in her pajamas. We stood mutually shivering for a moment before I urged her to get inside and get warm, which left me alone and wet on the river bank, facing the three mile run back home. During which I can only assume other joggers thought I was sweating heavily – but only on my front.

14th century bridge in nearby St Ives.

“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best.” – Ernest Hemingway

October 13, 2014October 13, 2014 / rreckin / 2 Comments

My transportation in front of a country church.

I officially have my first new Cambridge goal. Sure, I want that degree, I want to learn things, blah blah blah, but my new burning passion is to learn to ride a bike in a skirt. Or, I should say, to learn to ride a bike in a skirt without having a Marilyn Monroe moment. I never believed the basic laws of physics allowed such a thing, but girls here seem capable of riding along in the fullest of skirts with the greatest of ease, looking for all the world like Zooey Deschanel in every movie she’s ever made. I should clarify by saying that everyone in Cambridge has bikes. In 2013, 47% of people in Cambridge reported cycling at least once a week, which is by far the most in Britain. Oxford, which was in second place, had less than half as many reported cyclists. In 2010, a survey at the Cambridge rail station found more than 1,600 bikes parked there at one time.

Jesus College, with a typical array of bikes.

From parents with kids in trailers to little old ladies with baskets full of groceries, these tiny streets are full of bikes. And thousands of pedestrians. Which makes for MADNESS. For the most part, bikes adhere to traffic laws. But in the narrow, winding streets in the city centre, vehicular traffic is pretty much limited to buses, delivery trucks, and taxis. And there’s hardly enough room for one traffic lane, let alone two, so the bikes kind of go wherever they please. It’s mildly restrained chaos, punctuated by the dinging bike bells, which are a terribly British way to ask pedestrians if they might possibly consider moving from the centre of the road, if it’s not too much trouble, so as to avoid mutual dismemberment.

Yet more bikes outside the Archaeology Department.

Narrow Cambridge street late in the day, with the madness winding down.

And so I have bought a bike! It’s of British make, and is a hybrid road/cruiser, as a true road bike would be eaten alive by the cobblestones in the city centre. I actually haven’t been using it for riding around town much because my flat is so central. Also, as aforementioned, I neither want to be hit by another cyclist, nor do I want to be responsible for the serious injury of a hapless pedestrian. So I’ve mostly been riding out of town, through the surrounding countryside. Those who know me well know that I have always been a great lover of solitude, and not generally the most comfortable with crowds or with lots of social time. Recently, while going through elementary school papers at my folks’s place, I found an assignment to draw one thing I really wanted. I’m sure other kids drew trampolines and ponies; I drew myself in a bubble bath with the caption “I only want a moment’s peace from my sister.” And I love my sister! Sometimes, for me, even the best company is too much company. But solitude has been hard to come by here, so it’s wonderful to be able to flee the city in spare moments and ride around for a few hours on my own. The villages are all so close together that just a twenty mile loop ride can take you through seven or eight different hamlets. Which brings me to the only benefit of my dear Sarah Becker Johnson not being with me this time around: I can fully indulge my apparently “creepy” love of churches and graveyards. So look away, Mrs. Johnson. And let the photos of churches – and a few dead people – begin.

Where the @*$% are the clothes hangers? And other musings on international life.

October 4, 2014October 5, 2014 / rreckin / 2 Comments

King’s Parade, the street in front of King’s College.

My first actual day in Cambridge, I spent most of it looking for clothes hangers. Jetlagged and woozy, I wandered the streets of my new city baffled by store names like Primark, Next, Argos, John Lewis, Poundland. Have you ever noticed how rarely store names actually tell you what they sell? Whatever happened to Toys R Us or JoAnn’s Fabric? I also made the distinct mistake early in the day of purchasing several large-order items, meaning I was wandering the city with a giant collapsable clothes hamper, an iron, a lamp, bed linens and towels already filling my arms. As I stumbled from store to store, I’m quite sure several of the sales people just told the wild-eyed, sweaty American girl that they didn’t have hangers so that I would stop scaring the other customers. “I just want to put my clothes away!” I practically shouted at one poor clerk, realizing belatedly she was clutching a stuffed bear, and I was in a toy store.

Finally, I fell into a recommended store called Argos, catching my mini-fridge on the door, and found myself in an essentially empty room, populated only by iPads set up at stations with small notepads and pencils, and a till at the back. There was not another soul in the place. Generally, British stores have a surplus of extremely helpful, friendly salespeople. Just a few minutes before, a lovely man at Poundland had spent twenty minutes in the back room finding me exactly the power adapter I was looking for. But in Argos, no such luck. As I have since discovered, this store works on a system of customers choosing items on the iPad, then picking them up at the till after workers in a back warehouse bring them out. I was about to turn and leave, defeated, when I watched another customer come in and stride confidently to an iPad. “Is the store open?” I tentatively asked. “Of course,” the man said. “But I’m not sure you should buy any more things today, love.”

Seen in Cambridge.

Trinity Lane in a quiet moment.

Welcome to Hogwarts

October 2, 2014October 2, 2014 / rreckin / 7 Comments

St. John’s College Chapel

I think most American kids, myself included, thought that when JK Rowling wrote about Hogwarts and its houses, about students in robes, May Balls, OWL and NEWT exams, she was making it all up. As it turns out, Hogwarts is pretty much just Oxford or Cambridge, but with magic. I had to buy an elaborate calf-length black robe the other day that I’ll wear for formal hall – dinner in a giant high-ceilinged room with stained glass windows and long parallel tables. Sound familiar? And each college really does have a May Ball with a black tie dress code. People keep telling me “you brought some gowns, right?” Gowns?? I’ve never owned anything that would fit that description. Others of my friends seem to have had them for weddings, but considering that Montana weddings are most often either outside or in a barn… not so much. So now, improbably, I am gown shopping. Thank goodness I bought heels before I left!

St John’s College’s Famous Bridge of Sighs

My college, St. John’s, is quite beautiful, and apparently the second most wealthy college in Cambridge. This is good – I’m told – because it means our food is good, our accommodation is nicer, and they have more money to hand out for research and travel funding. The food, I can vouch, isn’t bad at all. My room is quite nice, though I only have one large window. I’m right in the center of town, more central than anyone else I’ve met. Which is extremely convenient, but also can be quite noisy. Last night at about three am I heard a girl outside my window shout that she was “sorry I buggered it all, but I didn’t know I was gay at the beginning!” Which brings me to the reason there were a significant quantity of drunk students running around last night at 3:00 am – the week here runs from Saturday through Wednesday. I’ll give you a minute to absorb that. There is no explanation for this, as for so many things at Cambridge. When asked, people simply shrug and tell you to get used to it. When you’ve had over eight hundred years to develop quirks, you develop a lot of them.

St John’s College Chapel

St John’s “New Court”

St John’s College

Turning Uphill

October 1, 2014 / rreckin / 2 Comments

The first thing you need to know about this story is that I am not a horse person. I don’t dislike horses, but when people discover I’m from Montana, they often assume that I grew up on a ranch and spent all of my toddling years trotting. But I’m from the woods, from the part of Montana where the mountains are too steep and the forests too dense to make space for ranch country, much as some have tried. I’m from the chainsaw and gold pan side of the state, and my time on horseback has been limited at best.

So, this summer when I found myself on the back of a horse on the side of a mountain in Wyoming, I was not entirely in my comfort zone. Our archaeological team of thirteen was in the mountains to search for the remnants of Native American life high in the Absarokas near Yellowstone, and I’d been in a constant state of mild trepidation for six hours. The trail, by about twelve miles in, had become a series of switchbacks climbing steeply to a high pass. And as these switchbacks rose, and the valley floor below me fell away, my hands grew sweaty on the reins. Let me clarify: I hike a lot, and with confidence. On my own two feet, I feel extremely comfortable on steeper slopes and scarier trails than this. I’ve laid on my stomach and looked straight down 4,500 feet without flinching. I simply – and I stand by this – cannot bring myself to trust the sure-footedness of an animal I have never met before, who could literally stumble once and send us both cartwheeling down two thousand feet or more.

I was already nervous, then, when the botanist fell. A lovely man who seemed more horse confident than I, Michael attempted to turn his horse straight up the mountain right in front of me to circumvent snow that was blocking a switchback, and the horse balked. It began to back down the mountain, reared, and both horse and man fell, tumbling toward a cliff below. My horse, appropriately known by the solid, dependable name of Ruth, balked, too. But she kept to her feet, and together we watched Michael fling himself from his cartwheeling horse. Separated, both managed to stop falling before going over the edge. By this time two of the packers were already off their horses, running to aid Michael, who was on his knees cradling a hurt shoulder. The third of our guides rode up to me, now the seriously under-qualified head of the line, and said “You can’t stop here.” I genuinely thought I might be sick, and must have looked it on the outside, too, because he said “I can’t lead you. But you’ve got to turn Ruth up the hill before the other horses panic.” So I did. There wasn’t anything else TO do. I turned her uphill, and Ruth and I led the pack train the rest of the way to the pass.

This may seem a strange story to start a blog about my time at Cambridge, but I tell it because this is how my life feels at the moment. I’ve put myself on a beautiful path, whose destination is something I have always wanted, but there’s so much of the journey that is terrifyingly beyond my control. There’s a quote, by John Shedd, that “a ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.” That quote, written on a yellow Forest Service sticky note, has been in my purse since I found out I got the Gates Cambridge scholarship. For the past three years, I’ve been safe in harbor, and quite happy to be there. I loved being back in Libby, with people and family and a job that I loved. This opportunity, the decision to take it, was also a decision to leave my beloved mountains and embark. I’m here, now, and I certainly don’t feel less afraid. But that doesn’t mean I can’t do this. Because I’m also thrilled. Joyous. In awe. So, if you’ll excuse my mixed metaphors, whether by ship, by horse or on my own two feet, I’m headed uphill.

Huckleberry Heart

From Cambridge, with love.